2-Day: Transforming Trauma-Related Resistance and Stuckness

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Janina Fisher, PhD Related seminars and products

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Janina Fisher, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, Dr. Fisher has also been treating individuals, couples, and families since 1980.

She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of the neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities.

She is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press).

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is an international expert and consultant on Trauma and Dissociation. She is a consultant for Khiron House Clinics and the Massachusetts Department of MH Restraint and Seclusion Initiative. Dr. Fisher receives royalties as a published author. She receives a speaking honorarium, recording royalties and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. Dr. Fisher has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is on the advisory board for the Trauma Research Foundation. She is a patron of the Bowlby Center.

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Objectives

1. Evaluate the effects of traumatic experience on attachment formation.
2. Determine the role of implicit memory in post-traumatic symptoms.
3. Investigate manifestations of animal defense survival responses.
4. Differentiate common conflicts between survival defenses observed in relationships.
5. Determine the aspects of psychotherapy that evoke defensive responses in traumatized clients.
6. Assess the association between client resistance or stuckness and trauma-related survival defenses.
7. Practice methods of evoking curiosity in stuck or resistant clients that move therapy forward.
8. Evaluate the role of ‘positive re-framing’ symptoms in trauma treatment.
9. Utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy interventions to help clients notice resistance without shame.
10. Determine use of the structural dissociation model for understanding resistance.
11. Utilize parts-related interventions to help clients resolve their resistance and/or “stuckness”.
12. Determine any signs of therapist resistance to resistant clients and how to plan therapy sessions around this issue.

Outline

DAY ONE

What do we mean by resistance and stuckness?

• Depression, shame, self-loathing
• Chronic suicidality or self-destructive behavior
• Belief that nothing will work
• Difficulty coming to or being present in therapy
• Struggles for control of the process

• Phobias of vulnerability
• Phobias of closeness or being visible
• Phobias of abandonment and distance
• Trauma-related fear and mistrust

• Survival responses and strategies
• Introduction to the Structural Dissociation Model
• Understanding resistance and stuckness as defensive, not offensive

• Triggering aspects of psychotherapy
• Decreasing the ‘threat’
• Positively re-framing stuckness and resistance as adaptive
• Acknowledging and sharing the dilemma: the client wants help but not at the cost of vulnerability

• Navigating the threat of closeness and the threat of distance
• Making use of the “social engagement system”
• Therapeutic benefits of laughter and playfulness

DAY TWO

Helping clients deconstruct inner conflicts and struggles

• Making use of the Structural Dissociation Model in therapy
• Helping clients understand internal conflicts as struggles between parts
• Using the language of parts to articulate and highlight contradictory behavior
• Honoring the parts who defend by resisting

• Introducing mindfulness as a therapeutic tool
• Increasing curiosity and interest
• Using psychoeducation to challenge existing beliefs and patterns

• Letting go of our need for the client to change or engage
• Facilitating empathy for parts who defend and parts that feel injured
• Re-framing resistance and stuckness as “the parts,” not the whole of the client
• Cultivating compassionate internal relationships

• ”Negotiated settlements” with defender parts
• Internal soothing and comfort for hurt and fearful parts
• Therapeutic support for resistance and acceptance of stuckness
• Creating a sense of “we” that includes the parts who collaborate and the parts who resist as well as the therapist

• Providing ‘missing experiences’ of healthy attachment
• Therapy as a play space: balancing permissiveness and structure
• ”Being” the therapeutic relationship instead of talking about it
• Enjoying the struggles rather than resisting them

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Case Manager
• Addiction Counselors
• Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals