Self-awareness, the mindful attending to ourselves and the ability to reflect on our experience, is a key capacity required for the therapist to succeed in this work. All our treasured techniques and theories are hollow without them. To foster these essential capacities in the therapist requires an ethic of care that encourages openness, curiosity and exploration, free from judgment or shame.

This one-day conference will include a morning plenary session exploring ethics and the intersection of personal and professional as well as afternoon breakout sessions.

The morning plenary, presented by Laurie Kahn and Monica Robinson, will address:

• The mindful attention to the inner world of the therapist
• Implications for understanding countertransference enactments, meaning-making and deepening empathic connections
• The ethics of self-care and self-disclosure

The afternoon breakout sessions will include:

• The Challenges of Surviving: Clinical Practice in Agencies and Mental Health Organizations, presented by Monica Robinson
• The Grieving Therapist: Honoring Our Own Needs and Those of Our Clients, presented by Beth Katz
• The Survivor Therapist: Claiming Wisdom and Vulnerability, presented by Judith Ierulli

With increasing awareness of sexual victimization of males, we as therapists are faced with the challenge of breaking down the silence and fear that often surround the ways boys and men show us their trauma. Statistics show that males are much less likely to report sexual abuse than females and are often given little to no room in society to be seen as victims of abuse. This workshop will help therapists make meaning of how men and boys show us their trauma and will outline ways to facilitate their healing.

This workshop will address:

• The impact of gender on abuse narrative
• The core affect of shame and its effect on sense of self and masculine identity
• Understanding and reframing acting out behaviors as dysfunctional coping skills
• Ways to get in relationship with abused adolescents

Nowhere do the bodily and psychic assaults of physical and sexual abuse converge more than in the realm of sexuality, making sex profoundly complicated for survivors. Issues of intimacy, trust, authenticity, flexibility, power and control often intensely emerge or re-emerge. Trauma work is filled with pitfalls and with opportunities, and all the more so in addressing the accompanying sexual issues.

This workshop holds sexual healing as a crucial step in trauma work that often deepens other aspects of therapy. We will address the impact of sexual abuse on a person’s capacity for intimacy and healthy sexual relationships. Using lecture, case examples, and dialogue, we will outline tools for assessment and intervention and explore issues of transference and countertransference.

This workshop will address:

• Timing and pacing of the sexual work
• Focused, multi-level assessment of the problems
• Identifying intervention targets and strategies
• Helping clients manage flashbacks and dissociation
• Transference and countertransference

Complex Posttraumatic Stress is often the consequence of prolonged and repeated interpersonal trauma which has occurred during the developmentally vulnerable time of childhood. Most often these events involve abuse and/or neglect by primary caretakers. We will describe the tri-phasic model of treatment and the special considerations for dissociative disorders, including challenges to sustaining the therapeutic alliance, creating safety, establishing affect regulation, stabilization, and the integration of traumatic experience.

This workshop is designed for mental health professionals who want to learn how to better provide treatment for some of our most injured populations. It is appropriate both for therapists new to the field and those more experienced frontline professionals who want to deepen their work by understanding the impact and treatment of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorders.

This workshop will address:

• The special challenges for clinicians in sustaining a therapeutic relationship with those who have survived ongoing childhood abuse or neglect
• The phases of treatment and the corresponding tasks in each phase
• Both the psycho-physiological impact of abuse and neglect and the relational implications
• Helping traumatized clients learn to restore feelings as signals that promote effective problem solving
• Engaging clients in a self-reflective process about previously disowned aspects of traumatic experience
• The function and creation of dissociative defenses

When a therapist becomes pregnant, the client-therapist relationship is impacted in ways that can be both challenging and enriching. A therapist's pregnancy is an unavoidable self-disclosure, which impacts the therapeutic relationship before, during and after the therapist’s maternity leave. The complex feelings and interpersonal dynamics which arise are stirring for the client, and also for the therapist as she enters into her own time of psychological change and growth. This three hour workshop provides a forum for therapists to share experiences, discuss themes and together explore this transformative time.

• Held at Womencare Counseling Center

Program Fee:
$65

What happens in a family when there is a child with special needs? Often, the whole dynamic of the family shifts in dramatic ways, as they become immersed in a world of acronyms, medical needs, therapy appointments and financial and emotional strain. Typically developing siblings end up feeling pulled in multiple directions, and often don’t feel permission to discuss their own conflicted emotions or fears. As a result, they may carry hidden, or not-so-hidden, currents of depression, anxiety or anger. However, research shows that, when given appropriate space and support to reflect, siblings may grow in very positive directions. In this workshop we will explore the experience of a typical sibling of a child with special needs, and discuss the ramifications of different family dynamics. We will discuss ways to address these concerns both individually and within the family system.

This workshop will address:

• A family systems framework around children with special needs
• Sibling issues 
• Ways to support siblings' healthy emotional and psychological development
• Methods of addressing roles within family system

We are pleased to announce our third annual Summer Institute on the Relational Treatment of Trauma. This six-session institute is intended for therapists fairly new to the treatment of trauma who value the therapeutic relationship as foundational to change. We recognize that participants may encounter the many faces of trauma in their work: the abused child, the rape survivor, the vet returning from combat, adults struggling with the aftermath of a difficult childhood...

In this training we will introduce concepts, incorporating discussion and case examples, that will provide both an initial framework and skills for better work with trauma clients. Presented by experienced trauma clinicians and designed to be accessible and affordable, the institute will address:

• Conceptualizing Trauma, PTSD and Complex PTSD
• The Relational Model and Its Application in Treating Trauma
• Assessment, Creating Safety, Boundaries
• Pacing, Stabilization and Affect Regulation
• The Grief Process in Trauma Treatment
• Trauma and the Therapist: Ethics of Self-Awareness and Self-Care