Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST Level 1): Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors
Janina Fisher · Ph.D.
This program has limited approval for both LIVE and DISTANCE LEARNING CEs. PLEASE CLICK ON THE SPECIFIC CE INFORMATION LINK BELOW FOR FULL PROFESSION/STATE DETAILS.
- Session 1May 8, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
- Session 2May 22, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
- Session 3Jun 5, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
- Session 4Jun 19, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
- Session 5Jul 10, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
- Session 6Jul 24, 20259-11am PDT2 CEs
For those who attend the live calls, this program has limited CE approval, on a per-session basis, for Live CEs for the following:
CEs ARE ONLY AVAILABLE TO PARTICIPANTS WHO ATTENDED THE LIVE CALLS FOR THE ENTIRE 2-HOUR DURATION.
THE LIVE CEs EXPIRE ON 8/30/2025
CE’s are included in the cost of the course.
Course Details
Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, former instructor at Harvard Medical School, board member of the Trauma Research Institute, and a patron of the John Bowlby Centre, as well as an international expert on the treatment of trauma and dissociation. She is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and the Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022). Best known for her work on integrating newer neurobiologically-informed interventions into traditional psychotherapy approaches, she is the co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015).
Childhood trauma, neglect, and failed attachment leave individuals with a legacy of overwhelming memories and emotions but also with a fragmented sense of self and a compromised nervous system that impairs the capacity to tolerate emotion or stress. Unaware that their intense feelings and reactions represent non-verbal implicit memories held by fragmented parts of the personality, these clients resort to desperate measures: addictive behavior and self-harm to numb the body or increase hyper-vigilance, suicidal ideation to restore a sense of control over painful emotions, dissociative and borderline responses of fight or flight when hurt, threatened, or rejected. Rather than offering a context for healing the effects of childhood trauma, therapy often becomes a crisis center whose goal it is simply to ensure the client’s safety.
The therapist is left with a quandary: how do we treat the underlying trauma when the client is unstable or unsafe, living from crisis to crisis, or caught in a revolving door of hospitals or treatment approaches? How do we acknowledge what has happened without opening up too much? The Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) model was developed to provide some hopeful answers to these puzzling and frustrating challenges. Based on theoretical principles drawn from the neuroscience research on trauma, TIST offers a treatment approach that combines mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, ego state techniques, and Internal Family Systems to address the challenges of treating clients with a wide range of diagnoses, including complex PTSD, borderline personality, bipolar disorder, addictive and eating disorders, and dissociative disorders.
Using a combination of didactic and experiential learning (demonstration, videotapes), participants will learn a new and promising model for treating trauma survivors that does justice to the traumatic past while stabilizing the ability to live a normal life here and now. When trauma symptoms are understood and treated neurobiologically as communications from young traumatized selves, even the most self-destructive, therapy-destructive, and de-stabilized clients become understandable and manageable.
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) Level 1
Pre-recorded Content
Agenda
The main points of the workshop are:
- Understand the relationship between trauma and structural dissociation
- Decoding crises and problems as internal struggles between parts
- Learning various methods for increasing a client’s mindfulness of parts
- Re-framing self-destructive behavior as a parts issue
- Using the social engagement system
- Developing the capacity for internal dialogue
- Teaching internal communication skills
Surviving trauma, especially when young, requires that individuals to rely on depersonalization responses that allow them to observe what is happening as if watching a movie. From that perspective, the child self-state observing the abuse is not the ‘bad’ child to whom it is happening. The observer can go on with life, while the abused child remains humiliated, frightened, and unafe. The effects of disowning and rejecting ourselves to survive have lifelong consequences, resulting in personality or dissociative disorders, unsafe behavior, and tumultuous relationships, including the therapeutic one. In this module, we will look at how the Trauma-Informed Stabilization model addresses this important issue and how to help clients understand themselves with compassion rather than shame and detachment.
Module 1 Agenda:
- Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST): Healing The Fragmented Selves (9 min)
- A Neurobiologically-Informed Understanding Of Trauma (20 min)
- How Trauma Results in Self-Alienation (15 min)
- Trauma and Structural Dissociation (28 min)
- Learning to Notice Signs of the Parts (28 min)
Overcoming internal fragmentation and self-alienation requires the ability to focus mindfully rather than ‘going with’ the flood of emotions and impulses survivors experience daily. Step-by-step instructions will help the therapist guide clients from impulsive actions and reactions to mindful awareness and increasing ability to be “with” themselves. Learning to relate to their intense distress as a communication from young traumatized parts changes their relationship to the strong emotions and tendencies to act out.
