Program includes

The Neuroscience and the Frontiers of Trauma Treatment lecture and the optional CEU content

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Building on the foundational conception of trauma, this lecture explores the neuroscience of trauma and a spectrum of body-centered interventions aimed at helping people integrate traumatic memories. At the core of trauma’s persistence is the dysfunction it induces in the brain and body. Neuroscience gives us a window into the consequences of both limited traumatic experiences and chronic trauma. Within that context, you will learn how trauma rearranges the brain’s wiring - specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.This lecture will show how trauma affects the developing mind and brain, and teach how trauma affects self-awareness and self-regulation. 

This lecture will discuss and demonstrate affect regulation techniques, examine ways to deal with fragmented self-experience, and teach the benefits of yoga, EMDR, meditation, neurofeedback, music, and theater.

Course duration 90 minutes


LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this lecture you will be able to 

  • Explain how neuroscience has enhanced our understanding of trauma

  • Describe critical parts of the brain and how the damage trauma causes impairs their functioning, leading to altered perceptions of the world

  • Explain the difference between limited traumatic experiences and developmental trauma

  • Explain the consequences of developmental trauma and the adaptations of the children who experience it and what that means for their adult lives

  • Discuss the importance of visceral experiences in both the making of and treatment for trauma

  • Examine and compare contemporary treatment paradigms and their limitations 

  • Critique treatment modalities that fall outside of the modern repertoire of treatment for trauma  

  • List 3 characteristics of what can happen to the brains and bodies of traumatized people

  • Explain how the amygdala facilitates communication between the brain and body  

  • Discuss barriers to treatment for traumatized people 

  • Discuss the core issues of trauma 

OUTLINE

TREATING TRAUMA EFFECTIVELY

  • Introduction to EMDR

  • Studying EMDR

  • The limitations of EMDR

  • Brain anatomy and how trauma rewires the brain

THE ACE STUDY

  • The ACE study and the prevalence of trauma

  • High ACE scores are associated with a range of negative adult outcomes

WHAT WE KNOW AND HOW WE KNOW IT

  • Technology has limitations

  • What brain imaging can tell us

  • The developing brain

  • Trauma interferes with the autonomic housekeeping of the body

  • Cultural responses to trauma

  • Development of the survival brain 

  • The importance of our map of the world and how it develops

  • Changing the map with deep visceral experiences

  • Development of the frontal lobe

WHAT CAN BRAIN SCANS TEACH US

  • Brain anatomy and how its functioning is disrupted by trauma

  • Brain activity in scans of people having a flashback

  • What we can infer from brain scans and what they show

  • How trauma renders us speechless

  • What we can learn from scans of “the default mode of the brain” versus scans of people who have experienced chronic trauma

  • What we understand about trauma at different stages of brain development 

  • Trauma changes specific parts of the brain and how they function

EARLY CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

  • Impulsivity and trauma

  • The finger-wagging part of the brain and how juvenile programs focus on a system that won’t work for many traumatized kids

  • Teaching kids self control with activities that require self restraint

  • The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and restoring a sense of time with visceral sensations

  • The importance of raising awareness for traumatized people about their ability to change their internal state and regulate themselves

  • The anterior cingulate and filtering what is and is not relevant

  • Attention deficit disorder and trauma

TRAUMA THERAPY AND MEDITATION

  • Examining how you organize your relationship to yourself 

  • The relationship between the survival brain and the frontal lobe 

  • Getting control over the primitive part of our brain with body-oriented methods

  • Our cognitive, social brain cannot override the emotional, survival brain

  • The midline structures of the cortex that is devoted to you and your relationship to yourself

  • Activating the midline structures of the brain with interoception and breathing exercises

  • Reactivity and accessing your internal experiences by exercising the pathway to the survival brain via the midline structures of the brain

  • Why meditation can be difficult for traumatized people

BREATHING EXERCISES AND THEIR BENEFITS

  • A breathing exercise

  • Notice your thoughts

  • Noticing your body

  • Noticing your breath

  • The importance of being in tune with each other

  • Heart rate variability

CHALLENGES WITHIN THE SYSTEM

  • The importance of talk and why it can take so long to be able tell your story

  • Group therapy is a useful setting that is not widely available

  • Access and barriers to mental health services 

PSYCHODRAMA WORKSHOPS

  • Things didn’t happen are as important as events that did happen

  • How psychodrama workshops can help you know what it feels like to have positive experiences

  • Working in three dimensions during psychodrama workshops

  • Suspending time and leaning into space and imagination

  • The real and the ideal

  • The right person at the right time in the right place

NEUROFEEDBACK

  • How neurofeedback works

  • People can learn to regulate their brainwaves using neurofeedback

  • Neurofeedback can radically improve executive functioning 

  • There is a spectrum of body-oriented treatments that can quiet the survival brain and enhance the temporal lobe

THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES

  • The roles we all play

  • Can we go beyond the roles we play