Full Course Description

2-Day Trauma & Memory Workshop: Clinical Strategies to Resolve Traumatic Memories and Help Clients Reclaim Their Lives

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Articulate the four major developmental stages that increase vulnerability to trauma and how to recognize them in your clients.
  2. Determine the naturalistic mechanics of trauma and survival responses of flight, fight, freeze and collapse as it relates to clinical treatment.
  3. Differentiate the different types of memory systems and comprehend the connection to the mind and body’s way of processing the types of memories.
  4. Analyze the various forms of memory and their impact on working with clients in therapy.
  5. Differentiate ways to identify which memory systems are operative and how to access these (memory) components in a systematic fashion to promote self-regulation, integration and empowerment with clients.
  6. Appraise the evolutionary underpinnings of trauma and the Polyvagal theory and their clinical implications.
  7. Demonstrate the importance of “Bottom-Up” processing versus “Top-Down” processing to improve treatment outcomes.
  8. Analyze the effects of stress on somatic and emotional syndromes in clients.
  9. Incorporate Dr. Levine’s simple containment tools to more effectively engage your client in trauma therapy.
  10. Implement Somatic Experiencing© techniques to help clients heal traumatic memories.
  11. Demonstrate practical tools for therapeutic work with emotional and procedural (“body”) memories.
  12. Manage avoiding pitfalls of generating spurious (“false”) memories and help clients come to peace with their troubling memories and haunting emotions.

Outline

Trauma and the Body

  • Developmental trauma
    • Pre-natal through age 5
  • Evolution and Polyvagal foundation
  • How the body stores trauma
  • Clinical research
Deeper Understanding of Memory and Clinical Implications
  • Explicit – More Conscious Memory
    • Declarative
    • Episodic
  • Implicit – Less Conscious Memory
    • Emotional
    • Procedural/Body Memory
  • Clinical application for memory systems
Traumatic Memories
  • Long-term memory vs short-term memory
  • How the brain and body store memory
  • Memory engrams with somatic markers
  • Fight, flight, freeze response
How Clients Get “Stuck”
  • Tonic immobility – The fallback to freeze
  • Freeze couples with Fear
  • Dissociation
  • Bracing and terror
  • Euphoric dissociation
  • Collapse
Somatic and Emotional Reactions to Trauma
  • Symptoms and complexities of each in therapy
  • Emotional – anxiety, depression
  • Somatic – chronic pain, fibromyalgia
  • Autonomic – migraines, irritable bowel
  • Resolving Traumatic Reactions
The Basic Stages of Trauma Treatment
  • Containment of strong sensation and emotion
  • Pendulation – The dual opposites of sensation
  • Titration – going gradually
  • Completion
  • Renegotiation of active for passive responses
  • Allow things to settle: Self-Paced termination
Therapeutic Approaches to Treat Traumatic Memories
  • The importance of “Bottom-Up” processing
    • The Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain
    • In an Unspoken Voice
  • Somatic Experiencing©
    • Renegotiation vs. Reliving
    • Restoration of self-regulation
    • Somatic experience of trauma
    • Developing internal awareness
  • The mind-body connection in trauma work
  • Help reinforce trust and acceptance in clients
  • Incorporating client’s spirituality in trauma work

Copyright : 28/10/2019

The Body as Healer: Working from the Bottom Up

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Integrate the clients’ awareness of their internal experience and your observations of their nonverbal behaviours, including involuntary gestures, posture changes, and external indications of shifts in their autonomic nervous system.
  2. Develop your capacity to read your own somatic cues as a means of resonating and connecting with the client’s experience.
  3. Assess the often-fleeting physical cues of their internal states that indicate crucial resources clients can access as they move toward healing.

Outline

From Trauma to Awakening & Flow

  • Trauma Vortex & Counter Vortex
  • Emotions & Touch

Core Regulation: Working from the Bottom Up

  • The Roots of Traumatization
  • Terror & the Freeze Response
  • Neuroception & the Activation of Arousal
  • Unsafe Touch

Copyright : 19/03/2020