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Case Consultation for Therapists

Expertise you can confidently
rely on

Consultations via Zoom, Micro-Soft Teams, in-person or telephone, assist seasoned and therapists new to complex and relational trauma to:

have the opportunity for safe, supportive and confidential exploration of the therapist’s desire to enhance skills, process emotional responses and various complex concerns
identify the unique challenges for both client and therapist
normalize and utilize feeling de-skilled, emotionally drained and personally impacted
address and benefit from complex transference and countertransference
develop strategies to compassionately work with defence mechanisms and boundaries
process powerful emotions: of both the therapist and client

Assisting individuals with a history of trauma or abuse is usually long term and at times may be challenging for both client and therapist. Trauma clients may present with a range of complex and confusing or unrecognized symptomatology.

Naomi Halpern provides case consultations to health care professionals working with complex trauma and severe stress. Topics for individual case consultation include:

4 core trauma dynamics:
- The problem is not the problem
- Locus of control shift
- Ambivalent attachment to the perpetrator
- Victim–Rescuer-Persecutor dynamic

Specific issues in PTSD, Dissociative Disorders, and Dissociative Identity Disorder: flashbacks; flooding; numbing; hearing voices; somatization; hostile; persecutory and apparent-sabotaging presentations of the client’s internal intra-psychic system

Trauma re-enactment in the counselling setting and therapeutic impasses

Utilising transference and counter-transference

Navigating empathic engagement and safe boundaries for the client and health professional

Understanding and transforming self-harming behaviours

Facilitating and supporting healthy expression of the spectrum of emotions, including difficult and intense feelings such as shame, anger and grief

Trauma, spirituality and healing

Self-care: vicarious trauma / compassion fatigue / burn out

One can hide in the past to avoid the present, or hide in the present to avoid the past.

– Ross and Halpern, 2009

Benefits of Case Consultation

Many therapists express concern they may have unwittingly overstepped professional boundaries or under-responded to the complex needs, presentations and challenges of this client group. Powerful feelings of grief, shame and anger or alternatively, numbing and detachment can arise in response to a client’s challenging material or behaviour.

Unrecognised or unaddressed, these counter-transferential responses may lead to blaming or disliking a client and to a defensive engagement, with profoundly negative impacts on therapy.

Vicarious trauma and empathic strain can significantly impact the therapist’s emotional and physical wellbeing, sense of professional competence and interpersonal relationships. When acknowledged and embraced, these normal feelings and responses can provide powerful insights and guidance to the course of therapy.

Finding the middle path, where the therapist is neither pushing a client to do work they are not ready for, nor colluding in avoidance of painful material, requires the capacity to sit back and reflect on what is occurring in and out of the therapy room.

Therapists have much to offer from a skill perspective, as well as their own life experiences and personal qualities. The therapeutic relationship is best able to facilitate healing when the therapist is committed to his or her own personal journey, recognising the ‘wounded healer’ in us all.

As we endeavour to provide our clients with nonjudgmental and empathic understanding, it is equally important for therapists to have a safe space to receive the same. Case consultation offers the opportunity to learn new skills, get back on track and reinforce or restore confidence in your capacity to assist your clients on their journey.

Ultimately, the therapist is responsible for the therapy session while the client is responsible for their healing.

These tax deductible consultations are suitable for:

psychotherapists
psychologists
psychiatrists
social workers
mental health nurses
counsellors
family therapists
expressive therapists
medical practitioners
allied health and related professionals

View Upcoming Events

Event Details:

Date	Start Time	Finish Time	Hours
August 2, 2023	6:00 pm	8:00 pm	2
August 9, 2023	6:00 pm	8:00 pm	2
August 23, 2023	6:00 pm	8:00 pm	2
August 30, 2023	6:00 pm	8:00 pm	2

Naomi Halpern

Event Details:

Date	Start Time	Finish Time	Hours
July 26, 2023	6:00 pm	7:30 pm	1.5

Prof. Michael Salter

Event Details:

Date	Start Time	Finish Time	Hours
July 14, 2023	9:00 am	1:00 pm	4
July 15, 2023	9:00 am	1:00 pm	4

Martin Dorahy & Naomi Halpern

What Mental Health Organisations say about training with Naomi Halpern

This has been an inspirational and full training opportunity. Not only has the content been excellent, but Naomi's presentation has also been excellent. I really enjoyed your 'humanity' Naomi and the way you used examples from your practice, both successful and less successful ones! You obviously have strongly well developed and integrated Parts, that have overcome the past, and allow you to shine in the present! So many thanks.

Social Worker, New Zealand

The training was excellent and really well received by the team. We’d love to proceed with a full day training to continue to build on these skills later in the year.

Employment Plus - Salvation Army, Melbourne, Vic

This complex material was very well organised and well presented with helpful, relevant and striking case examples e.g. the art work client's story. The candid comments from Naomi regarding some of her personal experiences as a therapist were effective and added warmth and a 'real life' context to the core content. These brief, humorous, tangible disclosures had an opening up, relaxing, humanising effect which softened the harder cerebral slog of technical material. The exercises were useful and essential in terms of knowing what is going on in yourself as a therapist.

Psychologist

This was the BEST workshop I have to been to in a very long time. Naomi was engaging, extremely interesting and able to relate the concepts to real life. I didn't doze once in her presentation ;-)!! It was well worth the trip from Melbourne to Geelong to see her. I would love to see more workshops from Naomi.

Psychiatrist, Melbourne

I found Naomi's "parts" perspective within the Snow White Model of complex trauma, and the information on the neurological aspects of treatment a most helpful framework. It assisted me to integrate my pre-workshop understandings of complex trauma and strengthens my understandings.

Social Worker, Newcastle

The two days were well paced, had well organised content enhanced by the Snow White metaphor and wove together therapeutic work with the brain function in a clear and concise way. I felt validated in my work but also challenged to be more collaborative, slow down and think more widely and deeply about interactions between the parts. The Snow White model has helped me to more easily remember the functions, survival responses and attachment characteristics of the different parts.

Psychologist, New Zealand

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