Mastering the Neurobiological Waltz Janina Fisher Clients raised by neglectful and frightening caregivers may as adults find themselves living with an unconscious somatic legacy of early traumatic attachment, yearning for closeness but unable to tolerate or sustain intimacy. Even their nervous systems rebel against physical proximity to others, or can’t tolerate being without proximity. AsRead More…
How to Help Our Clients Heal Anita Mandley Exposing the family secret of incest is a transgression that makes everyone deeply uncomfortable, both in the families in which it occurs and for the mental health professionals who try to help them. One reflection of this discomfort is the avoidance of even using the term itselfRead More…
Advances from Brain Science and Traumatology Noel Larson Clients with personality disorders—narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, sociopathic—often have profound traumatic childhoods, which leave them without a solid inner core from which to function. Often “nudged” into treatment by others, including the law, their inability to trust and their need for power make forming a therapeutic alliance seeminglyRead More…
When the Internalized Abuser Gets in the Way Amelio D’Onofrio A sad but basic fact of human psychology is that in the wake of trauma we can often internalize our abuser, adopting that person’s destructive voice and attitude as nonstop self-criticism. This punitive voice can instill negative expectations for relationships in general, and with theRead More…
Harnessing a Broad-Based Approach to Change Deany Laliotis While EMDR is best known for its treatment of trauma, it has developed into a comprehensive psychotherapy approach that treats a broad spectrum of presenting issues across various clinical populations. This workshop is for practitioners who are interested in learning more about this highly effective, evidence-based approachRead More…
A Practical Approach Christopher Willard For too many children or teens, talk and even play therapy feels unhelpful at best, and stigmatizing at worst. But when we can effectively introduce mindfulness into our sessions, we empower kids to transform themselves, allowing them to identify and regulate their emotions and attention with fun and effective exercises.Read More…
How to Get Unhooked Martha Straus To work with troubled and traumatized adolescents, it’s crucial for therapists to first foster their own capacity for self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s not easy, especially when our young clients’ extreme reactions—ranging from angry arousal to frozen shutting down—can trigger our own sense of helplessness, failure, dissociation, and rejection. InRead More…
Gentle Protocols for Rewiring the Brain Courtney Armstrong Hypnosis is making a comeback as research demonstrates its effectiveness in relieving anxiety, resolving traumatic memories, breaking habitual patterns, and reducing chronic pain. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to safely guide your clients into hypnotic states, effectively frame suggestions, clear subconscious blocks, and activate the client’sRead More…
We’re Older. Are We Better? Daniel Siegel & Bessel van der Kolk On the occasion of the Symposium’s 40th anniversary, two of the most influential figures in our field reflect on the most important advances of the past four decades as well as the prospects for improving our therapeutic effectiveness in the future, with aRead More…
Overcoming Internal Attachment Disorder Parts 1 & 2 Janina Fisher Many therapists believe the primary antidote to clients’ feelings of self-loathing, shame, and worthlessness is total acceptance and unconditional positive regard. But unfortunately, clients alienated from traumatized, disowned, or despised parts of themselves can’t internalize that message, no matter how hard the therapist tries. ThisRead More…
Four Core Skills Parts 1 & 2 Deany Laliotis How does a therapist know how to navigate the emotional landscape with a client when the present is more about the past? How do we help the client whose motivation for change is compromised? This workshop offers a conceptual framework from contemporary models of psychotherapy andRead More…
A Therapy for the 21st Century Parts 1 & 2 Eric Gentry What if there was a simple, efficient, and effective way to treat clients’ traumatic stress that didn’t involve them revisiting the painful memories of the past? Forward-Facing Trauma Therapy (FFTT) is a method of trauma treatment that combines components of CBT and brainRead More…
Memory Reconsolidation in Everyday Practice Parts 1 & 2 Bruce Ecker & Sara Bridges Neuroscientific advances in memory reconsolidation enable us to achieve therapeutic breakthroughs with previously unheard of consistency. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to engage the neural process that decommissions implicit learnings that drive PTSD, compulsive behaviors, and insecure attachment. You’ll seeRead More…
How to make Therapy More Portable Parts 1 & 2 Chris Germer From depression and anxiety to addiction and trauma, a lack of self-compassion lies at the core of nearly every presenting problem. When therapy is effective, the therapist’s compassionate attitude seems to rub off on the client. Luckily, self-compassion exercises can also be taughtRead More…
Processing Trauma without Talking about It Parts 1 & 2 David Grand Symptoms of unprocessed trauma—including dissociation, numbing, and chronic anxiety—are notoriously difficult to eliminate through talk therapy. The reason: the overwhelmed brain is unable to process verbal information about the events. But Brainspotting, a brain-based method for clearing trauma blockage without clients having toRead More…
How to Go Beyond Technique Mary Jo Barrett When it comes to working with complex developmental trauma, it seems like therapists can’t get enough tools for their tool bag. And yet what determines effectiveness in this challenging arena of practice are crucial dimensions of the therapeutic relationship that go beyond any technical intervention. In thisRead More…
