Trauma-Focused CBT Training (for all ages)

PTSD is an unusual and often devastating clinical phenomenon, with distressing symptoms and the ability to apparently change the personality of the person displaying it. Clinicians can be at a loss for how to respond to it, and may feel frustrated that their established clinical skills, which work well in other conditions, seem to be redundant with PTSD. This course is for clinicians who need to know about PTSD, how to help patients initially lessen the symptoms of it, then process the trauma, and ultimately head towards growing and developing post-trauma.

People who attend normally fall into one of two categories:

1. Professionals who see patients in 1:1 treatment settings, have a significant degree of clinical skill, and wish to add techniques relevant to PTSD to their repertoire.

2. 'Whole teams' (either in inpatient or community settings) seeking to develop a common approach to PTSD.

The professional affiliations of people attending the training include: mental health/psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, probation officers and others.

Establishing Foundation Knowledge.

• What constitutes a trauma, and What are the effects of trauma? (DSM criteria, and examples.)
• Is it fair to say that anything that results in the effects of trauma can rightly be considered a trauma?
• Assessment and formulation.
• Giving the client a chance to tell their story and assessing symptoms.
• What do we do if they don’t want to ‘tell their story’; not everyone wants to talk about experiences that have traumatised them.
• ‘Formulation’: What their purpose of coming to see you is (the problem-to-be-solved, or the goal), what predisposing and perpetuating factors there are, what positives they have, the plan.

Lessening the Effects of trauma.

• Safety and stabilisation, and making sure the person is out of the traumatic situation.
• Psychoeducation on Trauma.
• Examining the toolbox of coping strategies the person already has, and using those where possible.
• Mindfulness and Acceptance.
• Distress tolerance.
• Emotion regulation.
• Problem solving.
• Creating a safe place as a bolt-hole to retreat to if necessary, and creating confidence in their ability to use it well.
• Ensuring they can ‘put their foot on the brake’ when necessary.

Processing the traumatic event.

• Appraising what meaning the trauma holds for the person, and what it says about them, others, or the world around them; Figuring out what a more helpful appraisal would look like. Reinforcing the new cognitive appraisal of the situation - perhaps as 'post-traumatic growth'.
• Creating a trauma narrative bit by bit, thereby enabling the client to connect with the trauma - either through it's memory, emotions or somatically - without being overwhelmed.
• ‘Cleaning up after’ the patient, maybe offering more generous attributions and perceptions than they do.
• Using Logical Evidence Based Reasoning, and when not to use it.
• Encouraging compassion throughout, especially where the traumatic event was partly the patient’s fault. (Some tragic and traumatic events – for example some road traffic incidents – may be partly or largely attributable to the patient themselves. They are of course still entitled to help, but sometimes don’t feel they are.)
• Re-living and Exposure therapy.

Post-traumatic growth. In addition to growth achieved by the two previous sections:

• Helping people to assimilate what they have learned into their understanding of themselves, the world and others.
• ‘Forging Meaning and Building Identity’ (Andrew Solomon.)
• Learning to use the past as a “rear view mirror” and so predominantly looking ahead.
• Re-examining the environment from the new post-trauma perspective, and majoring on situations and people that produce the best for the patient.
• Contemplating positive events and ‘Anti-Traumas’ (William Davies): events so positive they leave a lasting positive schema in the brain.

All delegates are registered at APT as having attended the course, and receive a certificate to acknowledge their attendance, registration, and APT-Accreditation at the appropriate level. As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This accreditation is given weight by the fact of over 100,000 professionals having attended APT training.

Upon completion of the 3-day course, delegates will receive Level 1 APT accreditation in the subject, which can be uprated to Level 2 (free of charge) by completing the online exam (in your own time).

Event Venue

Online