In addition to providing cutting edge, evidence based trauma therapy, how can mental health practitioners living and working within oppressive systems (like colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, or exploitative capitalism) ensure we’re less likely to perpetuate the harms of these systems through our therapy? How can we educate ourselves to support the empowerment and healing… Read more »
Posts Categorized: online
Heart to heart: The healing power of Aikido (June 6, Zoom)
This workshop, which I am co-offering with my two Aikido teachers, Mary Heiny Sensei, 7th Dan, and Kimberly Richardson Sensei, MA, 6th Dan, focuses on the ways in which the martial art of peace, Aikido, is at its very core a healing art that can be of immense help to people struggling with trauma, loss,… Read more »
Dealing with vampire clients and surviving the encounter (April 9, Zoom)
This presentation is part of a day-long pre-conference workshop, Navigating issues of boundaries and ethics in the psychotherapy of trauma and dissociation. In my portion of this workshop I talk about a typology of destructive individual, either a colleague or a client, who I have come to describe as a “Vampire” due to their pervasive,… Read more »
Soothing the traumatized heart: Music, the polyvagal model of trauma, and healing of complex trauma (February 12, Zoom)
Persons who are subjected to repeated, unavoidable trauma, neglect, and disruptions to attachment during their earliest years are likely to develop what is now referred to as Complex Trauma. Different from classic PTSD, Complex Trauma affects all aspects of a person’s interpersonal functioning as well as their relationships with themselves, and their existential and spiritual… Read more »
Your turn for care: Surviving the aging and death of the adults who harmed you (January 30, Zoom)
The adult family members who harmed survivors of childhood complex trauma can present new difficulties and dilemmas for survivors when those perpetrators grow old. Demands on the survivors to engage in caregiving, even when refused, can activate what had been previously healed wounds or open new ones. This workshop will address the common concerns of… Read more »
Not the price of admission: Having healthy relationships for trauma survivors in the pandemic era (January 30, Zoom)
This workshop will offer participants insights into two things. One, why survivors believe, consciously or not, that they must pay a price in order to have any kind of relationship with other humans. And two, how to stop paying prices and instead develop a template for the healthy relationships that we deserve with friends, co-workers,… Read more »