Presented by Tovah Means, MS, LMFT.

***This workshop is for mental health professionals only***

As professionals, we will encounter childhood sexual trauma on our caseloads, whether known and stated or dissociated and unknown. Yet, as common as it is in society and in our offices, understanding and addressing the unique treatment challenges that come from childhood sexual abuse can be overwhelming, disturbing, and confusing as it is barely touched upon in graduate training. At Watch Hill Therapy, we want to help professionals deepen their understanding, way beyond trauma informed, to help this population and to help support the inevitable impact that you will face due to the nature of doing trauma work.

In this workshop you will learn:

• The differences between childhood trauma vs. adult sexual trauma

• How to identify different forms of sexual trauma & the nuances of different sexual traumas

• How clients were (back then) and are (here and now) impacted by sexual traumas occurring in families, dependent relationships, and relationships of power

• How to move away from cognitive interventions to treatments that support the way the brain processes traumatic memory via somatization, fight/flight/freeze, and intense emotional re-experiencing

• How to hold a client safely and ethically in treatment as they recall, remember, and become less dissociated from their childhood sexual trauma

• Core issues such as shame, denial, dissociation, under-protectiveness, hypervigilance, flashbacks, harmful or concerning coping skills that develop, challenges that can arise in intimate partnerships, and sexual health

• How to support yourself as a therapist navigating the therapist-client relationship with complex sexual trauma survivors

4 CEUs (LMFT, LCPC, LCSW, and Licensed Clinical Psychologists)