Psychotherapeutic work with individuals who experience dissociated self-states is challenging and often confusing. Both stabilization and healing can be facilitated by attunement in the therapeutic relationship. Attunement emerges from the therapeutic process. Attuned therapists are like tuning forks that resonate with client/patient shifting states. This shifting attunement is not always noticed and often not well understood. It takes great effort to move beyond the concepts of transference and countertransference so embedded in our training as therapists. Too often attunement with dissociated self-states is mistaken as countertransference and mis-attunement. When that happens, we lose an opportunity to understand more about dissociated self-states and increase the risk of vicarious traumatization. Attunement is an embodied rhythmic encounter that can be understood, in part, through the science and philosophy of entrainment. Entrainment, a natural process by which our biological systems synchronize within an environment, is part of everyday life. We do not need to understand the complex science of rhythmic entrainment to notice and appreciate the felt sense of being in rhythm. However, some knowledge of the neuroscience and the physics of information flow can help us listen to intuition in an informed and critical way. Often, in dissociated states, we lack words to describe experience while much of what we feel and sometimes enact in the treatment process holds meaning. When we notice information communicated without words we facilitate and enhance our therapeutic work. Mindfulness of dissociated attunements can be used as guidance in treatment decisions. Learning to listen is a lifelong project. In this workshop we will use poetry, music and video to explore and enhance our capacity to listen. This will open up possibilities of thinking differently about therapeutic encounters. We will review some current neuroscience research on dissociation that helps us to better understand shifting self-states and that informs concepts of somatic therapeutic treatment. Experiential exercises will be adapted to a virtual context to illustrate embodied ways of listening and knowing. Brief case vignettes will demonstrate pivotal moments in treatment when dissociated attunement facilitated growth and healing.

 

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