Ego State Therapy Interventions to Stabilize Your Most Wounded, Belligerent, and Dissociative Clients

Many of our clients suffer from profound trauma and attachment wounds from childhood – with child ego states very stuck in the past. Therapy models that are normally effective won’t work when these clients have fears about healing that block therapy, have belligerent child parts that sabotage therapy, or are so easily triggered they cannot tolerate deep processing. This workshop resolves these problems and more. It teaches unique, powerful, simple ego state therapy interventions not taught anywhere else. You’ll learn stabilizing interventions that resolve fears about healing, stop self-sabotage, and end flashbacks and nightmares. Clients become more grounded and self-aware, and less sensitive to stressful, triggering events. It helps them better understand their own internal world – equipping them to calm and comfort wounded parts when they do get triggered. Collectively these interventions can stabilize dissociative clients, but they can also be profoundly life changing, whether or not additional therapy interventions (like EMDR, Brainspotting, or advanced DNMS interventions) are used for deeper healing.

The workshop starts with an introduction to ego state theory, then details how to…

• Quickly and effectively mobilize a team of vetted Resources
• Establish a Special Safe Place (a fun place for wounded parts to hang out)
• Identify therapy goals that can actually block processing
• Set an effective therapy goal – free of blocks
• Invite wounded parts forward
• Start a dialogue with wounded parts
• Attune, validate, and empathize with wounded parts
• Build rapport with especially belligerent and oppositional parts
• Give wounded parts missing information, and clear any misunderstandings
• Connect wounded parts to a loving, supportive team of Resources
• Orient wounded parts to present time
• Enable wounded parts to see reality more clearly
• Show wounded parts that the upsetting experience they seem to be reliving, is actually just a harmless recording

The workshop will illuminate the implications for treating trauma wounds versus attachment wounds. It will describe how these interventions track with Porges’ Polyvagal theory, Dan Siegel’s parenting advice, and Memory Reconsolidation Theory. Upon completing the training, you should be able to apply these interventions with clients, using the scripts provided in the colorful 25-page handout.