Candice Richardson Dickens – Microtraumas and the African American Client

Outline

Understanding Cultural Trauma

• Fight or Flight Responses
• Learned Helplessness
• Micro- vs. Macro-traumas

DSM-5 Trauma and PTSD

• Defining and Assessing Trauma
• Witnessed or Experienced Trauma

Talking about Race

• Talking to Children about Race
• Addressing Ethnic Differences Between Therapist & Client
• Empowering through Experience Validation

Techniques for Treating Physiological Responses to Trauma

• Mindfulness
• Grounding & Tapping
• Deep Breathing Techniques
• Visualizations & Hypnosis
• Reducing Shame & Increasing Self-Affirmations

Understanding Long-Term Memory

• Implicit Memory
• Explicit Memory
  • Episodic
  • Semantic

Trauma & Neuroscience

• Polyvagal Theory
• Sympathetic and Parasympathetic responses

Physiological Impact of Trauma on African Americans