Blog

Many clients with dissociative minds get a message that they are inherently dangerous or ‘too much to handle’. Some therapist trainings unhelpfully reinforce clinicians’ fears. Ahead of PESI UK’s Women’s Trauma Summit 2022, trauma specialist and EMDR trainer Jamie Marich shares their own experience with Dissociative Disorder – and introduces a personal inventory exercise we can all use to deepen our understanding and normalise the experiences of even our most dissociative clients.

How can we coax dormant motivation out of hiding? What part might compassion play when goals and momentum prove elusive? Susan Warren Warshow, author of The Therapist’s Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense and its forthcoming sequel, describes her work with one man whose sessions had become beset by vagueness – and shares three signs that a client’s motivation for change may be mobilising.

When she first heard the phrase ‘legacy burden’, Kay Gardner felt she was encountering a concept that could illuminate her own fears as well as the pain and shame of her clients. Ahead of PESI UK’s Transgenerational Trauma Conference in October, and a dedicated training in November, the IFS lead trainer shares her journey toward understanding and clinically applying the notion of intergenerational burdens – from studying energy work to learning what helps clients ‘let go’.

Next month, PESI UK invites you to connect with Dr Rachel Yehuda, Dr Peter Levine, Dr Pat Ogden, Dr Stephen Porges, Dr Dwight Turner and other key voices in working with transgenerational trauma. Taking place from October 7-8 2021, this special two-day conference will take in the latest insights from epigenetics to IFS – and feature a very personal keynote from Baroness Floella Benjamin – as we consider how therapists can best support our clients to transform long legacies of pain.

Using stones and flowers to symbolise negative and positive events, NET is a narrative therapy intervention that allows clients to reflect on their life in its nuanced entirety. Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Sheetal Amin talks us through her use of this approach with refugee clients, explaining how it helps individuals to process the past and hold hope for the future.

The trauma of childhood sexual abuse leaves survivors with unique and complex needs. Ahead of a PESI UK live webcast this week, specialist, author and trainer Christiane Sanderson shares the core principles, models and frameworks that can support therapists of all modalities to practise safely and effectively, with understanding of the past and hope for the future.

The Tree of Life is a narrative therapy intervention that grounds people in their past and present communities. As we mark Refugee Week 2021, with its theme of ‘We Cannot Walk Alone’, Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Sheetal Amin talks us through this approach and explains how it has helped her refugee clients to reclaim their roots and grow new connections.

Flashbacks and recurrent nightmares are among the issues bringing those who have spent time in ICU during the Covid-19 crisis to therapy. Dr Christina Jones is a specialist in psychological recovery following critical illness, and the research manager for support group charity ICU Steps. To coincide with national Intensive Care Week, she explains why the pandemic led to the ‘perfect storm’ for patients and their distressed families.

Unresolved birth trauma can lead to clients presenting with depression, anxiety and attachment issues – years, and even generations, after the event. As we mark Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week and World Maternal Mental Health Day, Kate Foster, a psychotherapist and former manager of an NHS perinatal counselling service, explains why therapists shouldn’t confine our curiosity about birth experiences to the perinatal period.

What do grief work, relational neuroscience and the latest advances in trauma therapy tell us about the mental health impact of Covid-19 – and how we might help individuals and communities to heal? Next week, PESI UK will be asking Bessel van der Kolk, Julia Samuel, Daniel Siegel and Janina Fisher as part of a free, three-day summit for Mental Health Awareness Week.