2021 Spring Trauma & Attachment Conference
Day 1 ~ April 12 AM Reduce Zoom Fatigue and Optimize Health: From TechStress to TechHealth
Featuring Guest Speaker: Erik Pepper PhD
The pandemic has transformed our lives and many of us spend much of our time looking at screens for learning, tele-therapy, entertainment, communication and socializing. Personal technology affects our physical and emotional well-being so that by the end of the day many people experience Zoom/screen fatigue, eyestrain, back pain, neck and shoulder discomfort, exhaustion, stress, negative mood, anxiety, depression, and/or insomnia. The workshop explains why digital devices, displays and notification activate evolutionary response patterns and are so addictive and what we can do about it. More importantly, It focusses on practical strategies that clinicians/educators can use for themselves and clients to prevent illness and optimize health at work and at home especially while working in a digital environment. It includes experiential practices illustrating how thought and emotions affect body and how body affects thoughts and emotions.
Day 1 ~ April 12 PM
Inhabiting Ourselves: Embodying Mindfulness and Somatic Self-Care
Featuring Guest Speaker: Jamie McHugh, MA, RSMT
“The self is first and foremost a bodily self.” – Sigmund Freud
“Nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small – we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” - Georgia O’Keefe
Movement, breath, vocalization, contact and stillness - the five somatic technologies gifted to us by nature – are the initial ways we know and act upon the inner and outer world. These preverbal expressions of our humanity can be distorted, ignored, and even forgotten over time; or they can be highlighted, valued, and cultivated through practice to keep us whole and connected to our origins.
In this seminar, we will pause, slow down, and take time to be present with our bodily selves in easy and supportive ways. These somatic expressions in and of themselves can bring relief from stress-related issues, and can also augment the therapeutic process, especially with trauma, by stabilizing and softening attention with sensate perception.
We will experientially and theoretically explore the five somatic technologies as:
1) Touchstones for self-awareness and befriending ourselves
2) Mediums for downregulating and upregulating the nervous system (“chill out” and “charge up”)
3) Springboards for pragmatic, positive action
We will explore the five technologies in the ubiquitous modern environment of the chair – and highlight how we can not only adapt our relationship to this environment but also adapt this environment to meet our needs, and that of our clients, for a comfortable “holding space”.
Note: As we will be alternating between practice, reflection and theory, please create a safe and comfortable environment for yourself where you can be uninterrupted and at ease.
Day 2 ~ April 13
Technological Innovations for Psychological Interventions Featuring Guest Speaker: Dr. Paul Frewen
The use of technology in psychotherapy for trauma is quickly becoming mainstream, especially in the post-COVID era. In this presentation we will discuss and demo a number of cutting edge web based assessments and interventions, and focus in detail on virtual reality (VR) and EEG neurofeedback (NFB). Regarding VR, we will preview its novel integrative application beyond exposure therapy, that is, VR Integrative Therapy (VRIT). We will also introduce the use of 360 videography in psychotherapy. Regarding NFB, we will focus on the use of wearables such as the Muse headset and MyndLift app, as well as VR applications to NFB, and the Meditation/Medicine Integrations with Neuromodulation Design (MIND). All approaches are potentially delivered via remote means, via the web.
Day 3 ~ April 14
Trauma-Informed Dance Movement Therapy Featuring Guest Speaker: Ilene Serlin Ph.D, BC-DMT
The rising tide of suffering, displacement and natural disasters calls for expanded available human services. Creative and mind/body approaches to working with trauma and PTSD can complement available services with cost-effective and humane methods. This workshop will focus on understanding how working with the body through expressive movement can promote resilience and help heal from trauma, using examples from the United States, Israel, Jordan,Turkey and China.
The experience of trauma is contained in the body and has been described as speechless terror (Van der Kolk, 1987). Therefore, nonverbal and symbolic approaches are needed to address this speechless terror in the body. Trauma is also a crisis of mortality, meaning and identity; therefore, there is a need for existential perspectives to work with these crises of meaning.
Trauma is also about stuckness and numbness, an inability to play; therefore, there is a need for creative, imaginal, movement and emotional approaches to help stuck places begin to flow again. Trauma is also about fragmentation; therefore, there is a need for approaches that build connection, integration, and transitions.
The movement arts can provide creative ways to bring relief and to ease some of the human suffering associated with trauma. The ability to shape raw affect into symbolic meaning builds safety and regulates emotions. The act of creativity builds on courage, risk taking, confidence, and strength, and it gives the participant a sense of mastery. The therapeutic use of imagery, whether visual, auditory or kinesthetic, can help one communicate this experience. The arts
provide nonverbal and symbolic ways to express trauma, helping to re-integrate broken parts of the self, the psyche, and the community, and evoke images of wholeness.
This workshop will introduce participants to the theory, application and practices of KinAesthetic Imagining, a form of dance movement therapy, to promote resilience and work with trauma. For a group, participants will learn the physical embodiments of: Safe space, grounding, centering, creating boundaries, moving into space and connecting with others.
