Full Course Description


Somatic Interventions for Treating Complex Trauma with Janina Fisher, Ph.D.

OUTLINE

The Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma

  • How the mind and body react to threat and danger
  • Autonomic arousal and affect tolerance
  • Inability to feel safe in the body
  • Loss of the ability to self-witness

The Nature of Traumatic Memory

  • “The body keeps the score” (Van der Kolk)
  • Implicit memories: is it memory?
  • Remembering situationally: ‘here’ or ‘there’?

Neurobiologically-informed Trauma Treatment

  • Regulating the traumatized nervous system and restoring a witnessing self
  • Psychoeducation: knowledge is power
  • Reframing the symptoms
  • Avoid ‘self-defeating stories’ (Meichenbaum)
  • Treat the symptoms, not just the event

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

  • Trauma and procedural learning
  • Tracking the body as a source of information
  • Use the language of the body
  • Body-centered techniques into talking therapy treatments

Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

  • Mindfulness practices in therapy
  • Differentiate thoughts, feelings and body experience
  • Dual awareness of everyday experience
  • Teach mindfulness to clients

Challenges of Trauma Treatment

  • Secondary symptoms: anger, self-harm and suicidality, aggression, substance abuse, and eating disorders
  • Treatment-resistant depression and anxiety
  • Complex symptoms as manifestations of animal defense responses

Therapy as a Laboratory for the Practice of New Actions

  • Dis-identifying with the symptoms
  • Develop a new language and a new story
  • Capitalize on somatic resources for modulating the nervous system
  • New resources that address specific trauma symptoms

The Role of Neuroplasticity

  • Neuroplastic brain change
  • Principles of neuroplasticity
  • Treatments to enhance neuroplastic effects

Somatic Resolution of Traumatic Events

  • Repair and transformation rather than re-processing
  • Address uninvited memory
  • Tell the story to ourselves: creating internal safety
  • Right brain-to-right brain communication: feeling safe with others

OBJECTIVES

  1. Describe the neurobiological effects of traumatic experience.
  2. Identify implicit and procedural memories of trauma.
  3. Recognize role of autonomic arousal in exacerbating symptoms.
  4. Discuss how “the body keeps the score” as it relates to trauma.
  5. Describe basic principles of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy how it can inform treatment.
  6. Integrate mindfulness-based techniques in traditional treatments.
  7. Identify animal defense survival responses in trauma patients.
  8. Describe the roles of substance abuse, eating disorders and self-destructive behavior as trauma symptoms.
  9. Implement ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ interventions to address unsafe behavior.
  10. Describe a somatic approach to resolving traumatic experience.
  11. Differentiate past experience from present moment experience as it relates to the treatment of trauma.
  12. Utilize right brain-to-right brain communication to improve the effectiveness of trauma treatment.
Copyright : 12/05/2016

In-Session: Working with Somatic Components to Overcome Trauma Related Fears of Feeling Good

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Describe the characteristics of the split brain and its implications for trauma treatment.
  2. Discover aspects of sensorimotor psychotherapy as it relates to the treatment of trauma.

Outline

  1. Introduction of client
  2. Psychological Trauma Flip Chart
    1. The Split Brain
  3. Client Questions
  4. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  5. Expressing Emotions
  6. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  7. Anger
  8. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  9. Accepting Anger
  10. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  11. Safe feelings
  12. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  13. Client Feelings Survival
  14. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  15. Trusting the Protective Parts
  16. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
  17. Communicating with your Body
    1. The Trickle Down Affect
  18. Recap and Analyzation with Janina

Copyright : 01/01/2017

In-Session: Steps Toward Healing Traumatic Attachment & Borderline Personality Disorder

Program Information

Objectives

  • Utilize right and left brain communication to improve the effectiveness of attachment treatment.
  • Describe the Structural Dissociation mode as it relates to trauma.

Outline

  1. Introduction of Client
  2. Psychological Trauma Flip Chart
    1. The Split Brain
  3. Client Background
  4. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
    1. Domestic Violence in Pregnancy
  5. Attachment
  6. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
    1. Domestic Violence and Attachment
  7. Anger in Relationships
  8. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
    1. Structure Dissociation Model
  9. Childhood Attachment
  10. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
    1. Earned Secure Attachment
  11. Internal Attachment
  12. Recap and Analyzation with Janina
    1. Internal Attachment

Copyright : 01/01/2017

BONUS: Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Evaluate the effects of shame and self-loathing symptoms and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
  2. Determine the impact of the neurobiological effects of shame as it relates to clinical practice.
  3. Evaluate cognitive schemas and its clinical implications.
  4. Articulate the foundation of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy as it relates to clinical treatment.
  5. Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to alleviate symptoms in clients.
  6. Utilize clinical techniques, such as, memory processing, cognitive-behavioral and ego state as related to clinical treatment.

Outline

The Neurobiology of Shame

  • The role of shame in traumatic experience
  • Shame as an animal defense survival response
  • Effects of shame on autonomic arousal
  • Why shame can be treatment-resistant
Shame and Attachment: Its Evolutionary Purpose
  • Shame and the attachment system
  • Rupture and repair in attachment formation
  • What happens to shame without interpersonal repair
The Meaning of Shame in the Treatment of Trauma
  • Disgust, degradation, and humiliation
  • Cognitive schemas that exacerbate shame
  • Internal working models
Treating Shame
  • Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Physiological state as the entry point for treatment
  • Regulating shame states with somatic interventions
  • Using mindfulness-based techniques to inhibit self-judgment
Healing Shame: Acceptance and Compassion
  • Re-contextualizing shame as a younger self or part
  • Dual awareness of who we are now and who we were then
  • Getting to know our “selves”
  • Bringing our adult capacity to our childhood vulnerability

Copyright : 12/12/2016