This 8-hour Master Workshop addresses Complex PTSD through a somatic and resilience-informed lens. Across the program, Dr. Arielle Schwartz weaves together the following core teachings:
Understanding Complex PTSD
The cognitive, emotional, and physical impact of chronic exposure to threat. How growing up afraid creates a learned stress response — not a character weakness — and leaves a felt sense of powerlessness that persists into adulthood without sufficient support to heal.
Mutual Regulation as the Foundation
Why mutual regulation precedes self-regulation in treatment. How the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a key intervention for clients with relational and developmental trauma.
Recognizing Dysregulation
Identifying the emotional and physiological signs of CPTSD and dissociation, and understanding why traditional narrative-focused approaches often miss the disturbing sensations that dominate clients' lives.
Working with Shame and Self-Compassion
How shame underlies much of CPTSD presentation, and how to deepen compassion and reduce shame as foundational to healing.
Somatic Interventions for Complex Trauma
At least three practical interventions for working with somatic symptoms in complex trauma. Sensing the affective components of body posture, gesture, breath, and movement impulses through interoceptive awareness.
Titration and Pendulation
Working with the felt sense of the body using somatic practices of titration (small doses) and pendulation (oscillation between activation and resource) to access implicit memories without re-traumatization.
The Resilience Informed Approach
Recognizing every human's intrinsic drive toward wholeness — and seeing traumatized individuals for the strength they carry, not the symptoms they bear.
