Advanced Complex Trauma Skills in Schema Therapy:
Working with Shame, Guilt and Dissociative Self-states 

with Dr Helen Startup and Janis Briedis, Consultant Psychologists

22-23rd September, 2022
9:30am - 4:30pm (UK time, GMT)

Online workshop (Zoom)

Individuals who endure early life trauma may go on to experience disruption in the coherence and continuity of their sense of self.  This can be usefully conceptualised in Schema Therapy via a mode map of ‘part-selves’. For these clients’ their ‘Vulnerable Child’ may be ‘fused’ to a highly forceful inner Critic, giving rise to dissociated states, as well as intense feelings of shame and guilt, and a tendency to lurch between harmful coping strategies. This workshop is designed for therapists with knowledge of schema theory and therapy and experience of working therapeutically with clients who have endured trauma.  This workshop is highly specialised and aims to support therapists to conceptualise complex trauma presentations and to support these individuals to safely and effectively engage in the therapeutic process.  The workshop will support delegates to: 

• Differentiate between schema modes and dissociative ‘part selves’ and to consider the implications of ‘mode flipping’
• Conceptualise shame and guilt using a schema mode framework
• Appreciate evolutionary and developmental perspectives on the development of the self and complex emotional responses
• Have an overview of Trauma Theory and key ideas from sensorimotor psychotherapy
• Work with shame, guilt and dissociation across diagnoses; stepping beyond the diagnoses of Personality Disorder, Complex PTSD and Dissociative Spectrum Disorders.
• Observe and practice the key interventions for working with highly traumatised individuals
• Explore relational implications for working with highly shame-prone and dissociative clients - brushing along the edges of limited parenting and empathic confrontation
• Observe and practice strategies for working with the body with pre-verbal trauma

Training costs: 

£290 for a two-day online workshop. Click here to book