Full Course Description
Brain-to-Brain: Mastering the Neurobiological Waltz
OUTLINE
- Therapeutic relationship as dance between attachment systems
- Impact of early childhood experiences on attachment and affect regulation
- Arousal and self-regulation
- Secure v. insecure context
- Brain structures and systems related to self-regulation of affect
- Functions of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system
- Consequences of hypoarousal and hyperarousal
- Unconscious nature of early attachment experiences
- Body memory/somatic learning
- Approach v. avoidance
- Therapeutic relationship and managing sense of threat
- Styles of attachment
- Unconscious nature of body memory
- Nonverbal cues and therapeutic communication
- Successful regulation of arousal
- Optimal window of arousal
- Sources of therapist dysregulation
- Identifying somatic transference and countertransference
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Impact of internal dialog, labeling
- Mind/body integration
- Integrating mindfulness practices
- Co-regulation in interpersonal psychotherapy
- Effective methods of communication
- Connecting and integrating sensory perceptions
- Experimentation as technique
- Working brain to brain
- Role of mirror neurons
- Social engagement system
- Flowing with resistance
- Summary
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OBJECTIVES
- Explore how to recognize certain core issues in the therapeutic alliance—such as idealization and devaluing, stuckness, struggles for control, and abandonment fears—as manifestations of traumatic attachment
- Explore how to become skilled at “right brain to right brain” communication, or being able to “talk” without words
- Explore how to engage in a “dyadic dance” with your clients, mirroring their rhythms, body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures
Program Information
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Social Workers
Copyright :
03/26/2017
Enhancing Neuroplasticity: Strategies for Rewiring the Brain
OUTLINE
- Choosing experiences to rewire the brain
Mindfulness
- Compassion
- Tools of intelligence
- Purposes of enhancing neuroplasticity
Regulation, relation, reflection and resilience
- Strategies for implementing positive neuroplasticity
- Brain structures and systems related to perception of safety
Functions of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system
Consequences of hypoarousal and hyperarousal
- Unconscious nature of autonomic systems
- Therapeutic interventions to optimize feelings of safety
Beneficial exercises: breath, touch, posture and movement
Nonverbal cues and therapeutic communication
- Therapeutic resonance and healing
Techniques for developing resonance
Deep listening and acceptance of emotions
- Mindfulness and self-compassion
- Therapeutic exercise: Compassionate friend
- Shifting brain functioning through positive emotions
Neuroscience research
Gratitude exercise: Web of life
- Imagination
- Default mental play space
Therapeutic exercise: Wished for outcome
- Meta-processing and brain change
Journaling and creating a coherent narrative
- Summary and clinical take-aways
OBJECTIVES
- Discover how to teach clients tools of self-directed neuroplasticity to reverse the impact of stress and trauma on brain functioning and their capacities to cope
- Discover how to cultivate positive emotions to shift brain functioning from contracted survival responses to larger perspectives and openness to change
- Discover how to use practices of mindfulness and self-compassion to recover the capacities of the prefrontal cortex for response flexibility and resilience
- Discover how to strengthen capacities of empathy and deepen skills of relational intelligence to foster healthy, resonant relationships
Program Information
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Social Workers
Copyright :
03/24/2017
What the Brain Needs for Transformational Change
OUTLINE
- Different types of change and memory reconsolidation:
Counteractive
Transformational
- Transformational change therapies
Common therapeutic factors across diverse approaches
Permanence of transformational change
- Memory deconsolidation and reconsolidation
History and research
Nonverbal, implicit structure
Schemas and their self-protective function
- Impact of competing new learning
Brain circuits involved
Challenges of incremental learning and change
- Schema and implicit memory erasure
Non-reactivation
Symptom cessation
Effortless permanence
- Change mechanisms and sequences across therapeutic approaches
- Process for schema erasure
Reactivation
Guided contradictory experience
Juxtaposition with target schema
- Preparation for intervention
Symptom identification
Retrieving underlying schema
Finding contradictory experiences
- Nonspecific common therapeutic factors
- Verifying therapeutic outcome
Dissolution of schema
Evaluating presence of multiple schemas
- Clinical case examples of transformational process
Therapist factors
Potential complications
Symptom deprivation
Overt statements
Sentence completion
OBJECTIVES
- Discover the series of steps in the brain’s core process of profound unlearning
- Discover the process that swiftly reveals the emotional schemas generating symptoms
- Discover how to combine resource states and negative learnings into the juxtaposition experience that triggers reconsolidation and transformational change
- Discover how to shift unconscious emotional learnings into richly felt, conscious targets of change
Program Information
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Social Workers
Copyright :
03/25/2017
