A women's autonomic nervous system is at the heart of daily living powerfully shaping their experiences of safety and influencing their capacity for connection. What begins with their biology becomes the story that each day. Polyvagal Theory provides a guide to the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviours and beliefs and an understanding of the body to brain pathways that give birth to stories of safety and survival especially within trauma. Through this science of connection, we have a new understanding of the ways traumatic experience shapes the nervous system and the pathways that lead to healing.
Polyvagal Theory offers us a roadmap to navigate this unfamiliar territory. Anchored in the safety of a regulated nervous system, pathways of connection come alive, and we can travel those pathways in service of healing. In this recording, we will use the organizing principles of hierarchy, neuroception, and co-regulation to guide our exploration and answer the essential question when one has been affected by trauma, “What does the nervous system need in this moment to find safety in connection?”
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Recent statistics reveal that when it comes to risky alcohol use, for the first time women are now on par with men; historically, men’s drinking surpassed women’s by the sizable margin of 3:1. Clients feeling critically ‘addicted’ to screen time, work, food and body preoccupation, relationship preoccupation, cannabis/drugs or overspending are also rising clinical concerns. These common addictive issues are typically accompanied by struggles of chronic anxiety and stress along with the burdens of balancing work, children, partners and parents. How do these issues correlate? How can we help?
This experiential recording offers an Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach, including new concepts for understanding addictive processes and effective interventions that are compassionate, empowering and address the underlying shame and trauma that our clients who identify as women are navigating. How addictive issues impact the therapist will also be addressed.
This product is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the IFS Institute and does not qualify for IFS Institute credits or certification.
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Attachment science and 35 years of research on EFT offers the therapist a map to the structure of emotion, our deepest needs and fears, the components of health and resilience and the nature of relationships as a resource for healing. This map allows the EFIT therapist to be attuned, focused and on target, moving clients into a secure connection with themselves and others and a new way of connecting with their vulnerability that leaves them confident and competent to deal with the echoes of trauma.
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Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) was the first evidence-based treatment for PTSD that was designed for women survivors of rape and child abuse. The manual has been translated into 14 languages and has been proven to be effective at treating PTSD and related symptoms of depression, shame and guilt in women recovering from all types of traumatic events. CPT can be used with clients who have complex PTSD histories and the results have been shown to last 5-10 years later. This recording will provide a brief review of the evidence for CPT followed by a brief overview of how the treatment can help women regain the control of their lives after bring impacted by traumatic events.
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It can be very challenging to differentiate borderline personality disorder (BPD), bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder (DID), and psychotic disorders (especially schizophrenia) due to similar appearing symptoms. For example, the mood lability seen in BPD, bipolar disorder, and DID can lead to confusion about which is the accurate diagnosis. Hearing voices and seeing visual images is common in DID and psychotic disorders and can lead to misdiagnosis if clinicians do not know the differences that distinguish hallucinations among these disorders. Because the treatment for these disorders is so different, accurately differentiating and diagnosing clients is essential.
Furthermore, women with trauma-related symptoms are at risk for being misdiagnosed and sometimes even being treated dismissively if clinicians are not informed about the impact and symptoms associated with trauma. In this recording, Dr. Brand will present research-based methods of distinguishing these disorders including providing brief overviews of differences in etiology, psychological testing, and reported symptoms. Clinicians will learn to make differential diagnoses of these disorders more confidently so they can be better prepared to treat patients according to best practices.
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This recording will discuss the impact of toxic patriarchy and marginalization on the mental health treatment of women. We will discuss how trauma has been embodied into the identities of girls and women across ethnicity, nationality, and socioeconomic divisions. It is critical to implement embodied interventions as so much of what has happened to women has been procedurally learned and internalized. We have made trauma “our own and our home”. Clinicians will learn strategies to unpack body trauma and work with both top-down and bottom-up techniques to treat mental illness holistically.
