- Neurological substrates and sources of trauma
- Trauma as a disruption of trust
- Personal innate resiliency
- Impacts on family culture
- Responses of the people around the person experiencing the trauma
- Maintenance of trauma effects (re-traumatization, dismissive of actual trauma, ignorance)
How Treating Families Instead of Individuals Improves Outcomes
- Families as the source of healing for trauma
- Create secure connections and increase resiliency
- Build trust as it relates to anxiety, fear, threat
- Bowenian Family Therapy, Emotionally Focused Family Therapy and other systemic models
- Research, risks and treatment limitations
A Clinician’s Guide to Establishing Physical and Emotional Safety
- Risk Assessments
- Systemic Safety Planning
- How to customize the safety plan
- Managing physiological responses
- Integrating with treatment
- When it’s a bad idea to include the whole family
- Assessing for DV and other risks
- Use family sculpting to reveal family dynamics
- Working individually in order to work systemically
- Games and activities to:
- Assess a child’s self-esteem and world view
- Increase open communication
- Identify themes to be explored in future sessions
Coping Skills to Modulate Emotions and Trauma Responses
- Implementation
- How to notice warning signs early
- Using coping skills for calm
- Identifying primary emotions
Teach Caregivers to Depersonalize and Better Respond to Trauma Driven Behaviors
- Identifying reactions
- Scripts
- Case studies
- Role-plays to ensure proper implementation
Effective Strategies and Interventions to Overcome Resistance and Help Families Grow
- Preparing families for resistance to growth
- Tips for reframing the problem as the solution
- Effective ways to deal with deflection and defenses
- The difference between deflection, projection, and transference
- Ego defense mechanisms or personality disorder?
- FAIR intervention to mitigate frustration
- Three phases of family growth (Protect, Prepare, Participate)
How to Improve Communication, Set Healthy Boundaries and Rebuild Trust
- Practical tips for educating families on boundaries
- The House Metaphor for understanding boundaries
- Reinforcing boundaries after setting them
- Boundaries vs rules – the benefits of agreements vs. control
- Rebuilding trust – what works and what doesn’t
- Trust Equation – an online assessment
Exercises to Facilitate Forgiveness, Build Empathy and Move Families Forward
- Addressing shame in family systems
- Overcome the impact of survivors’ guilt on families
- How family members can stop “shoulding” themselves
- The Forgiveness Triangle (Empathy, Grief, Meaning)
- Exercises to facilitate the forgiveness of self

