Why is treatment planning so challenging in complex trauma cases?

The complexity of trauma work often requires clinicians to juggle multiple treatment goals, manage acute symptoms, and address coexisting mental health issues such as depression, substance abuse, or anxiety. A well-crafted treatment plan integrates these challenges, maintaining coherence while allowing for flexibility. Kathy Steele will guide participants in prioritizing treatment goals, balancing long-term objectives with the client’s immediate needs, and adjusting plans as the client’s capacity for engagement evolves.

Kathy will share a blend of general frameworks and specific interventions, all designed to keep therapy stable and adaptive, even in the face of ongoing crises or co-occurring disorders. Participants will explore how to build treatment plans that not only address trauma but also integrate the client’s current functioning, relational capacity, and emotional regulation skills.

Additionally, Kathy will discuss specific prognostic factors that influence the course of treatment, helping clinicians identify five key factors that support or hinder progress. These include the client’s level of dissociation, attachment patterns, and relational dynamics within the therapy itself, as well as skills deficits that prevent movement in therapy. Participants will learn to adapt treatment plans based on these factors, ensuring they remain responsive to the client’s evolving needs throughout therapy.

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Identify five key prognostic factors that influence treatment planning and understand how to assess these early in therapy.
• Set specific, achievable treatment goals that balance long-term objectives with clients’ immediate needs, ensuring treatment remains responsive to each individual’s unique capacity for progress.
• Apply three organizing principles for treatment planning that address comorbid challenges, help create stability, and guide therapy through a phased approach to trauma processing.

Learning Objectives:                                                                                                                

• Name five prognostic factors that impact treatment planning: taking into account essential factors such as the severity of dissociation, attachment patterns, emotional regulation capacity, comorbid conditions, and relational dynamics in therapy. Clinicians will learn how to assess and incorporate these factors into a flexible, yet structured, treatment plan.
• List goals of treatment for three clients: Using case examples, participants will explore how to set specific, achievable treatment goals tailored to clients with different trauma presentations. This will ensure that treatment plans are both responsive to the client’s immediate needs and mindful of their long-term healing process.
• Discuss at least three organizing principles of treatment planning: Kathy will introduce three key principles to guide treatment planning in complex trauma cases, including maintaining stability, addressing comorbid challenges, and pacing therapy in a way that avoids overwhelming the client. These principles will help clinicians maintain a clear therapeutic direction while remaining adaptable to their clients’ evolving needs.

As with other Clinical Pearls workshops, participants are encouraged to bring anonymized therapeutic dilemmas to the session. Kathy Steele will provide supervision and guidance on how to apply the principles of treatment planning to these real-world cases, helping participants refine their skills in creating stable, adaptive treatment plans.

By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of how to approach treatment planning in complex trauma cases, ensuring therapy remains stable, adaptable, and responsive to clients’ needs.

Kathy Steele’s approach is grounded in compassion, structure, and flexibility. Her expertise in managing the challenges of trauma therapy will equip clinicians with the knowledge and tools needed to keep treatment on track, even in the most complex cases.

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