Objectives
Incest was discovered as an unexpectedly common life event and the source of severe emotional distress in girls and women by Freud and his contemporaries, who later renounced this view and relegated incest to the status of childhood wish and fantasy. The reality of incest and its impact were re-discovered in the 1970s and 80s by feminists and associated social scientists who investigated and substantiated its occurrence, prevalence, and the primary family dynamics involved. In the decades since, incest has again gone underground, but in a different way. It has been subsumed under generic terms such as “child maltreatment” and “childhood sexual abuse,” even though most child sexual abuse is incestuous, meaning that it is perpetrated by someone related to or in relationship with the victim. Recent research has identified yet another form, when parents exploit their own children for money, subsumed under the term “sex trafficking.” This language muting and incorrect terminology has the effect of obscuring both the prevalence of incest and the betrayal and relational dynamics that are involved and that place a high burden on victims.
These dynamics also play out in the responses that incest survivors receive when they disclose the abuse, or it is otherwise discovered. Disclosure trauma occurs when victims are responded to with disbelief, dismissal, contempt, or worse and when professionals and organizations do not provide appropriate intervention and protection. Recently, an unconscionable additional burden has been placed on incest victims by the reversal of Roe v Wade, where no exceptions are allowed in cases of rape or incest. This constitutes societal betrayal, adding yet another layer of burden on the pregnant incest victim. All these dynamics are necessary to understand and address in a comprehensive response and treatment.
This recording emphasizes the betrayal-trauma inherent in incest and the disorganized attachment dynamics that are likely at play in the incestuous family. Without effective intervention, these can have a lifetime impact on the victim and on the entire family. An overview of the consequences associated with this form of sexual abuse will be discussed to include the more recent types of societal betrayals and their implications. The rationale for a relational and attachment-based treatment with great attention to betrayal dynamics will be presented. The need for social action and pushback regarding abortion availability is evident if impregnated incest victims are to receive social justice.
Objectives
Chronic childhood abuse leads to shame, guilt, self-loathing or hatred and isolation as an adult. It often results in re-victimization such as rape, violent partner relationships, traumatic abortions, difficulties sustaining lasting relationships and raising children. Dealing with the immense shame, guilt and rage is a challenge for all survivors of childhood traumatization. These feelings are most often directed towards self.
Vehement emotions, self-destructive behaviours and sometimes seemingly deliberate undermining of the therapeutic relationship in the treatment of chronically traumatised clients tends to be a difficult task for many treating physicians. In most clients with a dissociative disorder, the rage -and often also the guilt, shame and helplessness - is ‘held’ by dissociative parts that resemble the original perpetrators (so-called ‘perpetrator-imitating parts’) and directed towards self ( other dissociative) parts. These parts wield a great deal of power within the system. They are usually not well-oriented in the present, they are stuck in the past and they view the present through the lens of the past. Initially, they are very critical or suspicious of the treatment or the therapist. These parts of the personality may evoke strong countertransference feelings in treating therapists, especially fear, helplessness and even anger. Instead of avoiding these parts, both the therapist and the client must learn to understand them and develop compassion for them. Only then will it become possible to break the internal vicious circle of (often sadistic) punishment and self-destructive actions.
In this presentation, the significance is explained of these dissociative parts and their behaviour within the overall system of the client. Methods are suggested for the therapist to make contact with these parts and to help the client as a whole to break the vicious circles of self-destructive behaviour.
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From 1973 until this past June, people in the United States with the capacity to be pregnant were able to access healthcare that could end a pregnancy, should they need. With the havoc of this law being overturned, the impact is far reaching extending beyond solely the person who is pregnant and extending to communities as well as into those considering family building options. Pregnancy is met with more fear as access for care in a crisis depends upon where you live. This recording will enable clinicians to understand the lightning rod that is abortion care and how it impacts their current and future patients.
