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Navigating Extreme Avoidance and Amnesia in Complex Trauma Therapy: Video Course

Navigating Extreme Avoidance and Amnesia in Complex Trauma Therapy: Video Course
Part of the Clinical Pearls Series with Kathy Steele
How do you help clients break through the powerful barriers of avoidance and amnesia? What strategies are most effective when working with trauma survivors who feel disconnected from their own memories?
Avoidance and amnesia are hallmark features of trauma-related disorders, especially in Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders. While these defenses protect clients from overwhelming emotional pain, they also create significant obstacles to healing.
For discounted tickets for the full four parts of these training series please visit: A Practical Guide Through Complexity: Clinical Pearls and Supervision Series 2025
Video course packs, including all notes are available immediately on booking. The access links are part of your ticket. Online video access remains available for 1 year from the date you receive the video course.
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£ 72.00

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In this Clinical Pearls workshop, led by internationally recognized trauma expert Kathy Steele, participants will explore practical strategies for addressing extreme avoidance and amnesia in highly dissociative clients. Drawing on decades of clinical experience and the latest research, Kathy will guide clinicians in working with these entrenched defense mechanisms, all while respecting the psychological and emotional limits of their clients.
What challenges will you explore?
Extreme avoidance can appear as a significant therapeutic block, with clients steering away not just from memories but also from emotions, thoughts, and external triggers related to trauma. These avoidance patterns can range from subtle emotional withdrawal to overt behavioral disengagement, severely hampering the therapeutic alliance.
Amnesia presents another layer of complexity in therapy. Clients with dissociative disorders often experience gaps in autobiographical memory, leaving them disconnected from key life events or unable to recall significant aspects of their trauma. Navigating these fragmented narratives requires a sensitive and flexible approach, creating a therapeutic environment that encourages safe exploration without overwhelming the client.
In this workshop, you will learn how to:
- Recognize and identify various forms of avoidance and amnesia commonly seen in trauma survivors.
- Develop strategies for addressing emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and relational avoidance without retraumatizing clients, using approaches such as incremental exposure and grounding techniques.
- Gain insights into the neurobiological underpinnings of dissociation and how it serves as a protective mechanism, shielding clients from overwhelming traumatic memories.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify at least four strategies to work with extreme avoidance: Apply practical interventions tailored to different forms of avoidance, including emotional, cognitive, and behavioral avoidance. Explore methods like incremental exposure, grounding techniques, and co-creating ‘safe spaces’ that empower clients to begin processing repressed or dissociated content.
- Assess the reasons for severe dissociation and recognize threads of awareness beneath amnesia: Discuss how dissociation acts as a protective shield and discover how to detect subtle cues of awareness that persist beneath the amnesia, allowing clients to gradually reconnect with their fragmented experiences.
Participants will have the opportunity to bring anonymized therapeutic dilemmas to the workshop for direct supervision. Kathy Steele will offer practical guidance on how to apply workshop principles to real-life cases, giving attendees personalized insights on managing extreme avoidance and dissociative amnesia in their clients.
By pacing therapeutic interventions according to the client’s capacity for processing traumatic material, clinicians will learn to avoid retraumatization while fostering a safe, supportive therapeutic relationship.
Kathy Steele’s approach emphasizes compassion, patience, and deep respect for the client’s adaptive mechanisms. Her expertise in trauma therapy makes this workshop a valuable opportunity for clinicians seeking to enhance their skills in working with extreme avoidance and amnesia. Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how to approach these challenging symptoms, equipped with practical tools to apply in their clinical practice.
© nscience UK, 2024 / 2025
What's included in this course
- Presented by world-class speaker(s)
- Handouts and video recording
- 3 hrs of professionally produced lessons
- 1 year access to video recorded version
- CPD / CE Certificate
- Join from anywhere in the world
In this Clinical Pearls workshop, led by internationally recognized trauma expert Kathy Steele, participants will explore practical strategies for addressing extreme avoidance and amnesia in highly dissociative clients. Drawing on decades of clinical experience and the latest research, Kathy will guide clinicians in working with these entrenched defense mechanisms, all while respecting the psychological and emotional limits of their clients.
Learning objectives
- Identify at least four strategies to work with extreme avoidance: Apply practical interventions tailored to different forms of avoidance, including emotional, cognitive, and behavioral avoidance. Explore methods like incremental exposure, grounding techniques, and co-creating ‘safe spaces’ that empower clients to begin processing repressed or dissociated content.
- Assess the reasons for severe dissociation and recognize threads of awareness beneath amnesia: Discuss how dissociation acts as a protective shield and discover how to detect subtle cues of awareness that persist beneath the amnesia, allowing clients to gradually reconnect with their fragmented experiences.

Kathy Steele, MN, CS has been treating complex trauma, dissociation, and attachment issues since 1985. She is in private practice with Metropolitan Psychotherapy Services and is Adjunct Faculty at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Ms. Steele is a Past President and Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) and has also previously served on the Board of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS). She has been involved with developing treatment guidelines for Dissociative Disorders and well as for Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Ms. Steele has received a number of awards for her work, including the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award from ISSTD, an Emory University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006, and the 2011 Cornelia B. Wilbur Award for Outstanding Clinical Contributions. She is known for her humour, compassion, respect, and depth of knowledge as a clinician and teacher, and for her capacity to present complex issues in easily understood and clear ways using an integrative psychotherapy model that draws from both traditional and somatic approaches. She is sought as a consultant and supervisor, and as an international lecturer.
She has co-authored three books as part of the acclaimed Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology: The Haunted Self: Structural dissociation of the personality and chronic traumatization (2006, Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele – W. W. Norton); Coping with trauma-related dissociation: Skills training for patients and therapists (2011, Boon, Steele, & Van der Hart – W. W. Norton); and most recently, Treating trauma-related dissociation: A practical, integrative approach (2017, Steele, Boon, & Van der Hart – W. W. Norton). She has also (co)authored numerous book chapters and journal articles.
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