Psychotherapy with Self-Harming Clients

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Janina Fisher, PhD Related seminars and products

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Janina Fisher, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, Dr. Fisher has also been treating individuals, couples, and families since 1980.

She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of the neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities.

She is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press).

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is an international expert and consultant on Trauma and Dissociation. She is a consultant for Khiron House Clinics and the Massachusetts Department of MH Restraint and Seclusion Initiative. Dr. Fisher receives royalties as a published author. She receives a speaking honorarium, recording royalties and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. Dr. Fisher has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Janina Fisher is on the advisory board for the Trauma Research Foundation. She is a patron of the Bowlby Center.

Additional Info

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Objectives

1. Apply knowledge of neurobiology to explain how trauma-related cues increase symptoms 
2. Utilize mindfulness-based interventions to demonstrate empathic understanding of the self-harming client’s experience 
3. Employ at least two interventions for stabilizing self-destructive behavior 

Outline

Trauma and self-harm – recovering from either means recovering from both  

• The neurobiology of trauma and how triggers work 
• Procedural learning of self-destructive behavior 
• How unsafe behavior “helps” and the need to change the client’s relationship to self-destructive behavior 

How to address common mistakes made by therapists in working with unsafe behavior 

• The failure to validate the relief stimulated by self-harm 
• Forgetting that shame will make it feel normal to evade and unsafe to disclose 
• Tools for working with trauma survivors on care of the body 
• Techniques for stepping out of the role of safety spokesperson  
• Curiosity, mindful awareness, psychoeducation, and other important interventions 
• Limitations of the research and potential risks 

Target Audience

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