Working with the Phobia of Vulnerability in Trauma Treatment

Please note that all registrations have to be paid in full before the event takes place - otherwise you will miss out on receiving the Zoom link. This event will be recorded for all those who are registered on the day. Recording is available for three weeks.

Abusers capitalize on their victims’ vulnerability. Without the power to escape or fight back, children are helpless in an unsafe world. It isn’t safe to cry, look frightened or voice any emotional needs for fear of punishment. Because they have no other choice than to appear “fine,” the brain and body instinctively develop habits that prevent showing vulnerability.

These strategies are adaptive in a threatening unsafe environment, but they become impediments in treatment. Years later, traumatized clients come for ‘help,’ but their phobia of vulnerability poses an obstacle for the therapist. Although most survivors of abuse can intellectually acknowledge that they were traumatized, talking about the events is overwhelming and frightening. Feeling emotion or acknowledging the hurt they experienced as little children automatically leads to shutting down or intellectualizing. We try to help them process the memories and emotions only to get blocked by clients’ inability to ‘go there.’

Successfully working with vulnerability-phobic clients begins with the therapist’s acceptance that vulnerable feelings invariably will stimulate fear. The perpetrator exploited their vulnerability. Therapists need to be equally interested in how they survived. Fortunately, modern trauma treatment affords us many ways to help survivors, including those who cannot ‘go there.’ In this webinar, Janina Fisher will share strategies for how to develop strong therapeutic alliances with these clients and how to manage our own needs for them to be vulnerable. 

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the role of avoidance in surviving childhood abuse

• Discriminate intentional avoidance versus unintentional disconnection from affect

• Describe the adaptive value of intellectualization under threat

• Implement 3 interventions for increasing client ability to tolerate vulnerability 

PRESENTER: JANINA FISHER, Ph.D (USA)

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School. An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is an Advisory Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation and the author of three books, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022). She is best known for her work on integrating mindfulness-based interventions into trauma treatment, and she is also the creator of Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) therapy.