Master Clinician Series
Thursday, November 3, 2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Treating Trauma: Helping the Entire Human Organism Feel Safe and Live in the Present
Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Justice Resource Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Technical Level: Intermediate
Trauma affects the entire human organism, which gets stuck in neurobiological, immunological and relational survival modes. Neuroscience research shows that the brain regions most affected by trauma are involved in attention and perception, biasing the organism into perceiving threat and annihilation. These subcortical processes are independent from conscious appraisal or conscious control. This presentation will focus on evidence based treatments that address basic issues of safety, threat appraisal and embodied awareness, illustrated by EMDR, meditation, yoga, theater, martial arts and sensory integration.
Friday, November 4, 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Restoring the Protective Shield: Core Concepts from Child-Parent Psychotherapy
Chandra Ghosh Ippen, PhD, Child Trauma Research Program, San Francisco General Hospital, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
Technical Level: Intermediate
Children aged birth to five are highly vulnerable to exposure to interpersonal traumas, and trauma exposure at an early age can have long term consequences for development and functioning. Both research and clinical theory highlight the importance of developing and empirically validating traumainformed relationship-based practices, particularly for young children. Moreover, there is an urgent need to disseminate not only evidence-based practices but the core concepts that underlie these practices to other service systems, including schools, daycare settings and child welfare.
This presentation describes core concepts that are critical to working with young children who have experienced traumatic life events. The concepts are derived both from child-parent psychotherapy, a relationship-based treatment with empirical support from five randomized trials, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network Core Curriculum for Childhood Trauma. The presentation clearly outlines key core concepts, illustrating them with rich clinical material including vignettes and video, and describes ways to integrate these concepts into clinical practice and into other service systems.
Saturday, November 5, 2:00 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Using Compassion-Focused Therapy to Work with Shame-Based Flashbacks in PTSD
Deborah Lee, MSc, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Head of Berkshire Traumatic Stress Service, London, United Kingdom
Technical Level: Intermediate
Shame-based flashbacks are common in PTSD and are highly distressing and disturbing for most people who experience them. The personal meaning conveyed in the fragmented images and flashbacks is often painful, condemning and shaming. High levels of self-criticism appear to maintain the sense of current psychological threat experienced by individuals with PTSD. Evidence suggests that those who suffer from shame-based PTSD are often very self-critical and have difficulty regulating threat-based emotions with self-soothing.
Current evidence-based treatments for PTSD promote the use of exposure or enhanced reliving to treat flashbacks and other symptoms, yet this is based on an anxiety paradigm where fear is the predominant emotion associated with the trauma. Emerging evidence suggests such treatment approaches are not always suitable for shame-based PTSD, especially when clients are very self-critical and lack skills in self-soothing.
This presentation will introduce attendees to compassion-focused therapy for PTSD and will provide a theoretical and practical understanding of the use of compassion-focused therapy techniques and compassionate images to work with shame-based flashbacks in order to enhance self-soothing and feelings of safeness in the memories and to reduce self-critical maintenance cycles.