Understanding Chronic Trauma: Working with Narcissistic Clients
Presented by: Michael Lillie LMFT, MHP
When: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025 | 9:00 AM –12:00, 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 these individuals present in a therapist’s office, they may receive diagnoses of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, along with many other mental health diagnoses. Some individuals with chronic traumatization have been in therapy for many years—even 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 have positive outcomes from therapy while others show little sign of healing from their wounds can be rooted in chronic trauma and how the personality is formed and organized as a result of 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 multiple types of dissociation, making traditional therapy modalities more difficult or impossible to administer.
Objectives:
Attendees of Chronic Trauma Series: Workshop #2 will learn:
- The symptoms and behaviors of narcissistically organized clients.
- The diagnostic complexities and gender biases for clients who present as narcissistic.
- How personality is formed in the early developmental years through adulthood leading to narcissistic problems.
- The relationship between comorbid mental health symptoms and narcissistic traits and behaviors.
- The trauma of unrecognition and its relationship to subjugation of others and their own attachment needs.
- How secondary dissociation leads to a complex subsystem of defenses that may be impervious to traditional therapy.
- How to discern grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism.
- The impact of shame on narcissistically organized clients and their relational system.