Complex Development Trauma Specialist Outline
Gain career-making skills in treating complex
developmental trauma from leading approaches, including somatic therapy, DBT, CBT,
narrative therapy, and much more. Get attachment-focused skills to help almost any
client!
Module 1: Step-by-Step Childhood Trauma Processing in Adults
Featuring Dr. Shama Panjwani
Gain critical skills to help clients heal inner child wounds from attachment trauma with narrative
therapy, mindfulness, and guided memory strategies.
Attachment Formation, Styles, and Trauma
- Stages of attachment in early childhood development
- Attachment and brain development
- Attachment styles and parental figure relationships
- Identify different types of trauma
- Adverse Childhood Experiences
Attachment Trauma and Mind-Body Responses
- Formation of attachment trauma
- Physiological responses to trauma
- Core beliefs and schemas
- Personality development
Attachment Wound and Inner Child Healing
- Psychological wound from adverse childhood experiences
- Self-confidence, identity formation, and forming healthy relationships
- Concept of inner child healing
Signs, Symptoms, and Triggers
- Cognition, self-doubt, and beliefs
- Emotional distress and regulation
- Behavioral indicators
- Impact of having healthy relationships in adulthood
Mindfulness Exercises for Emotional Regulation and Grounding
- How mindfulness fosters awareness and presence
- Benefits of mindfulness in emotional regulation
- Grounding exercises to connect clients to the present moment
- Breathing techniques to manage anxiety and emotional dysregulation
- Body scans to enhance somatic awareness
Guided Memory Techniques
- Step-by-step process
- Create imagined scenes of safety and secure attachment
- Facilitate insight and processing
- Manage emotional responses
Trauma-Informed Narrative Therapy: Restructure Negative Self-Talk and
Core Beliefs
- The power of storytelling in healing
- How narrative shapes identity and self-perception
- Step-by-step guide to helping clients reframe their narratives
- Techniques for identifying and challenging negative beliefs
- Encourage clients to create empowering personal stories
- Research, risks, and treatment limitations of each approach
Cultural Responsiveness and Ethical Implications
- Working with marginalized populations
- Acknowledge systemic oppressions
- Cultural considerations, awareness, and responsiveness
- Ethical guidelines and reminders
Module 2: Abandonment Trauma Inner Child Healing with CBT & DBT
Featuring Ellen Biros, LCSW, C-PD
Help clients quiet abandonment fears from traumatic childhood wounds still impacting
their adult lives and relationships.
Abandonment, Attachment, and Early Experiences
- Early childhood's role in shaping the inner child
- Impact of attachment patterns on inner child development
- Recognize vulnerability, resilience, and a healthy inner child
- Formation of core beliefs from early experiences
- Link between self-identity and inner child health
Trauma and the Spectrum of Abandonment
- Differentiate between acute, chronic, and complex trauma
- Types of trauma and the impact on attachment
- Understand abandonment as a core psychological wound
- How abandonment influences personality development
- Impact of attachment on forming and maintaining healthy relationships
- Barriers to healthy relationships in adulthood
Recognize Signs and Symptoms
- Behavioral manifestations
- Cognitive and emotional symptoms
- Attachment-related behaviors
- Impact on self-esteem and identity
- Cultural considerations
CBT and DBT Strategies and Exercises to Repair Inner Child
Wounds
- DBT skills training for emotional regulation and interpersonal
effectiveness
- Tools to set healthy boundaries and reduce exposure to toxic people
- Cognitive exercises to challenge negative thought patterns about
self-worth
- Cognitive restructuring exercises to rebuild trust and self-confidence
- Behavioral interventions for self-compassion and fear of rejection
- Self-soothing techniques for abandonment triggers
- Graded exposure and desensitization for abandonment-related anxieties
- Research, risks, and treatment limitations
Therapeutic Relationship and Therapist Self-Care
- Build a therapeutic alliance
- Strategies for managing countertransference and vicarious trauma
- Self-care practices for therapists
Module 3: Anxious, Avoidant, Disorganized & Insecure Attachment Style Repatterning with Somatic Therapy
Featuring Wanda Brothers, LMFT
Quickly learn to identify, navigate, and work toward facilitating the healing of insecure attachment styles
related to developmental trauma with somatic therapy interventions.
