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GXC 2025 Online Virtual Conference - Mental Health Without Borders
Trauma: The Gruesome Conflict Between Radically Opposite Longings & Strivings
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Trauma: The Gruesome Conflict Between Radically Opposite Longings & Strivings
1.5 CE Hours
Intermediate
$50 - $125
Pricing
Information
Date & Time
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Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
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Describe the concept of longing and striving as foundational to all forms of life.
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Identify the problematic nature of metaphysical physicalism, idealism, and dualism.
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Explain how monism, in which mind and matter are regarded as attributes of a whole longing and striving ecosystem, resolves metaphysical troubles that haunt psychology to this day.
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Discuss how overcoming contradictory longings and strivings require the power to act.
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Identify at least 2 divided ecological subsystems that may be enacted by individuals who experienced neglect, maltreatment, or abuse by primary caregivers
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Infer how societal and interpersonal issues often stem from unresolved, conflicting longings and strivings.
Educational Goal
This session will enhance participants’ understanding of human functioning by introducing the concept of longing and striving as foundational to life, development, and trauma. Clinicians will advance their ability to conceptualize dissociation and trauma-related behaviors through an ecological, embodied, and integrative lens, supporting more nuanced and effective therapeutic interventions.
Description
Philosophers, notably including Aristotle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Ruyer, concluded that every form of life essentially involves a will to be, to become what it can be, and to preserve their existence. In other words, we long, and we strive. However, this drive to long and strive is also intrinsically intertwined with our umwelt, which is defined as the specific, subjective world as experienced by an individual organism, encompassing our unique sensory perceptions and interactions with its surroundings. This intrinsic intertwining of who we are as beings, including our drive to for longing and striving, and our umwelt form one whole ecological system.
When this ecosystem is confronted with contradictory elements, such as parents or primary caregivers who are supposed to support and protect but, instead, seriously and chronically harm them, this ecosystem becomes divided. As children navigate their primal nature to attach to their caregivers as well as their nature to defend against harm and preserve their existence, they potentially employ dissociative agents, such as overattaching to, defending, or avoiding a caregiver. This presentation will address how trauma therapy is the effort to overcome the gruesome conflict among radically opposite longings and strivings.
When this ecosystem is confronted with contradictory elements, such as parents or primary caregivers who are supposed to support and protect but, instead, seriously and chronically harm them, this ecosystem becomes divided. As children navigate their primal nature to attach to their caregivers as well as their nature to defend against harm and preserve their existence, they potentially employ dissociative agents, such as overattaching to, defending, or avoiding a caregiver. This presentation will address how trauma therapy is the effort to overcome the gruesome conflict among radically opposite longings and strivings.
Target Audience
- Addiction Professional
- Counselor
- Marriage & Family Therapist
- Nurse
- Physician
- Psychologist
- Social Worker
Presenters
Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, Ph.D., is a psychologist, researcher, and former psychotherapist. He engaged in the diagnosis, treatment and study of severely traumatized patients for more than four decades and teaches and writes extensively on the themes of trauma-related dissociation and dissociative disorders. He initiated several biopsychological studies of complex dissociative disorders. His publications (see www.enijenhuis.nl) include the book Somatoform Dissociation. With Onno van der Hart and Kathy Steele he co-authored the book The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization. A trilogy is The Trinity of Trauma: Ignorance, Fragility, and Control. With his daughter Kirande, he runs an eAcademy on trauma and dissociation. Nijenhuis has been one of the founders of the ESTD. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation granted him several awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Financially Sponsored By
- GXC Events - The Global Exchange Conference