Take it Back: Restoring Strength After Sexual Trauma
Sexual trauma is a seismic event which impacts the person emotionally, somatically, cognitively, spiritually, and philosophically. Someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes—both male and female&mdsh;in the United States. An overwhelming number will experience this trauma sometime in their lifetime with age five being the most common age for assault. Most victims do not get help for years following, and even those who do undergo counseling will likely experience some trauma reactivation during adulthood. Victims who go untreated statistically have higher rates of depression, anxiety, cardio-vascular disease, are more likely to smoke, struggle with addictions, and experience more than average relationship challenges and low immune function. Essentially, they have lost the vital qualities of life.

Help your clients take their lives back! This seminar is a resilience-based, multi-modal approach using evidence-based models to help late adolescent and adult sexual trauma victims reclaim and restore their lives. Many common sexual trauma approaches miss several of the essential and most complicating factors and often cause people to regress and identify more strongly with their trauma. Attendees will learn a holistic and post-traumatic growth approach so trauma work doesn't have to be more painful than it inherently is. This seminar focuses on strengths—not pathology—and uses a healing perspective versus a curing perspective.

Course Content

FOUNDATIONAL ESSENTIALS OF TRAUMA

• The essentials any professional working with trauma needs to know

LEVELS OF FUNCTIONING 

• Victim
• Survivor
• Thriver
• What are the developmental needs in each level?
• Immediately treatment vs. decades later treatment

UNDERSTANDING THE PROGRESSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT THE IMPACT ON THE COMPLEXITY OF TRAUMA 

• Identification of "potholes" and best trauma approaches to deal with them
• Trauma imprints and their complications
  • shame, arousal, and relationships
• Trauma rituals
  • repetition and why it happens
  • how to redirect the ritual
• Themis—the often hidden PRIMARY trauma
• Trauma composites—recognizing and dismantling
• Somatic, cognitive, behavioral, emotional, sensory details
• Sexual trauma activation over the course of a lifespan
• Developmental (possible) "flare up" times
  • pregnancy
  • surgery
  • developmental stages
  • loss
• Medical—reactivation of sexual trauma
• When medical issues mimic sexual trauma   

TREATMENT INTERVENTIONS WITH INDIVIDUALS AND COUPLES

• Assessing strengths and deficits of Post-Traumatic Growth
• Which approach? Group, couple, individual, or family? When? How?
• Setting up Resources
  • Somatic grounding—creating safety and resetting natural survival responses
  • Energy psychology approaches
  • Cognitive-behavioral approaches and creation of positive portfolios
  • "Preparing the team"—assembling the internal team and 
  • Utilizing external supports as assistants—spouse/partner, family, and friends
  • Reclaiming the ability for intimacy (couples)
  • Making Sense and Meaning
    • the heroic journey resilience narrative
    • utilizing movies and literature as resources
    • assisting the client to incorporate resources from their spiritual tradition
    • memories: micro or macro—titrating pain and incorporating the narrative

SPECIAL AREAS AND CONSIDERATIONS OF SEXUAL TRAUMA

• Dissociation
• Addictions
• Axis II
• Military Sexual Trauma (MST)
• Sex trafficking
• High profile media cases

DISCUSSION OF ADJUNCT THERAPIES

• Bodywork: Breema, Reiki, massage, acupuncture, and more
• Appropriate timing of encouraging other resources