Presented by Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
In the context of trauma, attachment failure is inevitable, leaving behind a lasting imprint on all future relationships, including the therapeutic one. Instead of experiencing therapy and the therapist as a haven of safety, the traumatized client will be driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationships. Because the capacity to tolerate affect without becoming overwhelmed develops in the context of secure attachment, therapeutic work will be challenged by the client’s vulnerability to affect dysregulation and recurrent crises.
In order to address the trauma, therapists increasingly find that they must first address its effects on the client’s attachment patterns. Until the client’s disorganized attachment, traumatic transference and disturbances in the capacity to self-regulate and self-soothe are addressed, the therapy either becomes stagnant or unstable.
In this workshop, we will address the impact of traumatic and sub-optimal attachment experiences on affect regulation, exploring how to understand the effects of traumatic attachment from a psychobiological perspective and how to work with both the somatic and relational legacy of attachment.
Using interventions drawn from the neuroscience and attachment research and from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body-centered talking therapy tailored to the treatment of trauma and affect dysregulation, this workshop will utilize a combination of lecture, video and experiential exercises to explore a neurobiologically-informed understanding of the impact of trauma on attachment behaviour, somatic interventions for challenging trauma-related relational patterns, and opportunities to use ourselves as “neurobiological regulators” of the client’s dysregulated emotional and autonomic states.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify trauma-related attachment patterns
- Describe disorganized attachment behaviour and its effects on affect regulation
- Describe the theory and practice of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy techniques
- Describe somatic interventions to address preoccupied, avoidant, and disorganized/unresolved attachment styles
- Employ interactive neurobiological regulation to address affect dysregulation
Who Should Attend
Professionals: All mental health professionals, including psychologists, psychiatrists, family physicians, social workers, psychiatric nurses, therapists, occupational therapists, alcohol & drug counsellors, employee assistance counsellors, school counsellors, youth workers, sexual abuse counsellors, vocational rehabilitation consultants, social service co-ordinators, street workers, and crisis counsellors who work directly with clients and are seeking practical, proven methods to enhance their therapeutic skills.
For more information and to register, please visit: www.jackhirose.com/workshop/healing-broken-bonds-burnaby/