Module 2 Agenda:
- Recruiting the Client (23 min)
- Differentiating Parts and Speaking “Their” Language (22 min)
- Increasing the Clients’ Mindfulness of Parts (28 min)
- Blending & Unblending (26 min)
Research demonstrates the strong relationship between a history of trauma and the development of unsafe behavior, addictions, and eating disorders. This module focuses on how to help clients learn to relate to unsafe impulses as trauma responses driven by protector parts. Trauma-related cues in daily life stimulate fear and shame, driving fight and flight parts to desperate measures that bring short-term relief but recreate the unsafe environment of childhood. Understanding their intentions as protective often calms the system and allows clients to build the resources and skills they need to manage emotional overwhelm.
Module 3 Agenda:
- Decoding Crises and Problems as Internal Struggles (39 min)
- Positive Re-framing of Unsafe Behavior (23 min)
- Strengthening the Normal Life Part (21 min)
- Resourcing the Going On with Normal Life Part (31 min)
Physical, emotional and/or sexual trauma in childhood has a profound effect on attachment development, causing what researchers call ‘disorganized attachment.’ The child (and later adult )respond to the threatening environment with heightened yearning for closeness and fear of abandonment, alternating with fears of closeness and heightened mistrust. Separation anxiety alternates with pushing others away or fleeing from them. The intensity of these opposing drives is confusing and frightening for the client and often strains the therapeutic relationship. In this module, we will address how to deal with traumatic attachment as it complicates the treatment.
Module 4 Agenda:
- Disorganized Attachment (29 min)
- Disorganized Attachment and the Traumatic Transference (37 min)
- Right Brain to Right Brain Communication (22 min)
- Using the Social Engagement System (15 min)
- Fostering Client Attachment Parts (10 min)
The next challenge in the treatment is the development of internal collaboration between parts driven by conflicting survival responses. Self-destructive behavior is usually addressed behaviorally, but high relapse rates confirms the need to also treat the trauma and traumatized parts. Learning how to help clients change their relationship to unsafe thoughts and impulsive actions is a first step. Next, treatment requires an ability for internal dialogue and negotiation that results in increasing empathy for the parts and a willingness to deal with them creatively and compassionately. Safety becomes common ground where all parts can be welcomed.
Module 5 Agenda:
- Teaching Internal Communication Skills (39 min)
- Internal Compassion and Soothing (19 min)
- Providing Reparative Experiences to Parts (29 min)
- Rupture and Repair of Internal Attachment (24 min)
In this last module, we will focus on helping clients ‘repair’ rather than remember the past in order to resolve the legacy of trauma borne by each parts. As bonds of kindness and compassion are built internally, the parts’ intense reactivity diminishes, allowing clients to welcome home disowned parts and offer them a safe, loving internal environment. Rather than emphasizing ‘integration,’ this model focuses on internal collaboration and closeness, on the establishment of internal acceptance, forgiveness and safety. The client’s ability to attach to each rejected, disowned part with warmth and loving kindness becomes the healing antidote to the trauma.
- Complications in Treatment (32 min)
- The Therapist’s Role (26 min)
- From Internal Conflict to Integration (24 min)
- A Healing Ending to the Story (6 min)
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) Level 1
Live Session
Agenda
The main points of the workshop are:
- Understand the relationship between trauma and structural dissociation
- Decoding crises and problems as internal struggles between parts
- Learning various methods for increasing a client’s mindfulness of parts
- Re-framing self-destructive behavior as a parts issue
- Using the social engagement system
- Developing the capacity for internal dialogue
- Teaching internal communication skills
Overview – Surviving trauma, especially when young, requires that we disown the abused, humiliated child and try to be a child who is too ‘good’ to be abused. The effects of disowning and rejecting ourselves to survive have lifelong consequences, resulting in personality or dissociative disorders, unsafe behavior, and tumultuous relationships, including the therapeutic one. In this module, we will look at a trauma model that addresses this important issue and how to help clients understand themselves with compassion rather than shame and self-judgment. Session Content:
• Structural Dissociation – the more trauma, the more splitting to avert future threats (15 mins)
• TIST = using the medial prefrontal cortex to ‘heal’ the parts (15 mins)
• Learning parts language as a second language (15 mins)
• “Speaking the language” of parts (15 mins)
• The challenge of vulnerable parts (15 mins)
• The challenge of protector parts (15 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins) Live Zoom Session 2 – May 22, 2025 – 9-11am PDT – Foundational Skills for Trauma-Informed Stabilization – 2 Hours – 2 CEs
