Healing Complex Trauma:
Working with the Body and Dissociative Parts
This is a course that I have taught for many years, touching on PTSD and focusing on C-PTSD or complex trauma, otherwise known as developmental or attachment trauma. It gives an overview of complex trauma and how to recognise and work with it, and detailed content integrating many different treatment models (why be limited to two or three when you can integrate all of them?) – including work with the body and every ‘parts’ model including IFS. It is designed to teach participants to integrate all these modalities confidently and seamlessly, by understanding the underlying principles of all trauma-informed interventions.
More information on the modalities that inform all our courses can be found here.
The training is very experiential, with real-life examples, exercises, live demonstrations, practice sessions and time for questions. It includes how to recognise the more subtle signs of unresolved trauma and dissociative switches, how to work with hostile parts, perpetrator introjects and attachment to perpetrators, and how to create a warm and open therapeutic relationship in which people can feel safe, and modify this for some personality disorders (and how to spot them).
Originally open to psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, it was increasingly attended by EMDR therapists, practitioners and consultants who wanted to integrate all this material into their practice of EMDR, especially into phases 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7. In 2022 it was awarded EMDR UK CPD credits.
All the course content can be conceptualised according to the EMDR modality: CPTSD- and dissociation-informed history-taking, preparation, resources, cognitive interweaves; emotional connection, emotional regulation and ‘telepathic’ interweaves (Gonzalez, 2020); relational, defence, modulation, experiential, information, developmental repair, action and integration interweaves (Korn, 2022), and somatic interventions to facilitate and enhance processing, installation and post-traumatic growth.
I am now planning to re-package this material for EMDR therapists, practitioners, consultants and trainers, and to offer it in different formats – but not frequently, as I am focusing on becoming an EMDR Europe facilitator, supervising a research team, and teaching Traumatic Stress Relief and other courses in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Future trainings:
17 – 18 November 2023, with Shiraz Farrand and Ahmad Abudoush, Traumatic Stress Relief, for psychologists, psychotherapists and educators in the West Bank, Jordan and Dubai
8 – 9 December 2023, with Shiraz Farrand and Ahmad Abudoush, Traumatic Stress Relief, for psychologists and psychotherapists in S Africa
3 February 2024, Working with EMDR and Dissociative Parts: Optimal Integration of Parts Models, EMDR UK CPD credits pending. You can find details here, there is no booking link yet but it will be added soon.
To be on the mailing list for future courses and workshops for EMDR therapists, please email healingcomplextrauma@icloud.com.
You are welcome to email healingcomplextrauma@icloud.com if you would like to talk about creating a bespoke workshop for your organisation.
You are also welcome to email deechevarria@icloud.com to ask for EMDR consultation.
We almost never take photos on our courses or at events – here are a few –
Guest speaker on working with the body at the NLPTCA conference 2019, in Manchester, UK –