How Brain Science Can Inform Interventions Frank Anderson Therapists often get shaken and lose confidence in their approach when a client’s trauma response edges into seemingly uncontrollable extremes of rage, panic, or suicidal desperation. This workshop provides an essential road map for treating difficult trauma cases through a detailed exploration of the neurobiological processes ofRead More…
Treating Clients Who Challenge Our Capacity for Compassion Noel Larson How do you encourage clients who’ve been perpetrators to take responsibility for the pain and suffering they’ve caused? It can be a daunting task, especially since such clients can’t develop the capacity to accept responsibility for having done harm without first having had the experienceRead More…
Special Issues in Working with Marginalized Clients Anita Mandley If you work with African Americans, Native Americans, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, or any other disenfranchised clients, you’re often working with the legacies of cultural and historical trauma. This workshop will open a path toward addressing wounds and issues that too often go ignored andRead More…
Collective Trauma as a Clinical Issue Patrick Dougherty While we know the regular eruptions of violence from mass shootings, police brutality, and acts of terrorism that dominate the news cycle often trigger anxiety, anger, and genuine despair in many of our clients, most of us have no training in how to bring up the impactRead More…
Changing the Family Dance Lynn Lyons Anxiety can be a very persistent master. When it moves into families, it takes over daily routines, schoolwork, and recreation. To make matters worse, the things adults (including many therapists and school staff) do to help anxious children can actually make the anxiety stronger. Fortunately, research shows that what weRead More…
One Step Forward and Two Steps Back Parts 1 & 2 Lisa Ferentz While every therapist understands that treatment is most effective when it unfolds within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, it’s often challenging to build a meaningful alliance with traumatized clients who turn therapy into an emotional roller coaster. This isRead More…
Working with Avoidant and Disorganized Clients Parts 1 & 2 Diane Poole Heller Many clients bring to therapy the remnants of attachment wounds experienced before they learned to speak, so talk therapy is often ineffective at getting to the root of early memories that can continue to roil emotions and disturb relationships. This workshop presentsRead More…
Uplifting Interventions to Heal the Heart and Rewire the Brain Parts 1 & 2 Courtney Armstrong Research from brain science and positive psychology shows that activating positive emotional states is the fastest route to instilling hope, stimulating creativity, spurring motivation, and empowering our clients. But how do you help clients access resourceful states when they’reRead More…
An Internal Family Systems (IFS) Approach Parts 1 & 2 Richard Schwartz One of the chief obstacles to effective trauma treatment can be the therapist’s view of trauma symptoms like dissociation, rage, and suicidal thoughts as frightening evidence of deep pathology, rather than an expression of the natural human impulse toward self-protection. This workshop willRead More…
Finding the Right Fit for Clients Parts 1 & 2 Joan Borysenko As meditation practice is increasingly being integrated into psychotherapy, therapists too often see it as a one-size-fits-all remedy. But these practices actually include a range of tools that can be more effective when tailored to a client’s history, personality organization, religious or spiritualRead More…
When Talk Isn’t Enough Parts 1 & 2 Bessel van der Kolk The last 20 years have provided us with great advances in understanding the impact of trauma on developing brains and how it interferes with the capacity to concentrate and filter out irrelevant information. In this workshop, you’ll review the latest research and interventionsRead More…
From Devastation to Hope Lisa Ferentz Although it’s important for therapists to help clients process the painful and often demoralizing effects of trauma, it’s also crucial to nurture their potential for new possibilities of healing through post-traumatic growth (PTG). In fact, learning respectful ways to plant seeds of hope and resilience can make all theRead More…
A Rapid Transformative Approach Robert Schwarz Increasingly, therapists are discovering that when clients are immobilized by trauma or overwhelming affect, there’s a method that can help resolve the problem. Energy Psychology (EP) techniques are easy to learn. With ongoing research that includes over 70 published studies and three meta-analyses, EP approaches have proven to beRead More…
What to Do When Things Get Messy and Uncomfortable Mary Jo Barrett & Linda Stone Fish When working with trauma cases do you see clients go into flight, fight, and/or freeze? Do they yell at you, insult you, or leave the session? Are there times you find yourself getting angry at your clients? Do youRead More…
Who Says It’s Always Toxic? George Faller As a society, we often appear to be waging a war on stress, but it’s time to reconsider our one-sided view. We have a choice about whether to view stressful situations as being invariably toxic or as opportunities to face a healthy challenge. This experiential workshop will presentRead More…
Bringing More of Your Hidden Potential to Life David Grand All too often performance, especially in sports, is undermined by developmental trauma and the accompanying dissociation. Brainspotting is an approach for going deep into the subcortical brain that can zero in on performance-blocking dissociation and enhance performance in sports, creative activities, school, and business. InRead More…
