![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Friday, March 4, 2011: 4:00 PM-5:30 PM
Point Hilton at Squaw Peak
Skills training is an essential component of the initial stabilization phase of the psychotherapy of complex developmental trauma, including in clients with comorbid eating disorders. Evidence-based skills such as Stress Inoculation Training (SIT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills are often utilized in these populations. However, many individuals with complex trauma-related disorders require both more diverse and more specific skills. I will describe additional types of skills that must be mastered as part of a successful therapy. These include mentalizing, self and relational regulation, developing inner empathy, resolving phobias of inner experience, and overcoming dissociation.
Introduction to complex developmental trauma disorders
Skills training is an essential component of the initial stabilization phase of the psychotherapy of complex developmental trauma, including clients with comorbid eating disorders. Evidence-based skills and treatments such as Stress Inoculation Training (SIT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills are often utilized in these populations. However, many individuals with complex trauma-related disorders have been excluded from efficacy trials for evidence-based trauma treatments, and when they are included, drop out rates are exceedingly high (Spinazolla, Blaustein, & Van der Kolk, 2005). These individuals often require long term, carefully paced therapy that includes extensive stabilization phases. Because they have typically been traumatized over long periods of time and during critical developmental phases, the effects of trauma extend beyond posttraumatic stress symptoms. Many of these individuals struggle with an extensive array of problems, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse and self harm, suicidality, eating and sleep problems, self dysregulation, attachment disturbances, and a broad symptoms of executive dysfunction. Most importantly, many of these symptoms have a dissociative underpinning. Though dissociation is often acknowledged as a trauma symptom, it is rarely a treatment target. However, it often remains a hidden problem that maintains and reinforces dysfunction and disturbance. Clients with complex developmental trauma disorders generally require both more diverse and more specific skills than the short term treatment options provide. I will describe additional types of skills that must be mastered as part of a successful therapy, and describe early research efforts to establish the effectiveness of these skills, including mentalizing, self and relational regulation, compensating for executive dysfunction, developing inner empathy, resolving phobias of inner experience, and overcoming dissociation. Individual and group approaches will be described.
Overview of phase oriented treatment
Introduction to skills training
Current research on group skills training
Current evidence-based research on complex developmental trauma disorders
Overview of skills-based treatment in phase 1
Primary Presenter:
Kathy Steele, MN, CS, APRN, BC
Kathy Steele, MN, CS is Clinical Director of Metropolitan Counseling Services, a non profit, low cost psychotherapy and training center, and is in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma. Kathy is a frequent international presenter and has authored or co-authored numerous publications on trauma and dissociation, and has received several international awards for her work.
See more of: Keynote and Luncheon Presentations