A large number of studies now provide strong evidence that psychosis is often an understandable reaction to trauma, abuse, and other difficult life experiences. This training will introduce you to a science based yet humanistic conceptualization of extreme human experiences that can be related to trauma, and will demonstrate how to help people change their relationship with these experiences, for example, by collaborating with them in building coherent and compassionate self narratives that can set the stage for a strong recovery.
Dissociation can be a normal response to traumatic stress and can, in its more extreme forms and when misinterpreted, easily lead to psychosis. Drawing on this understanding, the possibility of addressing dissociation and misinterpretations of dissociation using methods drawn from diverse sources such as CBT, the Hearing Voices Movement, mindfulness, and psychodynamic approaches will be presented. These approaches can help people to regain perspective and personal power and create an opportunity to resolve internal conflicts rather than remaining stuck in endless efforts to suppress whatever is disturbing them.
Learning Objectives:
• Identify possible interrelationships between trauma, dissociation, and psychosis, including ways that psychosis itself, and reactions to psychosis by others, can be traumatizing
• Describe a possible causal route from trauma to psychotic experiences, and describe the role of dissociation within that process
• Plan to integrate CBT for psychosis with various trauma therapies to effectively treat clients who have experienced both trauma and psychosis
• Demonstrate a collaborate approach to helping clients develop coherent and compassionate stories of trauma and recovery which provide an alternative to both fragmented “psychotic” stories, and to helplessness-inducing “mental illness” stories.
About the instructor: (Ron Unger LCSW): “I’m a therapist who has been practicing CBTp for almost two decades, and during that time I have led many seminars on CBTp at a variety of universities and agencies in the US and Canada. These seminars present CBTp as part of a deeply humanistic and open-minded approach to difficult experiences that can otherwise be too easily framed as “not understandable.” I am the author of 3 prerecorded “online courses” related to CBT for psychosis (these courses cover some of the same material that will be covered in these live seminars.) I am chair of the educational committee for the US Chapter of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS-US) and am a blogger at recoveryfromschizophrenia.org and www.madinamerica.com.”
3.5 hours of Continuation Credit for many US professionals will be provided: for information about that please see https://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/home/ce_info/
Schedule: 9:00am-12:30pm Pacific Time / (12:00-3:30pm Eastern Time).
Target audience: Mental health professionals, especially psychologists, social workers, and counselors.
Level: Intermediate
Accommodations for the Differently Abled: Individuals needing special accommodations, please contact: Ron Unger LCSW, [email protected], 541-513-1811.
There is no known commercial support nor conflict of interest for this program.