Website/URL: http://traumaticstressinstitute.org
Organized By: Steve Brown, Psy.D.
Contact Info: http://traumaticstressinstitute.org/event/risking-connection-3-day-basic-training-october-29-31-2013/
When a child depends on an adult for nurturance, safety, and love, he or she should not be taking a risk. When betrayed by abuse, however, future relationships do indeed involve taking great risks – risks of disappointment and loss, shame, and further abuse.
Many children in the mental health and child welfare system have been betrayed many times — by parents, by other caretakers, by the system. These traumatized children become highly skilled at pushing away others via a wide range of challenging behaviors and symptoms that hurt themselves and others. When these traumatized children become adults, many continue to find it risky to connect with others. They also carry forward extreme and often perplexing symptoms that test the skills of even the most seasoned human service professional.
Treating traumatized clients also poses risks to treatment providers. Opening our hearts to them means feeling their suffering and exposing ourselves to the darkest sides of humanity. It means investing in clients who often don’t want our help, who frequently return to abusive environments, or who are in and out of treatment programs through “revolving doors.”
In order to heal, traumatized children and adults need to risk forming connections with caring treatment providers that are different (enough) from those of the past. They need relationships that are RICH – Respectful, Informative, Connected, and Hopeful. Forming such relationships is no easy task because of the extreme behaviors survivors display, the powerful feelings they evoke in us, and their ambivalence about getting close to us.
Risking Connection is a curriculum-based training program created to provide mental health and human service professionals with a philosophy and method for working with clients who are survivors of childhood abuse and trauma. Nearly 35 organizations in the US and Canada use RC Training model to implement trauma-informed care.
Click here for brochure and registration Freestanding 3-Day Basic Training Brochure GENERIC 1.23.14 New Britain
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