Due to unforeseen circumstances, this training will not be offered this spring. Please re-visit our website at a later date for updates.
Upcoming Workshop
Treating Traumatized Teens and Emerging Adults: Development, Attachment, and the Therapeutic Relationship
Presented by: Dr. Martha Straus
Date: May 12th (also available by recording if you are unavailable this day)
Time: 1:00pm-4:00pm EST (please convert to your time zone)
Location: A Livestream Event with on-demand available to follow.
About This Workshop
Traumatized adolescents and young adults struggle with self-regulation. They are dysregulated across systems–neurologically, cognitively, physically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and spiritually. Anxious and vigilant, and unable to trust themselves or caregivers, they may experience even loving relationships as confusing and frightening. But to learn self-soothing, they must first be able to rely upon others and discover the comfort of co-regulation. They benefit from relationships with adults that provide them with the psychological (and physical) sense of stability and containment they cannot supply themselves.
Their lifelong experience of the world as unpredictable is exacerbated by the fear and uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to us all. To work effectively with these youth, it’s crucial for adults to first foster their own capacity for self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s not easy, especially now, when we have also endured traumatic stress and losses of our own. Their extreme reactions—ranging from angry arousal to frozen shutting down—can more easily trigger our own increased sense of helplessness and overwhelm.
In this webinar, you will learn about Developmental-Relational Therapy (DRT), an attachment-based model of trauma treatment. You will learn and practice mindful, empathic strategies that help teens feel more secure, connected, present, and regulated—even over Zoom. You’ll discover how to get unhooked from old enactments by exploring:
- The additional challenges for development and trauma therapy in a pandemic
- The Four M’s—mirroring, mentalizing, mindfulness, and modulation—to increase connection and mood regulation
- The React, Reflect, and Respond approach to corrective relational experiences
Traumatized adolescents and young adults struggle with self-regulation. They are dysregulated across systems–neurologically, cognitively, physically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and spiritually. Anxious and vigilant, and unable to trust themselves or caregivers, they may experience even loving relationships as confusing and frightening. But to learn self-soothing, they must first be able to rely upon others and discover the comfort of co-regulation. They benefit from relationships with adults that provide them with the psychological (and physical) sense of stability and containment they cannot supply themselves.
Their lifelong experience of the world as unpredictable is exacerbated by the fear and uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to us all. To work effectively with these youth, it’s crucial for adults to first foster their own capacity for self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s not easy, especially now, when we have also endured traumatic stress and losses of our own. Their extreme reactions—ranging from angry arousal to frozen shutting down—can more easily trigger our own increased sense of helplessness and overwhelm.
In this webinar, you will learn about Developmental-Relational Therapy (DRT), an attachment-based model of trauma treatment. You will learn and practice mindful, empathic strategies that help teens feel more secure, connected, present, and regulated—even over Zoom. You’ll discover how to get unhooked from old enactments by exploring:
- The additional challenges for development and trauma therapy in a pandemic
- The Four M’s—mirroring, mentalizing, mindfulness, and modulation—to increase connection and mood regulation
- The React, Reflect, and Respond approach to corrective relational experiences
*A CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE WILL BE ISSUED*
Speaker Information
Martha B. Straus, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England Graduate School in Keene, New Hampshire and part-time Lecturer in the Program of Professional Education at Smith College for Social Work. Straus is an international trainer, speaking on topics related to child, adolescent, and family development, attachment, trauma, and psychotherapy. She maintains a small private practice in Brattleboro, Vermont where she also provides supervision and consultation to individuals, schools, and social service agencies. She’s the author of numerous articles and seven books including most recently a co-authored third edition of The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (2021), Cool, Calm, and Connected: A Workbook for Parents and Childten to Co-regulate, Manage Big Emotions & Build Stronger Bonds (2021), and Treating Trauma in Adolescents: Development, Attachment, and the Therapeutic Relationship (2017).
Course Objectives
Webinar Objectives:
- To review the impact of complex and continuous traumatic exposure and pandemic-related stress on development and effective therapy.
- To explore four relational pathways for healing the interpersonal effects of developmental trauma.
- To understand co-regulation across intrapersonal and interpersonal systems.
- To describe adult behavior that increases calm, intentional, empathic interaction.
- To discuss specific intervention strategies to help youth in both highly activated and deactivated dysregulated states.
- To provide corrective relational experiences by getting hooked and unhooked from worrisome and provocative behavior.
Timeline
Hour 1:
- Overview of Webinar
- Types of Traumatic Exposure
- The Impact of the Pandemic on Trauma and Stress
- Dependency is Good—Even in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood
- Developmental-Relational Therapy
Hour 2:
- The Two-Person System: Co-Regulation before Self-Soothing
- Attachment and Regulation in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood
- Empathy and Self-Compassion: Doing Your own Work
Hour 3:
- Getting Hooked to Get Unhooked
- 4 Ms: Mindfulness, Mirroring, Mentalizing, Modulation
- Putting on the Brakes, Grounding, Breathing, Connecting
- The React-Reflect-Respond Model
Additional Information
Audience: This workshop is designed to support both beginning and seasoned individual and family therapists, school counselors, and those providing social and therapeutic services in- and out-patient, in residential and secure settings, and as part of alternative and community programs. Biological, foster, and adoptive parents and other caregivers will also find much of the material useful and relevant.
Teaching Methods: Lecture, discussion, case examples, self-exploration exercises, video clips
Relevance of Training: Concurrent and cascading adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) harm millions of kids each year with well-documented consequences for health and mental health throughout the lifespan. Traumatic exposure and underlying attachment insecurity often precede the most vexing emotional, social, and behavioral problems of adolescence and emerging adulthood, including, for just a few examples: attention-deficit and conduct disorders, substance use, chronic anxiety, self-harm, dissociation, suicidality, and psychosis. To be most effective, therapists need to treat the source of dysregulation while also finding a way to stay cool, calm, and connected themselves. This webinar offers a developmental and relational model along with dozens of strategies for understanding and intervening to help the most complex and challenging youth with a special focus on practice modifications for teletherapy during the global pandemic.
Traumatized adolescents and young adults struggle with self-regulation. They are dysregulated across systems–neurologically, cognitively, physically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and spiritually. Anxious and vigilant, and unable to trust themselves or caregivers, they may experience even loving relationships as confusing and frightening. But to learn self-soothing, they must first be able to rely upon others and discover the comfort of co-regulation. They benefit from relationships with adults that provide them with the psychological (and physical) sense of stability and containment they cannot supply themselves.
Their lifelong experience of the world as unpredictable is exacerbated by the fear and uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to us all. To work effectively with these youth, it’s crucial for adults to first foster their own capacity for self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s not easy, especially now, when we have also endured traumatic stress and losses of our own. Their extreme reactions—ranging from angry arousal to frozen shutting down—can more easily trigger our own increased sense of helplessness and overwhelm.
In this webinar, you will learn about Developmental-Relational Therapy (DRT), an attachment-based model of trauma treatment. You will learn and practice mindful, empathic strategies that help teens feel more secure, connected, present, and regulated—even over Zoom. You’ll discover how to get unhooked from old enactments by exploring:
- The additional challenges for development and trauma therapy in a pandemic
- The Four M’s—mirroring, mentalizing, mindfulness, and modulation—to increase connection and mood regulation
- The React, Reflect, and Respond approach to corrective relational experiences
*A CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE WILL BE ISSUED*