What You’ll Learn During Your Two Days in Santa Clara
Transform your practice while enjoying all that the Bay Area has to offer! Here’s what you’ll learn at the amazing Santa Clara Marriott hotel, where you can find onsite pools, complimentary yoga classes, water activities, salon services, and much more within walking distance!
More than just the basics, you’ll get the ins and outs of Dr. Janina Fisher’s revolutionary approach to trauma treatment so you can easily customize your approach client by client.
You’ll learn how to:
- Accurately assess and diagnose PTSD, CPTSD, DTD and other trauma-related symptoms
- Confidently apply neurobiological research in treatment to foster new neural pathways
- Successfully employ various trauma treatment approaches like EMDR, IFS and more
- Empower clients to identify and differentiate their own trauma-related symptoms
- Choose the best approaches for treatment of traumatic memory
- Facilitate clients’ changing relationship with their parts and addressing dissociative issues
- Utilize powerful interventions to reduce feelings of shame, guilt, anger and fear
Course Outline
What is a ‘trauma’?
How Trauma is Encoded in the Brain and Body
Applications of Neurobiological Research to Treatment
Trauma-informed Treatment Planning
Use of Mindfulness-based Interventions
Implementing the Principles of Neuroplastic Change in Therapy
Treatment of Traumatic Memories
Resolving Implicit Memory
- The neurobiological effects of traumatic experience
- Impact of trauma on brain development
- Threat and the developing brain
How Trauma is Encoded in the Brain and Body
- Implicit versus explicit memory
- Procedural learning
- Assessment of trauma-related symptoms and co-morbidities
- Differential diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, C-PTSD, developmental trauma
- Assessment tools and scales
Applications of Neurobiological Research to Treatment
- Assumptions of neurobiologically-informed treatment
- Helping clients increase activity in the prefrontal cortex
- Fostering the growth of new neural pathways
- Research risks and limitations
Trauma-informed Treatment Planning
- Addressing ongoing neurobiological effects of the trauma
- Phase-oriented treatment model
- Well-accepted trauma treatment approaches
- Evidence-based treatments
- Strategies from EMDR, IFS and SP
- Contraindications for treatment
- Stabilization Phase Treatment
- Assist clients to identify and differentiate trauma-related symptoms
- Observing triggers and triggering
- Dis-identifying from implicit memories
- Reframing the symptoms to reduce shame
Use of Mindfulness-based Interventions
- Mindfulness in the context of therapy
- The effect of mindfulness on the brain
- Using mindful language and interventions to promote neuroplastic change
Implementing the Principles of Neuroplastic Change in Therapy
- Inhibition of old patterns of thinking/behaving
- Intensive repetition of new patterns or skills
- Role of mindful concentration
Treatment of Traumatic Memories
- Implicit versus explicit memory
- A neurobiologically-informed approach to processing explicit memory
- Risk factors and complications of memory processing
- Approaches to treatment of traumatic memory
Resolving Implicit Memory
- Treatment approaches for addressing implicit memory
- Overcoming the fear of traumatic memory
- Assessing when memory has been adequately processed
Traumatic Attachment
Effects of Disorganized Attachment in Therapy
Addressing Disorganized Attachment
Dissociation as a Complication of Trauma
Changing the Client’s Relationship to Themselves and Their Parts
Treating the Effects of Trauma-shame
Addressing the Effects of Persistent Fear
Interventions for the Effects of Anger and Hostility
- When the source of safety is the source of threat
- “Frightened” and “Frightening” caregiving
- Disorganized-unresolved attachment as survival defense
- Impact of disorganized attachment on affect regulation/dysregulation
Effects of Disorganized Attachment in Therapy
- Phobia of therapy and the therapist
- Traumatic transference and disorganized attachment
- Affect dysregulating effects of psychotherapy
- Increasing regulatory ability in therapy
- Right brain-to-right brain communication
Addressing Disorganized Attachment
- The therapist as neurobiological regulator
- Minimizing negative affect
- Maximizing positive affect
- Playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy
Dissociation as a Complication of Trauma
- Fragmentation and dissociation as an adaptation to trauma
- Understanding client symptoms as manifestations of fragmented parts
- Mindful observation of distress and impulsive behavior as parts-related
- Dis-identification with the parts and symptoms
Changing the Client’s Relationship to Themselves and Their Parts
- Increasing empathy for the parts
- Facilitating inner dialogue and negotiation
- Replacing self-hostility with self-compassion
Treating the Effects of Trauma-shame
- Understanding shame as a defensive survival response
- Shame as a source of safety in trauma
- Combatting shame-based cognitive schemas
- Treatment of shame as a part of the personality
Addressing the Effects of Persistent Fear
- The role of fear as a survival defense
- A neurobiologically-informed approach to addressing anxiety symptoms
- Treatment of anxiety as a part of the personality
Interventions for the Effects of Anger and Hostility
- The role of anger as a survival defense
- Discharging anger versus using anger to empower
- Treatment of anger as a part of the personality
Objectives
- Demonstrate knowledge of three neurobiologically-based trauma responses and their clinical implications.
- Theorize the treatment implications of how the somatosensory and autonomic effects of trauma exacerbate PTSD.
- Assess the role of procedural learning and memory in client presentations.
- Describe the relationship between autonomic dysregulation and addictive or self-destructive behavior to inform treatment interventions.
- Specify three interventions for regulating autonomic arousal.
- Categorize ‘implicit memory’ and its role in post-traumatic stress disorders.
- Employ three interventions that ensure safe, successful memory processing.
- Distinguish the signs that traumatic memory has been sufficiently processed.
- Catalogue the root causes of ‘disorganized attachment’ status in children as it relates to case conceptualization.
- Assess the clinical implications of the symptoms and difficulties associated with disorganized attachment in adults.
- Evaluate the role of structural dissociation in the treatment of complex trauma and personality disorders.
- Investigate common trauma-related internal conflicts and behavioral issues caused by structural dissociation.
- Utilize mindfulness-based interventions that address resolution of internal conflicts.
- Determine the role of shame as an adaptation to trauma in relation to treatment planning.
- Propose 3 interventions for decreasing problematic shame, fear, and anger.
