Examining the Living Legacy of Trauma

• Symptoms instead of memories
• Addictive behaviors as a survival strategy
• Threat and brain response
• The window of tolerance & nervous system responses
• Understanding triggers and triggering

Unlearning Addictive & Self-Destructive Behaviors

• How unsafe behavior regulates
• The relationship between numbing and parasympathetic nervous system
• Compulsivity as a trauma response
• Pleasure and punishment to soothe and regulate
• Hyperarousal: alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, opioids
• Eating disorders and arousal states
• Self-injury, adrenaline, and endorphin responses

The Neuroscience of Trauma in Body & Mind

• When acute trauma turns into PTSD, and the difference with complex PTSD
• Early attachment wounds and the patterning of the nervous system
• How transgenerational trauma, collective trauma, and epigenetics shape the nervous system

Assessment,  Differential Diagnosis & Comorbidities

• How trauma might underlie other presenting diagnoses
• Differentiation between bipolar, ADHD, major depressive disorder, personality disorders and trauma
• How the autonomic nervous system shapes the health of our immune system

Applied Polyvagal Theory to Resource the Nervous System

• Psychoeducation on how the nervous system is wired to keep us safe
• Key assessment tools for the applied polyvagal theory model
• Strategies for co-regulation as a biological imperative
• Strategies for proximity awareness and relational resourcing

10 Natural Vagus Nerve Stimulation Techniques

• Promote regulation, relaxation, and calmness in the body
• Enhance the tone of the vagus nerve to improve health outcomes
• How heart rate variability (HRV) is related to stress management
• Ways to measure health of the autonomic nervous system
• How fascia or the connective tissue matrix is essential for mind-body communications
• Conscious breathing for stress reduction

Embodied Somatic & Body Psychotherapy for Trauma Recovery

• Safely prepare clients for deeper work with mind-body resourcing
• Bilateral stimulation techniques for brain-body integration
• Find the right “pace” for trauma processing
• Research, risks, and treatment limitations

Consider Client’s Internal Systems to Overcome Treatment Barriers

• Navigate “resistant” parts of a client’s inner system
• Attend to competing biological needs for closeness and separateness
• Polyvagal perspectives on approach-avoidance attachment dynamics
• Work mindfully with rupture and repair cycles

Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma Recovery

• Intersection of neuroplasticity research applied to trauma treatment
• Facilitate trauma sensitive mindfulness practices
• Strategies for self-compassion and loving kindness
• The science of neuroplasticity as applied to mindful mobilization
• Trauma-informed meditation and yoga nidra practices
• Empower growth post-trauma and help clients build resilience

Getting Started with Somatic Therapy for Attachment Trauma

• Fundamental principles of Somatic Therapy
• Attachment theory simplified
• Assess your own attachment style to improve the therapeutic alliance
• Create a safe first impression
• Risks, limitations and ethical issues

Boundaries: The Often-Overlooked Foundation of Effective Therapy

• The 4 key boundaries to know for every session
• Using mirror neurons to understand the client's experience
• Interoceptive awareness to distinguish the client's emotions from therapist's
• Reframing “difficult” clients
• How your own boundaries impact your work with clients

Assessment & Treatment Planning for Somatic Shame, Implicit & Explicit Memories

• Brain regions and their relationship to attachment styles
• Notice subtle cues in body language, eye movements and posture
• Map your client’s underlying attachment wiring
• Provide co-regulation for corrective emotional experiences
• How developmental trauma shapes somatic shame identities
• Create targeted treatment plans for unique attachment patterns
• Risks, limitations and ethical issues

Anxious Attachment Style: Treating Relational Anxiety

• Focus on deeply rooted beliefs like, “I’ll never get enough love”
• Help clients transition from anxious toward secure attachment
• Target memory rumination that reinforce anxious patterns
• Redirect clients’ attention toward positive experiences
• Help clients create internal and external boundaries
• Simple exercises to repair the core attachment wound

