Healthy Autonomy

Trauma and the Therapist: The art of the possible

As facilitators and therapists we are frequently in contact with traumatised and potentially traumatising fields. Whilst we know and understand more about the processes and effects of trauma on the human psyche, body and soul and on systems, do we know and attend to how working with traumata affects us as facilitator and therapist? How does vicarious traumatisation affect our relationships: with our self, our colleagues and with our ‘clients’? How effective are we at recognising our own, some would say, inevitable vicarious traumatisation? And what are the implications for our health and well-being?
Since 1994, when I began learning Constellations with Bert Hellinger, Hunter Beaumont and other international trainers and from 2005 learning with Franz Ruppert, I have rarely seen attention paid to the effects of this work on the facilitator. Yet, as therapists, we know our awareness of and attunement to the processes of counter-transference (the therapist’s response to the client) and vicarious traumatisation (the therapist’s response to the stories of trauma told by clients)
will inform our therapeutic interventions, enrich our work and protect ourselves and our clients.
As a facilitator and supervisor, these are some of the questions I am currently engaged with.
So I invite you to join me in exploring, for the facilitator, the potential consequences
of facilitating trauma and bonding constellations and how we attend to our own well-being.

Clare Kavanagh
I am a psychotherapist, in private practice, currently working in the UK and Croatia.
I bring to my facilitation my experience and training in various humanistic therapies
(Gestalt, Body Psychotherapy, Somatic Trauma Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy,
Constellations) as well as my interest in and study of attachment theory, neuroscience,
psychoneuroimmunology and meditation.
I am also a keen dancer, artist, musician and gardener.

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Tel. 0044 07704 098122

Traumaconstellations with children and juveniles
– opportunities and limits

Children and juveniles are mostly stronger integrated in their familiesystems then adults. They are in a real or subjectiv felt relationship of dependence to their parents depending on their age.
Children and juveniles, who are taken care of by the youthcare system, have to deal with an outside analytic view on their families and also have to develope their own critical opinion. In addition to their distraught situation they have to solve this specially tasks of development.

If social workers know about the theory of trauma- and psychological-splits developed by Franz Ruppert and are able to reflect the different personality structures of the young people, based on that modell, it can help the social worker to deal better with the processes of the young people.

In my workshop I want to describe and discuss how the constellation of the intention could be used in the work with children and juveniles and how results from the method of constellations on the basis of bonding and trauma by Franz Ruppert can be helpful in this kind of work. All based on my theoretical considerations and experiences in a residential youthcare unit.

Corinna Schürmann, born 1983
Diploma in Education, special education teacher for children with mental or physical handicaps, Mediator guideline BM, since 2010 participation on further education in multigenerational psycho-traumatology and the ‘constellation of the intention’ developed by Franz Ruppert, offered by Birgit Assel.

Currently working as a social worker in a residential youthcare unit in Hamburg.

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Tel: 0049 (0)170 8468766