Featuring:
Bessel van der Kolk, MD
Bruce Perry, MD Phd
RIchard Schwartz, Phd
Beatrice Beebe, PhD
Tarana Burke
Julian D. Ford, PhD
Donna HIcks, PhD
Ruth Lanius MD, PHD
Cathy Malchiodi, Phd
Michael Mithoefer, MD
Martin h Teicher, MD PHD
Ed Tronick, PhD
Register: www.pesi.com/traumaconference or call 800-844-8260
The study of trauma has probably been the single most fertile area in helping to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship among the emotional, cognitive, social and biological forces that shape human development. Starting with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults and expanding into early attachment and overwhelming attachment and social experiences in childhood (“Developmental Trauma”), this endeavor has elucidated how certain experiences can “set” psychological expectations, bodily experiences and biological selectivity.
When addressing the problems of traumatized people who, in a myriad of ways, continue to react to current experience as a replay of the past, there is a need for therapeutic methods that do not depend exclusively on drugs, talk or understanding. We have learned that most experience is automatically processed on a subcortical level of the brain; i.e., by “unconscious” interpretations that take place outside of conscious awareness. Insight and good intentions have only a limited influence on the operation of these subcortical processes, but synchrony, movement and reparative experiences do. This conference will present both basic research about the impact of trauma over the life cycle, and a range of effective interventions that are being practiced in clinics, schools, prisons, families, and communities around the world.
Conference Objectives:
The objective of this conference is to present current understanding of how people’s minds, brains, bodies and social organizations respond to traumatic experiences, and what currently appear to be the optimal clinical interventions, including the role of relationships, movement, synchrony, justice and processing to protect and restore safety and regulation.
Central is the role of affect regulation and the resolution of misinterpretation of innocuous stimuli as threats, which require interventions that can restore a sense of active mastery and the capacity to mindfully focus on the demands of the present.
We will also explore how different populations, ethnic groups and cultures may deal differently with traumatic experiences, and address how the legacy of trauma, systematic discrimination, isolation, blame, and social inequality can have profound effects on the capacity to cope and recover from trauma.
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