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Myths and misconceptions still abound about addressing dissociative identity disorder (DID), other dissociative disorders, and even dissociation within complex trauma using the EMDR approach to psychotherapy. A most harmful myths is that EMDR Therapy should be avoided absolutely with DID and people with high levels of clinically significant dissociation. Although EMDR is one of the most effective and widely researched treatments for trauma-related pathology, even the most seasoned EMDR therapists and trainers can find themselves baffled in working with dissociation.
Your guide for this recording addresses these problems from several angles—as a person with a dissociative disorder and intricate internal system, as an EMDR Therapy practitioner and trainer, and as a long-time recipient of EMDR therapy as a client. Solutions are proposed for helping professionals become less afraid of dissociation by more fully embracing their own internal world of responses and parts. This paradigm shift can lead us to more effectively serve our clients and to not judge all dissociative minds as the same. Even if you are not specifically an EMDR therapist please consider attending, as multiple concepts presented in this workshop translate well to any trauma-focused modality.
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Sensorimotor Psychotherapy pioneer and developer, Dr Pat Ogden explains how to use the wisdom of the body to address internalized misogyny. We are all familiar with the inequities that result from misogyny, such as violence against women, the gendered wage gap, lack of representation in positions of power, and so much more. However, the internalized misogyny that is so prevalent in patriarchal societies often goes unrecognized, while profoundly impacting women on both psychological and physical levels. A form of internalized oppression, internalized misogyny can lead women to distrust, discredit, shame or devalue themselves and other women and contribute to, if not cause, a plethora of body issues. In this recording, you’ll learn about the many faces of internalized misogyny and how to work with it in a clinical setting. In particular, you will learn about its impact on our relationships to our bodies, to other women, and on our unconscious tendency to adhere to gender stereotypes that can curtail our authenticity and limit our expression. Interventions from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to address internalized misogyny in clinical practice by working with the body and with parts of the self will be illustrated.
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For generations, arguably centuries, women’s stories have been told and reinterpreted by men. Also, the lens of women’s mental health has been defined through a Eurocentric lens, primarily defined by white men. Deviations from the male Eurocentric norms are often seen as pathology. Patriarchal and Eurocentric systems of thought analysis have often perpetuated the soul wounds of women and created the intergenerational trauma of being powerless, devalued, disconnected from community, and left struggling to have hope in a future life they want to have. This recording examines an indigenous decolonized model of healing and participants will have a chance to experience this model themselves.
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In this panel discussion we will discuss the complexities of trauma treatment in the 21st century. The recording will provide viewers with the latest insights and knowledge from leading trauma treatment modalities such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Polyvagal Theory and DBT - what’s really working and what’s not. It will also detail what we are missing as we as clinicians treat more complex trauma cases. For example, should we be training in somatic counter transference or is this a thing of the past? Is there more of an evidence base for cognitive therapies or is this down to the political landscape?
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Research has identified disparities between women and men in regard to risk, prevalence, presentation, course, and treatment of mental disorders. Compared with men, women are twice as likely to experience PTSD with greater prevalence of symptoms of hypervigilance, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. In part, this is due to the notably high rates of exposure to relationship traumas. Current statistics suggest that 1 in 3 women experience at least one incident of sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking within their lifetime. According to best practices in mental health treatment, a focus on women’s mental health is an imperative. Often traumatic events begin in childhood. Such adverse childhood experiences are associated with increased rates of chronic physical health pain and illness conditions in adulthood. Because of this link, a mind-body approach to care allows the clinician to attend to the impact of trauma on the body and physical health.
Drawing upon her background in somatic psychology and as a certified yoga teacher, Dr. Schwartz shares her integrative mind-body approach to care with specific attention to practical tools for mental and emotional wellbeing. Within this engaging recording, you will learn how trauma can be associated with symptoms of premenstral dysphoria, post-partum depression, and menopausal transitions and learn key interventions to expand your therapy toolbox.
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This recording will discuss treatment challenges such as ‘stuckness’ frequently encountered in trauma treatment.
