Complex Trauma: Recognising and Responding Effectively to Our Clients - Social Work

A Day of Theory and Training for Working Beyond Single Incident Trauma

Complex trauma is highly damaging but frequently unrecognized and inappropriately treated. While current research in the neurobiology of attachment has major implications for treatment of trauma, the potential of these insights is not widely operationalized in clinical practice and confusion about the differences between ‘complex’ and ‘single incident’ trauma persists.

This training event addresses the stakes of recognizing and responding to complex trauma (which comes in many guises) in light of current research findings and their implications for treatment.

Clinical and research insights establish that effective approaches to complex trauma are “phased” and need to engage physical as well as cognitive and emotional processes (‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’) This poses challenges to standard perspectives (i.e. insight-based and cognitive behavioural) which privilege ‘talk’ and which thus require some reconsideration. Core features of effective therapy for complex trauma will be delineated and discussed.

Learning Objectives of This Training:

1. Recognize the possibility of complex trauma in diverse client presentations.
2. Recognize differences between complex/single incident trauma and the treatment implications.
3. Identify the necessary components of effective therapy for complex trauma, and the extent to which the combination of these components may require modification and adaptation of your existing ways of working.
4. Chart the links between core principles of effective therapy for complex trauma and their clinical application.
5. Recognize the centrality of the realm of the non-verbal and ways in which unarticulated experience is ‘evoked’, ‘enacted’ and ‘embodied’ (Wallin, 2007).
6. Understand the rationale for the three phases of recommended treatment for complex trauma and assemble a foundational context in which Phase 1 (safety and stabilization) can take place.
7. Attune with increased sensitivity to non-verbal cues within the evolving stages of the therapeutic relationship.
8. Embed within your particular approach ongoing attunement to pre-verbal experience and the body with a view to assisting clients to stay within their ‘window of tolerance’.
   

How will you benefit from attending this training?

• Increase attunement to the role of non-verbal experience and the body in effective therapy for complex trauma.
• Recognize the relationship between research findings pertaining to complex trauma and their application to practice.
• Understand ways in which standard psychotherapeutic approaches (insight-based and cognitive behavioural) may require adaptation and supplement in light of the evolving research base on complex trauma and a basic capacity to tailor familiar ways of working in light of this understanding.

Outline

Morning Session 

• `Complex’ and ‘single incident trauma (PTSD) - the stakes of the distinction and the implications for treatment.
• A diverse research base - the neurobiology of attachment.
• Trauma theory. 
• The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.
  

Afternoon Session 

• Clinical implications of the research base- importance of non-verbal and the body (`bottom up’ and `top down’).
• The challenge to `standard’ psychotherapeutic approaches.
• Mental health and adaptation to trauma.
• The importance of dissociation.
• Key features of effective therapy for complex trauma.
• Working clinically: Initial stages of therapy.
• Towards self-regulation (the centrality of safety).
• Phased treatment.
• Transference and counter-transference.
• The high stakes of therapist well-being.
• Vicarious trauma, self-care and supervision. Evaluation and closing.

Evaluation and Quiz - your payment includes a quiz which when completed with a minimum of 80% correct answers, will enable you to download your Attendance Certificate.

To complete the quiz, please log into your account at pdp-catalogue.com.au and click the orange "Certificate" button under the program's title.

Target Audience

This seminar has been designed to extend the clinical knowledge and applied skill of Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Coaches, Psychologists, Hypnotherapists, Social Workers, Case Workers, Pastoral Care Workers, Community Workers, Mental Health Nurses and Psychiatrists.

Note this e-course is not hosted on Nexlec and users can click the "Select" button to be directed to the course page.