Janina Fisher – 2-Day Intensive Workshop: Treating Trauma in Intimate Relationships – Healing the Trauma Legacy in Couples Therapy

Outline

Day 1 Program

The Effects of Early Relational Trauma: Emotional, Physiological, Relational

• What is a ‘trauma’?
• Single events versus enduring conditions
• Remembering with our emotions and our bodies
• Procedural or conditioned learning
• Effects on brain and body

Habitually-Learned Survival Responses Recreate the Sense of Threat

• Triggers and Triggering: stay prepared for danger
• Animal defense survival responses in human beings
• Effects of traumatic adaptation on relationships

The Danger of Closeness and the Threat of Distance

• How trauma-related patterns affect the capacity for intimacy
• Body and emotional memories re-create the sense of danger
• Chronic conflict as activation of animal defenses
• Why couples cannot process conflicts or tolerate empathy

Strategies for Working with Couples in Chronic Conflict

• Create neutral space in therapy sessions
• Provide psychoeducation about trauma
• Inhibit destructive patterns in the therapy session
• Practice of new patterns as ‘experiments’

Mindfulness-Based Techniques for Decreasing Conflict and Changing Trauma-Related Patterns

• Mindfulness-based awareness of the ‘play-by-play’
• Notice the effects of their actions on partner reactions
• Observe with curiosity: “Am I getting what I want this way? Is this working?”

Day 2 Program

Shift from “Processing” Issues to Changing Patterns of Response

• A repair model for psychotherapy in place of an insight model
• The therapist as referee rather than empathic listener
• Limits and boundaries on conflict in the therapy
• Limitations of the research and potential risks

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Techniques for Getting to the Emotions Beyond Words

• Brief introduction to sensorimotor psychotherapy
• Teach couples somatic awareness and dialogue techniques
• Work with the body to decrease tension and ‘charge’ in the relationship
• Use movement and gesture as vehicles for communication

Externalizing Techniques for Increasing Perspective

• Externalizing techniques deter conflictual verbal exchange
• Diagram patterns of conflict
• Use diagramming to help couples take responsibility for their actions and reactions
• Connect to the wounded child in each partner
• Acknowledge the role of child selves in their conflicts
• Sooth and protect the hurt child self
• Increase self-compassion and compassion toward partner