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Women in today’s society are all experiencing mass trauma. With the regressive laws around the governmental management of women’s reproductive rights, the post covid worldwide pandemic and the global wars seen with daily internet access, the experience of trauma is real. In addition, according the Centers for Disease Control, one in four women have experienced some kind of sexual trauma. One in five report being raped and/or being sexual abused as children. Healing from this level of trauma means understanding the female experience and relationality on a deep level.
Therapists can learn to support, treat and create safe environments for these women, as well as work on their own experience of vicarious trauma in sessions. This recording will address ways to heal, move forward and find hope in the field of psychotherapy and it’s advances in this area.
Objectives
More than any other type of child abuse, incest is associated with secrecy, betrayal, guilt, powerlessness, conflicted loyalty, fear of reprisal, and self-loathing. Self-destructive tendencies, trauma bonding, the distortion of the arousal template, dissociation, and fragmentation of the attachment system and the personality are all enduring expressions of the complex post-traumatic sequelae of survivors.
Linda Thai will unpack the historical context of patriarchal coercive control, and use it to build a foundational lens through which to frame the clinical challenges, complexities and nuances faced by clinicians who work with incest survivors.
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In this panel discussion recording, we discuss the future of women’s trauma treatment. The DSM has come a long way in recognizing trauma is often implicated and may be a cause of many disorders. Moreover, women have often been labelled ‘hysterical’ and are often given a diagnosis of BPD, DID, PTSD or the like. A growing body of research now indicates that women’s behavioral responses that can lead to a diagnosis, might just be ‘natural’ brain response to horrific and unspeakable events. In this session, we take a deep dive into this discussion and what this might mean for the future of women’s trauma treatment.
Objectives
The central role of shame in women who have been sexually abused will be explored, including the experience of body shame. We will examine the dynamics of shame in sexual abuse, and cultural messages that increase and maintain shame around sex and the body. A practical integration of cognitive, emotional, relational and somatic interventions to resolve shame will be discussed.
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Borderline Personality Disorder is a diagnosis that is given 50-100% more frequently to female than to male clients, not surprising given the numerous studies over the past thirty years that demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between that diagnosis and a history of childhood abuse. But despite that research evidence, BPD is rarely treated as a trauma-related condition.
We can better understand Borderline Personality as a traumatic attachment disorder. In the context of trauma, attachment failure is inevitable, leaving a lasting imprint on all future relationships. Rather than experiencing others as a haven of safety, traumatized individuals are driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationships. Their intense emotions and impulsive behaviour make them vulnerable to being labelled ‘borderline’ and thus feared or dreaded by the therapists from whom they seek help.
The borderline client is not at war with the therapist. She is caught up in an internal battle: Do I dare to trust or should I not trust? Should I live or should I die? Do I love or do I hate? Understanding borderline clients as fragmented and at war with themselves transforms the therapeutic relationship and the treatment.
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Women are impacted by trauma throughout their lives: from abuse in childhood, sexual assault in adulthood, and systemic misogyny and sexism that impedes embodied expression of their wisdom and power. Attachment-Focused EMDR, an evolution from Standard EMDR, has been effective in liberating women from the constraints of trauma freeing them to flourish in expression of their wholeness.
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Debra Chatman-Finley, LPC, NCC, and Gliceria Pérez, LCSW, will explore racial trauma, its relationship to white supremacy, oppression, microaggressions, and implicit biases. They will also examine privilege and marginalization and its impact on BIPOC individuals, particularly in the therapeutic environment.
Copyright : 22/03/2022Psychotherapists, also (maybe even especially) those working with trauma, are particularly prone towards automatic, deep resonance with their clients. The human capacity for empathy is the somatic and emotional component, the brain's mirror neuron system is the neurological component. This talent for resonance provides therapists with both their best and truest therapeutic tool, and is also the basis for their most common and volatile professional risks: vicarious traumatization and compassion fatigue. This session includes theory, exercises, and take-home strategies to put the trauma therapist fully in charge of regulating their own empathy and mirror system rather than falling victim to its effects.
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