SCHEDULE

Helene Delucci

Strategies for strengthening child-caregiver attachment when supporting families impacted by trauma


Today the transgenerational transmission of trauma is recognized. People who have not experienced adverse events still feel the wounds of what happened as if the trauma had happened to them. They show signs of trauma and dissociation, and attachment in subsequent generations is disrupted or trapped in nonconstructive behaviors. At the same time, they are able to talk about events that happened to their parents and grandparents in a detached way, talking about lack of communication in the family, secrets, drama, and repeated catastrophes.

How can they deal with such transmitted suffering? What are the specific symptoms of transgenerational trauma? How is it best to find appropriate targets for reprocessing? Is it possible to get rid of those strange experiences that the person has not had? How can the effectiveness of therapy procedures be maintained while dealing with this type of trauma? How can transgenerational trauma be conceptualized in a treatment plan? These questions will be addressed in the course and I will propose (from this conceptualization) several interventions that have proven effective in trauma therapy through clinical examples.

The learning objectives of this course will be:

Understand the symptoms of transgenerational trauma

Conceptualize and assess transgenerational trauma through the genogram and body response

Learn EMDR-inspired tools for treating relationship trauma without being overwhelmed