Working with Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

CPD

Handouts

Speaker

Christiane Sanderson, BSc., MSc. Related seminars and products

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Christiane Sanderson BSc, MSc, is a former senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Roehampton, of London with 30 years of experience working in the field of childhood sexual abuse, sexual violence and complex trauma. She has delivered advice and training for parents, teachers, social workers, nurses, therapists, counsellors, the police and faith communities. She is the author of Counselling Skills for Working with Shame, Counselling Skills for Working with Trauma: Healing from Child Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence and Domestic Abuse, Counselling Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, 3rd Edition, Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse, The Seduction of children: Empowering Parents and Teachers to Protect Children from Child Sexual Abuse, and Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma, all published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. She has also written The Warrior Within: A One in Four Handbook to Aid Recovery from Religious Sexual Abuse Across All Faiths and Responding to Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse: A Pocket Guide for Professionals, Partners, Families and Friends for the charity One in Four for whom she is a trustee.

Outline

Day 1:

• The nature and dynamics of CSA The range of CSA including in the family, educational and sports settings, institutional settings, and religious and faith communities
• Identifying those children most at risk
• The range of perpetrators of CSA including parents, grandparents, extended family members, siblings, cousins peers, priests, teachers and coaches as well as opportunistic paedophiles
• The grooming process and the role of silence and secrecy, traumatic bonding and the distortion of reality
• The role of shame in CSA
• CSA as trauma and its neurobiological impact
• Clinical challenges in the conceptualisation of PTSD including sub-syndromal PTSD, C-PTSD, mis-diagnosis and co-morbidity
• The role of dissociation in CSA and the range of dissociative disorders and deletion of the body
• The psychological impact and long term effects of CSA including relationship and sexual difficulties, compulsive behaviours, rumination, addictions, self- harm, and the impact on parenting
• The intergenerational transmission of CSA and the role of resilience
• The range of assessment scales
• How to develop a collaborative case formulation

• The range of therapeutic models when working with survivors of CSA
• The fundamental principles of the trauma focused model which emphasises a phased treatment approach that promotes stabilisation, processing and integration
• The importance of adopting a relational approach
• The need for attunement, mutuality and connection to create a collaborative and non-hierarchical therapeutic relationship
• The management of shame in the therapeutic space including the interplay between client and therapist shame, and how to build shame resilience and restore authentic pride
• How to minimise the replication of power and control dynamics and re-traumatisation
• How to ‘be with’ rather than ‘do to’
• The use of both top down and bottom up processing such as non-verbal approaches, art and play therapies, and sensorimotor techniques
• The co-creation and management of therapeutic impasse
• The role of practitioner’s own unprocessed material and dissociation in the therapeutic relationship
• The cost of caring as seen in vicarious traumatisation, burn-out, compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress
• The importance of practitioner self-care
• Post traumatic growth and vicarious post-traumatic

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