Janina Fisher – Somatic Interventions for Treating Complex Trauma with Janina Fisher, Ph.D.

Outline

The Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma

• How the mind and body react to threat and danger
• Autonomic arousal and affect tolerance
• Inability to feel safe in the body
• Loss of the ability to self-witness

The Nature of Traumatic Memory

• “The body keeps the score” (Van der Kolk)
• Implicit memories: is it memory?
• Remembering situationally: ‘here’ or ‘there’?

Neurobiologically-informed Trauma Treatment

• Regulating the traumatized nervous system and restoring a witnessing self
• Psychoeducation: knowledge is power
• Reframing the symptoms
• Avoid ‘self-defeating stories’ (Meichenbaum)
• Treat the symptoms, not just the event

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

• Trauma and procedural learning
• Tracking the body as a source of information
• Use the language of the body
• Body-centered techniques into talking therapy treatments

Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

• Mindfulness practices in therapy
• Differentiate thoughts, feelings and body experience
• Dual awareness of everyday experience
• Teach mindfulness to clients

Challenges of Trauma Treatment

• Secondary symptoms: anger, self-harm and suicidality, aggression, substance abuse, and eating disorders
• Treatment-resistant depression and anxiety
• Complex symptoms as manifestations of animal defense responses

Therapy as a Laboratory for the Practice of New Actions

• Dis-identifying with the symptoms
• Develop a new language and a new story
• Capitalize on somatic resources for modulating the nervous system
• New resources that address specific trauma symptoms

The Role of Neuroplasticity

• Neuroplastic brain change
• Principles of neuroplasticity
• Treatments to enhance neuroplastic effects

Somatic Resolution of Traumatic Events

• Repair and transformation rather than re-processing
• Address uninvited memory
• Tell the story to ourselves: creating internal safety
• Right brain-to-right brain communication: feeling safe with others