Thursday, November 6, 2008

“I Don’t Want to Talk About It”:
Creative Non-Verbal Treatment Strategies for Traumatized Youth

Youth who have experienced trauma struggle to create healthy relationships. The adults around them also struggle to find the right thing to say or do to make things better. Given the way our brains and bodies manage and heal from trauma, using conventional “talk therapy” alone is not enough. We need to know best practices about how to engage the whole person in healing: mind, body, and spirit.

This workshop will examine ways in which advances concerning trauma and attachment-informed treatment, resiliency, and neuro-development can be integrated in your day-to-day work. By using the therapeutic relationship to help youth build a body-felt sense of safety, competency in managing emotional and physical responses, and a coherent trauma narrative, youth and their families can heal and thrive.

We will focus on the use of non-verbal, body-oriented, and creative arts modalities to assist traumatized youth with safe forms of expression and effective ways of coping. In addition, we will consider the growing field of sensory interventions and mindfulness strategies that reduce restraints and self-injury. Participants will leave this workshop with a toolbox of intervention strategies in visual arts/art therapies, movement (yoga or dance), touch, sound (music and poetry), play of all types, and psychodrama. We will also consider when to refer to practitioners specializing in DBT, EMDR, hypnosis, and body-oriented interventions for intensive or adjunctive interventions. Workshop participants will:

• Develop a focus on connection and competence to foster resilience while decreasing the traditional emphasis on problems and pathology
• Learn how to use relational, self-soothing, attachment/trauma narrative and multi-systemic interventions
• Obtain an array of expressive, play, and/or creative arts methods to facilitate attachment within families and treatment settings

Workshop format includes lecture, lively discussion, case examples, and experiential exercises.

Instructor

Mary Bettley, MSW, LICSW, Clinical Director at the Baird Center, a program of the Home for Little Wanderers, has over 20 years of experience working with youth, adults, and families in outpatient, home-based programs, residential care, state hospitals, and schools.  She is an adjunct professor at Lesley University, has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School’s Attachment Conference, and trains nationally on attachment, trauma, and interpersonal violence.  Ms. Bettley is known for her humor and practical examples.  She is the adoptive parent of two girls.