Beyond Trauma 101
Course Date: Refer to Calendar page.
Course Overview
The brain and the body’s response to traumatic experience are now understood to be a factor in the emotional and mental health problems of our clients. This two-day workshop will help counselors understand what constitutes trauma and learn what behavioral symptoms are an outcome of traumatic events as well as participants will learn in depth information about disrupted attachment and how clients have dissociated reactions due to the impact of early childhood trauma. Being familiar with trauma symptoms, attachment wounds, and dissociative reactions will help the professional shift their thinking and take a different approach to providing treatment to their clients.
This workshop will use an overarching phase model, Dr. Ricky Greenwald’s Fairy Tale Model, to guide interventions during treatment of a client. The phase model consists of Fence Around activities (case management), Personal Training (building up internal and external resources) and learning about evidence-based Swords (trauma treatment options). We will teach participants about the phase model and different aspects and examples of each phase. Participants will also view their challenging cases through a trauma lens and utilize a case consultation format throughout the two days and come up with interventions that are appropriate to their case.
Participants will learn that attachment disordered clients are a specialized population that unfortunately have become more the norm with therapists than the exception. These are our most challenging clients and special interventions need to be provided to assist these clients to improve their functioning at home, school, work and community.
This workshop will help participants to develop clearer case conceptualization for our most difficult clients, especially to understand how wounded attachment has lifetime implications for the ability to form and sustain relationships, including in therapy. We will explore the latest developments in attachment theory, including the impact on window of tolerance for affect, polyvagal theory (Porges), and epigenetics and how to apply this understanding to clinical work. We will teach attachment repair interventions for both children, their parents as well as our adult clients which can provide corrective experiences and lay out the path to healing.
Within the workshop, dissociation is a significant component of this training and participants will learn and practice new strategies including 10 scripted soothing and grounding tools and Fraser’s table and utilizing the Dissociation doll with children. These soothing and grounding tools are in scripted form and put into a manual for clinicians to practice in the workshop and take home to utilize with their clients.
This 2-days hands-on clinical skills development workshop uses lecture, experiential exercises and scripted interventions that will be practiced in the workshop.
Workshop Trainer
This workshop is presented by Ms Ann Beckley-Forest and Ms Annie Monaco.
Ms Ann Beckley-Forest is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in the Buffalo, New York area, and has focused on interventions with children and adolescents throughout her career. She received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1996. Ann is a registered play therapy supervisor and approved provider of play therapy education through the Association for Play Therapy and vice-president of the New York chapter of APT. Ann’s clinical specialties include intervention with very young children, adoption, problems of attachment and trauma work with adolescent and adult survivors of trauma. She is currently enrolled in the Foundation practicum for Theraplay through the Theraplay Institute.
Ann is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and a faculty member of the Child Trauma Institute. She published an article on the integration of EMDR and play therapy in the fall 2015 issue of Play Therapy magazine and has offered professional trainings in play therapy and trauma treatment around the US, in China at the Sixth Hospital of Peking University, and in Singapore. Most recently she co-presented with Annie Monaco and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Ann is active in EMDRIA at the national level as the national Training Chair for the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA.
Ms Annie Monaco is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and graduated with her Masters of Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1992. Annie has furthered her knowledge by taking extensive additional trainings in business, family therapy, play therapy, trauma, EMDR, progressive counting, attachment and dissociation.
Annie’s early career began with treating young children and adolescents in several mental health agencies. For 10 years beginning in 1999, she was the Director of Restorative Justice programs at a local agency in Western NY and was a community organizer with many local agencies, law enforcement, probation in developing a community approach to offenders using restorative practices. She developed and directed programs for juvenile and adult offenders including family therapy, Victim Offender mediation, sex offender programs and trauma therapy. She joined the faculty of the Child Trauma Institute in 2007 and began her training career teaching therapists how to do trauma work as well as teaching many other disciplines such as schools and mediators on understanding the impact of trauma.
She has traveled extensively throughout the US and Asia teaching trauma related topics for mediators, schools, law enforcement, and colleges. Her largest trainings including teaching counselors how to be effective trauma therapists using evidence-based practices including EMDR, Progressive Counting, Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga and Play Therapy. Her specialty topics are on utilizing attachment and dissociation interventions with foster care children, out of country adoptions, teens, and complex trauma adults.
Annie is certified in EMDR, an EMDR Approved Consultant and most recently she co-presented with Ann Beckley-Forest and Paris Good-year-Brown a full day pre-conference workshop for the 2018 EMDRIA international conference in Atlanta on the topic: EMDR and Play Therapy: A Powerful Combination. Annie has been active in EMDRIA at the national level and has been part of the Child and Adolescent Special Interest Group of EMDRIA and EMDR Co-Regional Coordinators group.
Target Audience
This workshop is designed for any mental health professionals (or graduate level students) working with children, adolescents and adults. This can include social workers, psychologists, counsellors, school counsellors and any other counselling disciplines. This is a hands-on clinical skills training for working with clients who have been exposed to significant trauma or loss.
Duration
2 days (9 - 4.30 pm)
Workshop Topics:
Day 1: Full day, 6 hours of instruction plus breaks
- Intro to Trauma
- Phase Model of Treatment
- Practice Trauma History for both adults and children
- Case Formulation,
- Future Movies,
- Window of Tolerance,
- Soothing and grounding tools
Objectives
- Understanding trauma’s contribution to reactivity and symptoms by integrating recent advances in neurobiology including Porges polyvagal theory
- Explaining to clients how past trauma or loss can lead to ongoing behavior problems or symptoms using a scripted intervention
- Learn and practice how to do a comprehensive trauma history for adults and for children using a scripted intervention
- Develop a systematic and comprehensive trauma-informed treatment plan
- Build motivation for your treatment plan to succeed with this population and practice a motivational technique called Future Movies
- Enhance the client’s sense of safety through learning and practicing 10 soothing and grounding techniques
- Understand the mechanisms of trauma resolution, including an introduction to EMDR and Progressive Counting (PC)
- Trauma case consultation format will be introduced and supervision of challenging cases
Day 2: Full day, 6 hours of instruction plus breaks
- Attachment and Dissociation theory
- polyvagal theory and implications
- epigenetics
- repair interventions for attachment
- structural dissociation and utilizing Fraser’s table with both adults and children
Objectives
- Perform an in-depth attachment history to assess attachment wounds and disruption
- Identify attachment symptoms and trauma triggers and understand how this leads to dissociative symptoms
- Utilize attachment repair interventions such as Theraplay-inspired games and dyadic resourcing (Philip Manfield) and repair interventions by Laurel Parnell
- Learn about Structural Dissociation and utilize Fraser’s Table and the Play Room techniques and practice how to work with ego parts
- Learn and practice 10 playful grounding and soothing tools for managing emotional reactivity