Understanding and Working with Simple and Complex Trauma

There is a high prevalence of trauma in the general population and even more so in clinical populations. This workshop will provide clinicians with theoretical understanding and practical techniques that will assist them in their work with clients struggling with trauma related concerns.

The workshop overviews a neuropsychological framework for our processing of both everyday experience and traumatic experience. It looks at how this processing can break down following exposure to trauma, resulting in difficulties like PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Utilising this framework, the workshop considers how we can support clients in resolving trauma related difficulties. The framework is also applied to understanding how childhood abuse and neglect can shape the development of personality disorders (particularly Borderline Personality Disorder) and the therapeutic considerations for therapists working with these clients.

The workshop covers a range of areas including:

• Emotional processing of everyday experience – how does this work from a neuropsychological perspective?
• How our processing of traumatic experience differs from everyday experience
• The resolution of trauma and factors that interfere with this process
• PTSD and complex PTSD (looking at overlap with Borderline Personality Disorder)
• Childhood trauma and its impact on personality development
• Therapeutic interventions to facilitate the resolution of simple trauma: theory, treatment planning and techniques
• Therapeutic interventions for complex PTSD: theory, treatment planning and treatment approaches (e.g. Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Schema Focused Therapy)

By the end of this workshop, participants will understand:

• How our childhood environment shapes perception, affect regulation and behaviour into adulthood
• A neuropsychological framework for how we process emotional experience and how to facilitate this in therapy
• The fight/flight/freeze response
• How we react to trauma – the adaptive and maladaptive side of trauma reactions
• How and why people fail to recover from trauma without support
• Therapy for trauma: the how, what and why of supporting trauma recovery – this includes both a theoretical understanding of how we help bring about change and a range of relevant techniques
• The differences between simple and complex trauma
• The more complicated treatment needs of clients struggling with complex trauma

Who should attend?

Experienced case workers and counsellors who would like more information on trauma