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Sunday, March 8, 2009: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
Salon CD & Corr 2 (Westin Long Beach)
In the context of trauma, attachment failure is inevitable. Since early attachment is a body experience, an altered relationship to the body develops: it becomes an enemy, not an ally. Traumatic attachments ‘wire’ the nervous system to over-respond, increasing vulnerability to emotional overwhelm, and compulsive efforts to regulate affect behaviorally. Instead of experiencing relationships as havens of safety, traumatized clients will be driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationship. Is it any wonder that eating disorders develop in this context? This presentation will address how to work with these challenges using techniques that speak to both mind and body.
Using approaches drawn from the spheres of psychodynamic psychotherapy, from research on attachment behavior, addictions and eating disorders treatment, and somatic approaches to the treatment of trauma, this presentation will use a combination of lecture, demonstration, video, and experiential exercises to explore:
· A neurobiologically informed approach to understanding the impact of trauma on attachment behavior
· How attachment failure affects not only adult attachment behavior but also subsequent capacities to regulate affect and autonomic arousal
· The relationship between affect dysregulation and addictive or self-destructive behavior, including eating disorders
· Interventions that address the effects of attachment failure on mind and body and offer clients new options for regulating their emotions
· How the therapist can address the challenges posed by these clients by becoming a “neurobiological regulator” for clients suffering the effects of attachment-related dysregulation.
Not only do traumatic experiences leave behind a legacy of post-traumatic symptoms but also a burden of fear and mistrust that affects all future relationships. Instead of experiencing relationships as a haven of safety, the traumatized client will be driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationship, while therapeutic work on the trauma will be compromised by the client’s vulnerability to autonomic dysregulation and secondary disorders, including eating disorders, addictions, and suicidal, self-destructive behavior. In order to address the impact of traumatic events on their clients, therapists find that they must first address the effects on adult attachment style, manifested both in disorganization of attachment, relational difficulties and disturbances in the capacity to self-regulate and self-soothe. In this presentation, we will address the impact of trauma and sub-optimal attachment experience on child and adult attachment behavior and on the development of addictive disorders (substance abuse, eating disorders, sexual addictions), as well as exploring how to understand the effects of traumatic attachment on the all future relationships including the therapeutic one. In the context of an attuned therapeutic relationship, informed by the neuroscience research, therapist can address work with eating and addictive disorders as manifestations of the somatic and relational legacy of attachment.
· A neurobiologically informed approach to understanding the impact of trauma on attachment behavior
· How attachment failure affects not only adult attachment behavior but also subsequent capacities to regulate affect and autonomic arousal
· The relationship between affect dysregulation and addictive or self-destructive behavior, including eating disorders
· Interventions that address the effects of attachment failure on mind and body and offer clients new options for regulating their emotions
· How the therapist can address the challenges posed by these clients by becoming a “neurobiological regulator” for clients suffering the effects of attachment-related dysregulation.
Primary Presenter:
Janina Fisher, Ph.D.
Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Instructor at the Trauma Center, a clinic and research center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Dr. Fisher is also past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Consultant, a faculty member of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor, Harvard Medical School. Author of numerous publications on mind-body treatments for trauma, she lectures nationally and internationally on the application of neurobiological and attachment research to therapies for trauma and addictive disorders. For more information about Dr. Fisher, go to www.janinafisher.com.
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