This workshop is designed for experienced front-line workers who provide short-term (non psychotherapy) counseling contact with vulnerable populations in community-based settings. 

Traumatic experiences that are frozen, stuck and unprocessed have the potential to exacerbate and to generalize stress reactions.  We will learn what causes certain memories to become traumatic.  We will review the neurobiology of stress on memory systems and cognitive distortions that sear trauma responses in the nervous system.  Some memories are based on fear, helplessness and horror, and others memories are fortified by cognitive stuck points (guilt, shame, absorption of perpetrator messages, cultural/religious beliefs).  

Participants Will Learn To:

  • Effective interventions that target source traumatic memories
  • Have an overview of evidenced-based treatment (CBT, CPT, PET, IRRT)
  • How fear hijacks cognition
  • Why people do what they do when they are overwhelmed
  • How people get 'stuck' and how to the get them 'unstucK'
  • 3 techniques for processing 'horror'
  • How to process 5 cognitive 'stuck points' 

Please note Natalie will be showing explicit video images of trauma reactions (popular film and clinical tapes)