Prenatal Trauma, Dissociation & Bonding: Cultivating Growth with the Calming Womb Model

This session is available for 1.5 APA and ASWB credits.

Abstract
Do you ever find yourself stuck or curious about how to engage in clinical work with client’s who are pregnant and have simultaneous unresolved histories of trauma and dissociation? This presentation endeavors to highlight how experiences of unresolved trauma and dissociation in pregnant clients often remains hidden as a result of defensive adaptations, thus leaving trauma unseen, unknown, and untreated. Research and practice has illustrated that unresolved trauma and dissociation in pregnant client’s prior to their childrearing years impacts prenatal bonding, the obstetric experience, and the ability to parent children in a mindful, attuned manner. This presentation will provide practitioners with an exploration into the importance of assessment and screening to identify unprocessed trauma in new parents, followed by a presentation of a model called the Calming Womb Family Therapy Model (CWFTM). The Calming Womb Family Therapy model can be integrated into different therapeutic modalities, carefully integrates the results of trauma and dissociation screening tools/questionnaires into case conceptualization and treatment planning, and offers trauma informed interventions and collaborative care to support and nurture relational attunement with parents and babies from the moment of conception through the first year after birthing. The overall goal of this presentation is to offer treating clinicians with tools to engage in early screening and assessment of trauma and dissociation, as well as a model for treatment and healing to prevent the transmission of intergenerational trauma, as a result of exposure to traumatic experiences that span childhood maltreatment, rape and sexual assault, unwanted/unplanned pregnancy, relational tragedy, unresolved obstetric traumatic misattunement, birthing trauma, and familial/cultural/migratory stressors.