Courage in Trauma Work
Moving beyond Safety with Graham Music and Sharon Lewis
NOW CLOSED
Saturday 1 October 2022
A live webinar or in-person event with Graham Music and Sharon Lewis
CPD Credits: 4 hours
- This event will not be recorded
- Attend live webinar OR in person at Confer’s premises (Please see our FAQ)
- Bookings close at 9:00am BST Wednesday 28 September
Much trauma work is focused on the need to provide safety, and for good reason. However, there is a danger in such approaches that we do not help our clients go to places where they are able to face feelings that would enable them to live richer and more emotionally vitalized lives.
READ MORE...In this workshop we’ll be looking at trauma through a fresh lens, one in which traumatized clients are supported in courageously facing their defenses.
The clues to the approach are in the body and how it gives important but easily missed signals on how to proceed therapeutically. In a refreshing new angle for trauma work and taking a lead from Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) – an emotionally accelerated psychoanalytic model – our presenters will show how exploring complex feelings in the body via sensitivity to our nervous system and body-body communication in the therapy is crucial for healing trauma.
FULL PROGRAMME
13:30 BST
Registration & Coffee (attending in person only)
14.00
Introductions
14.05
Graham Music
Trauma and the body – a radical new (and very old) look
In this introductory talk, Graham Music will go over why in therapy, and especially with trauma, we need to be increasingly body-aware and able to read and respond to signals in our own and our client’s nervous system. He uses the idea of being a nervous system whisperer or senser who makes sense of the centrality of somatic body-to-body experience. He will outline some key distinctions taken from Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy such as being able to differentiate clients’ smooth as opposed to striated muscle states, and what each signal tells us about the client’s readiness to face and work through deep feelings and to challenge old defenses. This presentation will be illustrated by slides and live role-play.
15.00
Q&A
15.20
Break
15.40
Sharon Lewis
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy and daring to challenge defenses
In this session Sharon Lewis will take forward Graham’s presentation by going more deeply into some core principles of ISTDP in relation to understanding the threshold for safe emotional exploration with people in therapy who have suffered from trauma. This work is founded on an understanding of patterns of physical responding that are specific and observable in the consulting room. She will explain a model of work which requires an ability to both monitor anxiety and challenge defenses in order to connect to the client’s complex emotional responses to trauma. We will be shown how an over-emphasis on safety can lead to defenses staying in place which perpetuate self-defeating patterns.
16.40
Q&A
17.00
Break
17.20
Graham Music and Sharon Lewis
Courage in the patient and in the therapist
In this final session, the speakers will go over some of the central points about clinical technique, giving clinical examples to clarify and deepen the ideas and technical aspects of this approach. There will be space for questions and discussion with the participants.
18.00
Q&A
18.30
End