Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma: Helping Your Clients Heal Attachment Wounds Through Parent-Child Relationships: SELF-PACED ONLINE

This presentation will provide a comprehensive understanding of intergenerational trauma and explore an innovative approach for breaking the transmission cycle through focused interventions with adult clients who are also parents. Participants will gain insight into the profound impact of intergenerational trauma and discover the rationale behind offering parents the opportunity to address and improve their relationships with their children as a means of interrupting this powerful cycle.

The rationale and motivation for encouraging adult clients, who are parents themselves, to concentrate on their relationships with their children will be explored in depth. Attendees will learn how this intervention can contribute to their clients' overall well-being, fostering a sense of happiness and satisfaction in their own lives. 

We will focus on working with parents' non-conscious negative beliefs. Participants will gain skills to help clients uncover the sensations and non-conscious beliefs associated with conflicts in their parent-child relationships. The program will demonstrate the practice of installing a message of self-compassion through an experiential tool, featuring an example to enhance the learning experience.

By the end of the program, participants will understand how addressing attachment wounds and promoting self-compassion can lead to a calmer and more grounded emotional state for clients. This newfound emotional resilience will enable parents to connect with their children more effectively, breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma and fostering healthier family dynamics. The program aims to equip mental health professionals with practical tools and insights to transform their approach and make a positive impact on the lives of their clients.

Learning objectives:

1. Define what intergenerational trauma is.

2. Discuss the rationale and motivation for offering an adult client who is also a parent the opportunity to focus on their relationship with their child as a way of interrupting the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

3. Explain how focusing on the relationship with a client’s child may help your client feel better, happier, and more satisfied with their own life.

4. Determine who and when this intervention would be appropriate so you can introduce it to clients.

5. Describe how to introduce this intervention to clients so you can help them transform their attachment wounds.

6. Explain how to help clients uncover the sensations that they have in their body as well as their non-conscious beliefs when they are in a conflictual situation with their child. 

Presented by: Dafna Lender, LCSW

Dafna is an international trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families. She is a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), as well as an EMDR therapist.  Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families with attachment in many settings: at-risk after school programs, therapeutic foster care, in-home crisis stabilization, residential care and private practice. Dafna’s style, whether as a therapist or teacher, is combining the light-hearted with the profound by bringing a playful, intense and passionate presence to every encounter.

Dafna is author of Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (2023) and the co-author of Theraplay the Practitioner’s Guide (2020).  She teaches and supervises clinicians in 15 countries in 4 languages: English, Hebrew, French and Spanish. 
 
Dafna has been teaching about the polyvagal theory and the use of social engagement system since May 2020.  This includes co-teaching a workshop with Dr. Stephen Porges in May 2020 and with Peter Levine at the Somatic Experiencing Conference May 2022.  Dafna instructs clinicians and parents to apply polyvagal theory in a practical way to increase self-compassion, co-regulation and connection between dyads.  Dafna incorporates Polyvagal theory as part of the Level Two Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy training as well as in her teaching of Integrative Attachment Family Therapy.  

Continuing Education Units: 1.5 CEUs

This training is approved for continuing education by the boards listed here.

*CASAT has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6492. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. CASAT is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Presentation materials are not for reproduction or distribution without specific written authorization. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in our courses are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of CASAT.

Details