Addressing traumatic memories directly is critical to successful therapy.
But there’s tremendous misunderstanding in how to work with traumatic memories in treatment. It can leave you confused, insecure, and seeking a deeper understanding of memory systems to help guide your important work.
Peter Levine, PhD is a master therapist, pioneer in the field of trauma and memory, and author of several seminal books on trauma. His body-oriented techniques for healing traumatic memories are built upon 50 years of research and clinical work and have influenced generations of therapists.
This 2-day recording is your chance to learn from Dr. Levine himself!
Watch Dr. Levine as he explains the significance of memory systems in the resolution of trauma, and shares the therapeutic approaches that he’s found most effective during his decades of groundbreaking clinical work. His proven strategies will help you to quickly reduce symptomology in your clients and the traumatic memories that haunt them.
Under Dr. Levine’s expert guidance, you’ll discover how you can take your treatment of complex, deeply entrenched trauma to the next level and overcome the painful roadblocks that can frustrate you and your clients.
You don’t want to miss this rare opportunity to study directly under Dr. Levine and learn from a legend in our field!
Who should takes the course
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- Addiction Counselors
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Occupational Therapists
- Nurses
- Other Helping Professionals
Learning Objectives:
- Articulate the four major developmental stages that increase vulnerability to trauma and how to recognize them in your clients.
- Determine the naturalistic mechanics of trauma and survival responses of flight, fight, freeze and collapse as it relates to clinical treatment.
- Differentiate the different types of memory systems and comprehend the connection to the mind and body’s way of processing the types of memories.
- Analyze the various forms of memory and their impact on working with clients in therapy.
- Differentiate ways to identify which memory systems are operative and how to access these (memory) components in a systematic fashion to promote self-regulation, integration and empowerment with clients.
- Appraise the evolutionary underpinnings of trauma and the Polyvagal theory and their clinical implications.
- Demonstrate the importance of “Bottom-Up” processing versus “Top-Down” processing to improve treatment outcomes.
- Analyze the effects of stress on somatic and emotional syndromes in clients.
- Incorporate Dr. Levine’s simple containment tools to more effectively engage your client in trauma therapy.
- Implement Somatic Experiencing© techniques to help clients heal traumatic memories.
- Demonstrate practical tools for therapeutic work with emotional and procedural (“body”) memories.
- Manage avoiding pitfalls of generating spurious (“false”) memories and help clients come to peace with their troubling memories and haunting emotions.
Course Modules / Outline
Trauma and the Body
- Developmental trauma
- Pre-natal through age 5
- Evolution and Polyvagal foundation
- How the body stores trauma
- Clinical research
Deeper Understanding of Memory and Clinical Implications
- Explicit – More Conscious Memory
- Declarative
- Episodic
- Implicit – Less Conscious Memory
- Emotional
- Procedural/Body Memory
- Clinical application for memory systems
Traumatic Memories
- Long-term memory vs short-term memory
- How the brain and body store memory
- Memory engrams with somatic markers
- Fight, flight, freeze response
How Clients Get “Stuck”
- Tonic immobility – The fallback to freeze
- Freeze couples with Fear
- Dissociation
- Bracing and terror
- Euphoric dissociation
- Collapse
Somatic and Emotional Reactions to Trauma
- Symptoms and complexities of each in therapy
- Emotional – anxiety, depression
- Somatic – chronic pain, fibromyalgia
- Autonomic – migraines, irritable bowel
- Resolving Traumatic Reactions
The Basic Stages of Trauma Treatment
- Containment of strong sensation and emotion
- Pendulation – The dual opposites of sensation
- Titration – going gradually
- Completion
- Renegotiation of active for passive responses
- Allow things to settle: Self-Paced termination
Therapeutic Approaches to Treat Traumatic Memories
- The importance of “Bottom-Up” processing
- The Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain
- In an Unspoken Voice
- Somatic Experiencing©
- Renegotiation vs. Reliving
- Restoration of self-regulation
- Somatic experience of trauma
- Developing internal awareness
- The mind-body connection in trauma work
- Help reinforce trust and acceptance in clients
- Incorporating client’s spirituality in trauma work
Why Take This Course?
If you work with trauma survivors, you already know that unresolved traumatic memories can block progress and leave clients stuck in cycles of fear, pain, or dissociation.
But what if you could…
Understand how memory lives in the body—and how to safely access it?
Learn to distinguish between procedural, emotional, and declarative memory to target interventions more effectively?
Use somatic techniques that tap into the body’s innate healing mechanisms?
Avoid re-traumatization and facilitate deep transformation—even in clients with complex trauma?
This course gives you all of that—and more.
Led by Dr. Peter Levine, one of the world’s foremost trauma experts and founder of Somatic Experiencing®, this 2-day training helps you master the body-based tools that are revolutionizing trauma therapy.
You’ll walk away with:
A deeper understanding of the neuroscience of trauma and memory
Techniques to resolve trauma without re-living the past
Methods to help clients regain nervous system regulation
Skills to navigate dissociation, collapse, and chronic somatic symptoms
Whether you’re new to somatic work or an experienced trauma therapist, this course will elevate your clinical effectiveness and restore your confidence in treating trauma at its roots.
Meet the Course Expert:
Peter A. Levine, PhD, holds doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology. The developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a body-awareness approach to healing trauma, and founder of the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, which conducts trainings in this work throughout the world and in various indigenous cultures, with 26 faculty members and over five thousand students. Dr. Levine was a stress consultant for NASA on the development of the space shuttle project and was a member of the Institute of World Affairs Task Force of Psychologists for Social Responsibility in developing responses to large-scale disasters and ethnopolitical warfare. Levine’s international best seller, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, has been translated into 22 languages. His recent interests include the prevention of trauma in children, and he has co-written two books, with Maggie Kline, in the area: Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. His most recent book: Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past, was recently released to rave reviews. Levine’s original contribution to the field of body psychotherapy was honored in 2010 when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). Levine was also honored as the recipient of the 2020 Psychotherapy Networker Lifetime Achievement Award.
23 reviews for 2-Day Trauma & Memory Workshop: Clinical Strategies to Resolve Traumatic Memories and Help Clients Reclaim Their Lives