Deconstructing Trauma: Memory Exposure, Mindfulness, and Existential Awareness in Psychotherapy

Medical model approaches to trauma tend to focus on the psychopathology of adverse experience. This new workshop, by leading scientist and clinician, John Briere, breaks new ground by demonstrating that it is not trauma exposure, per se, that is the ultimate problem, nor is the solution necessarily a quasi-medical procedure.

Trauma will be described as a normal part of human experience, with chronic posttraumatic suffering generally arising when trauma-related distress is excluded from awareness through suppression of unwanted thoughts and feelings, as well as through activities such as substance abuse, dissociation, and tension-reduction behaviours. This process is reinforced by social messages about the need to avoid “bad” feelings (i.e., anxiety, sadness), and a view of those who have been traumatized as sick, bad, or self-indulgent.

Drawing on Buddhist philosophy and practice, Dr. Briere will outline the clinical implications of this perspective, including reworked versions of therapeutic exposure and affect-skills development, but also, more centrally, the role of compassion, mindfulness, and meta-cognitive (existential) awareness of thoughts, feelings, and memories. Also considered (and de-pathologized) will be the therapist’s own struggles with injury and resolution.

For a preview of the ideas in this workshop, click here.

You will learn —

• Clinical tools and techniques relevant to trauma survivors
• Three techniques to increase affect regulation or tolerance to stress
• The primary characteristics and impact of mindfulness as it relates to trauma therapy
• How to enhance cognitive and emotional processing in treating trauma victims
• The development of meta-cognitive awareness
• The role of meditation as an optional approach to posttraumatic suffering

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