Treating Complex Trauma and Dissociation in Tribal Communities 

15 hour webinar series: Integrative Treatment: Understanding the Connection between Complex Trauma, Dissociation and Substance Abuse in Tribal Communities AND Traumatic Shame and the Therapist: Complex Ethics for Complex Clients

Have you gone to trainings on trauma in the past but left thinking "But there are so many more complicated relationships and dual roles in my community...trauma plays out differently" or even "That speaker just doesn't understand my culture...s/he just doesn't get us". Attend Kimber's Comprehensive webinar series to experience something different!

This 15 hour workshop will establish an overall framework for the gold standard in the phasic treatment of complex trauma that may be co-morbid with dissociative symptoms and the use of dissociative agents such as substance abuse. 

 In 2012, when Kimber was asked to present at the Alaska Statewide CINA Conference, Safe Children, Strong Families, she shared that culture and attachment cannot be separated. They are synonymous. They are the smell, taste, touch, and sounds that begin in the womb, supported by generations of similar sounds, tastes, smells, and particular touches. They are the foundation and cornerstone of our ability to maintain mental health and function as adults. The way in which a culture holds a child is attachment. One cannot attach without it. It is a scientific impossibility founded in the neurobiology of each individual and collective group of people’s very ways of being. Attachment, as it is loosely defined and easily flung around in casual conversation is not defined correctly. How are non-Native therapists prepared to demonstrate that they are dedicated to cultural practice, traditions and beliefs? From all indications, the “dedication” to cultural practice, traditions and beliefs is, at the very best, often “tribal glossing”.

Eduardo Duran in Healing the Soul Wound, Counseling with American Indians and other Native Peoples, states “Dysfunction in healing institutions is perpetuated by hiring and retaining staff who are not culturally competent and through the implementation of strictly Western medical models of treatment, which maintain the process of colonization. By operating health institutions in this manner, we ensure that people seeking help will continue to suffer from the illnesses that brought them there in the first place” (pg. 25). This type of insistence on imposing a different worldview can be understood as a form of (purposeful or accidental) violence against the client’s knowledge of life-world known as “epistemic violence” (Spivak, 1990). Professionals who believe they are culturally sensitive, culturally aware, or culturally competent can be the most damaging and self-serving professionals there are as they are genuinely attempting to help and heal with blinders on. As John Steinbeck quoted in America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction, page 326, “The Indians survived our open intention of wiping them out, and since the tide turned, they have even weathered our good intentions toward them, which can be much more deadly”.

Duran’s assertion that “The extent of colonization in our institutions has allowed hegemony epistemic violence, and oppression of cultural norms to flourish...agencies and institutions prefer models of service delivery that are entrenched in Western ideology, and Aboriginal models are often regarded as subservient and invalid”, is evidenced in the “worried” fears that a tribe will ask for “too much” cultural emphasis. There is no such thing as “too much cultural emphasis” in a child’s life. Culture is that thing which defines us, molds us, and influences us in every aspect of our being. It roots us to our personal, family, and community group, and allows us to flourish. There is significant evidence that “every Indian child placed in a non-Indian home for either foster care or adoption is placed at great risk for long-term psychological damage as an adult” (see Split Feathers Study by Carol Locust, 1998 and Congressional Hearings pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act, 1978). The major contributing factors of this psychological damage include “loss of Indian identity, the loss of family, cultural, heritage, language, spiritual beliefs, tribal affiliation and tribal ceremonial practices, the experience of growing up being different, the experience of discrimination from the dominant culture, and a cognitive difference in the way Indian children receive, process, integrate, and apply new information-in short a different learning style” (American Indian Adoptees Split Feathers Study, 1998).

There are some nationally known standards for addressing the cultural needs of Native children. These include:

1)  Specific Cultural Plans that address the historical, contextual, geographical, political, and familial traditions of the particular child in foster/adoptive placement. 

2)  Adoptive parent training-to be conducted preferably by a relative of the child in question, or, alternatively, by a tribal representative chosen by a family member. 

3)  Information about registration-for example, will the child loose their ability to be a registered member of a particular tribe if a non-tribal member adopts him? What are the steps, requirements, responsibilities and rights of tribal members? 

4)  Consultation with the community leadership prior to and on-going after the adoption takes place to ensure that the child has appropriate information and access to practices, customs, traditions, language, food, smells, community events, and other cultural necessities. 

5)  Counseling-see Eduardo Duran on counseling that is appropriate for Native children and how it differs significantly from that of non-Native children and why 

6)  Health information about the child’s family, culture, geographic ties, etc. 

7)  Community Mentors-before, during and after adoption, to provide a family and/or non-family adult mentor to aid in on-going cultural ties, understanding, and participation in certain rites of passage, cultural ceremonies, and other activities that may be unavailable to or prohibited from access by non-tribal members. 

