ADVANCED PRACTICES

Love, Regulation, Disruption & Repair

with Lisa Mortimore, PhD

 

About the Training

The legacy of impaired attachment has far-reaching implications; psychotherapists have long been occupied with finding the most fruitful ways to facilitate the maturation and development of the self to mediate the suffering and symptomology of early relational trauma that perseveres across the lifespan and generations. Overwhelming evidence establishes the neuroaffective and psychological implications of impaired attachment, namely, the interruption and maladaption in the complex development of the psyche, as well as relational, regulation, and integrative capacities. The construct of the therapist as psychobiological regulator (Schore), provides an overarching framework where the therapist stands in for reparative experiences to facilitate the maturation of the right brain (RB). Schore’s comprehensive theory provides a foundational bedrock to leap into relational repair work, a theoretical safety net, or a map, to understand and steady our questioning mind (left hemisphere), as we traverse the often difficult terrain of attachment repair.

Clinical practice oriented towards the reparation of early attachment injuries calls for a three-pronged approach revolving around love, affect regulation, and disruption of impaired foundational adaptive measures, both neurophysiologically and psychologically, with the intention of advancing the maturation and development of the bodyself. This disruption of the internal working models (IWMs), regulatory habituated states, and relational strategies, opens the system to expand with supportive, attuned therapeutic contact. This expansion of capacity is precisely what is necessary to evolve maladaptive patterns established in early years. Applying the idea of disruption to impaired development within the bodyself can be seen through three pillars of practice—attachment, the body, and relational repair. Within these pillars, the therapist utilises several types of listening with the bodyself, and acts as a disruptor of the infant/caregiver patterning, offering self in relationship for relational repair.

Drawing on the sensibilities of body-centred psychotherapy where one uses modulation of the body to shift the arousal states (regulate) and facilitate processing of bodily held states, and weaving understandings from relational and interpersonal analytic work, one follows a model of right relationship in therapy, where therapists can fall into relationship, RB to RB, body to body, to meet and work with the medicine of therapeutic love and connection. In living the new story of psychotherapy, where the right hemisphere (RH) has priority; where relational contact, authenticity, connectedness, and intuition are primary; where love rather than the intellect is the container; where the body, the primary container for life, becomes what we thread the needle through, clinicians are taken to the edge, the precipice, so we can fall, fall into the right, into the flow of relationship, deeply and soundly, and rely on theoretical and conceptual frameworks to provide the landscape for therapeutic work. In bringing the body into the clinical space the psychotherapist feels into where the bodyself will yield to new expressions of self.

Over eight days, in two clinics, utilizing interactive lecture, demonstration, clinical vignettes, small group practice, group exploration, and discussion of application to clinical practice, we will deepen our exploration Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy. Additionally, in the AP practice sessions, we will orient the practices to delve deeper into supporting your therapeutic edge through increased feedback, coaching and mentorship.

In preparation for the clinics there will be readings to invite you to attune in specific ways to some of the material we will be working with. Two consultations between clinics will be offered to further integrate the material into clinical practice.

clinic overviews

ADVANCED PRACTICES ONE

In this clinic we deepen and expand our understanding of love in therapeutic practice, expand our clinical frame and examine our therapeutic stance, looking at the spaces and places that we shift between a one- and two-person psychology stance, deepening our awareness of when and why, as we articulate our understanding of the movement between stances. We will spend time deepening our awareness of listening, looking at what and how we are listening, and how to translate the listening into clinical material. We will work to deepen our understanding and clinical application of holding, particularly holding and self-regulation. We will deepen our practice as we look at disruption and its place in clinical practice, particularly from our orientation towards early reparation, and finally, we will delve into mentalization.

    ADVANCED PRACTICES TWO

    We will spend time looking at the impact and implications of fear in early life. We will explore psychic and bodily defenses, and deepen our work with self-states, fragmentation, dissociation, and shame. We will look at dependency and motivational states, and deepen our understanding of early injury and hypo arousal. Finally, we will spend time deepening our understanding of enactments, how they arise in clinical practice, and how to listen and work with them.

     Questions that we will explore:
    •  How can we track and identify our shifting stance in therapeutic practice, finding ourselves engaging with one person and two person stances? How do we understand what has us moving between the two, the implications, for better and for worse?
    • How do we disrupt, repair and facilitate growth?
    • How do we integrate the sensibilities of interpersonal/relational analytic psychotherapy into our work? What are the threads we need to weave to expand and build our framework and practice?
    • How do we track the developmental material as we listen? How do we piece together our understanding of a patient’s history and the etiology of their injuries as we listen? What are we listening for?
    • How can we understand the capacity to mentalize as essential for growth and repair?
    Questions that we will explore:
    • What do we understand about the implications and impact of fear states in early life?

    • How can we understand and work with a developmental trajectory that gets interrupted and leads to dependent tendencies that show up in relational contexts?

    • How do we notice and work with psychic and bodily defenses? 

    • How can we understand enactments as an essential part of therapeutic practice? How can we identify them, work with them, and find our way through them?

    Fees & Dates

     2024 dates: April 11 – 14, 2024 & November 14 – 17, 2024  $1,100 per clinic, includes GST

    Consultation Dates: Thursday May 16th, 6 – 9 pm PT and Tuesday October 15th, 6 – 9 pm PT.

    • Space is limited and open to those who have completed the BBP Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy 2 yr training or BBP Advanced trainings
    • This will be an online program

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What credentials do I need for the workshops and trainings?

    We require a graduate degree in a clinical mental health discipline.

    Can you tell me about the financial commitment for the two-year training?

    Each clinic of the six clinics cost $1100, plus gst- totalling $6930, while people commit to the entire training, they pay per clinic as we go. Payment plans are available.

    Are the clinics available à la carte?

    The clinics are not available individually as the training runs on a cohort model for the entirety of the program.

    How long has BBP been teaching psychotherapists?
    We started training therapists with workshops in 2006 and in 2016 we launched the first cohort of the 2 year Somatic Attachment Psychotherapy (SAP) Training. We are now registering for our thirteenth (May 2025) SAP cohort.