Understanding Chronic Trauma: Attachment & Dissociation as a Foundation to Working with Complex Presentations
Presented by: Michael Lillie LMFT, MHP
When: Friday, June 13th, 2025 | 9:00am – 12:00pm Pacific Time
Where: Live on Zoom. You will receive your Zoom link/invitation the week of the workshop.
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 3 CEs | $95.00
Therapy clients who present with chronic traumatization offer unique challenges. They may enter therapy having been given multiple diagnoses and a history of treatment failure. Depending on how they present, they may receive diagnoses of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, along with many others mental health challenges. Some individuals with chronic trauma have been in therapy for many years—some for decades -without achieving symptom relief and stabilization.
This scenario can be frustrating for both the client and the therapist, leading to shame for clients and burnout for the therapist. Why some clients get positive results from therapy, while others show little sign of healing from their wounds, can be rooted in chronic trauma and how their personality is formed and organized around traumatic events.
Chronically traumatized individuals may have experienced repeated developmental, relational, and acute types of disturbing and/or traumatic experiences. This type of client presentation will often have serious attachment injuries/ruptures, along with higher levels and various types of dissociation, making traditional therapy modalities more difficult or impossible to administer.
Objectives:
- The history of trauma and suffering from multiple disciplines.
- Definitions and perspectives of multiple types of traumatic stress.
- The basics of attachment theory.
- Foundations of dissociative theory.
- Ways to spot for chronic traumatization in your clients.