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

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Janina Fisher, PhD Related seminars and products

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Janina Fisher, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, Dr. Fisher has also been treating individuals, couples, and families since 1980.

She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of the neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities.

She is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press).

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is an international expert and consultant on Trauma and Dissociation. She is a consultant for Khiron House Clinics and the Massachusetts Department of MH Restraint and Seclusion Initiative. Dr. Fisher receives royalties as a published author. She receives a speaking honorarium, recording royalties and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. Dr. Fisher has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is on the advisory board for the Trauma Research Foundation. She is a patron of the Bowlby Center.

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Target Audience

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 the 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 and 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.

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