Expert Panel: The pendulum swing: How trauma fragility fuels avoidance, determinism, and transference issues in counseling.

This presentation will look at how the recognition of trauma and its impact on a person has been groundbreaking to the evolution of psychology, psychotherapy, and addiction counseling. What we now understand in regards to the impact trauma has on the brain, and thus how it distorts a person’s perception and the way that they relate to the world (making them more vulnerable to self-destructive and addictive behaviors), has created a lens through which we can now conceptualize a client and better treat them. However, this presentation will also look at how an over identification with trauma, such as the idea of being a trauma survivor, without the integration of being a trauma thriver who moves beyond one’s traumatic experiences, can often lead people to be stuck in a pattern of determinism.