Overview – Overcoming internal fragmentation and self-alienation require the ability to focus mindfully rather than ‘going with’ the flood of emotions and impulses survivors experience daily. Step-by-step instructions will help the therapist guide clients from impulsive actions and reactions to mindful awareness and increasing their ability to be “with” themselves. Learning to relate to their intense distress as a communication from young traumatized parts changes their relationship to the strong emotions and tendencies to act out. Session Content:
• Signs and Symptoms of Internal Struggles (15 mins)
• Heighten mindful awareness by using the “Language of Parts” (15 mins)
• What to say: the language of the parts (15 mins)
• How the Parts Dominate: “Blending” (15 mins)
• Mindful “Unblending”: Unblending is a two-step process (10 mins)
• A Protocol for Unblending (10 mins)
• The Importance of Unblending (10 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins) Live Zoom Session 3 – June 5, 2025 – 9-11am PDT – Suicidality, Self-Harm, Addictions, and Eating Disorders – 2 Hours – 2 CEs
Overview – Research demonstrates the strong relationship between a history of trauma and the development of unsafe behavior, addictions, and eating disorders. This module focuses on how to help clients learn to relate to unsafe impulses as trauma responses driven by protector parts. Trauma-related cues in daily life stimulate fear and shame, driving fight and flight parts to desperate measures that bring short-term relief but recreate the unsafe environment of childhood. Understanding their intentions as protective often calms the system and allows clients to build the resources and skills they need to manage emotional overwhelm. Session Content:
• Re-framing self-destructive behavior as a parts issue (15 mins)
• When clients get “highjacked” by an unsafe part (15 mins)
• Communicating with Protectors (15 mins)
• Allying with Protectors (15 mins)
• Key Negotiating Strategies (15 mins)
• Strengthening the Normal Life Part (15 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins) Live Zoom Session 4 – June 19, 2025 – 9-11am PDT – The Challenge of Traumatic Attachment – 2 Hours – 2 CEs
Overview – Physical, emotional, and/or sexual trauma in childhood has a profound effect on attachment development, causing what researchers call ‘disorganized attachment.’ The child (and later adult) respond to the threatening environment with a heightened yearning for closeness and fear of abandonment alternating with fears of closeness and heightened mistrust. Separation anxiety alternates with pushing others away or fleeing from them. The intensity of these opposing drives is confusing and frightening for the client and often strains the therapeutic relationship. In this module, we will address how to deal with traumatic attachment as it complicates the treatment. Session Content:
• If the reactive impulsive nonverbal right brain is dominant (15 mins)
• If the client has a working PFC. (15 mins)
• If there is no working PFC (15 mins)
• How do we co-regulate fragmented, traumatized clients? (15 mins)
• Elements of co-regulation (15 mins)
• “Dyadic dancing” with clients (15 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins) Live Zoom Session 5 -July 10, 2025 – 9-11am PST – Developing Internal Communication and Collaboration – 2 Hours – 2 CEs
Overview – The next challenge in the treatment is the development of internal collaboration between parts driven by conflicting survival responses. Self-destructive behavior is usually addressed behaviorally, but high relapse rates confirm the need to also treat the trauma and traumatized parts. Learning how to help clients change their relationship to unsafe thoughts and impulsive actions is a first step. Next, treatment requires an ability for internal dialogue and negotiation that results in increasing empathy for the parts and a willingness to deal with them creatively and compassionately. Safety becomes common ground where all parts can be welcomed. Session Content:
• Internal communication (30 mins)
• Prioritizing relationships between the client and wounded parts (15 mins)
• “Direct access” work with parts (15 mins)
• Rupture and repair of internal attachment (10 mins)
• Attachment repair versus memory processing (10 mins)
• Resolving inner conflicts (10 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins) Live Zoom Session 6 – July 24, 2025 – 9-11am PDT – Healing the Fragmented Selves of Our Clients – 2 Hours – 2 CEs
Overview – In this last session, we will focus on helping clients ‘repair’ rather than remember the past in order to resolve the legacy of trauma borne by each part. As bonds of kindness and compassion are built internally, the parts’ intense reactivity diminishes, allowing clients to welcome home disowned parts and offer them a safe, loving internal environment. Rather than emphasizing ‘integration,’ this model focuses on internal collaboration and closeness and on the establishment of internal acceptance, forgiveness, and safety. The client’s ability to attach to each rejected, disowned part with warmth and loving-kindness becomes the healing antidote to the trauma. Session Content:
• Our ability to help is contingent (15 mins)
• Diagnosing the causes of difficulty with clients who are stuck (30 mins)
• If the client’s non-verbal right brain and parts are dominant. . . (15 mins)
• Challenges of working with a system, not an individual (15 mins)
• De-coding treatment blocks (15 mins)
• Q & A (30 mins)
TIST Level 1 – Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors
Learning Objectives
- Identify two indicators of client fragmentation and internal conflict.
