Trauma-focused ACT (TFACT): Working with body, mind and emotion
General information:
About this workshop
An in-depth, integrated approach to healing from trauma
If you want to help your clients find safety and security in their bodies, unlearn old physical responses to trauma, overcome hyperarousal and hypoarousal, shift from self-hatred to self-compassion, work mindfully with body memory, break free from dissociation, and learn how to build develop rich and meaningful lives …. this 2-day masterclass is for you.
This advanced-level ACT training is intensely practical, with a major emphasis on working with the body and limbic system. Sadly many therapists don’t realise that ACT is a powerful somatic therapy, ideal for working flexibly and creatively with the body (which is, of course, where so much trauma is “imprinted”). This masterclass will show you how to use ACT in a deeper, holistic, integrative way, to work flexibly with body, mind and emotion.
Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT): an in-depth, integrated approach to helping clients heal from trauma
Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT) is a flexible, comprehensive approach model for treating the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, moral injury, chronic pain, shame, suicidality, insomnia, complicated grief, attachment issues, sexual problems, and more.
In this two-day advanced level training, you’ll discover cutting-edge strategies for healing the past, living in the present, and building a new future. With this compassion-based, exposure-centered approach, you’ll learn how to help your clients:
- Find safety and security in their bodies
- Overcome hyperarousal and hypoarousal
- Break free from dissociation
- Shift from self-hatred to self-compassion
- Rapidly ground themselves and reengage in life
- Unhook from difficult cognitions and emotions
- Develop an integrated sense of self
- Resolve traumatic memories through “inner child” work and flexible exposure
- Connect with and live by their values, and engage fully in life here and now
- Experience post-traumatic growth
In this workshop you will learn:
Workshop Contents
This course will help you become more flexible, fluent and creative in ACT, so you can work effectively not just with PTSD but with the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues: simple, complex, acute or chronic.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The neurobiology of trauma, including Polyvagal theory and Attachment theory
- How to work effectively with the limbic system
- How to bring a numb body back to life
- Why and how “talk therapy” and “supportive counselling” can keep clients stuck in trauma
- How to use movement and mindfulness to help a client’s body unlearn old adaptive responses to trauma
- How to work with a freeze response
- How to help clients find a sense of safety and security in their body
- Simple psychoeducation to help clients understand their trauma symptoms
And you’ll also learn about:
- How to reverse hopelessness and build optimism from the word ‘go’
- How to rapidly ground and centre your clients
- How to use values for post-traumatic growth
- Epigenetic aspects of trauma, and how to ameliorate them
- How to recognise and reverse emotional dysregulation
- Powerful new tools, techniques and metaphors for working with trauma
- When and where ‘mindfulness meditation’ is contraindicated in trauma work
- How to use mindfulness processes flexibly and safely (without meditation)
And this too:
- The art and science of compassionate, flexible exposure
- How to keep exposure safe by ‘Dipping in’ and ‘Dipping out’
- How to develop self-compassion, step-by-step, in the face of self-hatred
- How to revisit traumatic memories safely, without getting trapped in them
- How to use self-as-context naturalistically to help clients transcend past trauma
- How to deconstruct and overcome shame, step-by-step
And, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also discover:
- Inner child imagery and rescripting
- Nightmare rehearsal and rescripting
- Working with body memory
- Defusion from self-hatred, self-criticism, self-blame
- Mindfulness and defusion as antidotes to worrying, rumination, catastrophizing
- How to overcome common barriers to change
- Working with comorbidity
- Shifting paradigms: from the “window of tolerance” to the “window of flexibility”
Making “homework” simple, desirable, and likely to be successful