Description
Overview
The pressures of the current world situation are touching all of us every day. Even the youngest among us feel the effects of what is disturbing for the grown-ups who care for them. When these daily stresses are compounded by potentially traumatic conditions in our families, schools, neighbourhoods and places of worship, we need a particular kind of support to come through it whole. Relational neuroscience is teaching us that the provision of safe presence is the foundation and for healing these traumas. We are also understanding more deeply why tending to our own mental health is essential to being able to provide this kind of holding for the people we see in our counselling practice.
During this five-part webinar series, we will foster left-hemisphere understanding of the roots of trauma and how our presence can become a sanctuary and healing catalyst for those who come to us. We will also nourish our right hemispheres with practices to increase our ability to be truly present with others and ourselves. Through reflective practice, non-dominant hand drawing, and deep listening to our bodies, each of us may emerge from these groups with greater hope, compassion, and confidence in our clients’ ability to heal with our abundant support. Stephen Porges, Jaak Panksepp, and Iain McGilchrist will be our primary guides, along with support from the work of James Coan and Lane Beckes, Marco Iacoboni, and Bruce Ecker. As we weave together the visions of these pioneers, our understanding and experience of the process of healing trauma in the context of relationship will hold and steady us as we engage with those who come to our counselling rooms and those who are part of our daily lives. In a beautiful way, this learning can support our becoming a therapeutic presence in the world.
Learning objectives:
- Describe the importance of nonjudgmental presence in facilitating safety in the counselling room.
- Describe the connection between the ventral state of the autonomic nervous system and the right hemisphere of the brain.
- Discuss three primary differences between the perspective of the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere according to Iain McGilchrist.
- Discuss the importance for our clients of us establishing a ventral vagal baseline for our autonomic nervous system.
- Describe the relationship between the skin and the nervous system.
- List and describe the three branches of the autonomic nervous system according to Stephen Porges.
- Describe the brainstem’s role in regulating the rhythms of the embodied brain.
- Discuss the midbrain circuits that come online when we experience disconnection from others and the circuits that come online when we experience connection with each other.
- List three differences between explicit and implicit memory.
- Discuss the five components of implicit memory.
- Describe the two essential components of disconfirming experiences.
- Describe the neurobiological correlates of the four attachment styles.
- Discuss the role of rupture and repair in the therapeutic relationship.
- Describe the role of mirror neurons and resonance circuits in the development of the inner community.
- Discuss how working with both native parts and imported parts can deepen healing embedded traumas.
- Discuss how befriending protectors is supportive of healing trauma.
- Discuss how working with our own inner community facilitates offering this kind of healing to others.
