Navigating the Pandemic and Online Therapy with Trauma Survivors

Can online therapy provide the inherently reparative and healing effect of face-to-face therapy with trauma survivors? In this 2-hour webinar, master trauma clinician Lisa Ferentz will help you address the challenges of treating trauma specifically online as well as treating trauma in the context of a pandemic. Because for clients with histories of trauma, abuse and neglect, the shift to online therapy and the reverberating impact of the pandemic on a personal and global level can be profoundly triggering.

With her characteristically innovative and nuanced clinically informed approach, Lisa will explore the cognitive, emotional, somatic and behavioral impact that these triggers can have on traumatized clients. She will raise some relevant themes that therapists should be exploring with their clients including: the impact of isolation; rekindling of past trauma; issues of loss; and the triggering of helplessness and uncertainty.  She will also explore how deeply to go in an online session, balancing the need for clients to focus on the virus with an attempt to maintain some semblance of continuity and momentum in whatever they were addressing before the pandemic began.

Since so many therapists are new to the online therapy format, this webinar will also look at the challenges of using an online platform and how the dynamics of transference and counter-transference can manifest as therapists attempt to do good work from their living rooms or kitchen tables. You will have a chance to explore the need to maintain boundaries, the very real phenomenon of “Zoom fatigue,” how to enhance a sense of attunement, and how to navigate the potential glitches that can occur during a session.

You Will Learn:

• About at least five issues that can surface for traumatized clients as they attempt to navigate the pandemic, social distancing, and the shift to online therapy sessions
• How to address both the transferential and counter-transferential issues that emerge when shifting from face-to-face to online therapy
• About the specific dynamic of loss as it pertains to social distancing and on-line sessions
• About the challenges related to boundaries when doing therapy on-line and how to navigate the potential for a lack of attunement during the session
• About how pervasive uncertainty impacts clients in the context of the pandemic and the nature of online therapy