Bessel van der Kolk – Trauma Conference: The Body Keeps Score – Trauma Healing with Bessel van der Kolk, MD

Outline

Neuroscience & Brain Development

• How children learn to regulate their arousal systems
• How the brain regulates itself
• Developmental psychopathology: The derailment of developmental processes & brain development due to trauma, abuse, and neglect
• How the brain responds to treatment

Early Life Trauma

• Interpersonal neurobiology
• Adaptations to trauma early in the life cycle
• Loss of affect regulation
• Chronic destructive relationships towards self and others
• Dissociation and amnesia
• Somatization
• Self-blame, guilt, and shame
• Chronic distrust and identification with the aggressor

Attachment, Trauma, and Psychopathology

• The breakdown of information processing in trauma
• Mirror neuron systems and brain development
• How to overcome the destabilization and disintegration
• The compulsion to repeat – origins and solutions
• Difference between disorganized attachment and traumatic stress

Neuroscience, Trauma, Memory, and the Body

• The neurobiology of traumatic stress
• Learned helplessness and learned agency
• Restoring active mastery and the ability to attend to current experiences
• Somatic re-experiencing of trauma-related sensations and affects that serve as engines for continuing maladaptive behaviors
• How mind and brain mature in the context of caregiving systems

The Diagnosis of Treatment of Trauma-Related Disorders

• Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD)
• Affect and impulse dysregulation
• Disturbances of attention, cognition, and consciousness
• Distortions in self-perception and systems of meaning
• Interpersonal difficulties
• Somatization and biological dysregulation
• The development of DTD in the DSM-5® as a diagnosis and its implications for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment

The Latest Research on Trauma-specific Treatment Interventions

• The role of body-oriented and neurologically-based therapies to resolve the traumatic past
• Alternatives to drugs and talk therapy
• EMDR
• Self-regulation, including yoga
• Mindfulness
• Play and theatre
• Dance, movement, and sensory integration
• Neurofeedback