Inside the Clinical Mind: Working with Distrust and Dissociative Defences

10 February 2026 | 7 pm UK | 90 minutes | Live Online | 1.5 CPD Hours

When closeness feels unsafe

In the treatment of complex trauma, safety itself can evoke fear.
Clients long for connection, yet instinctively retreat the moment it appears.

What looks like resistance is often the nervous system’s last-ditch attempt to stay alive — dissociative defences that once protected, now imprison.

This Mastery session invites you to enter the clinical mind of Kathy Steele — one of the world’s leading authorities on trauma-related dissociation — to understand how she assesses, stabilises, and gently shepherds clients toward trust when connection feels dangerous.

⭐ This Mastery evening is built around Kathy Steele’s definitive video course

Assessment and Therapeutic Work with Trauma-Related Dissociation

8h41m | 9 CPD Hours | 2-year access in the combined option

Across eight modules, this landmark training offers a complete roadmap to recognising and working with dissociative processes:

What the full video course covers

• How to identify dissociative structures without over-pathologising
• The practicalities of assessing amnesia, time loss, and internal voices
• Distinguishing ego states from dissociative parts — and why it matters
• The full three-phase treatment model Kathy helped define
• Techniques for stabilisation, pacing, and trauma-related phobias
• Systemic approaches to parts: cooperation, communication, “talking through”
• How to maintain therapeutic presence, boundaries, and regulation

This course is the clinical foundation.
The Mastery evening is the clinical application.

Together, they offer an unusually complete learning arc: theory, practice, moment-to-moment reasoning.

⭐ How the Video + Mastery Session Work Together

• The video course gives you Kathy’s structured, integrative model.
• The Mastery session shows how she thinks when the model meets the reality of the room.

You’ll watch her navigate:

• protective withdrawal
• fragmented internal systems
• implicit phobias of attachment
• rupture, repair, and relational pacing
• the therapist’s own somatic countertransference

It’s a rare opportunity to witness not just what she does, but why she does it.

⭐ Inside the Mastery Session

Clinical Orientation (10 min)

Why safety evokes fear, and how dissociation functions as protective withdrawal.

Live Case Exploration (40 min)

Kathy works through participant case submissions, illustrating how she assesses readiness, regulates distance, and builds cooperation among competing internal systems.

Clinical Commentary & Dialogue (30 min)

Real-time analysis of pacing, alliance management, attachment dilemmas, and the therapist’s own autonomic regulation.

Integration & Closing (10 min)

Practical takeaways + reflective prompts for supervision and future sessions.

⭐ You’ll come away with

✔ A clear framework for assessing dissociative structure and treatment readiness
✔ Strategies to build trust with clients who fear both safety and connection
✔ Techniques for navigating therapeutic impasse without rupturing the alliance
✔ Guidance for sustaining your own regulation and empathy
✔ Insight into balancing containment and exploration over the long arc of trauma therapy

⭐ About Kathy Steele

Kathy Steele, MN, CS, is a leading authority on complex trauma and dissociation, past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and co-author of Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation and The Haunted Self. Known for her clarity, warmth, and integrative clinical teaching, she has trained thousands of psychotherapists worldwide in advanced trauma treatment.

Join Kathy Steele for a live, in-depth exploration of how to recognise and work compassionately with the protective systems that make closeness feel unsafe — and learn how authentic connection becomes the foundation of integration.

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