The Compassionate Mind Approach to Recovering from Complex PTSD: Working with those who experience shame and self-loathing as a consequence of being hurt and harmed by others.

This workshop will be 14 hours towards your CPD, and you will receive a certificate of attendance shortly after the workshop via email.

Level: Intermediate

Requirement: This workshop is intented to follow the CFT Introduction which we recommend delegates to have attended previously and been practicing CFT with their clients for at least 6 months.

Timings

All timings are UK BST (GMT+1):

Day One 09:30hrs - 16:30hrs

Day Two 09:30hrs - 16:30hrs

Pricing

Online registration: £239.00

For those in difficult financial circumstances, who may struggle to afford this price, please contact hello@compassionatemind.co.uk

About the workshop

This workshop will present a treatment programme to work with Complex PTSD using a compassion focused approach to enhance evidence- based practice. Clients who have repeatedly experienced hurt and harm at the hands of others, often face many challenges their therapy journey. As well as distressing symptoms of PTSD, they may struggle with profound self- loathing, lack of trust, pervasive sense of danger, interpersonal difficulties, affect regulation and altered states of consciousness. The emotional context of their lives is often overwhelmed by intense shame states which are experienced both intra and interpersonally. Compassion focused therapy was developed by Professor Paul Gilbert (2005,2009). The explicit goal is to develop, access and stimulate positive affect associated with self-soothing in the mind and body of the patient in order to promote an inner sense of psychological safeness (Gilbert, 2005).

This workshop explores an evolutionary understanding of shame from social mentality theory (Gilbert, 2005). This roots our understanding of trauma and it’s impact on human development in the biopsychosocial science of human nature and suffering. The workshop will explore our understanding of compassion as a motivation, an antidote to shame states, as it fosters a physiological state of safeness as well as orientating the mind to be care giving as opposed to self-loathing (Gilbert, 2009). We will discuss how we can foster clients’ basic motivation to be compassionate to enhance compassion for self and others. We will also discuss how we use compassionate practices such as breath work, meditation, and imagery to develop an embodied sense of safeness (Lee, 2022, Lee & James, 2013). We will also explore how we can then use compassionate states of mind to de-shame trauma memories, promote grief process, how to develop a compassionate narrative and update shame-based trauma memories, and facilitate emotional processing of trauma experiences, within a CFT framework treatment programme.

Recent expert consensus (published by the UK Psychological Trauma Society, 2019) recommends Compassion Focused Therapy as part of a phased treatment approach for Complex PTSD and this workshop will explore how to use CFT to develop compassionate resilience as part of this phased based approach.

Learning Objectives:

• to learn how to develop compassionate resilience using CFT theory and practice.
• to learn ways to work directly with shame - based trauma memories using the compassionate soothing system.

Key references:

• Ashfield E., Chan, C & Lee, D.A., 2021. Building “A Compassionate Armour”: The Journey to Develop Strength and Self-Compassion in a Group Treatment for Complex PTSD.
• Lee, D.A (2012). The compassionate mind approach to recovering from trauma, using compassion focussed therapy. Constable & Robinson. London
• Lee, D. A (2022). Using compassion focused therapy to work with complex PTSD. In P. Gilbert & G. Simos (Eds.), Compassion Focused Therapy: Clinical practice and applications (ch. 25, 565–583). Routledge.

Workshop Leader

Dr Deborah Lee, Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Head of Berkshire Traumatic Stress Service and OpCourage Integrated Services for Veteran Mental Health, South East England.

Honorary Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, University College London

Lead for Compassionate Leadership Programme, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Deborah Lee is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Head of Berkshire Traumatic Stress Service and OPCOURAGE Integrated Services for Veteran Mental Health for the Southeast of England. She has pioneered the development of compassion focused therapy for trauma and PTSD and authored the bestselling self-help book, The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Recovering from Trauma and PTSD: Using Compassion-Focused Therapy to Overcome Flashbacks Shame, Guilt, and Fear (2013). New Harbinger, New York.

Dr Lee has worked in the field of trauma for 33 years and collaborated with Professor Paul Gilbert for 27years to develop de-shaming and effective treatment for the consequences of interpersonal, shame-based trauma and, Complex PTSD. She has pioneered ‘compassionate resilience’ as part of a phased based treatment approach for complex PTSD and has widely contributed to the dissemination of her clinical knowledge through writing and, delivering over 300 clinical workshops, keynote addresses, podcasts, in North & South America, Europe, Japan and Australia.