Full Course Description

2-Day: Trauma Conference: The Body Keeps the Score-Trauma Healing with Bessel van der Kolk, MD

Nobody can “treat” abuse, rape, molestation, or any other horrendous event. What has happened cannot be undone.

But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul.

Watch Bessel van der Kolk, MD, in a transformational clinical trauma training. Attend and learn from one of the most renowned trauma experts - one who has spent decades working both as a researcher and clinician. – and NY Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps The Score.

As clinicians, the challenge is to help clients reestablish ownership of their bodies and minds — to feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed.

It takes specific methods, like neurofeedback, EMDR, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and sensory integration. Dr. van der Kolk has used every one of these methods extensively to successfully treat his own clients, and has also experienced them himself.

This 2-day conference will serve as both a guide and an invitation – an invitation to dedicate yourself to the pursuit of helping trauma clients with the best treatment approaches proven to alleviate suffering.

Let Dr. van der Kolk show you how to apply these proven methods and approaches to your clinical practice — so you can experience the satisfaction of helping even your toughest client heal from deep-rooted trauma.

Purchase today!

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze and support how traumatized clients process information.
Determine how sensorimotor processing can alleviate traumatic re-experiencing.
Theorize the range of adaptations to trauma that occur early in the life cycle.
Investigate how trauma affects the developing mind and brain.
Communicate the recent advances in neurobiology of trauma.
Differentiate between disrupted attachment and traumatic stress.
Breakdown how adverse childhood experiences affect brain development, emotion regulation and cognition.
Integrate techniques that promote affect regulation and memory processing.
Defend the criteria of the proposed Developmental Trauma Disorder within the DSM®.
Propose treatment strategy alternatives to drugs and talk therapy.
Plan how to integrate various treatment approaches in your practice discussed during the workshop.
Support the rationale for using dance, movement, play and theatre in treating trauma.

Outline

Neuroscience & Brain Development

Neuroscience and brain development
How children learn to regulate their arousal systems
How the brain regulates itself
Developmental psychopathology: The derailment of developmental processes & brain development due to trauma, abuse and neglect
How the brain responds to treatment

Early Life Trauma

Interpersonal neurobiology
Adaptations to trauma early in the life cycle
Loss of affect regulation
Chronic destructive relationships towards self and others
Dissociation and amnesia
Somatization
Self-blame, guilt and shame
Chronic distrust and identification with the aggressor

Attachment, Trauma, and Psychopathology

The breakdown of information processing in trauma
Mirror neuron systems and brain development
How to overcome the destabilization and disintegration
The compulsion to repeat – origins and solutions
Difference between disorganized attachment and traumatic stress

Neuroscience, Trauma, Memory and the Body

The neurobiology of traumatic stress
Learned helplessness and learned agency
Restoring active mastery and the ability to attend to current experiences
Somatic re-experiencing of trauma-related sensations and affects that serve as engines for continuing maladaptive behaviours
How mind and brain mature in the context of caregiving systems

The Diagnosis of Treatment of Trauma-Related Disorders

Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD)
Affect and impulse dysregulation
Disturbances of attention, cognition and consciousness
Distortions in self-perception and systems of meaning
Interpersonal difficulties
Somatization and biological dysregulation
The development of DTD in the DSM-5® as a diagnosis and its implications for assessment, diagnosis and treatment

The Latest Research on Trauma-specific Treatment Interventions

The role of body-oriented and neurologically-based therapies to resolve the traumatic past
Alternatives to drugs and talk therapy
EMDR
Self-regulation, including yoga
Mindfulness
Play and theatre
Dance, movement and sensory integration
Neurofeedback

Copyright : 06/05/2021

Bottom Up: How Neuroscience Can Guide Us in Body-Oriented Therapies

Trauma tends to have a profound impact on one’s sense of self, leaving a lasting imprint on both cognitive and somatic domains of self-experience. Traumatized individuals often remain tortured by thoughts that reflect intensely negative core beliefs about themselves such as: “I don’t know myself anymore”, and “I have permanently changed for the worse”. It also is increasingly evident that ‘the body keeps the score’: traumatized individuals frequently report somatically-based alterations in self experience, including feelings of disembodiment and related identity disturbance. Pioneering neurobiological studies are beginning to shed light on self-disturbance in traumatized individuals both during resting state and under conditions of threat. The brain networks involved in self-experience are most intact while under threat, which may explain various forms of reckless behaviours. We will present findings from the laboratory and demonstrate how we can we work clinically to restore the self as an integrated brain, mind, and body.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the neurobiological links that mediate self- and trauma-related processing in traumatized individuals, in particular, as these links pertain to altered functional characteristics of the brain's default mode network (DMN).
Conclude how the links between self- and trauma-related processing are manifested clinically (i.e., clinical disturbances to self-related processing), as well as how these links relate to addictive or risk-seeking behaviours in traumatized individuals.
Evaluate how psycho-therapeutic interventions that may assist the re-introduction, or re-establishment of an individual's sense of self having been lost in an aftermath of trauma.

Outline

How the brain processes trauma
The development of maladaptive self-beliefs in the experience of PTSD (identity disturbance)
Somatically-based alterations of experience in the bodies of trauma survivors
Harnessing the brain networks in therapy that can lead to trauma resolution

Copyright : 18/05/2021

The Transformation of EMDR: From Technique to Comprehensive Psychotherapy

This recording provides an introduction to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is a unique type of psychotherapy proven to help clients recover from trauma and improve the quality of their lives. Trauma is stored in the brain and body, continuing to cause pain and suffering, and EMDR can free clients by repatterning thinking and emotional reactions. This recording will help you understand the evidence to support EMDR and all of its applications. As well as, a look at the evolution of EMDR - from technique to a comprehensive, integrative psychotherapy tool.