Participants will learn techniques and contraindications for reducing anxiety, building strength, increasing bodily awareness and expressiveness, and building supportive relationships in the group. These approaches build on current approaches to treating trauma by adding tools that bring the body, symbolic movement, movement through space and the creative process into the healing process.
We will explore both theory and practice to apply this work as clinicians, to reduce compassion fatigue, build resilience and posttraumatic growth, and increase self-care.
Day 4 ~ April 15
Finding Your Routes of Safety Featuring Guest Speaker: Jack Ernst, MSW RSW
Jake is the developer of the Routes of Safety model. The Routes of Safety model is built on the belief that feeling safe is an essential treatment for those who have experienced various forms of hurt or trauma. Trauma changes and compromises our ability to feel safe within ourselves and the Routes of Safety was built to assist people in gaining more access to a felt sense of emotional safety.
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the eight Routes of Safety and participants will gain a thorough understanding of each pillar and how it can be applied to our therapeutic work with clients. Participants will come away with an in-depth understanding of a process that Jake calls ‘safety-seeking’ and how this impacts our perceptions of safety. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how this nervous system informed framework can be used to enhance or explore the felt sense of safety.
For more information, you can read about Jake’s Routes of Safety model in this article for Healthline: "Move Over, Love Languages: Do You Know Your 'Route of Safety'?" https://bit.ly/3joze2t
Day 5 ~ Writing the Way Through: An Immersive Journal Therapy Experience for Working Through Trauma
Featuring Guest Speaker: Cherie L. Spehar, LCSW, ACTP, RPT-S
Have you ever offered writing activities to your clients? Do you invite them into a journaling process, but don’t always know where to go from there? Would you love some new ideas that work in synergy with trauma healing, as well as learning some important Journal Therapy touch points like “Ethical Invitation”, “Sensitive Reflection Processes”, and immediately usable techniques to guide your clients through their healing? If this sounds exciting, please join me for a day long immersive and experiential training where you will become equipped and resourced in this very special landscape of the field of Journal Therapy as a standalone trauma therapy approach, how to integrate it into your treatment planning and other therapeutic modalities, how to pace clients with techniques designed to match their current level of emotional safety, and at least 10 new activities that will deepen, enrich, and actualize healing while working with the client’s own voice and guidance.
Objectives
Featuring Guest Speaker: Erik Pepper PhD
The pandemic has transformed our lives and many of us spend much of our time looking at screens for learning, tele-therapy, entertainment, communication and socializing. Personal technology affects our physical and emotional well-being so that by the end of the day many people experience Zoom/screen fatigue, eyestrain, back pain, neck and shoulder discomfort, exhaustion, stress, negative mood, anxiety, depression, and/or insomnia. The workshop explains why digital devices, displays and notification activate evolutionary response patterns and are so addictive and what we can do about it. More importantly, It focusses on practical strategies that clinicians/educators can use for themselves and clients to prevent illness and optimize health at work and at home especially while working in a digital environment. It includes experiential practices illustrating how thought and emotions affect body and how body affects thoughts and emotions.
Day 1 ~ April 12 PM
Inhabiting Ourselves: Embodying Mindfulness and Somatic Self-Care
Featuring Guest Speaker: Jamie McHugh, MA, RSMT
“The self is first and foremost a bodily self.” – Sigmund Freud
“Nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small – we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” - Georgia O’Keefe
Movement, breath, vocalization, contact and stillness - the five somatic technologies gifted to us by nature – are the initial ways we know and act upon the inner and outer world. These preverbal expressions of our humanity can be distorted, ignored, and even forgotten over time; or they can be highlighted, valued, and cultivated through practice to keep us whole and connected to our origins.
In this seminar, we will pause, slow down, and take time to be present with our bodily selves in easy and supportive ways. These somatic expressions in and of themselves can bring relief from stress-related issues, and can also augment the therapeutic process, especially with trauma, by stabilizing and softening attention with sensate perception.
We will experientially and theoretically explore the five somatic technologies as:
1) Touchstones for self-awareness and befriending ourselves
2) Mediums for downregulating and upregulating the nervous system (“chill out” and “charge up”)
3) Springboards for pragmatic, positive action
We will explore the five technologies in the ubiquitous modern environment of the chair – and highlight how we can not only adapt our relationship to this environment but also adapt this environment to meet our needs, and that of our clients, for a comfortable “holding space”.
Note: As we will be alternating between practice, reflection and theory, please create a safe and comfortable environment for yourself where you can be uninterrupted and at ease.
Day 2 ~ April 13
Technological Innovations for Psychological Interventions Featuring Guest Speaker: Dr. Paul Frewen
The use of technology in psychotherapy for trauma is quickly becoming mainstream, especially in the post-COVID era. In this presentation we will discuss and demo a number of cutting edge web based assessments and interventions, and focus in detail on virtual reality (VR) and EEG neurofeedback (NFB). Regarding VR, we will preview its novel integrative application beyond exposure therapy, that is, VR Integrative Therapy (VRIT). We will also introduce the use of 360 videography in psychotherapy. Regarding NFB, we will focus on the use of wearables such as the Muse headset and MyndLift app, as well as VR applications to NFB, and the Meditation/Medicine Integrations with Neuromodulation Design (MIND). All approaches are potentially delivered via remote means, via the web.
