297,00 € IVA inclusa
Lecturer:
Maurizio Andolfi
, Gabor Maté
, Ed Tronick
, Wai Yung Lee
, Peter Rober
, Paris Goodyear-Brown
, John Rolland
706 total views
The active participation and the voice of children has been quite neglected in the field of psychotherapy all over the world. The aim of this Masterclass is to give a central role to children, not merely as problems & symptoms to be labeled and medicated or as victims of various forms of abuse. At the contrary, children who have been suffering life adversities can show their resilience and become therapeutic resources for themselves as well as being guides in exploring family wounds and still open intergenerational traumas. This orientation in dealing with children’s trauma is very much needed today in a toxic society where problems have to be fixed quickly and there is no room for the search of authenticity and humanity as healing factors.
In this Masterclass, many relevant issues in the area of children’s trauma will be addressed by world- known experts such as: Gabor Maté, Ed Tronick, Wai Yung Lee, Maurizio Andolfi, John Rolland, Paris Goodyear Brown and Peter Rober.
The idea of the child as a therapeutic resource has been absent from the main theoretical models and in family therapy the child has been seen mainly as a problem to be labeled or as a victim of different forms of abuse. In this presentation, the main reasons that brought to the “betrayal of the child” will be explained and a pathway to move from child protection to child respect will be indicated.
Seeing the problem-child as a main resource in family therapy has been an idea that Maurizio Andolfi and his school developed from the 90’s and his role as a consultant was well described in the book “Please Help me With This Family” (1994). In order to establish a special alliance with the child, it is necessary to reframe his symptoms instead of labeling them and to find a relational meaning for his problems as soon as possible. Once his voice is heard and his relational competence appreciated , the child can become a special guide to enter the emotional world of his family. With his genuine help relevant family events (losses, hostile divorces, betrayals, secrets, abuses, cut-offs, forced migrations, chronic diseases, gambling, additions etc.) can be explored. The genogram is the map of the family world and provides a wonderful platform to start this therapeutic journey. Using a multigenerational lens, Andolfi will describe how the therapist can explore family development with a “bottom-up approach”, asking the child “intergenerational questions” which refer to adversities experienced by parents or grandparents in their past history. The results of this intimate journey with the family are evaluated according to two principles : the resolution of children’s symptoms/disorders and a deep transformation of family emotional bonds. Both principles need to be satisfied at the end of treatment and checked in follows-up sessions.
Learning objectives:
Gabor Maté, international trauma expert, in his book “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture,” states that the most common form of trauma in our society is trauma with a small “t”, that is, the “disconnection from self” to satisfy the attachment needs of our parents. Because this is a largely invisible process, unlike capital “T” trauma, people are often unable to identify how their childhood affected their development.
This process is explored by Maté, by identifying the tension between attachment and authenticity as one of the fundamental elements of the growth and development of the self.
Attachment is the fundamental drive towards proximity, responsiveness and attunement with our caregivers, which develops from infancy and also it influences later stages.
Authenticity is the other basic need: to be true to oneself, to honour our “gut” feelings, to express the emotions we feel.
Maté explains this tension as: “What happens if our attachment needs are endangered by our authenticity, by our connection to what we really feel?”
Maté tells us that the outcome of this tension is predetermined. When a child feels that being true to their sense of self will not be acceptable to a parent, the child will conform in a way that pleases the parent.
In this speech Maté will explore the negative outcomes of denying authenticity, showing the link between inauthenticity and physical illness, depression, addictions and other mental health conditions. However, Dr. Matè will also show us that not all is lost and that we can act with hope.
Thanks to therapy, the development of self-awareness and self-compassion can bring us closer to authenticity. It is possible to re-train the brain and the nervous system to the possibility that both needs, attachment and authenticity, can be satisfied simultaneously in our adult relationships.
Though they lack language and symbols, infants make meaning of themselves in relation to the world primarily during interactions with caregivers using embodied neurosomatic systems (e.g., HPAA; cortisol; immune; epigenetics). Successful meaning making with a caregiver generates a dyadic state of consciousness that leads to both physical and mental growth and development.
However, the process of meaning making is messy. It is characterized by matches and mismatches of meaning between the interactants and reparation to shared meaning. Reparation is a significant change process resulting in resilience and coping, and a coherent sense of self.
The talk will be illustrated with research from my laboratory and video tapes of infants in interaction.
In this presentation, Dr. Wai Yung Lee will introduce her family assessment protocol, which is specifically designed to demonstrate the interconnection between children’s presenting symptoms and the inter-parental dynamic. Furthermore, this protocol is a clinical tool that can be used for therapeutic exploration and treatment. By measuring children’s physiological responses, such as changes in heart rate, peripheral temperature, and skin conductance, in response to inter-parental conflicts, therapists can use these arousal scores to elicit children’s voices during conjoint family sessions and navigate the clinical process. The protocol also allows therapists to access the children’s own resources to alleviate their distress and that of their families.
Learning objectives:
A lot of the therapist’s actions in the process of a family therapy session can be seen as unreflected reactions that are in the first place intuitively and bodily responsive. First there is the other, and immediately there’s our response. But the therapist is also present in another way in the process: as if it were an epiphenomena of our immediate responsiveness, there is –with some delay- our e and evaluation of our response, and our reflections. This slower and more distant cognitive activity is in constant tension with our immediate responses; reinforcing them, correcting them, inhibiting them, … As if we are our own self-supervisor.
In this presentation we will focus on therapeutic work with families challenged by trauma. The therapist’s dealing with the tension between his/her immediate bodily responsiveness and the cognitive delayed reflections will be the lens with which we look at the main challenges in the process of family therapy with traumas.
Learning objectives:
Learn how to use this playful, components-based, evidence-informed treatment with traumatized children and teens. Paris will share her flexible, sequential model, identifying specific treatment goals with corresponding interventions. She will differentiate between trauma treatment goals that are can be accomplished through non-directive methods and goals that are best served by integrating parents as partners, utilizing somatic grounding techniques, cognitive-behavioral play therapy interventions, expressive therapy techniques, dyadic work, and playful ways to complete trauma narrative work. Participants will leave with an expanded toolkit of interventions and a revived sense of excitement about the process. Come prepared to play!
Learning objectives:
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
Serious illness and disability in a child or adolescent pose daunting challenges for families. The impact reverberates throughout the family system, affecting all members and their relationships. Distilling practice principles from his recent book, Rolland’s Family Systems-Illness model offers a guiding framework for therapists to help families navigate the changing landscape in the experience of illness over time.
Practical, resilience-oriented treatment guidelines and skills are provided for meeting key challenges, such as: facilitating age-appropriate communication; living with uncertainty and threatened loss; balancing illness-related dependence with healthy child development and autonomy; resolving parental conflicts; well-sibling issues; developmental disabilities and genetic disorders, treatment adherence issues; decision-making, including palliative care vs. “aggressive” treatment; and preparing for the death and loss of children with terminal illness. Discussion includes timely applications in different clinical settings, including use of preventive family consultations, psychosocial checkups, brief and intensive interventions, and multifamily psychoeducational groups.
Learning objectives:
The course will take place online, on Zoom, on:
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297,00 € IVA inclusa
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