Avoidant Attachment Style: Treating Relational Avoidance

• Focus on beliefs such as: "Relationships aren't enjoyable", "I am all I need.”
• Support clients to notice and experience goodness in relationships
• Target implicit/explicit memories that reinforce disconnection & withdrawal
• Effective boundaries for avoidantly attached clients
• Provide simple somatic exercises to repair the avoidant wound

Disorganized Attachment Style: Treating Terror and Creating Safety

• Focus on beliefs, such as: “I need you but relationships are dangerous.”
• Enhance relational safety with distance, pacing and more
• Target implicit and explicit memories that reinforce dissociation
• Teach effective boundaries for disorganized attached clients
• Simple somatic exercises to treat terror responses

Self-of-the-Therapist Work: Relational Impact and Self-awareness

• How somatic and attachment dynamics influence session effectiveness
• What to do when you need to work on your own attachment style
• Avoid getting “pulled in” to clients’ attachment wounds
• Identify your own implicit memories related to:
  • emotional intimacy
  • gender dynamics
  • power relations
• How the therapists’ stress and anxiety affect each session
• “Grounded, present self” as a secure attachment to accelerate healing
• Somatic transference and countertransference on alliance building

Introduction to Gestalt Practice today

• Key historical influences
• A bottom-up experiential approach
• Somatic attending, how to notice the “the here and now”
• Get collaborative, “contact” in Gestalt work
• Focus on the whole experience
• Dialogic and Relational in nature
• Demonstration: Attending to the relationship, Intrusive thoughts, OCD patterns, dissociating in contact with others
• Demonstration: “Here and Now” relational attending, contact

Gestalt Theory Concepts & Pillars of Therapy

• Three Pillars: Field Theory, Dialogue, Phenomenology
• See the client in context, nothing is irrelevant
• Awareness: The Goal of Gestalt Therapy
• Stop interruptions that get in the way of awareness
• The difference between awareness and insight
• Simple breakdown of Gestalt Formation and Resolution Cycle
• Being a guide, not an expert
• Defense styles: projection, retroflection, deflection, introjection
• Paradoxical Theory of Change: Change through full acceptance

Gestalt Therapy Practice Basics

• Focus on process over content
• Therapist as observer and relational partner
• Identifying patterns, memories, and characterological traits
• Allow time for assimilation
• Relapse prevention against old memory/characterological patterns
• Diversity considerations
• Research risks/limitations, ethics
• Assessing client readiness for emotionally intensive work
• View on diagnosis on pathology, “blocked awareness process”

Gestalt Therapy Demonstrations & 5 Key Gestalt Techniques

• Create space and opportunity for discovery
• Allow client attention to focus on their own process
• Discussion and example of the following interventions:
• Chair work – even in telehealth
• Exaggeration
• Do the Opposite
• and deflection.
• Doing the Circle
• Pointing out the obvious
• Awareness Exercise
• Incudes 5 demonstrations!

Neurobiology, Trauma & Memory

• The limitations of “talk therapy” and trauma processing
• How traumatic experiences change neurophysiology
• Left versus right brain processing and what it means for therapy
• Memory storage – how ordinary memories change over time
• 2 parts of the Autonomic nervous system
• Polyvagal explanation for trauma responses
• Evolutionary advantages to trauma neurobiology
• Somatic sense of self in the world

Gestalt Therapy for Trauma Treatment

• What gets in the way of the work is the work
• How trauma interrupts
• The intersection of anxiety and trauma
• Disconnection and memory impairment
• Working with implicit memory system to create present moment choice
• Holistic individualized approach: cognitions, emotions, sensations
• Variations in your clients’ window of tolerance
• Facilitating new learning

Gestalt Therapy & Parts Work Integration

• Whole person versus part responses
• Parts work, IFS, and chair work target the same concepts
• Systems thinking on the individual level
• Types of parts: IFS therapy categorizations
• The concept of “Self Leadership”
• Experiments can work with movement and the body
• Other recommended treatment integrations: EMDR, Brainspotting
• Demonstration: Starting a new business, imposter syndrome, working with child parts
• Demonstration: CPTSD, parts work, assimilation of new awareness