Getting Started with Somatic Therapy for Attachment Trauma
- Fundamental Principles of Somatic Therapy
- Attachment theory simplified
- Assess your own attachment style to improve the therapeutic alliance
- Create a safe first impression
- Risks, limitations, and ethical issues
Boundaries: The Often-Overlooked Foundation of Effective Therapy
- The 4 key boundaries to know for every session
- Using Mirror Neurons to understand the client's experience
- Interoceptive awareness to distinguish the client's emotions from the
therapist's
- Reframing “difficult” clients
- How your own boundaries impact your work with clients
Assessment & Treatment Planning for Somatic Shame, Implicit & Explicit
Memories
- Brain regions and their relationship to attachment styles
- Notice subtle cues in body language, eye movements, and posture
- Map your client's underlying attachment wiring
- Provide co-regulation for corrective emotional experiences
- How developmental trauma shapes somatic shame identities
- Create targeted treatment plans for unique attachment patterns
- Risks, limitations, and ethical issues
Anxious Attachment Style: Treating Relational Anxiety
- Focus on deeply rooted beliefs like, "I'll never get enough love."
- Help clients transition from anxious toward secure attachment
- Target memory rumination that reinforces anxious patterns
- Redirect clients' attention toward positive experiences
- Help clients create internal and external boundaries
- Simple exercises to repair the core attachment wound
Avoidant Attachment Style: Treating Relational Avoidance
- Focus on beliefs such as: "Relationships aren't enjoyable", "I am all I
need."
- Support clients to notice and experience goodness in relationships
- Target implicit/explicit memories that reinforce disconnection &
withdrawal
- Effective boundaries for avoidantly attached clients
- Provide simple somatic exercises to repair the avoidant wound
Disorganized Attachment Style: Treating Terror and Creating Safety
- Focus on beliefs, such as: "I need you, but relationships are dangerous."
- Enhance relational safety with distance, pacing, and more
- Target implicit and explicit memories that reinforce dissociation
- Teach effective boundaries for disorganized attached clients
- Simple somatic exercises to treat terror responses
Self-of-the-Therapist Work: Relational Impact and
Self-awareness
- How somatic and attachment dynamics influence session effectiveness
- What to do when you need to work on your own attachment style
- Avoid getting “pulled in” to clients' attachment wounds
- Identify your own implicit memories
- How the therapists' stress and anxiety affect each session
- “Grounded, present self” as a secure attachment to accelerate healing
- Somatic transference and countertransference in alliance building
Module 4: Treating Trauma & Grief from Unmet Maternal Needs
Featuring Kelly McDaniel,
LPC
Discover the missing piece in treatment for clients with seemingly insatiable needs for
sex, love, food, pain, unstable relationships, deprivation, and more.
Attachment Injury from Unmet Maternal Needs
- The three core elements of maternal needs
- Child development is impacted when core needs are unmet
- Insecure attachment from the perspective of an attachment injury
- How insecure attachment impacts adult functioning
- Tools to identify attachment injury and complicated grief
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress: The Legacy of an Abusive Mother
- PTSD vs. Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Brain changes from CPTSD and mood disorders
- Creative and flexible strategies for supporting "difficult" clients
Working with Clients Hurt by Those Who Were Supposed to Love
Them
- Identify the "apology ache"
- Reduce the “apology ache” to manage adult interactions
- Create a safe, supportive environment for clients to explore and express
difficult emotions
- Reduce the craving our clients have for closure
- Manage the fantasy of the ideal parent figure
- Disenfranchised grief and creating a container
- Journaling and creative ways to support healthy grieving
Clinical Tools to Treat Adult Daughters with Unmet Developmental
Needs
- Attachment-focused interventions to identify bonding behaviors
- Techniques to move clients towards building healthier relationships
- Family constellation work to help clients explore their maternal bond
- Use imagery of positive attachment experiences to assist in the
development of adult secure attachment in therapeutic contexts
- Self-soothing practices for emotional regulation
Additional Clinical Issues
- When is group work helpful and when is it not?
- Address countertransference
- Treatment termination
- Research, risks, and treatment limitations
