Category: Trauma

Trauma Resilience: A Personal Perspective – Martin Weaver

Martin Weaver

Working with clients who have faced trauma and seeing them recover and grow is a satisfying and rewarding experience. And yet, as the therapist, what happens when we are involved in trauma?

John Wilson talks to psychotherapist Martin Weaver about his personal journey through childhood bereavement, the age of AIDS/HIV, family death, and now cancer. They explore how we can and perhaps should make the best use of our skills and experiences as therapists to ensure our own resilience through life’s major and minor traumas. Participants will be encouraged to ask their own questions and make their own observations during the conversation.

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Northern Ireland Conflict, Trauma, and Mental Health – Kristine Abercrombie

Kristine Abercrombie

I would love to share my own personal experience of growing up in Northern Ireland during ‘the troubles’, leaving just as the peace process began, and returning four years ago as a clinical psychologist to work with people in my community affected by the trauma of this period. The conflict in Northern Ireland, although steeped in much deeper history, started in the late 1960s, continuing until the 1990s, with dissident republican and loyalist groups continuing to attempt to upset the peace which has been obtained.

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Helping and Healing in Trauma – Noel McDermott

Noel McDermott

Noel will cover trauma from several perspectives and with clinical experience going back to his work from the mid 1990’s. The session will cover what trauma is, what PTSD is, how trauma develops neuro-biologically, and how that manifests in the individual and also in their relationships to others.

Trauma is a complex area of work and there is no one size fits all approach. There are common pitfalls to avoid such a re-traumatisation and secondary traumatisation of the therapist.

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Learning from Our Differences: Drawing from Our Overarching Humanity – Kristine Abercrombie

Kristine Abercrombie

To say we are all unique does not really capture the complexity and true ‘one-of-a-kind’ we all are. Regardless of what theoretical orientation or orientations we all practice from, or our training background, all of us counsellors / psychotherapists / clinical psychologists are taught and deeply know the importance of our own self awareness, both for our therapeutic relationships and self-care.

Words such as difference and diversity, transference and counter transference, narratives, scripts and stories, authenticity and individualisation are regularly discussed. We are all trained and experienced in sitting with our clients differences, vulnerabilities and uniqueness, but it is inherently and understandably more difficult to sit with our own.

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Trauma and Blessing in the Family System – Enid Welford

Enid Welford

Berne referred to the ‘family scripting’ that can be seen as a pattern through several generations, and the important influence of the grandparents. Thus difficulties with our immediate parents may have begun several generations in the past, and often seem to be related to unresolved traumas. Fanita English (1979) described these traumas as a ‘hot potato’ passed on to subsequent generations. Knowledge of these traumatic experiences is held within the introjected Parent, and the theme of this TA Tuesday is the usefulness of working at the source of the difficulty, i.e with the ancestor who first had the traumatic experience.

Unfortunately the knowledge we hold of our family history is not always available to our conscious mind. There are signs in the therapeutic process that indicate the presence of an impasse that spans the generations, and hopefully there will be time to discuss these signs. I also hope to discuss aspects of Family Constellations that inform my approach to these difficulties, along with TA techniques that Transactional Analysts can use to address intergenerational trauma.

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Domestic Violence in Pregnancy and Post Partum: A Review of the Evidence and How Professionals Can Support Vulnerable Women – Clare Slaney

Clare Slaney

Pregnancy is a risk factor for domestic violence. Many men are profoundly threatened by their partners’ pregnancy and change of role from their partner to another person’s mother. One third of domestic violence starts or gets worse when a woman is pregnant and one in five midwives sees at least one woman a week who she suspects is a victim of domestic violence.

One in 4 women will be affected by domestic violence and the complexities of this life threateneing situation, not least our own responses to domestic violence, mean that non-specialist counselling support for this client group can be compromised. Clare has given this talk to midwives both online and face to face where discussion has focused around the midwives’ lack of support and time, but the subject is also of interest to counsellors who, throughout out careers, will inevitably meet with clients who are experiencing domestic violence.

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Dealing With Trauma & Phobias Using NLP – Anthony Beardsell

Anthony Beardsell

In this session we take a look at trauma and phobias and examine how NLP approaches this specific area of change. Can NLP possibly help people recover from trauma and overcome phobias in a fifteen minute session? Join us to find out.

Designed to help uncover some of the mysticism around NLP, in this event we will be taking some practical examples and discussing how to approach trauma and phobias using various NLP techniques.

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Trauma & Transactional Analysis – Michael Gavin

Michael Gavin

Michael Gavin is deeply passionate about the role Counselling & Psychotherapy can play in helping people who have experienced Trauma.

Michael has extensive experience in working with people who are experiencing Post Traumatic Stress. He has agreed to talk to us about how his work has been informed by the theory of Transactional Analysis and how he thinks about the clients embodied experience, engaging with the whole person of the client to facilitate recovery.

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Rage and Shame – Sue Parker Hall

Sue Parker Hall

In the trainings I deliver I have frequently been asked “what is the link between rage and shame?” Participants and myself have intuitively known that there is a strong relationship between them both. As a consequence I have been inspired to research the issue and have developed a model that articulates the connection between the two, and also a deeper understanding of how the therapeutic relationship can address these commonly presented, often perplexing, issues.

In this online interview I discuss a practice example of how a client may oscillate between rage and shame, the impact that this had on me as a therapist and how I worked with it.

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TA with Kids in Care: Being Part of a Therapeutic Community – Clifton Supple

Clifton Supple

Clifton Supple is Clinical Director of Physis Quantum (www.physisgroup.co.uk) recently established in Shropshire to work with children and young people who present a complex range of emotional needs, inappropriate / harmful sexualised behaviours, attachment disorders, abuse reactive behaviours and trauma.

He is intending to discuss the culture that been developed upon an explicit commitment to a whole team approach focused upon the integration of therapeutic care, educational provision and clinical components to maximise the opportunities and outcomes for the young people they support.

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PTSD from a Multi Modal Perspective – Andy Williams

Andy Williams

In this discussion, Andy considered the changes that have taken place between the definitions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in DSM-IV and DSM-V, and the ways in which this may inform our thinking about treatment of trauma as practitioners.

We discussed a triage approach to trauma, and looking at the importance of stabilisation as the initial treatment intervention, prior to further integrative work. We then discussed differing treatment modalities and what they may have to offer the practitioner and client in the treatment of trauma.

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Dropping to the Universal: Engaging with the Potential Space to Give Voice to Traumatic Woundings – Noel McDermott

Noel McDermott

Exploring indirect and creative ways of approaching traumatic material in clients where direct talking approaches may be inappropriate or not possible.

Making meaning from a traumatic history or event is crucial in moving on and integrating the experience. As is reprocessing the emotional content to alleviate the stress of flashbacks, depression, anxiety, sleep problems and so on often associated with sever or multiple trauma.

Dealing with the trauma directly can often be contra-indicated if there are issues of age (working with young children), comorbidity with substance misuse relapse, shame, cultural and ethnic barriers to western approaches to talking therapy.

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Working Relationally to Explore the Impact of Trauma in Children and Adolescents – Amanda Phillips & Stephanie Cooke

Amanda Phillips

In this workshop we will explore the emotional and relational impact of trauma on children. This will include a brief overview of the impact of trauma on brain development and attachment patterns. Through the use of clinical examples we will demonstrate how to work effectively and safely with trauma.

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