Traumatic Memory Processing 101

• The neurobiology of trauma
• The role of the body, mind, and emotions in healing
• The basics of cognitive processing therapy
• The adaptive information processing (AIP) model
• Attachment theory
• Polyvagal theory
• Psychodynamic theory

Simple to Use Breathing and Grounding Techniques

• Reduce anxiety and calm the nervous system
• How to guide clients through Bees Breath exercise
• Practical demonstration and participant practice
• Alternate nostril breathing
• Benefits for calming and balancing the nervous system
• Step-by-step instructions for the technique
• Practical demonstration and participant practice
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Emotional Regulation Techniques and EFT Tapping

• Introduction to Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
• The theory behind tapping and its effectiveness for trauma
• Demonstrate tapping sequence
• Practical demonstration and participant practice
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Pendulation and Working with Traumatic Memories

• Explanation of pendulation in trauma healing
• Shift between the traumatic memory and resource states
• Pendulation demonstration

Somatic Trauma Techniques

• Release stored tension in the body
• Step-by-step instructions for “Shake it Off” technique
• Group practice: Shake off exercise
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Eye Movements for Stress Relief

• Oculocardiac Convergence
• Explore the connection between eye movements and heart rate regulation
• Instruction on using eye movements for stress relief
• Practical demonstration and participant practice
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Introduction to EMDR and the 8 Phases

• Introduction of origins and theory
• Overview of the 8 Phases of EMDR
• How EMDR facilitates trauma reprocessing
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Instantly Useable EMDR Techniques for Resource Building

• EMDR Spiral Skill
  • Use the spiral for identifying and processing memories
• EMDR Container
  • Create a safe mental space for clients to store difficult emotions
• EMDR Safe Space
  • Create and anchor a safe space for clients
• EMDR Resource Tapping
  • Enhance resource-based intervention using tapping techniques
  • Create BLS with light, sound, paddles – both in person and virtual options
  • Practical demonstration and participant practice

Brainspotting Techniques for Trauma Treatment

• Introduction of origins and theory
• Differences between activation and resource models
• How to identify which approach to use with each client
• The Triple Resource approach (3 distinct resources for clients)
• Demonstration
• How to use body awareness in brainspotting
• Overview of the gaze spotting technique in brainspotting
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Use Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy in Trauma Work

• Introduction to IFS principles and the 6-step process
• Explanation and demonstration of how to guide clients through IFS
• How to use guided imagery to access traumatic parts
• Work with protective parts that may block emotional processing
• Techniques to engage protective parts in healing
• Engage parts through creative expression and art
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Create a Trauma-Informed Treatment Plan

• Integrate the techniques covered in the workshop
• How to assess which treatment modality to use for specific client needs
• Case study discussion: Develop a treatment plan using multiple techniques

Trauma Epidemiology 

• Thinking outside the box
• The 4 steps of HELP 
• Types of trauma
  • ACES
• Manifestations of trauma
• Symptoms, maladaptive coping
• Adaptation responses & influencing factors
• Pathology v learned resilience
• Co-occurring disorders
• Trauma & PDs

Laying the Foundation for Medication: Trauma and the brain 

• Neurobiology of trauma
• Stress and the developing brain
• Personal narrative
• Science of perception
• Diagnostic criteria for PTSD
• Affected pathways/brain regions affected by stress & trauma
• Mechanisms 
• Neurotransmitters and neurotransmission as it relates to medications used in trauma & comorbid conditions 
• Serotonin, NE, DA, GABA, etc.
• Easy-to-follow charts of pathways
• Agonist spectrum

Psychopharmacology: Adverse effects & More

• Antidepressants – SSRIs & more
• Anxiety medications
• Anxiolytics 
• Mood stabilizers 
• Antipsychotics 
• Frequent manifestations of trauma and pharmacological treatments. 
• Sleep & nightmare medications 

Conjunctive Therapies

• Self-care
• Care Teams & coordination
• Non-pharmacological therapies, modalities & more