Please Note: For this semester, this training is ONLY open to Level II Trauma Certificate participants.
According to trauma expert Judith Herman, the first task of trauma recovery is to help the client establish a basic sense of safety and stabilization; a foundational emotional state that is necessary before processing can begin. While on the surface this might appear to be a simple task, many trauma survivors have an extremely difficult time attaining a sense of safety, and furthermore face great difficulty managing the chronic fluctuations in emotional and physiological state. The role of the trauma therapist is to assist the client in attaining and managing fluctuating states of arousal for trauma healing to begin.
“Top down” therapies relying on words alone may not be sufficient for managing the effects of traumatic stress, as trauma is stored implicitly in the limbic or emotional area of the brain and often is not available for explicit or cognitive processing. This workshop will introduce participants to ways that art therapy works from the “bottom up” making it well suited for working with emotions, connecting with the body, and managing affect through grounding, resourcing and containment exercises.
Participants in this workshop will be introduced to a range of art and body-based interventions that can increase self-awareness and help us tune into present moment experience. Skills from this workshop can be applied to various clinical practices. No previous experience with art is required.
