Relational Trauma Repair: Psychodrama and Experiential Tools for Individual and Group Therapy
Trauma isn’t just a memory.
It’s feeling utterly alone in moments that should have been safe. Tightening in the chest when trust was broken. Silence where love should have been.
These experiences are felt realities that fuel your clients’ fear, panic, shutdown, shame, emotional numbness, and stuck relationship patterns.
And until clients can safely experience something different, their past will keep controlling their present.
That’s where experiential therapies comes in.
Now in this training you can learn to use experiential tools in your own practice from one of today’s leading experts.
You’ll join Dr. Tian Dayton—a world-renowned expert in experiential therapy and developmental trauma, praised by Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine and other leaders in the field.
Dr. Dayton will share a toolbox of psychodrama-based interventions, role play techniques, and embodied exercises along with the latest from polyvagal theory, attachment science, and interpersonal neurobiology…
…so you can give clients the lived experience of safety, connection, and agency that trauma took away.
Whether you work with individuals, couples or groups the detailed instruction in this training brings immediately usable experiential therapy tools into your practice – no previous training in psychodrama or any other approach required.
Register now!
Objectives
Explain the neurobiological and psychological mechanisms through which attachment trauma affects emotional regulation and attachment security.
Spinazzola, J., Van der Kolk, B., & Ford, J. D. (2021). Developmental trauma disorder: A legacy of attachment trauma in victimized children. Journal of traumatic stress, 34(4), 711-720.
Summarize the rationale for using action-based experiential methods and how these approaches differ in therapeutic impact from cognitive-only models.
Giacomucci, S., & Marquit, J. (2020). The effectiveness of trauma-focused psychodrama in the treatment of PTSD in inpatient substance abuse treatment. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 896.
Describe the theoretical foundations underlying the use of sociometry and psychodrama in therapy.
Dayton, T. (2022). Sociometrics: Embodied, Experiential Processes for Relational Trauma Repair. Central Recovery Press.
Use floor checks as experiential psychoeducation techniques to help clients understand trauma's impact on connection, regulation, and relational patterns.
Giacomucci, S. (2021). Trauma, Social Work, and Psychodrama. In Social Work, Sociometry, and Psychodrama: Experiential Approaches for Group Therapists, Community Leaders, and Social Workers (pp. 127-146). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Use experiential tools (e.g., sociometry, role reversal, doubling) to promote safety, trust, and emotional expression in trauma recovery work.
Maya, J., Pérez-Berbel, M., Giraldo-Arroyave, L., & Hurtado, I. (2025). Psychodrama: implementation, study design and effectiveness: a systematic review. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 25, 232.
Implement warm-up sociometric techniques that foster shared vulnerability and increase participant engagement prior to enactment.
Giacomucci, S. (2021). Warming-up, sociometric selection, and therapeutic factors. In Social Work, Sociometry, and Psychodrama: Experiential Approaches for Group Therapists, Community Leaders, and Social Workers (pp. 237-251). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Utilize brief, focused psychodramatic vignettes to support clients in expressing unresolved emotional experiences and practicing new relational patterns.
Giacomucci, S., & Marquit, J. (2020). The Effectiveness of Trauma-Focused Psychodrama in the Treatment of PTSD in Inpatient Substance Abuse Treatment. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 896. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00896
Describe how trauma disrupts the subjective experience of time, and why temporal distortion is a key psychological feature in trauma-related disorders.
Mezzalira, S. (2021). Trauma and its impacts on temporal experience: New perspectives from phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Routledge.
Facilitate a psychodramatic timeline exercise with a client to explore and sequence significant life events related to trauma, attachment, or resilience.
Mezzalira, S. (2021). Trauma and its impacts on temporal experience: New perspectives from phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Routledge.
Construct a basic social atom or role atom diagram with clients, using step-by-step procedures provided.
Giacomucci, S. (2021). Sociometric Assessment and Written Psychodramatic Interventions in Individual Social Work Practice. In Social Work, Sociometry, and Psychodrama: Experiential Approaches for Group Therapists, Community Leaders, and Social Workers (pp. 311-322). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Apply the Empty Chair technique as an intervention for increasing access to emotions such as grief, anger, shame, or compassion.
Pascual-Leone, A., & Baher, T. (2023). Chairwork in individual psychotherapy: Meta-analyses of intervention effects. Psychotherapy, 60(3), 370.
Use letter-writing exercises in sessions with bereaved clients to help them access avoided emotions or unresolved relational dynamics.
Larsen, L. H. (2024). Letter writing as a clinical tool in grief psychotherapy. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 89(1), 222-246.
Outline
Module 1:
Attachment Trauma and an Introduction to Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Embodied Practices
Module 2:
Trauma and Resilience Timelines:
Tools to Make Sense of Trauma History, Identify Moments of Rupture and Strengthen Inner Resources
Module 3:
Using Social Atoms to Map Relational Patterns, Externalize Relational Pain and Create Healing Moments
Module 4:
Relational Trauma, Loss, and Grief: Experiential Tools for Processing What Was and What Wasn't
Target Audience