Lisa Ferentz | Psychotherapy Networker

Contributed by Lisa Ferentz

36 Results

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CE Offerings

May 16, 2023

Enhancing Affect Regulation in Trauma Survivors: Creative Strategies that Give Your Clients Agency

Although there’s a clear connection between insecure attachment in childhood and a client’s inability to navigate emotional states and self-soothe in healthy ways later in life, this relationship is often overlooked in trauma work. And when trauma survivors don’t feel a basic sense of safety, just getting started in therapy can be a monumental challenge. In this session, you’ll discover creative strategies to help traumatized clients develop and enhance affect-regulation skills. You’ll learn techniques like soothing breath work, resourcing with body movement, guided imagery, simple flashback halting protocols, and how to activate mirror neurons. You’ll also discover: How to identify and implement treatment strategies designed to enhance external and internal safety Creative strategies that teach traumatized clients how to modulate emotional arousal and self-soothe How to implement strategies that incorporate somatic resourcing for grounding Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Guilt, Shame & The Trauma Survivor: Integrated Modalities to Move Therapy Forward

Guilt is about what somebody has done. Shame is about who somebody is. Clients with sexual and physical abuse have two problems: who they are, and what they have done. Wouldn’t most people feel hopeless at that point? Wouldn’t most clinicians feel overwhelmed? Resolving these two pervasive, paralyzing issues absolutely moves therapy forward but requires a host of psychotherapeutic interventions. Watch Lisa Ferentz in this recording to learn cognitive, emotional, somatic, expressive, and psychoeducational techniques all used at key moments in therapy to have the fullest impact on resolving these pivotal issues. As a trauma therapist, author, and international presenter, Lisa Ferentz has spent 35 years working with the deepest levels of shame and guilt, honing integrated practices specific to the client’s readiness to address these intense emotions. Case examples are woven in throughout the day to help you learn how guilt and shame surround unmetabolized traumatic experiences, including sexual abuse, and the profound and confusing dynamic of pleasure that occurs in many instances for male and female victims. The recording will include crafting psychoeducation with practical cognitive techniques, self-compassion, and even expressive modalities – in addition to experiential activities to help you create a treatment plan adapted to your specific clients and trauma treatment modality. Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Cultivating Post-Traumatic Growth: Hope from the Very First Sessions

Have you ever been working with a traumatized client, compassionately bearing witness to their symptoms, but unable to shake the feeling that you’re overly focusing on their pain? You’re not alone. We all want clients who’ve survived trauma to chart a path forward. Fortunately, there are ways to help them heal and grow while still acknowledging what happened to them---even in the very first sessions. In this experiential recording, we’ll explore creative ways to help trauma survivors navigate the impact of traumatic events while guiding them to a place of newfound hope, resiliency, and healing. You’ll learn: Why the meaning clients attach to trauma is so important How to incorporate the body in trauma work, plant the seeds of hope in your earliest sessions, and identify and nurture tangible markers of post-traumatic growth Creative strategies like internal and external resourcing, before-and-after imagery, two-handed writing, and future-self visualizations Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Trauma, Affect Dysregulation and Shame: Treating the Seeds of Self-Destructive Behaviors

If you believe that most clients who engage in self-destructive behaviors have Borderline Personality Disorder, you may be missing the fact that they have pain and trauma narratives – and you are not approaching treatment in the best way to create healing. If you think that the choice to cut as opposed to burn – to starve as opposed to binge – is arbitrary, it isn’t. You need to help clients re-frame their behaviors as the inevitable byproducts of affect dysregulation and shame, and help them embrace new ways of addressing them in therapy. Join international trauma expert and author, Lisa Ferentz, LCSW, for her much praised, experiential seminar and start altering your practice in treating trauma, shame and self-destructive behaviors. Lisa will give you her proven approach that incorporates psycho-education that teaches your client new coping strategies that help them: Reduce their shame and self-blame narratives Self-soothe and re-claim their affect regulation skills Short-circuit overwhelming thoughts and feelings Experience one of the top-selling continuing education seminars available on trauma and shame. Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Helping Clients Find Their Ruby Slippers: Bringing Life Lessons of Empowerment and Healing into Therapy

