Understanding Trauma Three-day short series on ACEs

Talk Title: Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivorsHealing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation and attachment with a pratical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Chronic traumatisation often leads to self-alienation and self-destructive impulses, necessitating techniques that resolve internal conflicts and evoke self-compassion. Janina's Full bio: Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a Board member of the Trauma Research Foundation, a patron of the John Bowlby Centre, and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School.  An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017) and Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: a Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021).  She is best known for her work on integrating newer neurobiologically-informed interventions into traditional psychotherapy approaches.   More information can be found on her website: www.janinafisher.com.

Talk Title: The impact of childhood experiences on adults health and wellbeing Dr. Felitti is the co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study. ACE is a major, ongoing, retrospective and prospective study involving over 17,000 middle-class Americans. The study looks at categories of adverse childhood experiences and their relationship to adult health, well-being and social functioning. The Adverse Childhood Effects (ACE) Study has major implications: all patients should be routinely screened for adverse childhood experiences; a childhood trauma history may be very relevant to both serious illness and vague somatic complaints; and appropriate approaches to treatment must include dealing with childhood trauma. Additional data suggest that evaluating patients for ACEs is also cost-effective. According to data collected from over 17,000 Kaiser patients, adverse childhood experiences, though well concealed, are unexpectedly common, have a profound negative effect on adult health and well-being a half century later, and are a prime determinant of adult health status in the United States. Founding Chairman, Department of Preventive Medicine, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, San Diego, California; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California Vincent Felitti Full Bio: Vincent J. Felitti is co-Principal Investigator of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, ongoing collaborative research between Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control. A 1962 graduate of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Felitti is an Infectious Disease internist who founded the Department of Preventive Medicine for Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, California in 1975. He served as Chief of Preventive Medicine until 2001. Under Dr. Felitti’s leadership, the Health Appraisal Division of the department became the largest single-site medical evaluation facility in the world, providing comprehensive, biopsychosocial medical evaluation to a total of 1.3 million individual adults. During his career, he developed major health-risk abatement programs for obesity, smoking, the genetic disease Hemochromatosis, and for somatization disorders. These programs are provided to over 1,000 patients per month in San Diego. Dr. Felitti is Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Talk Title: The Power of Everyday Heroes Jaz shares her powerful journey of how a child survives when the system fails. Jaz's resilience drove her from appalling abuse at the hands of her parents to running away from foster care and life as a teen on the streets, to advising governments and speaking internationally. Jaz has a disarming ability to share her story with humour and humility and without anger or bitterness. Jaz will share how healing can span generations. Jaz lives out her words around risk taking and resilience as her career (all while raising three children) are testament to. Jaz gives you the feeling you can do the impossible so that the next time you face adversity and challenge, you’ll be ready. Jaz Ampaw-Farr's Full Bio: It would be easy to say, you’ve never met anyone like Jaz before.  Her passion for the potential we can uncover in ourselves when we are just 2% braver and her insight into how to remove the barriers that hinder connection between us and those we seek to influence make Jaz one of those people you will never forget.   Jaz’s story is one of growing up in the midst of most appalling abuse, poverty and hardship during which she encountered five teachers (and, importantly, one pimp) whose belief in her literally saved her life.   She shares her fantastic journey of how saying yes first allowed her to progress from council estate and foster care to advising international governments on education policy.   There are many messages leaders take away from listening to Jaz as she shares her story across the UK, in the US (where she’s being called ‘The British Oprah’!) and elsewhere. Clearly, the impact that we have to transform lives comes through loud and clear but there is more to it than just that.   Jaz also embodies the idea of bravery and the willingness to be defined by what you’ve tried even if you fail, rather than by what you could have done.   Both her (very) brief stint on TV’s The Apprentice and her career as a stand up comedian are good examples of this. And she shows that a human being can be subject to the worst depravities of her fellow humans and not only survive, but thrive – and do so without anger or bitterness.   It is true, we are more than our stories, and Jaz shares ideas and insights from her life in her work with leaders and educators with humour, energy, honesty and an unswerving optimism in people and in authentic connection in particular.  Full of practical advice, her message is neatly summed up in her own words to those five teachers from her past and the title of her best selling book - Because Of You - This Is Me..