Dissociative Symptoms in Personality Disorders (Mosquera)

Practical tools to work with dissociative processes in Personality Disorders and Complex PTSD

This workshop is intended for therapists who already have a basic understanding of trauma informed treatment for personality disorders and who wish to increase their skills in working with dissociative symptoms. Having attended previous workshops on the use of EMDR with Personality Disorders is recommended.

In recent years, the subject of dissociation has been generating a great deal of clinical interest. Dissociative clients present a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from those that are overt and highly noticeable to those so extremely covert and subtle that they often go unnoticed--even to the trained therapeutic eye.  Some of the most obvious dissociative symptoms (amnesia, not recognizing the therapist, losing dual attention, reliving a past event as if it were happening in the here and now) can be puzzling for clinicians.

Participants will learn practical ways to understand, recognize and effectively work with covert and overt dissociative processes. Clinicians will learn to identify the dissociative language and will be given tools to decipher the underlying messages.  

Various approaches used in a variety of complicated clinical situations when working with the system of parts will be illustrated through video examples. Participants will also learn different grounding techniques and procedures to expand the window of tolerance.

Key Program Content

1.     Understanding the language of dissociation.

2.     Identifying overt and covert dissociative processes during therapy sessions

3.     Expanding the window of tolerance with rejected emotions

4.     Enhancing the capacity to stay present 

5.     Grounding techniques

6.     Working with the internal system of parts

Learning objectives

1.     Participants will be able to identify and describe the language of dissociation.

2.     Participants will be able to list at least 5 overt and covert dissociative processes

3.     Participants will be able to describe how to expand the window of tolerance

4.     Participants will be able to describe and apply at least 5 grounding techniques for dissociative processes.

5.     Participants will be able to list different key aspects to work with the internal system of parts.