Keynote presentation: Complex trauma � road to psychiatric dysfunction or path toward posttraumatic growth?

Claudia Herbert

Healthcare service providers, as well as mental health practitioners, frequently associate the suffering of complex trauma with pathology, mental illness, personality disorders and severe psychiatric dysfunction. Clients are perceived as difficult to treat, interventions are guided by the nature of the psychiatric diagnosis and therapy focuses on crisis management and on helping clients to achieve reductions of symptoms that account for the psychiatric diagnosis. Although symptom reduction can be of great value and importance to sufferers, sole focus on this misses the great potential to engage a person in a transformative process that can lead to considerable inner strengthening, alignment and positive growth, as a result and in spite of their early traumatic experiences. This keynote introduced a shift in perspective away from the traditional focus on psychiatric dysfunction toward a model of positive growth for clients suffering from Complex Trauma and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It is proposed that development of empathic empowerment of the individual toward greater personal authenticity, honesty, accountability and compassion can open the path toward posttraumatic growth. However, in order to achieve such development specific parameters must be fulfilled. These parameters, which include therapist factors, the nature of the therapeutic relationship, an underlying therapeutic framework for working with complex trauma and the guiding principles and ingredients that nurture growth rather than dysfunction, were outlined and illustrated through the use of client vignettes.

THE CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATING EMDR BASIC TRAINING INTO THE CONTEXT OF YOUR OWN PRACTICE

Liz Royle

This session looked at common challenges faced by therapists when beginning the task of integrating EMDR basic training into their existing practice and skills. It discussed how therapists often react to this challenge (including giving up / protocol drift) and offered suggestions on how to overcome this. The specific difficulties encountered by those with different theoretical backgrounds were highlighted. This session was aimed at novice EMDR therapists who may be feeling apprehensive about applying their new skills.

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DILEMMAS OF USING EMDR IN TIME LIMITED ENVIRONMENTS

Carolyn Stone & Paul Goode

Applying EMDR standard protocol in time limited settings with clients who have experienced multiple traumas, often in childhood and combined with disrupted attachments, poses an ongoing clinical challenge. It is necessary to continue to explore ways in which such clients might benefit from EMDR whilst keeping the client �safe.� This presentation offered some practical EMDR strategies which have been found to be effective with such a client population in these settings, accompanied by case studies.

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A NEW PROTOCOL TO ENHANCE EMDR THERAPY

Art O'Malley

Bilateral Affective Reprocessing of thoughts or BART is a dynamic new model of trauma therapy designed to complement traditional EMDR therapy. Often with early touchstone memories the client has no verbal recall. It is impossible to access negative cognitions. In BART gut feelings are activated and connected to feelings and sensations elsewhere in the body. Ultimately heartfelt sensations link to the cerebral hemispheres and eventually the prefrontal cortex. Examples illustrated combining BART psychotherapy with traditional EMDR.

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TEMPORAL SEQUENCING AS A MULTIPURPOSE AID IN PREPARING FOR AND FACILITATING EMDR WITH COMPLEX TRAUMA OR SEVERE PTSD

Nel Walker

There are various uses of chronological autobiographical memory cues (temporal sequencing) to restore the sense of �continuity of being� disrupted by trauma:

• To facilitate readiness for EMDR processing when a client is avoidant to accessing memory, or is likely to become hyper-aroused, by creating felt distance in time from the time of the trauma to the present.
• To securely close an incomplete EMDR session.
• To improve the clients� present groundedness both in the session, and to improve their general level of groundedness, making them less vulnerable to intrusions and avoidance.
• To build sufficient ego-strength and empowerment for secure processing and integration of traumatic memory.

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MY MISSION TO TURKEY AND LIBYA

Khaled Sultan

Khaled's presentation was a 'thank you' to the Yorkshire and NE Regions for supporting him on his missions to the Middle East.

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