From Trauma to Triumph: The Journey of Resiliency in the Community of Persons With a Disability

Everyone journeys through life with the same parts to their brain and ability to adaptively process information. With this in mind, we will take a scenic hike (view demonstrations, slides and client videos) exploring the world of persons with disabilities. The journey will start with developing a shared understanding of trauma and the many parallels between trauma and disability. We’ll investigate a few of the social models influencing our interpretation of folks with a disability. At our next stop we will outline important phase 1 questions to ask client’s around their membership to and experiences in cultures/communities from « how would you describe your disability » to what are some good things that have come out of being in the community of persons with a disability?. Our hike will continue to Phase 2 where we’ll explore ways to help clients find and utilize strengths, resources and positive experiences they have resulting from being in the community of those with a disability or any community. At our next stop we’ll tour some ways we have to provide clients accessibility to EMDR phases 3-8 in order to promote healing and build resiliency for clients with a disability.

Learning objective:

1. List at least 3 traumatic experiences that people with a disability are more susceptible to.
2. Identify 3 examples of ableism.
3. Apply RDI utilizing a positive experience a person has had as a result of being a member of the community of those with a disability.
4. List at least 3 ideas for making EMDR more accessible to clients with a disabilit.

Percentage of EMDR Content: 90%