Rethinking Trauma Treatment: Attachment, Memory Reconsolidation, and Resilience

What makes trauma therapy effective? The answers might surprise you. While therapists have been bombarded with brain science, hundreds of new models, and pressure to use evidence-based techniques, research has demonstrated that the therapeutic relationship ultimately predicts therapy outcomes. This is especially true for traumatized clients. But, what kind of therapeutic relationship? Forming a secure therapeutic alliance with traumatized clients is tricky. How do you help clients trust you after they’ve been abused, betrayed, or exploited? How do you instill hope and convince clients who’ve been devastated by loss to believe that a better life is possible?

In this accessible guide, Courtney Armstrong distills discoveries from attachment theory, brain science, and post-traumatic growth into practical strategies you can use to:

+ Build trust and a secure therapeutic relationship
+ Transform traumatic memories into stories of triumph and courage
+ Help clients cultivate resilience and a positive post-trauma identity

The Therapeutic "Aha!": 10 Strategies for Getting Your Clients Unstuck

Courtney Armstrong’s The Therapeutic “Aha!” explores the thrilling and rare moment when a client reaches an elusive realization, allowing them to make meaningful change. In 10 straightforward strategies, this practical book demonstrates how to shake things up in therapy when a client is stuck or stalled to jumpstart progress. Readers will learn how to spark the “emotional brain”—the part of the brain that houses automatic, unconscious patterns—and create new neural pathways that engage and advance the healing process.

Divided into three parts—(1) Awakening a Session, (2) Healing Emotional Wounds, and (3) Activating Experiential Change—the book walks readers through specific techniques for harnessing the emotional brain and re-patterning its routine. Elegant therapeutic insights and coping strategies only go so far; until we intervene with something our emotional brain can understand—a compelling felt experience—old, established neural patterns will persist.

The brain-based strategies Armstrong presents include:

+ How to enliven the therapeutic alliance
+ Elicit exciting goals
+ Identify the root of an emotional conflict
+ Reverse trauma with memory reconsolidation
+ Invoke inspirational imagery
+ Use stories, humor, music, poetry, and even mindfulness to induce change.

Transforming Traumatic Grief: Six Steps to Move from Grief to Peace after the Sudden or Violent Death of a Loved One

Although losing someone you love to a sudden or violent death is a shocking and life changing experience, there are steps you can take to heal. Written by a trauma therapist who has recovered from her own traumatic grief experience, this book provides you with:

+ Activities that promote emotional healing
+ Methods to stop nightmares, recurring images, and thoughts
+ How to clear guilt/regrets and open up to new experiences
+ Ways to get the support you want from other people
+ How to retain “the living story” of your loved one and sense them as a positive or supportive presence in your life