- Describe how to psychoeducate clients on the relationship between trauma and their internal experiences.
- Explain two methods to foster client curiosity and interest in their inner world.
- Recognize the three ways fragmented parts of the self can manifest in clients.
- Demonstrate the application of mindfulness skills to observe and describe internal parts.
- Utilize the language of parts to facilitate clients’ mindful awareness of their self-states.
- Identify two client defensive responses that contribute to unsafe behaviors.
- Explain the impact of trauma on addictive and self-destructive behaviors.
- Apply three mindfulness-based techniques to support clients in observing impulses without acting on them.
- Employ two internal dialogue techniques to aid in stabilizing clients engaging in unsafe behaviors.
- Define and differentiate one characteristic of disorganized attachment.
- Describe two distinct intervention strategies for addressing symptoms associated with disorganized attachment.
- Identify two intervention strategies aimed at fostering internal secure attachment in clients.
- Articulate the principles of interpersonal neurobiology and social engagement techniques relevant to trauma treatment.
- Describe one method for eliciting client empathy towards their wounded child parts.
- Educate clients on the application of internal dialogue techniques for self-understanding and regulation.
- Summarize two key elements of somatic, visualization, and ego state techniques in resolving traumatic memories.
- Explain the concept of a “disconfirming experience” in the context of trauma recovery.
- Identify two distinct intervention strategies that promote self-compassion in clients.
- Identify three or more signs of disorganized attachment and traumatic transference.
- Describe how to assist clients in validating their trauma-related parts and experiences.
- Articulate the meaning of ‘integration’ as it relates to the treatment of splitting and fragmentation.
TIST Level 1 – Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors
Live Session Learning Objectives
Live Session 1
Identify (three) psychoeducational techniques for supporting clients to recognize and cultivate understanding of their own neurobiological responses to potentially traumatic events, including natural tendencies to attach for survival, to flee, to fight, to freeze and to submit.
Differentiate between left brain-dominant and right brain-dominant responses to trauma and identify how structural dissociation manifests in individuals with varying levels of trauma.
Name two defensive strategies employed by different parts of the personality in response to trauma and analyze how these strategies interact and trigger one another.
Live Session 2
Recognize three signs and symptoms of internal struggles in clients.
Apply a two-step technique for unblending and fostering empathy for different parts of the self in clients, enabling them to differentiate between their own feelings and those of their parts, as well as fostering a compassionate understanding of internal struggles.
Identify two reasons why unblending is so important when supporting your client.
Live Session 3
List three techniques for empowering clients to regulate their autonomic arousal in order to cultivate a nervous system state that is calm enough to support curiosity about their distressing experiences.
Explain how the use of parts language may help trauma survivors to view distressing experiences in the present as communications from parts that have naturally evolved to sequester or to protect the client from becoming flooded by memories of those overwhelming experiences.
Employ three coping techniques to use when clients get “highjacked” by an unsafe part.
Live Session 4
Integrate three components of “Dyadic Dancing” with clients so that they do not feel a loss of empathy when working with their parts.
List three somatic strategies the therapist can use to enhance the session.
Apply three elements of co-regulation during a session to enter a receptive, curious, open but attentive state.
Live Session 5
Apply three techniques for facilitating internal communication between clients and activated parts.
Explain the three phases of the Rupture and Repair of Internal Attachment cycle.
Explain the key difference between “attachment repair” versus “memory processing” as it pertains to IFS and Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST).
Live Session 6
Apply three diagnosing techniques to discover the causes difficulty with clients who are stuck and not progressing.
Identify two personal biases in therapy sessions, fostering a client-centered approach focused on meeting the client’s needs rather than imposing therapeutic goals.
Apply two strategies for de-coding treatment blocks when working with highly protective parts.
Intermediate mental health care practitioners.
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CostCEs for this training are included in the cost of the course.
Continuing Education credits offered:
Psychology: Not offered with this training.
Counseling:
Distance Learning: Academy of Therapy Wisdom has been approved by NBCC as an ApprovedContinuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7370. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program is approved for 10.5 CE Credit hours.
Live: Academy of Therapy Wisdom has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7370. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program is approved for 2 CE Credit hours for each live session for a possible total of 12 CE Credit Hours.
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relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approving Program, Authorization
Number D-10321.
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Live: Academy of Therapy Wisdom, Provider #1032323, is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, and LPCCs. Academy of Therapy Wisdom maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. This course meets the qualifications for 2 hours of continuing education credit per session for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
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