Engaging the Client with a Disorganized Attachment Style: Avoiding the Common Pitfalls
an AEDP Workshop at Psychotherapy Networker Symposium 2016, in Washington, DC
with Diana Fosha, PhD, Diane Poole Heller, PhD & Stephen Porges, PhD
Straightforward problem-solving is simply not an effective option in work with clients with intense trauma histories and disorganized attachment styles. Therapeutic tasks like creating initial conditions of safety, determining optimal therapeutic proximity, effectively using the “relational field,” and resourcing interventions are central to success with such clients. This special workshop will focus on the challenges of doing attachment-based work with an extremely vulnerable treatment population by bringing together two noted therapists and a neuroscientist to discuss videos of actual clinical cases.
Topics Covered Will Include:
- The dangers of retraumatization and determining the appropriate intensity level a client can tolerate
- Disentangling the threat response needed to defend against a scary parent from the healthy orientation toward connection of secure attachment
- How the Polyvagal Theory can illuminate both the nature of disorganized attachment and the process of therapeutic healing
Meet the Presenters
Diana Fosha, PhD
Diana Fosha, Ph.D., is the developer of AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), a healing-based, transformation-oriented model of psychotherapeutic treatment; she is Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute. Based in New York City, she has been on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of NYU and St. Luke's/Roosevelt Medical Centers (now Mount Sinai) in NYC, and of the doctoral programs in clinical psychology at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies and The City University of New York. Diana Fosha is the author of The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change (Basic Books, 2000), and of numerous articles on an attachment-emotion-transformation focused experiential treatment model. She is senior editor, with Daniel Siegel and Marion Solomon, of The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice (Norton, 2009), part of Norton’s Interpersonal Neurobiology series, and co-author, with Natasha Prenn, of Essentials of AEDP Supervision (APA, 2016). APA has issued 3 DVDs of her APA work. [Learn more and purchase here.]
She has contributed chapters to, among others, Clinical pearls of wisdom: 21 leading therapists offer their key insights, edited by M. Kerman (Norton, 2009); Complex traumatic stress disorders: An evidence-based clinician's guide, edited by C. Courtois & J. D. Ford (Guilford, 2009); Healing trauma: Attachment, mind, body and brain, edited by Marion Solomon and Daniel Siegel (Norton, 2003); and to The comprehensive handbook of psychotherapy, Volume 1: Psychodynamic and object relations therapies, edited by J. J. Magnavita (Wiley, 2002).
Dr. Diana Fosha graduated magna cum laude with a BA in psychology from Barnard College and received her PhD in clinical psychology from the City university of New York (CUNY). For the last 20 years, she has been active in promoting a scientific basis for a healing oriented attachment, emotion and transformation focused therapy.
Known for her powerful, precise yet simultaneously poetic and evocative affective writing style, Diana's phrases --- "undoing aloneness," "existing in the heart and mind of the other," "True Other," "make the implicit explicit and the explicit experiential," "stay with it and stay with me," "rigor without shame" and "judicious self-disclosure" -- capture the ethos of AEDP.
Watch Diana's Trusting Vitality video here.
Diane Poole Heller, PhD
Diane is the creator of the Dynamic Attachment Re-Patterning Experience (DARe), Somatic Attachment Training (SATe) certification program, Therapy Mastermind Circle, Attachment Mastery online courses, and Psychotherapy 2.0 Summit with Sounds True.
Stephen Porges, PhD
Stephen is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, where he’s creating a trauma research center within the Kinsey Institute. He’s author of The Polyvagal Theory.
Additional Things You May Need to Know
This workshop takes place from 3pm – 5pm and is part of Psychotherapy Networker Symposium 2016, taking place on Day 3 of the four day event (March 17-20, 2016). For 39 years, the Networker Symposium has been psychotherapy’s essential conference, the largest and most celebrated annual meeting in our field. With 130 workshops, a faculty of over 100 of the field’s leading contributors, and 3,500 of its most creative and inquiring practitioners, the Symposium is the place therapists go year after year to catch up on the latest advances in the field.
Check out the Symposium’s web site for all the important details like directions, food options and lodging during your stay.
Fee and Credits
Registration options for the Symposium:
- Full PASS* (3 Days): $499
- Full PASS+* (4 Days): $599
- DAY RATE: $219
*Includes 17-hour bonus video: Best of the 2015 Symposium
Questions about this Workshop?
Event Details:
Date/Time
03/19/20163:00 pm - 5:00 pm