Help your clients overcome everyday obstacles, boost confidence, and end self-critical thoughts with simple life lessons from internationally recognized psychotherapist Lisa Ferentz. With more than 30 years of clinical experience, Lisa blends time-tested approaches and the power of journaling to help clients look inside for tools to embrace change, take healthy risks, and increase self-compassion. Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Guilt, Shame, and the Traumatized Client: Finding Release from Toxic Emotions

Although trauma can affect clients’ inner lives in countless ways, most survivors grapple with deep-seated feelings of guilt and shame. Until these powerful and debilitating emotions are specifically addressed, it’s difficult for clients to fully heal. In this recording, learn how to compassionately help clients understand the root causes of shame and guilt, and offer creative strategies for releasing themselves from the grip of these toxic emotions. You’ll explore: The difference between guilt and shame, and why shame is so difficult to resolve The specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame How secondary gain and “protective parts” affect clients’ willingness to let go of shame How to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance the two antidotes to shame: self-compassion and curiosity Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Techniques for Creatively and Compassionately Addressing the Impulse to Self-Harm and Relapse

Many clinicians still insist that clients sign and abide by a standard safety contract as a way to manage self-harm and addictive behaviors. This inevitably creates a power struggle between clients and therapists and forces clients to "white knuckle" their destructive urges without giving them alternative ways to navigate and process the deeper reasons why they turn to acts of self-destruction. This recording will offer therapists a viable alternative that helps to de-code the deeper trauma-based communication, metabolize emotions, access clients' creativity and self-compassion, while teaching them healthier ways to self-soothe that don't lead to an endpoint of guilt or shame. Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Techniques for Creatively and Compassionately Addressing the Impulse to Self-Harm and Relapse

Many clinicians still insist that clients sign and abide by a standard safety contract as a way to manage self-harm and addictive behaviors. This inevitably creates a power struggle between clients and therapists and forces clients to "white knuckle" their destructive urges without giving them alternative ways to navigate and process the deeper reasons why they turn to acts of self-destruction. This recording will offer therapists a viable alternative that helps to de-code the deeper trauma-based communication, metabolize emotions, access clients' creativity and self-compassion, while teaching them healthier ways to self-soothe that don't lead to an endpoint of guilt or shame. Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

Post Traumatic Growth: From Devastation to Hope

Although it’s important for therapists to help clients process the painful and often demoralizing effects of trauma, it’s also crucial to nurture their potential for new possibilities of healing through post-traumatic growth (PTG). In fact, learning respectful ways to plant seeds of hope and resilience can make all the difference when working with trauma survivors. In this workshop, you’ll explore: The tangible markers of PTG, such as new ways of relating to others, the rediscovery of personal strengths, and a newfound appreciation for life in general Specific strategies—including writing exercises, role-playing, art, and guided imagery—to help clients connect with the concept of PTG How to use somatic resourcing and remembered resources to access clients’ inner wisdom How to cultivate the possibility that insight and healing can occur even in the midst of painfully devastating experiences Read More

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CE Offerings

October 19, 2022

The Attachment Dance with Traumatized Clients: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

While every therapist understands that treatment is most effective when it unfolds within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, it’s often challenging to build a meaningful alliance with traumatized clients who turn therapy into an emotional roller coaster. This is even more challenging when therapists have their own attachment wounds. Through case examples, videos, and discussion, you’ll discover how to: Handle the impact of disorganized attachment and traumatic transference on the client-therapist relationship Recognize how your own attachment experiences can evoke countertransreferential responses that can influence therapy Integrate strategies that can strengthen attunement Apply approaches that address testing behaviors and increase secure attachment Read More

Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, DAPA, is a recognized expert in the strengths-based, de-pathologized treatment of trauma and has been in private practice for more than 35 years. She presents workshops and keynote addresses nationally and internationally, and is a clinical consultant to practitioners and mental health agencies in the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland. In 2009 she was voted the “Social Worker of Year” by the Maryland Society for Clinical Social Work. Lisa is the author of Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors: A Clinician’s Guide, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2014), Letting Go of Self-Destructive Behaviors: A Workbook of Hope and Healing (Routledge, 2014), and Finding Your Ruby Slippers: Transformative Life Lessons From the Therapist’s Couch (PESI, 2017).