Are the trauma, attachment and self-regulation interventions you use based on an outdated understanding of the neurophysiology? Is your treatment model rooted in an understanding of client arousal based on traditional measures without incorporating concepts from the Polyvagal Theory? During therapy sessions, are you aware that you and your client are responding to each other’s physiological state? Are your interactions with your clients missing an understanding of how mental processes influence physiology and how physiology influences cognitive, emotional, and social behavior? If you aren’t consciously monitoring your client’s facial features and vocal intonation, you are missing the important cues of the social engagement system and missing important therapeutic opportunities. Dr. Stephen Porges is an international expert on the neurophysiology of emotions, trauma, attachment and self regulation. He will show you how you can put this understanding to use when implementing interventions for mediating symptoms of many mental health disorders including autism, depression, ADD and PTSD. In addition, learn strategies to trigger states of safety in your clients by activating the “highest level” mechanism. Objectives:
Describe the foundation of the Polyvagal Theory.
Describe how the Polyvagal Theory may demystify several features related to psychiatric disorders and behavioral problems
Describe how deficits in the regulation of the Social Engagement System are expressed as core features of several psychiatric disorders.
Explain how maladaptive behaviors, which may accompany several psychiatric disorders, may reflect adaptive responses triggered by survival mechanisms.
Explain how the neural process, neuroception, evaluates risk in the environment and triggers adaptive neural circuits, which promote either social interactions or defensive behaviors.
Explain how therapeutic presence is based on the interaction between the Social Engagement Systems of client and therapist.
Explain how the Social Engagement System is involved in optimizing therapeutic outcomes.
Define the features of the Social Engagement System, which include neural pathways connecting brain, face, and heart.
Explain how features of the Social Engagement System are compromised by stress and trauma. Outline:
The Polyvagal Theory The principles and features of the Polyvagal Theory and how to apply it in a clinical setting
How the Polyvagal Theory can demystify several features related to stress-related illnesses and psychiatric disorders such as PTSD, autism, depression, and anxiety
How the Social Engagement System is compromised by stress and trauma and how to reset it
Evolutionary changes and adaptive functions in the autonomic nervous system
Humans response hierarchy to challenges
Three neural platforms that provide the neurophysiological bases for social engagement, fight/flight, and shutdown behaviors Social Engagement System and Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders
A description of the “face-heart” connection that forms a functional social engagement system
How our facial expressions, vocalizations, and gestures are regulated by neural mechanisms that are involved in regulating our autonomic nervous system Neuroception: Detecting and Evaluating Risk
How our social and physical environment triggers changes in physiological state
Understanding that adaptive physiological reactions may result in maladaptive behaviors
Immobilization without fear
Play as a neural exercise
Listening as a neural exercise Demystifying Biobehavioral Responses to Trauma and Abuse
Fight/flight and immobilization defense strategies
Adaptive function of immobilization and the associated clinical difficulties
How the stresses and challenges of life distort social awareness and displace spontaneous social engagement behaviors with defensive reactions Applying the Polyvagal Theory in Clinical Settings
Understanding auditory hypersensitivities
State regulation as a core feature of psychiatric disorders
Deconstructing features of autism and PTSD
Strategies to explain disruption and repair of symbiotic regulation
Identifying social cues that disrupt or repair defensive reaction About the Speaker: Stephen Porges, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he directed the Brain-Body Center, and at the University of Maryland, where he chaired the Department of Human Development and directed the Institute for Child Study. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines including pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, space medicine, and substance abuse. In 9994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of psychiatric disorders. He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011).
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