Culture is not static, nor is it linear or one-dimensional. This means that healing happens not only through activities such as dance class, but also language classes, participating in community storytelling to gain lore, mythology and traditional and historical context. Rites of passage cannot be accessed unless the child/client is engaged in the community and accepted by those who provide the rites. Without both child and parents (or adult client) being known in the tribal community, all of these afore mentioned activities can be difficult to access. Eating foods specific to the tribal community, learning about and being exposed to rituals and religious practices, smelling tribal smells, hearing the traditional music and songs of the area, listening to Elders talk and tell stories, knowing tribal members and being familiar with both traditional and modern tribal customs, sharing and engaging in subsistence activities, and participating in community events are important in individual healing from trauma, especially when that trauma includes historical or multigenerational trauma.

This training will set the foundation for understanding complex trauma, dissociation and substance abuse within a tribal context, and how these three are correlated and compound one another exponentially and are best healed through cultural involvement.   A connection will be made with early childhood relationships, disrupted and disorganized attachment, and how these literally set the stage for dissociative phenomenon.  Participants will be taught therapeutic interventions for all three phases of treatment, from safety and stabilization, through trauma resolution, working within the alter system of dissociative clients, and through habilitation, leaving with a basic understanding of the trauma treatment model and preparing them for further study in this area.

We will explore the complex ethics of working with complex trauma, including how the therapist reacts to clients with complex trauma histories, how enactments, re-enactments, transference and countertransference and projective identification play out in the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client.  An emphasis on vicarious trauma prevention and treatment, and a deeper understanding of self care will be presented.  Participants will leave with the understanding that those professionals who have a high standard of connection to their theoretical model and also a high connection to their understanding of their own countertransference will fair the best when working with clients who have a complex trauma history.  Therapists will be taught specific techniques to improve self care, prevent vicarious trauma, and use countertransference to actually improve and more the therapy forward. 

 Clinicians completing the 15 hour training will leave with an understanding of complex trauma and dissociative disorders, how they interact with and are correlated with substance use, and will be able to use their own theory and sense of self to facilitate a reduction in difficult symptoms such as self-injury, trance states, dissociative switching, rage reactions and acting out. Additionally, they will gain skills in the area of ethics as it applies to complex trauma, which is significantly different from the treatment of non-traumatized clients.

Register Now! 

Kimber Olson, LCSW, BCD, C-ACYFSW

 

Kimber Olson is Cayuga (Iroquois) and English (maternal lineage) and Pomo Indian and German (paternal lineage).  She is a board certified, licensed clinical social worker.  Her nearly 20 years of mental health experience includes work in outpatient community mental health centers, in school-based programs, providing city-wide on-call and crisis management services, home-based and hospital-based therapy, community health development coordination, and long-term residential treatment. She is currently in private practice where she specializes in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociation with both children and adults.

Kimber Olson is the co-author of The Thursday Group, a story and information for girls healing from sexual abuse, available from Neari Press and Amazon, and the author of the Pathway to Hope Video Guidebook, a companion resource for the Pathway to Hope: Healing Child Sexual Abuse video developed to help Native communities in Alaska understand and address the sexual abuse of children and to promote healing.  She co-authored, with Diane Payne and Jarad Parrish, the Pathway to Hope: An Indigenous Approach to Healing Child Sexual Abuse (International Circumpolar Health Journal, 2013).  Kimber is a faculty member of the Professional Training Program and also the Chair of the Alaska Regional Component Group for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissocation.  ISST-D supports therapists working in the field of trauma and dissociation, and promotes higher learning and increased skill in these areas.  She has taught as an adjunct instructor in the social work and human services departments of the Kachemak Bay Branch of the Kenai Peninsula College in Homer, and has presented nationally and internationally, as well as throughout Alaska and in Indian Country on complex trauma, attachment, dissociation, eating disorders, ethics, compassion fatigue, and other topics. In her private therapy practice, Kimber specializes in working with individuals who have experienced attachment difficulties, complex developmental trauma, and dissociation.  She has training in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, including the Early Trauma Protocol, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, and the Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping).  She uses bottom-up brain based exercies and stabalization and grounding teachniques with individuals to create a calmer brain with which to eventually be able to process trauma.  

Webinar Schedule

April 8th           1-4pm   Disorganized Attachment, Trauma and Dissociative Disorders

May 6th           1-4 pm  Substance Abuse as a dissociative agent and connection to trauma

June 10th        1-4 pm  Working with Dissociation, a phase based treatment

July 1st            1-4pm  Ethics of countertransference, re-enactments and self care

August 19th     1-3 pm Treatment Interventions with a FREE bonus question and consultation time from 3-4pm

 

The cost for this will be $250.00 for all 15 hours 

 

Who Should Attend?

This will be a course that is appropriate for therapists who already have knowledge of complex trauma and are in the beginning and intermediate stages of their understanding of treating dissociative disorders including DID.  For those who are beginners, you are welcome as well. Those with training in EMDR and sensorimotor psychotherapy may have a particular interest in this course.