Intensive Workshop: Shame and Self-Loathing in the Treatment of Trauma

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. Related seminars and products: 59

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Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, Dr. Fisher has also been treating individuals, couples and families since 1980.

She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of the neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities. 

She is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press). 

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Janina Fisher is in private practice. She receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.

Non-financial: Janina Fisher has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.

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Objectives

1. Describe the neurobiological effects of traumatic experience.
2. Recognize role of autonomic arousal in exacerbating symptoms.
3. Identify animal defense survival responses in trauma clients.
4. Evaluate the effects of shame and self-loathing symptoms, and identify how these symptoms inform treatment interventions.
5. Determine the impact of the neurobiological effects of shame observed in clinical practice.
6. Evaluate cognitive schemas and its clinical implications.
7. Articulate the principles of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and how they relate to clinical treatment.
8. Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to alleviate shame symptoms in clients.
9. Utilize cognitive-behavioural techniques to reframe shame-based cognitive schemas.
10. Integrate mindfulness-based techniques to inhibit client’s self-judgement.
11. Describe a somatic approach to resolving chronic shame.
12. Implement ego state techniques to challenge and re-contextualize chronic shame.

Outline

The Neurobiology of Shame

• The role of shame in traumatic experience
• Shame as an animal defence survival response
• Effects of shame on autonomic arousal
• Why shame can be treatment-resistant
• Limitations of research & potential risks

Shame and Attachment: Its Evolutionary Purpose

• Shame and the attachment system
• Rupture and repair of shame states in attachment formation
• What happens to shame without interpersonal repair
• Shame as a defensive response to traumatic attachment

The Meaning of Shame in the Treatment of Trauma

• Trauma and procedural learning
• Shame as a survival strategy
• Implicit memory of disgust, degradation and humiliation
• Shame-based meaning-making
• Cognitive schemas that exacerbate shame
• Vicious circle of shame
• Vicious circle of shame and anger Internal working models

Treating Shame

• Why shame is hard to overcome
• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: physiological state as the entry point for treatment
• Mindfulness-based techniques to combat trauma responses
• Regulate shame states with somatic interventions
• Use mindfulness interventions to inhibit self-judgment
• Work with shame as implicit memory
• Work with shame-based cognitive schemas

Healing Shame: Acceptance and Compassion

• Dis-identifying with the shame
• Re-contextualize shame as a younger self or part
• Shame and the Structural Dissociation model
• Getting to know our “selves”
• Recognize the role of critical voices and judgmental parts
• Dual awareness of who we are now and who we were then bringing our adult compassion to our childhood vulnerability

Healing Shame in the Therapeutic Relationship

• How can we use therapy to ‘repair’ shame states?
• The role of therapeutic empathy
• Therapists as neurobiological regulators
• The social engagement system in trauma recovery
• Incorporate playfulness, acceptance and curiosity

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counselors
• Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Other Mental Health Professionals
• Nurses

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