Program in Trauma, Family and Resilience: Integrating Biology, Psychology, Family, Community Perspectives

This Program is currently taught at the Family Institute of Cambridge (http://www.familyinstitutecamb.org). I am available to teach components of this program elsewhere.

Program Description:

Trauma highjacks family life, both in the acute crisis stage and for generations after. This program integrates state-of-the-art understanding of the neurobiology and psychology of trauma with state-of-the-art approaches (including EMDR and IFS) to managing trauma in the context of family life, whether the family of origin or current choice. The program will tackle the kinds of issues clinicians face daily, both in their own lives and with clients; none of us is exempt: How to activate resilient processes in acute situations or chronic festering ones? How to work with an individual without de-stabilizing the family, friendship network, school or workplace? How to maintain perspective in the midst of perilous and grim situations? What are the systemic impacts of trauma and how to work with them?

The program will consist of 12 modules. Each module will address five themes: the role of marginalization in initiating and perpetuating trauma; the impact of witnessing violence and violation; the differential effects of trauma at different phases of the life cycle; the use of community to ameliorate trauma and the care and nurturance of the therapist.

Clinicians who take this program will feel better able to evaluate and treat families in crisis and families who have been stuck for generations. The program will foster community among its members, using the class as both learning lab and supportive resource.

1. Biology and Psychology of Trauma: Integrating Body-based Interventions into Conversational Therapy
2. Witnessing
3. Marginalization
4. Resilience
5. Trauma and the Child
6. Trauma and the Adolescent
7. Adoption and Attachment Issues
8. Dys-Regulation Disorders (Eating, Alcohol, Drug, and Sexual Addictions)
9. Illness and Loss
10. Couples
11. Transgenerational Transmission
12. International Issues at Home

Workshops on Hope and Resilience

This workshop is available in two formats: for audiences of clergy and healthcare professionals and for concerned adults.

(Both hope and resilience workshops are available in half-day and one day formats.)

For Concerned Adults: Hope in a Time of Global Despair

In this era of globalization, we are witnesses to violence and upheaval all over the planet. Road rage confronts us as we drive to work. The evening news brings us images of natural and man-made disasters of horrific proportion. Even the grocery store may be a scene of shocking rudeness. Many of us feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems around us. Compassion leaves us numb; we are desperate to feel hope. Indeed, hope is vitally important to withstanding illness and buffering all types of violence. In this workshop, I will propose that hope is more usefully understood as something we do together than as a feeling one individual may or may not be able to summon. This shift in perspective has major implications for how we lead our lives. Those who are hopeless and those who witness hopelessness have different roles to play to “do hope.” We will consider these ideas in both large and small group discussion formats. I will conclude by asserting that hope is a human rights issue. Just as food, water, and security must be equitably distributed, so, too, must hope. Whether we offer or receive, co-create or imagine, we can all participate in doing hope.

For Professionals: Fostering Resilience and Hope in Our Clients and Ourselves

In this age of globalization, none of us escapes witnessing violence and violation on a daily basis. Road rage confronts us as we drive to work. The evening news brings us images of natural and man-made disasters of horrific proportion. Even the grocery store may be a scene of shocking rudeness. Many of us arrive at work already overwhelmed by the impact of witnessing, yet the work that lies ahead entails mobilizing resilience and hope. How do we do for others what may be hard to do for ourselves? How do we empathically attune to the hopelessness clients feel without being inducted into their despair? Worse, how do we manage our own reactions when we feel hopeless ourselves?

While most of us have grown up thinking that resilience and hope are assets that individuals either do or do not possess, that turns out not to be the case. Resilience and hope are emerging properties of relationships and therapists can play a vital role in bringing them forward in clients’ lives. And it is important to do so, for both are key to healthy lives. In this workshop, I will propose that resilience and hope are more usefully understood as something we do together than as a quality or a feeling that one individual may or may not be able to summon. This shift in perspective has major implications for therapists, influencing the stances they take and the questions they ask.

I will review cutting-edge research on resilience and hope, grounding us in the latest findings about their contribution to positive outcomes for youth and adults. Working in small and large-group formats, we will address the kinds of challenges clinicians face daily. We will consider how we can interview to promote or close down resilience and hope. We will learn to recognize and work with our inadvertent contributions to hopelessness and our greatest strengths in challenging it. Participants may experience shifts in both their professional and personal lives.

Objectives:
1. To understand better the impact of unintentional witnessing of violence and violation in our lives
2. To conceptualize resilience and hope as emergent qualities of relationship not as personal characteristics or feelings
3. To understand the neurobiological and interpersonal advantages conferred by resilience and hope
4. To gain tools in interviewing clients to foster their resilience and hope
5. To strengthen our ability to withstand the “drag” of our client’s despair without numbing or sacrificing empathic attunement

Workshop with Kaethe Weingarten:
Intercepting Historical Trauma: The Global Imperative

(This workshop is available in formats ranging from half-day to three days.)

Globalization does not refer just to the worldwide dispersal of market economics, but also to the worldwide awareness of societal conflicts. Violence in distant countries finds partisan supporters in local communities. Increasingly, our family, friends and clients are caught up in and distressed by events happening elsewhere. For some, legacies of historical traumas contribute to their current concerns.

In this workshop, I will present material on witnessing violence and violation, noting the multiple pathways by which we witness. One pathway occurs within the family. We are all familiar with the effects of exposure to interpersonal violence within families. Less well understood is the effect of exposure to the aftermath of historical violence, for instance legacies related to mass violence directed at particular ethnic, tribal or religious groups.

I will present material on intergenerational transmission of historical traumas and consider ways that it surfaces in our everyday lives and our daily work with our clients.

We will consider ways that historical trauma:

1. impacts current world views
2. links to the operations of social oppressions
3. influences loyalties, attitudes and behaviors.

We will then identify

1. responses we wish to strengthen and ones we wish to modify in relation to intergenerational messages we have received about historical trauma,
2. ways of working with our clients to strengthen responses that assist them with healing from, rather than intensifying, historical trauma, and
3. the contribution of “small acts” of compassionate witnessing to global peace.

Witnessing Violence in Our Clients’ Lives:
Including Ourselves in the Compassionate Circle

(This workshop is available in half-day and one day formats.)

Whether we like it or not, all of us are witnesses every day to violence and violation. There are biological, psychological, interpersonal and societal consequences of this everyday witnessing. For helping professionals, there is yet another layer. For in addition to the routine exposure that confronts us all, we choose to expose ourselves to our clients’ stories of violence and violation. We do so in the hope that our caring and compassion will help ease their suffering. We count on the salutary effects of showing ourselves to be people who can bear to hear what others fear is unspeakable. However, our choice to witness may take a toll on us. This workshop will look at ways that we can include ourselves in the circle of those to whom we offer compassionate witnessing. We will consider obstacles, challenges and inspirations to help us help ourselves.