Day 3 ~ April 14
Trauma-Informed Dance Movement Therapy Featuring Guest Speaker: Ilene Serlin Ph.D, BC-DMT
The rising tide of suffering, displacement and natural disasters calls for expanded available human services. Creative and mind/body approaches to working with trauma and PTSD can complement available services with cost-effective and humane methods. This workshop will focus on understanding how working with the body through expressive movement can promote resilience and help heal from trauma, using examples from the United States, Israel, Jordan,Turkey and China.
The experience of trauma is contained in the body and has been described as speechless terror (Van der Kolk, 1987). Therefore, nonverbal and symbolic approaches are needed to address this speechless terror in the body. Trauma is also a crisis of mortality, meaning and identity; therefore, there is a need for existential perspectives to work with these crises of meaning.
Trauma is also about stuckness and numbness, an inability to play; therefore, there is a need for creative, imaginal, movement and emotional approaches to help stuck places begin to flow again. Trauma is also about fragmentation; therefore, there is a need for approaches that build connection, integration, and transitions.
The movement arts can provide creative ways to bring relief and to ease some of the human suffering associated with trauma. The ability to shape raw affect into symbolic meaning builds safety and regulates emotions. The act of creativity builds on courage, risk taking, confidence, and strength, and it gives the participant a sense of mastery. The therapeutic use of imagery, whether visual, auditory or kinesthetic, can help one communicate this experience. The arts
provide nonverbal and symbolic ways to express trauma, helping to re-integrate broken parts of the self, the psyche, and the community, and evoke images of wholeness.
This workshop will introduce participants to the theory, application and practices of KinAesthetic Imagining, a form of dance movement therapy, to promote resilience and work with trauma. For a group, participants will learn the physical embodiments of: Safe space, grounding, centering, creating boundaries, moving into space and connecting with others.
Participants will learn techniques and contraindications for reducing anxiety, building strength, increasing bodily awareness and expressiveness, and building supportive relationships in the group. These approaches build on current approaches to treating trauma by adding tools that bring the body, symbolic movement, movement through space and the creative process into the healing process.
We will explore both theory and practice to apply this work as clinicians, to reduce compassion fatigue, build resilience and posttraumatic growth, and increase self-care.
Day 4 ~ April 15
Finding Your Routes of Safety Featuring Guest Speaker: Jack Ernst, MSW RSW
Jake is the developer of the Routes of Safety model. The Routes of Safety model is built on the belief that feeling safe is an essential treatment for those who have experienced various forms of hurt or trauma. Trauma changes and compromises our ability to feel safe within ourselves and the Routes of Safety was built to assist people in gaining more access to a felt sense of emotional safety.
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the eight Routes of Safety and participants will gain a thorough understanding of each pillar and how it can be applied to our therapeutic work with clients. Participants will come away with an in-depth understanding of a process that Jake calls ‘safety-seeking’ and how this impacts our perceptions of safety. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how this nervous system informed framework can be used to enhance or explore the felt sense of safety.
For more information, you can read about Jake’s Routes of Safety model in this article for Healthline: "Move Over, Love Languages: Do You Know Your 'Route of Safety'?" https://bit.ly/3joze2t
Day 5 ~ Writing the Way Through: An Immersive Journal Therapy Experience for Working Through Trauma
Featuring Guest Speaker: Cherie L. Spehar, LCSW, ACTP, RPT-S
Have you ever offered writing activities to your clients? Do you invite them into a journaling process, but don’t always know where to go from there? Would you love some new ideas that work in synergy with trauma healing, as well as learning some important Journal Therapy touch points like “Ethical Invitation”, “Sensitive Reflection Processes”, and immediately usable techniques to guide your clients through their healing? If this sounds exciting, please join me for a day long immersive and experiential training where you will become equipped and resourced in this very special landscape of the field of Journal Therapy as a standalone trauma therapy approach, how to integrate it into your treatment planning and other therapeutic modalities, how to pace clients with techniques designed to match their current level of emotional safety, and at least 10 new activities that will deepen, enrich, and actualize healing while working with the client’s own voice and guidance.
Objectives
- Learn basic principles of Journal Therapy and its integration into a broad age and population range.
- Be able to recognize the ethical principles connected to using Journal Therapy methods in a trauma healing process.
- Learn specific techniques for assessing readiness, and parameters around the therapist’s roles, and client’s permission in processing of their sacred and creative works.
- Be introduced to a framework for sensory safety and type of journal therapy techniques.
- Learn and experience at least 10 new Journal Therapy, Art Journal Therapy, and Play Based Journal Therapy techniques.
