An Approach to Treating Children, Families and Couples Who Have Experienced Relational Traumas.
In this workshop, Fiona True will teach participants a recursive model of therapy linking individual and family modalities into a seamless systemic therapy that provides safety for the child while not usurping the primacy of the parents, providing opportunities for relational ruptures to be addressed and healed. Working with children whose sense of emotional and/or physical safety has been ruptured is a challenge family therapists must often confront. When this rupture is the result of traumatic events emanating from within the family itself – a bitter divorce, experiencing domestic violence, sexual abuse, or physical neglect, this challenge becomes even more daunting. Similarly, histories of relational traumas often inform problematic couple dynamics and this workshop will demonstrate an approach that evolved from the earlier work with children and families, to address these issues. It will demonstrate the use of choice points to maximize the changes needed to induce a safe therapeutic atmosphere whilst also processing past relational ruptures that may be informing current dynamics.
The clinical examples that will be used, will demonstrate how to honor both privacy and foster connection by holding individual, couple or family meetings. Techniques will be illustrated to bring forth individual family members’ organizing relational and gender premises that may inform the occurrence of ongoing ruptures. The therapeutic approach will demonstrate how to bring forth complex descriptions of self and others whilst holding a clear moral stance around responsibility and personal accountability. Participants will observe videotaped sessions of families and couples and have the opportunity to consult on therapeutic dilemmas in their own caseloads.
Learning Objectives:
- To create a recursive therapy model using a “decision dialogue” to link modalities
- To understand and repair relational bonds
- To create a safe therapeutic context for children and reactive couples
- To expand Relational Information to include family of origin histories
- To promote the appropriate personal agency of each member of the family or couple
- To mitigate shame and bring forth notions of pride
- To use mantras and self-soothing techniques to manage reactivity
Presenter:
Fiona True, LCSW is a member of the senior teaching faculty of the Ackerman Institute for the Family. She is Co-Director of the Center for Children and Relational Trauma, a clinical research program that has addressed issues of family violence and relational trauma since 1992. She has authored several papers on the subject of intrafamilial sexual abuse and family violence and the clinical methodology, which the center developed, to address the dilemmas and impasses that this set of presenting problems generates. She directed the Ackerman’s International and Community training programs for twelve years, developing programs in Hong Kong, Argentina, Chile and Japan. She has presented the work of the Center both internationally and within the United States. She maintains a private practice treating couples, individuals and families. She was the recipient of the American Family Therapy Association Award for Contribution to Theory and Practice, together with Marcia Sheinberg and Peter Fraenkel in 2004.
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Relational Trauma: Healing the Past in the Present
March 28, 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Fiona True, LCSW
5 CE Contact Hours
In-Person at Ackerman Institute for the Family