Trauma, Affect Dysregulation and Shame: Treating the Seeds of Self-Destructive Behaviors – Lisa Ferentz

Salepage link: At HERE. Archive:

If you believe that most clients who engage in self-destructive behaviors have Borderline Personality Disorder, you may be missing the fact that they have pain and trauma narratives – and you are not approaching treatment in the best way to create healing.

If you think that the choice to cut as opposed to burn – to starve as opposed to binge – is arbitrary, it isn’t. You need to help clients re-frame their behaviors as the inevitable byproducts of affect dysregulation and shame, and help them embrace new ways of addressing them in therapy.

Join international trauma expert and author, Lisa Ferentz, LCSW, for her much praised, experiential seminar and start altering your practice in treating trauma, shame and self-destructive behaviors.

Lisa will give you her proven approach that incorporates psycho-education that teaches your client new coping strategies that help them:

• Reduce their shame and self-blame narratives
• Self-soothe and re-claim their affect regulation skills
• Short-circuit overwhelming thoughts and feelings

Experience one of the top-selling continuing education seminars available on trauma and shame.

1. Explain the relationship between self-destructive behaviors, trauma, attachment, developmental stressors and affect dysregulation.
2. Describe a chronic cycle of self-harm and the ways in which dissociation and anxiety influence the process.
3. Describe and utilize CARESS, an alternative to standard safety contracts.
4. Implement at least 3 creative strategies that help re-ground and re-establish a sense of safety in triggered trauma survivors.
5. Identify the recurring themes in the artwork of traumatized clients and learn how to work with art in session.
6. Describe the impact of counter-transference when working with self-destructive behaviors.

The Connection: Attachment and Affect Regulation

• The four attachment styles and their impact on child development
• The challenge of attaching to unavailable or abusive caretakers
• The connection between trauma, attachment, and the self-narrative of shame
• Living in a state of affect dysregulation and the impact of hypo- and hyper-arousal
• Exploring the dynamics of attachment and affect regulation through videos

Working from a Strengths-Based Perspective

• Advantages to de-pathologizing destructive behaviors
• The impact this paradigm has on the therapeutic relationship

Trauma Re-Enactment

• Meta-communication of self-harm
• “Telling” without talking
• Why acts of self-harm are not arbitrary
• Why your clients hurt themselves

Breaking the Cycle of Self-Destructive Behaviors

• What sets the behavior in motion
• Why it escalates
• What reinforces it

Extinguish Self-Destructive Acts: Creative Interventions

• The connection between trauma, attachment, and the self-narrative of shame
• The “management” of self-harming behavior
• Journaling to understand triggers
• Re-framing cognitive distortions
• Using guided imagery for untenable thoughts and feelings
• Safe place imagery and containment
• The power of incorporating breath work
• Using the body for somatic resourcing and grounding
• Short-circuiting flashbacks and dissociation

Why Standard Safety Contracts Don’t Work and What to Do Instead

• Incorporating CARESS – a unique proven approach
• Eliminating the power struggles in treatment
• Processing clients’ artwork