INTEGRATING BODY-BASED PSYCHOTHERAPIES AND

This course will explore how to work with trauma, affect regulation, and early attachment difficulties without inadvertently exacerbating the symptoms of psychic numbing, flashbacks and hyperarousal. Patients who have diffi culty forming cohesive stories about their pasts, or those who are constantly pulled back into their traumatic histories (by fl ashbacks and other dissociated experiences) have not been suffi ciently helped by meaning-making alone. However, when the therapist gives careful attention to the patient’s activation levels and the psychic resources that will help to regulate them, traumatized individuals will feel more in control and become less vulnerable to dissociation and shame. Case material presented by the instructor will introduce specifi c technical interventions found to be helpful in trauma treatment. Recent neuropsychological research studies of van der Kolk, Porges, and Siegel will be reviewed to support these technical interventions. In addition, specifi c attention will be given to the self-care of the therapist as it relates to self-regulation and vicarious traumatization.

Christopher B. Eldredge, MA, LCSW, Trauma Program Faculty, Associate Coordinator of Evening Colloquia and Workshops, and Supervisor in our Trauma/EMDR Treatment Service is co-author of the chapter “Learning from Work with Individuals with a History of Trauma: Some Thoughts on Integrating Body-Oriented Techniques and Relational Psychoanalysis” in Bodies in Treatment: The Unspoken Dimension, edited by Frances Sommer Anderson. He is certified in Somatic Experiencing. Eldredge is interested in how evolving theories of technique and practice inform the integration of traumatology and relational psychoanalysis. He focuses in both his teaching and private practice on the integration of somatically-based psychotherapies, including Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR, with relational psychoanalytic technique.

*This program has been approved for 12 hours of continuing education under the auspices of the National Association of Social Work

**** The National Institute for the Psychotherapies Training Institute (NIPTI)is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.  NIPTI maintains responsibility for this program and its contents.