Treating Personality Disorders: Advances from Brain Science and Traumatology
OUTLINE
- Personality disorders in the US, prevalence and personal history
Risk factors, therapeutic options
- Diagnostic criteria for personality disorders
Cluster characteristics
Developmental characteristics
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Differential diagnostic criteria and defining characteristics
Pathological v. healthy narcissism
- Grandiose v. vulnerable narcissism
- Continuum of disturbance and loss of self
- Borderline Personality Disorder
Differential diagnostic criteria and defining characteristics
Boundary setting and treatment approaches
Attachment and therapeutic relationship considerations
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
Differential diagnostic criteria and defining characteristics
Victim v. perpetrator symptom expression
- Psychopathy and personality characteristics
- “No Solid Self”
Complex therapeutic history
Common underpinnings to varied personality diagnoses
Relationship characteristics
- Developmental processes underlying personality disorders
Family systems
Neurophysiological systems
Determining level of intervention
Self-regulation, positive regard, mirroring
Creating attachment and inserting self into therapy
Importance of non-verbal communication
Language selection and techniques
- Identifying meaning of disordered behavior and emotional regulation
- Therapist self-regulation, necessity and strategies
- Pictoral Coherence technique
- “Undissociation” technique
- General principles for therapeutic intervention
OBJECTIVES
- Explore how to develop a therapeutic alliance in the face of mistrust, control issues, and rock solid defenses while staying out of power struggles
- Explore how to work with the pathological dissociation typically present in personality disordered clients
- Explore practical, effective interventions informed by neuroscience that help clients safely manage frightening symptoms, including violence and emotional meltdowns, and develop healthier boundaries and a more differentiated sense of self
Program Information
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Social Workers
Objectives
- Utilize clinical strategies to develop a therapeutic alliance in the face of mistrust, control issues, and rock- solid defenses while staying out of power struggles
- Apply effective tools for working with pathological dissociation in therapy
- Utilize clinical interventions informed by neuroscience to alleviate symptoms of personality disorders, including violence and emotional meltdowns
Copyright :
03/26/2017
Brain Care: Applying the Neuroscience of Well-Being to Help Clients​
Program Information
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Social Workers
Objectives
- Implement lifestyle choices that protect the physical brain as our clients age, and extend the “health span” portion of our lifespan
- Apply the tools of self-directed neuroplasticity in therapy that help reverse the impact of stress and trauma on emotional regulation, learning and memory, and empathy
- Engage clients with practices such as guided visualizations and process journaling that can enhance the higher brain’s capacity for response flexibility, discernment, planning, creativity, and imagination
- Apply interventions that help prevent/reverse addiction to digital technology and recover capacities for focused attention and concentration, relational intimacy, introspection, and self-reflection
- Employ valuable resources in the latest findings about the brain and the mind-body connection
Outline
- Brain structure, overlapping areas of physical pain, emotional pain and temperature
- Modalities impacting brain structure
Multiple approaches, experiences change the brain
Consciousness remains unexplained
Mindfulness, compassion
- Burnout and compassion fatigue
- Macro and micro approaches to self-care
- The impact of exercise on brain chemistry and development
Telomeres, longevity, types of movement
- The impact of sleep and rest on brain chemistry and development
Cognitive impairment, depression
Sleep improvement strategies
Brief restorative strategies
- Nutrition supports for brain function
MIND diet
Neurotoxins
Impact of obesity
- The role of play in sustaining healthy brain function
- Social relationships and well being
- The four intelligences of well being
- Body based tools for healing trauma
Reactivity and healing
Emotional regulation
- Priming the neuroplasticity of the brain
- Relational intelligence
- Mindful awareness
Modifying perceptions and reactions
- Exercise: Increasing somatic intelligence
- Exercises: Breath, posture and movement
- Positive psychology and neuroscience research
Contraction and reactivity
Resilience and health
Ability to shift perspective
Mindful self-compassion and acceptance
- Exercise: Hand movement, mindfulness and emotion
- Exercise: Visualization and self-compassion
- Exercise: Moments of kindness
- Exercise: Guided visualization toward self-acceptance
- Exercise: Playing Parts and self-integration
- Exercise: Integrating the inner critic
Copyright :
03/23/2017
How Hard Times Can Open the Heart
No CE Credit Available
OBJECTIVES
- State how our deepening understanding of neuroscience can enable us, even in times of great stress, to tap into five natural capacities of the brain
- Recognize how to help clients have greater access to their inner resources
- Develop a client’s capacity for deep pleasure and savoring the moment
Program Information
Target Audience
Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists and other Behavioral Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/20/2016