Yes, but it’s optional. There are several opportunities for self-reflection on your caseload and clinical experiences, and to apply the content to your own work in the context of an on-demand, online course format.

Participants will gain a solid foundation in identifying, assessing and treating complex trauma with dissociative features.  Specifically, they will:

• Learn a neurobiology- and attachment-oriented model of complex trauma and trauma-related dissociation
• Get a sound foundation in preparing complex trauma clients for trauma processing by teaching them to regulate their nervous systems with sophisticated application of foundational skills including Grounding, Containment, and physiological Self-Soothing
• Learn to formulate complex trauma and dissociative systems within a model that organises the treatment targets and structures the therapy
• Get a method for working with internal conflict and/or dissociated parts that focuses on harmonising the client’s nervous system and reduces internal conflict.

Through four gorgeous interactive modules, you get the foundations for treating complex trauma that is complicated by dissociation.  You learn to formulate your clients’ presenting symptoms from a neurobiology and attachment focus, which provides your roadmap for treatment. 

Introduction and Overview

This is available separately as a mini-course for those who are seeking an overview rather than a comprehensive course: Structural Dissociation Made Simple (link).

It includes 7 lessons:

1. Identifying Dissociation
2. Mapping Dissociation
3. Emotional Parts
4. Protector Parts
5. Bring your Own Adult
6. Integrative Capacity
7. What now?

Module 1: Preparation

• Learn about the client’s symptoms in terms of their survival-relevant and attachment experiences
• Learn what dissociation is, and how to understand it as the nervous system’s brilliant accommodation to manage adversity
• Teach clients to manage their nervous systems through sophisticated application of foundational skills such as: Grounding, Containment, and Physiological Self-Soothing
• Learn about relational adversity, how it manifests in therapy, and how to develop a collaborative therapeutic relationship despite its legacy

Module 2: Formulation

• Learn how to use the therapeutic relationships as a stabilisation strategy
• Structure your therapy around your client’s physiology, and how they’ve adapted to their experiences, which helps to alleviate shame
• Structure your intervention so that it’s paced appropriately for your client
• Develop a map of the client’s physiology that provides your key treatment goals

Module 3: Harmonisation

• Learn how therapies known as parts work are all about decreasing internal conflict and bringing the nervous system into harmony with itself
• Learn about the elements of parts work that make your interventions effective
• Learn how to actually apply those elements in your treatments to resolve internal conflict and prepare complex clients for trauma resolution