Now I’m Here, Now I’m Not: Understanding and Treating the Complex Survival Strategy of Dissociation

In clinical discourse dissociation is a word that is frequently used but in clinical practice, the identification, comprehension and treatment of dissociation may feel elusive and complicated for many clinicians. This course aims to demystify dissociation and to empower clinicians to recognize and address dissociation in their clinical settings. Clinicians will gain an understanding of dissociation as both a complex and adaptive survival strategy to trauma through an overview of dissociation theories and how dissociation subsequently impacts a person’s lived experience. Not only will this course establish how to ascertain dissociation and its role for a client but will also introduce practical interventions to help clinicians manage and therapeutically tend to dissociation experientially. These techniques will be drawn from multiple experiential trauma therapies, evidence-based practice paradigms and case examples. Clinical relational dynamics and counter-transference issues that may arise in the treatment of people with dissociation will be discussed.

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