Trauma treatment is rarely straightforward. Clients want help but resist connecting emotionally. Many are tormented by critical self-hating thoughts or want to die, jeopardizing their ability to process the trauma. TIST is a new trauma-informed treatment that directly addresses the challenges, not just the events, of a traumatic past. In TIST, we view these trauma-related thoughts, emotions, and impulses as communications from fragmented, disowned trauma-related parts. When clients form meaningful attachment relationships to these young, rejected parts, the trauma often resolves spontaneously. When the parts finally experience safety and care, the traumatic past feels done and behind them.
Learning Objectives:
Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and former instructor at The Trauma Center, a research and treatment center founded by Bessel van der Kolk. Known as an expert on the treatment of trauma, Dr. Fisher has also been treating individuals, couples, and families since 1980.
She is past president of the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma and Dissociation, an EMDR International Association Credit Provider, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former Instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fisher lectures and teaches nationally and internationally on topics related to the integration of neurobiological research and newer trauma treatment paradigms into traditional therapeutic modalities.
She is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press).
