Description
While every therapist understands that treatment is most effective when it unfolds within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, it’s often challenging to build a meaningful alliance with traumatized clients who turn therapy into an emotional roller coaster. This is even more challenging when therapists have their own attachment wounds. Through case examples, videos, and discussion, you’ll discover how to:
- Handle the impact of disorganized attachment and traumatic transference on the client-therapist relationship
- Recognize how your own attachment experiences can evoke countertransreferential responses that can influence therapy
- Integrate strategies that can strengthen attunement
- Apply approaches that address testing behaviors and increase secure attachment
CPD
CPD
- PESI Australia, in collaboration with PESI in the USA, offers quality online continuing professional development events from the leaders in the field at a standard recognized by professional associations including psychology, social work, occupational therapy, alcohol and drug professionals, counselling and psychotherapy. On completion of the training, a Professional Development Certificate is issued after the individual has answered and submitted a quiz and course evaluation. This online program is worth 3.75 hours CPD for points calculation by your association.
Faculty
Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, DAPA, is a recognized expert in the strengths-based, de-pathologized treatment of trauma and has been in private practice for over 40 years. She has been an adjunct faculty member at several universities, and is the founder of The Ferentz Institute, now in its seventeenth year of providing continuing education to mental health professionals and graduating several thousand clinicians from her two certificate programs in advanced trauma treatment. In 2009 she was voted the “Social Worker of the Year” by the Maryland Society for Clinical Social Work. She is the author of Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors: A Clinician’s Guide, now in its second edition, Letting Go of Self-Destructive Behaviors: A Workbook of Hope and Healing and Finding Your Ruby Slippers: Transformative Life Lessons from the Therapist’s Couch.
Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Lisa Ferentz maintains a private practice and is the founder and president of the Ferentz Institute. She receives royalties as a published author and is a consultant for Northwest Hospital. Lisa Ferentz receives a speaking honorarium and product royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Lisa Ferentz is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychotherapy Association.
Outline
- Types of Trauma and Abuse
- Physical & Emotional
- Inconsistent Roles & Expectations
- Losses Associated with Trauma
- Boundaries
- Trust
- Innocence
- Emotional Expression
- Relationship between Attachment and Trauma
- Desire for Connection
- Fear of Connection
- Physiology & Attachment
- Positive and Negative Triggers
- Regulating Stress
- Early Childhood Attachment Patterns
- Free/Autonomous
- Dismissing
- Ambivalent
- Disorganized
- Frightened vs. Frightening Behaviors
- Withdrawn & Avoidant
- Reactive & Aggressive
- Managing Emotional States
- Inter-regulation
- Auto-Regulation
- Affect Dysregulation
- Art Therapy Strategies
- Types of Art Expression
- Strategic Prompts
- Open vs. Closed Questions
- Therapist countertransference responses
- Empathy and compassion
- Secure attachment
- De-pathologizing Trauma
- Borderline Personality Disorder
- Complex Trauma
- Attachment Dance
- Stepping In
- Stepping Out
- Normalizing
- Trauma-Informed Therapy
- Optimum Window of Arousal
- Assessment
- Prioritizing
- Traumatic Transference
- Fear of Abandonment
- Sabotaging the Relationship
- Not asking for help
- Ambivalence
- Manifestations of Counter-transference
- Empathetic Disequilibrium
- Empathetic Withdrawal
- Empathetic Enmeshment
- Empathetic Repression
Objectives
- Determine how to handle the impact of disorganized attachment and traumatic transference on the client-therapist relationship
- Explore how to recognize how your own attachment experiences can evoke counter-transreferential responses that can influence therapy
- Ascertain how to integrate strategies that can strengthen attunement
- Explore how to apply approaches that address testing behaviors and increase secure attachment
Target Audience
Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Marriage and Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers
