Over the moon and very honoured to have been invited by the wonderful CPTSD Foundation as a guest speaker alongside leading trauma professionals, including Bessel van der Kolk!
On 31st March 2020 I left my full-time job and started working on the expansion of my clinical practice. Then lock-down happened. I used this time to my advantage by working on developing a number of online specialist group programmes to support adult survivors of childhood trauma. One of these is a carefully planned programme to support parents living with trauma.
I know of the struggle parents go through when they have experienced trauma themselves. Something as trivial as their child crying, or climbing all over them, or wanting to play with them can be very triggering and overwhelming to parents who have a history of past trauma. Issues such as emotional flashbacks, hypervigilance, dissociation and other survival resources kick in, and consequently interfere with the way one wants to parent. This awareness led me to develop my programme for parents living with the aftermath of their past trauma.
Athena Moberg, the founder of CPTSD Foundation was very impressed by this work and invited me along as a guest speaker to talk about this sensitive topic which we often don’t mention, discuss or acknowledge: Parenting with a History of Trauma. My talk will be part of the CPTSD Foundation’s summit called ‘We are Healing Trauma’. This summit is aimed at survivors of complex childhood trauma/CPTSD. I am sure many will find the talks to be a helpful resource. You can find more details here: https://cptsdfoundation.org/wearehealingtrauma/
The summit will be a fundraising event by CPTSD Foundation. They do some fantastic work to support trauma survivors for a very low cost. As all of their services are virtual, they will be accessible to the global community. You can find out more about their services here: https://cptsdfoundation.org/
Thank you, CPTSD Foundation for all what you are doing to support trauma survivors and for giving me a chance to collaborate with you. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all my parent clients and also all the parents who attended my programme. Thank you for believing in me and my work. A huge thank you to the lovely Wendy Andrews who I co-facilitate the ‘Parenting with a History of Trauma’ programme with. The programme wouldn’t be the same without you. You bring something very unique to our sessions with your warm, nurturing, empathic and compassionate presence. Receiving that in itself can be so healing 
The feedback for the programmes has repeatedly been that participants had found the 6-weeks sessions more helpful than any Individual Therapy they had attended before. This positive feedback has inspired me to integrate the elements of our programme, including the Listening Circle sessions from our programme, into our therapeutic membership package. This membership package is dedicated to those living with complex trauma. Wendy hosts the ‘Listening Circle Session for Parents with a History of Trauma’ to members who have registered to our membership package. The membership will offer you a number of weekly sessions, access to a healing book club, a secret support group and also discount to all our future events. You can find more about this here: https://steppingstonespsychology.com/membership-for-trauma-survivors
You can purchase the summit for lifetime access at a low cost here: https://cptsdfoundation.org/wearehealingtrauma Please note that the payment will be not for profit and will go towards the fundraising.
