CaPPP Annual Gathering & AGM 2025

Workshop: Stabilisation in Trauma Treatment

This workshop will combine theory and experiential elements to highlight some of the nuances of working to resource someone who has been significantly traumatised. Given the prevalence of psychological trauma for the therapy seeking community, the topic can have a broad relevance and may also apply to clients that are not always seen as traumatised, such as those who have been emotionally neglected, some who are prone to anxiety or who are experiencing depression, etc.

Stabilisation tends now to be understood to be a foundation for trauma therapy, foregrounded by leading trauma therapists such as Rothschild, Van der Kolk and Fisher, in models such as DBT & Sensorimotor & in texts such as the recent ‘Complex Trauma: The Tavistock model’. But helping to resource a traumatised client can be at odds with many more traditional ways of working therapeutically, as it encourages that a more active and directive therapist stance is central to the early - and perhaps ongoing - work with a client. Thus, many therapists can find it hard to integrate this approach. For other therapists the approach is less of a theoretical challenge, but it can be hard to know how to stabilise in different contexts. Earlier versions of this training have received strong feedback re: helping participants to work more comfortably and extensively to resource their clients and to incorporate this perspective in to their existing ways of working.

Learning outcomes:

- An understanding of Janet’s 3 stage model of trauma treatment

- Helping clients to appreciate their existing ‘resources’

- A nuanced view on using the ‘Window of Affect Tolerance’ model

- Body based experiential practices that can stabilise clients and help therapists to be more available under high stress

- A framework that helps us to position ourselves in different versions of the therapeutic relationship

- An exploration of a key approach to using mental imagery with traumatised clients

- Understanding how depression can often be reduced by a simple, well researched practice, (given how many traumatised clients may also become depressed).

- A review of ways that we can understand psychological trauma and how to respond to different types of presentation

Facilitator Profile:

Ben Gatty is an integrative psychotherapist who has specialised in work with psychological trauma. He was Trauma Lead in Transport for London’s Counselling and Trauma Service and is currently a lecturer at Regent’s University. His clinical approach combines embodied, experiential, psychoanalytic and other ways of working. He lives in Brighton with his partner and 5 year old daughter.

Price: Free to CaPPP members * We ask that you only book a place if you can commit to attending the event and, to reduce food waste, we reserve the right to charge you £15 to cover the catering cost for your place if you do not attend or cancel after 10th October

Booking: This is a members only event . All places must be booked in advance by Sunday 12th October. Not a member? Join CaPPP for just £30 a year and take part in this event for free https://cappp.co.uk/

Registration & refreshments: 9.00 to 9.30 refreshments are available throughout the day

Lunch: Lunch and refreshments are included in your booking

Venue: Engineer's House, The Promenade, Clifton Down, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 3NB

AGM: Our AGM will be held after lunch between 13.30 to 14.30 with the second part of Ben’s workshop to follow.