Janina Fisher – 2-Day Intensive Workshop: Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Transformational Approaches to Treating Complex Trauma

Outline

Trauma & Attachment

• Neglect, abuse & attachment formation
• Traumatic attachment
• Early attachment & shaping attachment to self
• Internal attachment styles

Fragmentation an Adaption to Trauma

• Identify manifestations of self-alienation
• Recognize self-alienation as a survival strategy
• Split brain & conflicting defensive strategies
• Primary structural dissociation vs. secondary
• What to do when the parts highjack the body
• Repair internal attachments
• Help clients overcome the challenge of self-acceptance

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Fragmentation

• Sensorimotor principles of treatment
  • Prerequisites for successful treatment
  • Mindfulness & psychoeducation
  • Implications of procedurally learned patterns
• Autonomic adaptation
• Teach clients skills to regulate arousal
• Somatic resources for traumatic reactions

How the Parts Dominate:
Blending

• The questions trauma survivors don’t know to ask
• Blending
• Unblending: step-by-step
• Sensorimotor approaches to unblending

Internal Family Systems:
Befriending our Parts

• Awaken an observer
• Help clients achieve distance from symptoms
• Decoding: identify parts
• Speak the language of parts to decrease phobia of traumatized parts
• Encourage self-leadership

Connecting One’s Parts for Inner Healing

• Recognize the role each part plays in survival
• Assist clients with learning to “ask inside”
• Facilitate internal communication
• What does each part need?
• Establish relationships with parts
• Cultivate empathy for the parts
• The befriending questions

From Alienation to Attachment

• Rupture & repair of internal attachment
• Provide missing experiences for parts
• Role of mentalization
• Requirements of integration
• What to do when clients get highjacked
• Utilize the Social Engagement system

Limitations of Research & Potential Risk