Program Information

Objectives

Determine the current status of EMDR therapy’s evidence base in treating PTSD and other psychiatric conditions.
Formulate the basic tenets of the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model.
Inspect the goal and function of each prong of the three-pronged approach in EDMR therapy.

Outline

What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy?
- Basic Tenets of the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) Model
- Use of Eye Movements/Bilateral Stimulation
- 8 Phases of EMDR Therapy
- Addressing “Big T” AND “little t” Traumas
- Addressing Acts of Commission AND Omission
- Addressing Single, Discrete Events AND Complex/Developmental Trauma
- Three-Pronged Approach – Past, Present Future Targets
- Themes of Responsibility, Safety, and Control
Evidence Base for EMDR Therapy and Range of Applications
- PTSD
- Complex PTSD
- Compared to Other Evidence-Based Treatments
- Most Cost Effective and Time Efficient
- International Treatment Guidelines and Endorsements
- Other Psychiatric Diagnoses
Effects of Eye Movements in EMDR and Proposed Mechanisms of Action
- Eye Movements
  - Reduce negative emotions, imagery vividness, emotional arousal
  - Increase episodic memory retrieval, recognition of true information, de-arousal, positive neurophysiological changes, thinking flexibility
    - Mechanisms – Working Memory, Orienting, and REM Hypotheses
  - Evolution of EMDR – From Technique to Comprehensive, Integrative Psychotherapy
    - Influences from other Psychotherapy Models
    - Integrating Elements form other Models
    - Innovative Applications and Delivery Frameworks

Copyright : 29/05/2021

The Use of Mind-Altering Substances: MDMA, Psilocybin, and Marijuana for Treating PTSD and other Mental Distress

For the first time in over four decades, researchers are returning to examining the therapeutic benefits of mind-altering substances, including MDMA (ecstasy), psilocybin (mushrooms), marijuana and LSD. In the 1970s the study of all psychedelics was criminalized in the US, despite emerging evidence of their medical value. Over the past decade, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS) has helped to revive psychedelic research, sponsoring studies across the United States and around the world, including MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, and end-of-life anxiety. The results have been very positive, lasting over 72 months of follow-up, with few adverse effects. Psychedelics may promote a deepening and acceleration of the psychotherapeutic process. During therapy, people often are able to access and find peace with disavowed, “exiled” parts of themselves. In this workshop, the principal investigator of the Phase I and II level trials will discuss outcomes and processes. Two of the most prominent neurobiologists of psychedelics, Robin Carhart Harris and Sue Carter will present their findings about fundamental mechanisms, and the Boston MDMA study team will discuss clinical experiences and applications. In appropriate therapeutic contexts, psychedelics may prove to be more effective than most conventional treatments, as well as safer and more cost-effective.

Program Information

Objectives

Debate the emerging research of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy (MDMA-AP) and describe effective ways of integrating it into ongoing psychotherapy to improve clinical outcomes for clients with PTSD.
Investigate the history and contemporary research of Psilocybin and evaluate the effectiveness of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy (PAP) in facilitating psychotherapy.
Synthesize methods of integration of psychedelic-assisted therapy in contemporary treatment for mental illness.
Differentiate key areas of investigation regarding therapeutic potentials of classic 5-HT2A agonist psychedelics for mental healthcare.

Outline

The emerging research on MDMA and MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy
The history and contemporary research on Psilocybin and Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy
Integration of psychedelics in contemporary treatments for mental illness
Investigations regarding neurotransmitters and psychedelics

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

WE CAN’T HELP OURSELVES EVEN BEGIN TO HEAL RACIALIZED TRAUMA IF WE DON’T ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IT EVEN EXISTS. Our society needs to break down systems and institutions that perpetuate the concept of white body supremacy and recognize how the myth of race and historical trauma is deeply ingrained into our culture.

Through a somatic-body approach that negotiates the common historical and perpetual myths that Black bodies, Native bodies, and other bodies of colour are inherently deviant and that the white body is the standard of humaness, Resmaa helps build an understanding of racialized trauma so that we can move from our racialized lens to a cultural lens – and move further to a resourced energy lens of healing. Learn how to recognize trauma in the body, how to build a cultural container to heal and how to begin practising resourced resilience. These tools can help us recognize body trauma born out of racism and white body supremacy in our own body and our communities and to start to heal.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the stress signs and symptoms of racialized trauma.
Integrate the basics of the HIPP theory (historical, inter-generational, persistent institutional, personal) of racialized trauma into your clinical practice.
Demonstrate one resourcing technique to use with trauma clients.
Theorize the dimensions associated with how the body carries racialized trauma.

Outline

Racialized Trauma
- Myth of race
- Historical trauma
- White body supremacy
- HIPP theory (historical, inter-generational, persistent institutional, personal)
How the body carries racialized trauma
- Recognizing trauma in the body
Resilience and community in healing
- Building a container
- Repetition, Consistency, Practice
- Strategies for healing

Going Beyond Regulation: Exploring Sensory Integration & Processing and Implications in Developmental Trauma

During this recording, you will review sensory integration and processing performance skills. Understand how the ability to take in information through the senses, from within and outside of the body, and organize and interpret that information, and make a meaningful, functional response for healing. Take away sensory-based strategies to support childhood development and resiliency with children with developmental trauma.

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate between varied sensory integration and processing performance skills.
Analyze the impact of developmental trauma on sensory integration and processing skills.
Apply 3-5 sensory-based strategies supporting childhood development and resiliency with children with developmental trauma.

Outline

Review sensory integration and processing performance skills
Identify how developmental trauma impacts sensory integration and processing performances skills through clinical illustration
Apply and identify 3-5 sensory/body-based strategies to support development and resiliency in children with developmental trauma