This live event takes place Tuesday, August 4, 7 pm-9 pm EDT (4 pm-6 pm PDT).
Myths, misconceptions, and cruel assessments of people who dissociate still abound in the helping professions. Dissociation, or severing, meaning separating from the present moment or aspects of self, is a natural part of all trauma response and the human experience. Yet even seasoned professionals can find themselves baffled in addressing dissociation clinically. Your instructor for this course addresses these problems from several angles—as a person with a dissociative disorder and an intricate internal system, as an EMDR Trauma Therapy practitioner and trainer, and as a long-time recipient of various approaches to trauma therapy as a client. Solutions are proposed for helping professionals become less afraid of dissociation by more fully embracing their own internal world of responses and parts and committing to addressing the abundance of stigma that exists toward people with dissociative identities in helping professions and in society at large. These paradigm shifts can lead us to more effectively serve our clients and not to judge all dissociative minds as the same.
This course is designed for psychotherapists, counselors, social workers, and other helping professionals practicing in a variety of modalities and from a variety of traditions.
The purpose of this course is to equip clinicians with the knowledge and skills that they need to better understand dissociation and its connection to trauma.
Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:
- Define dissociation in a comprehensive manner.
- Identify three of the most common myths and misconceptions about conducting trauma therapy with people who have dissociative identities (DID) and other dissociative responses.
- Describe how stigma in both the media and the psychological professions has created a hesitancy or fear of addressing dissociation clinically.
- Explain how phenomenology, or listening to the lived experiences of people with dissociative disorders, can help clinicians build more effective treatment plans and strategies.
- Develop a treatment plan that is both trauma-informed and dissociation-responsive.
Jamie Marich, PhD, LPCC-S, REAT, RYT-500, RMT, (she/they) travels internationally speaking on topics related to EMDR therapy, trauma, addiction, expressive arts, and mindfulness while maintaining a private practice and online education operation, the Institute for Creative Mindfulness, in her home base of northeast Ohio. She is the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness approach to expressive arts therapy and the developer of Yoga for Clinicians. Dr. Marich is the author of numerous books, including EMDR Made Simple, Trauma Made Simple, and EMDR Therapy and Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care (written in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Dansiger). She is also the author of Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery. In 2020, a revised and expanded edition of Trauma and the 12 Steps was released. In 2022 and 2023, Dr. Marich published two additional books: The Healing Power of Jiu-Jitsu: A Guide to Transforming Trauma and Facilitating Recovery and Dissociation Made Simple. Dr. Marich is a woman living with a dissociative disorder, and this forms the basis of her award-winning passion for advocacy in the mental health field.
Contributing faculty, Jamie Marich, PhD, LPCC-S, REAT, RYT-500, RMT, has disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
Kimberly Byrd, EdD, PMSW
Scott Deatherage, PhD
The division planners have disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
Sarah Campbell
The Director of Development and Academic Affairs has disclosed no relevant financial relationship with any product manufacturer or service provider mentioned.
The purpose of NetCE is to provide challenging curricula to assist healthcare professionals to raise their levels of expertise while fulfilling their continuing education requirements, thereby improving the quality of healthcare.
Our contributing faculty members have taken care to ensure that the information and recommendations are accurate and compatible with the standards generally accepted at the time of publication. The publisher disclaims any liability, loss or damage incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents. Participants are cautioned about the potential risk of using limited knowledge when integrating new techniques into practice.
It is the policy of NetCE not to accept commercial support. Furthermore, commercial interests are prohibited from distributing or providing access to this activity to learners.
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The role of implicit biases on healthcare outcomes has become a concern, as there is some evidence that implicit biases contribute to health disparities, professionals' attitudes toward and interactions with patients, quality of care, diagnoses, and treatment decisions. This may produce differences in help-seeking, diagnoses, and ultimately treatments and interventions. Implicit biases may also unwittingly produce professional behaviors, attitudes, and interactions that reduce patients' trust and comfort with their provider, leading to earlier termination of visits and/or reduced adherence and follow-up. Disadvantaged groups are marginalized in the healthcare system and vulnerable on multiple levels; health professionals' implicit biases can further exacerbate these existing disadvantages.
Interventions or strategies designed to reduce implicit bias may be categorized as change-based or control-based. Change-based interventions focus on reducing or changing cognitive associations underlying implicit biases. These interventions might include challenging stereotypes. Conversely, control-based interventions involve reducing the effects of the implicit bias on the individual's behaviors. These strategies include increasing awareness of biased thoughts and responses. The two types of interventions are not mutually exclusive and may be used synergistically.
#9657L: Dissociation Fundamentals for Clinical Care
Dissociation is a hard-wired response that is a normal part of the human experience. Although clinicians are often taught to be afraid of it and to proceed with extreme caution if they are going to work with people who dissociate, the reality is that we all dissociate, albeit in different degrees and different ways. There can even be plenty of gifts that come with dissociation above and beyond simple survival. As many people with lived experience of dissociative phenomena attest, dissociation is not the problem; the underlying trauma or distress leading to it is the real problem. So, let's learn as clinicians how to better address the underlying sources of trauma that cause dissociative responses that can be problematic or less helpful and assist people in navigating dissociation when it shows up.
The slides from this webinar are available here.
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