Full Course Description

Trauma Treatment for Kids - Healing the Body Through Play: Advanced Interactive Workshop

Program Information

Outline

Neuroscience of Childhood Trauma Trauma Theory
- Fight-or-Flight (parasympathetic/sympathetic nervous system)
- Attachment Theory
Assessment
- Complex Trauma
- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- Reactive Attachment Disorder
- Developmental Trauma Disorder
- A new conceptualization and integrated clinical framework
Essential Components for Trauma-Informed Treatments
- Establishing safety and a sense of competence/worth
- Appropriate attachments & relational engagement
- Self-regulation (body & emotions)
- Self-reflection & Introspection
- Integration of traumatic experiences (acknowledgment & processing of the trauma)
- Future safety ~ transitioning beyond the Trauma
Body Based Treatment – Emotional and Behavioral Regulation
- Verbal vs nonverbal responses – how to recognize trauma without verbal report
- Bottom-up versus top-down processing – trauma starts in the body
- Developmental needs of traumatized children
- Embodied play & sensory integration – emotional and behavioral regulation
Incorporating Play Therapy into Proven Evidence-based Treatments
- Components that “fit” the child’s specific needs
- TF-CBT- Trauma focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
- CPP – Child Parent Psychotherapy
- ARC – Attachment, Regulation, and Competency
- TARGET – Trauma Adaptive Recovery Group Education Therapy
Play Therapy Principles
- Therapist establishes a friendly relationship
- Accepts the child as he is
- Creates a permissive relationship; child has freedom of expression
- Validates (acknowledge and reflect) child’s feelings
- Responsibility for decisions and change is left mostly to the child
- Child directs the therapeutic process; therapist follows
- Therapeutic interaction is not rushed
- Limits are set only when necessary for child’s outcomes
Advancing Trauma Treatment with Play Therapy
- Non-verbal techniques
- Sensory-based techniques
- Culturally and developmentally appropriate techniques
Play Therapy Strategies and Techniques
- Integration of traumatic experiences to acknowledge and process the trauma: Sandtrays, drawings, & play
- Target shame, self-doubt, and selfcompassion: Sandtray Safeplace & All About Me
- Build an understanding of the brainbody relationship: Flip your lid and Charades
- Target indiscriminate attachments and interpersonal reactivity: Invisible String & Family Sandtray
- Improve emotional and bodily regulation: Stressballs, Be Spaghetti, Feelings Map, Trashballs, Yoga, and Weather Massage

Target Audience

Counselors, Social Workers, Psychologists, Marriage and Family Therapists, Play Therapists, Speech-Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapist

Objectives

Articulate how to help children with complex trauma histories restore their capacity for playfulness and co-regulation.
Evaluate the fight-or-flight response in children, and learn playful ways to teach children about the brain-body relationship.
Assess the neurophysiological theory behind developmental trauma and attachment.
Contrast diagnostic challenges within this population, and ascertain symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder which can be decreased through embodied play therapy strategies.
Combine embodied play therapy interventions with evidence-based treatment models for improving emotional and behavioral regulation.
Utilize the core components found within the leading evidence-based trauma treatments (TF-CBT, EMDR, CPP, ARC, TARGET) with play therapy techniques to improve relational engagement.
Evaluate which trauma informed treatment components “fit” with specific needs of children who have experienced developmental trauma.
Determine how core components of childcentered play therapy align with best practices for treating childhood trauma.
Employ strategies to help children with trauma through play therapy and evidence-based cognitive strategies.
Implement play therapy techniques that are consistent with the core components of trauma-informed treatment.
Develop a treatment plan for introducing play therapy to clients and families in an engaging, fun manner.
Integrate culturally attuned play therapy strategies into trauma work with children and families.

Copyright : 02/15/2018

The Ethics of Touch in Child Psychotherapy & Play Therapy

Program Information

Objectives

State 10 different types of touch that can occur in a therapy session.
Demonstrate four ways to evaluate for a child’s psychosocial experiences related to touch.
Describe how to apply 5 therapeutic interventions to handle in-the-moment ethical dilemmas in a play therapy session.

Outline

The Ethics of Touch in Context

Clinical concerns of touch in child psychotherapy and play therapy
No touch policies-more harm than good?
Types of touch: greeting, accidental, task-oriented, attentional, and more

Assessment for Psychosocial Experiences of Touch

4 Child Drawing Assessments
Rating scale questionnaires
- Parent’s perceptions of child’s touch experiences
- Teacher Touch Observation Rating Scale for child

Interventions and Case Examples: Ethical dilemmas of Touch- Responses, Interventions and Boundary Setting

Risk/benefit decision making
Child hits/slaps therapist
Inappropriate touching of therapist
Child asks to be touched inappropriately
Child asks for appropriate touch
Specific populations
- Infants-behavioral cue indications
- Teenagers
- Attachment Disorders
- Autism/Sensory Processing Disorders
- Sexually traumatized children
10+ Recommendations for working with abused children
Engaging parents in problem touch occurrences

20+ Top Ethical Touch Best Practice Guidelines

Practitioner Touch Awareness Questionnaire
Informed Consent-for therapy approaches that use touch
Informed Consent-Mandated Reporter of all forms of abuse
Unethical Forms of Touch
And many more…

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Teachers/Educators, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, Speech-Language Pathologists, and other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 08/06/2015

Trauma Defined: Bessel van der Kolk on The Body Keeps the Score

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

The Latest Clinical Research Surrounding:

The impact of trauma on brain activity
Neurofeedback, EMDR and “body work” on symptom reduction
The effectiveness of movement, mindfulness and theater activities in trauma treatment

Objectives

Evaluate how trauma influences the activity of the key areas of the brain and how that dictates behavior patterns in clients.
Articulate the clinical research surrounding the effectiveness of yoga, mindfulness meditation, and theater in healing trauma in clients.

Copyright : 09/02/2014

Overcoming Trauma-Related Shame and Self-Loathing with Janina Fisher, Ph.D.

Program Information

Target Audience

Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Case Managers, Addiction Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Mental Health Professionals

Objectives

Discriminate the clinical implications of physiological and cognitive contributors to shame.
Determine cognitive-behavioral, ego state, and psychoeducational interventions to address shame in clients.

Outline

The Neurobiology of Shame

The role of shame in traumatic experience
Shame as an animal defense survival response
Effects of shame on autonomic arousal

Shame’s Evolutionary Purpose

Shame and the attachment system
Rupture and repair in attachment formation

Making Meaning of Shame

Feelings of disgust, degradation, and humiliation are interpreted as “who I am”
Cognition and the body
Internal working models predict the future and determine our actions

Working from the “Bottom Up”

The role of procedural learning and memory
Physiological effects of mindful dual awareness
Using mindfulness-based techniques to inhibit self-judgment

A New Relationship to the Shame: Acceptance and Compassion

Re-contextualizing shame as a younger self or part
Bringing our adult capacity to our childhood vulnerability
Healing shame through compassionate acceptance

The Social Engagement System and the Healing of Shame

Social engagement and the ventral vagal system (Porges)
The incompatibility of shame and social engagement
The therapist’s own social engagement system as a healing agent