9 Must-Have Trauma Treatment Techniques: The Clinician's Guide to Improved Stabilization, Resourcing and Processing

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Jennifer Sweeton, PsyD, MS, MA Related seminars and products

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Dr. Jennifer Sweeton is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and internationally-recognized expert on trauma, anxiety, and the neuroscience of mental health. Dr. Sweeton has been practicing EMDR for nearly a decade and has treated a variety of populations using EMDR and other memory reconsolidation approaches, including combat veterans, individuals with PTSD and complex trauma, and those suffering from treatment-resistant anxiety. She completed her doctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, and the National Center for PTSD. Additionally, she holds a master’s degrees in affective neuroscience from Stanford University, and studied behavioral genetics at Harvard University.

Dr. Sweeton resides in the greater Kansas City area, where she owns a group private practice, Kansas City Mental Health Associates. She is a past president of the Oklahoma Psychological Association and holds adjunct faculty appointments at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. She is the president of the Greater Kansas City Psychological Association. Dr. Sweeton offers psychological services to clients in Oklahoma, Kansas, and internationally, and is a sought-after trauma and neuroscience expert who has trained thousands of mental health professionals in her workshops.

 

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Jennifer Sweeton is in private practice. She has an employment relationship with the Oklahoma City VAMC. Dr. Sweeton receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.  She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.

Non-financial: Jennifer Sweeton has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.
 

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Objectives

1. Determine how the neurological consequences of trauma can lead to resistance in therapy.
2. Evaluate how neurological processes in the brain regions impacted by psychological trauma can inform choice of therapeutic techniques.
3. Analyze neuroscience supporting a trauma treatment sequence.
4. Utilize sensory awareness techniques in-session to increase felt safety in clients.
5. Employ bilateral movement techniques in session to de-activate the amygdala.
6. Apply therapies that integrate desensitization and exposure to help clients process traumatic memories.

Outline

• Amygdala
• Insula
• Hippocampus and cortical areas

• Timing is everything
• Overwhelm and flooding
• Numbing or dissociative responses
• Failure or user error?

• First step -- address lower brain regions with sensory, body-based and other bottom-up techniques
• Next step - target higher brain regions with cognitive techniques and other top-down
• techniques
• Process trauma using a combination of bottom-up and top-down techniques

• Sensory awareness techniques for insula regulation
  • Grounding and advanced grounding
  • Interoception
  • Body-based approaches
• Attunement techniques for amygdala de-activation
  • How to activate mirror neurons
  • Co-regulation
  • Embedded relational mindfulness
  • Mirroring and following
• Movement-based techniques for insula regulation and amygdala de-activation
  • Resource tapping
  • Bilateral movement

• Determining which clients may benefit from exposure work
• Monitoring distress
• Importance of repeated exposure
• Therapies that integrate desensitization and exposure
• Ways to speed up desensitization
• Research, treatment risks and limitations

Target Audience

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