The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human & The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing

SESSION 1: The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human

We are living inside overlapping crises – institutional and systemic violence, climate crisis, political upheaval, genocides – while continuing to sit with others’ pain in the therapy room. For many clinicians and clients alike, the body is holding more than one lifetime of fear, rage, grief, and exhaustion. These responses are not signs of pathology; they are logical adaptations to sustained threat.

Together we will explore how trauma lives in the body during times of polycrisis, and how rage, shutdown, numbness, and grief function as protective and meaning-making responses. Together, we will reflect on how nervous systems respond to chronic uncertainty and moral injury, and how parts of us organize around survival, refusal, and care. We collectively will be invited to tend to our own bodies while exploring how to support clients in staying rooted in their full humanness – without bypassing despair or rushing toward resilience.

SESSION 2: The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing

Long before we have words, the body integrates a knowing of what we were given and what was missing. Our nervous systems organize around fundamental needs for place, safety, protection, support, nurturance, and limits – not as preferences, but as requirements for dignity and survival. When these needs are unmet, bodies adapt in wise ways, shaping patterns that are often mislabeled as pathology.

This workshop/webinar offers a contemporary, embodied framing of basic needs as both a developmental and transformation map. Drawing from somatic and parts-based perspectives, we will explore how unmet needs show up in the body, in relationships, and in our clinical work – especially for those shaped by familial, cultural, and systemic trauma. Through reflection, dialogue, and experiential practice, participants will be invited to sense into what was missing, honor the adaptations that emerged, and imagine what repair, countershape, and collective care might look like in a more just world.

Course Agenda

with Mariah Rooney, MSW, LICSW

Live Online Zoom Session 1 –  The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human – Friday, May 8th -9-10:30am PDT/12-1:30pm EDT/5-6:30pm BST

This session opens by grounding participants in their own bodies and in the collective reality of practicing during polycrisis. The session is rooted in an honest acknowledgment of what clinicians are carrying in their nervous systems, in their therapeutic relationships, and in their sense of meaning and purpose within the work and world. From this place, participants will explore theoretical frameworks that contextualize stress responses as adaptive rather than disordered, with particular attention to the roles of rage, grief, and shutdown as protective and meaning-making. The session integrates brief experiential practices throughout, designed to be clinically translatable. It closes with reflection on what it means to stay rooted in one’s full humanness without bypassing despair or rushing toward resilience and how to support clients in doing the same.

• Welcome, land acknowledgment, and somatic grounding practice (10 min) Orienting to the room/space; brief body-based arrival practice (breath, weight, contact with ground)
• Framing polycrisis: naming what we are living inside (15 min) Introduction to the concept of polycrisis; normalizing the weight clinicians carry; brief reflection prompt: What is your body holding right now?
• Nervous system responses to chronic threat: a polyvagal and somatic lens (15 min) Overview of dorsal/ventral/sympathetic activation; how systems organize around survival under sustained threat; distinction between acute and chronic/cumulative trauma
• Rage, grief, shutdown, and numbness as adaptive responses (15 min) Reframing these responses through a trauma-informed, somatic lens; how parts of the self organize around survival and refusal; brief large-group reflection
• Experiential practice: sensing the body in the context of crisis (15 min) Guided somatic awareness practice; pendulation between activation and settling; participants invited to notice without needing to resolve
• Moral injury, clinician burnout, and staying human in the therapy room (10 min) How sustained witness of suffering intersects with systemic violence and moral injury; the role of collective care and repair
• Closing reflection and integration (10 min) Dyadic or large-group reflection: What does your body need to stay rooted?; resourcing and closing grounding

Live Online Zoom Session 2 – The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing – Friday, May 22nd – 9-10:30am PDT/12-1:30pm EDT/5-6:30 BST

This session begins from the premise that the body holds a pre-verbal knowing of what it was given and what was missing – and that this knowing shapes how we move through the world, how we relate, and how we show up clinically. Rather than framing unmet needs as pathology or deficiency, the session offers a developmental and transformational map that honors the intelligence of adaptation. Participants will be introduced to a contemporary framework of basic needs and explore, through somatic inquiry and reflection, how these needs manifest in body patterns, relational templates, and clinical work – particularly for those shaped by familial, cultural, and systemic trauma. The session creates space to honor what was missing without collapsing into deficit, to recognize adaptive genius, and to imagine what genuine repair might look and feel like – in the body, in relationships, and in community.

• Welcome and somatic arrival practice (8 min) Brief grounding; orienting to the body as a site of knowing
• Introduction: what the body knows before language (10 min) The pre-verbal body; how needs are encoded somatically; why “basic needs” is a clinical and political frame, not just developmental
• A contemporary map of basic needs: safety, place, protection, nurturance, support, limits (15 min) Overview of the needs framework; how each need, when unmet, shapes nervous system organization and relational patterns; connection to familial, cultural, and systemic trauma
• Somatic inquiry: sensing what was missing (15 min) Guided embodied practice; participants invited to sense into one area of unmet need with care, curiosity, and appropriate pacing; option to journal or draw
• Adaptive patterns as wisdom: reframing “symptoms” (12 min) How the body’s adaptations are intelligent responses to unmet needs; parts-based lens on protective patterns; reframing clinical presentations through this lens
• Countershape, repair, and collective care (15 min) What “repair” means somatically and relationally; the concept of countershape what the body needed and didn’t get; the role of collective and community in meeting needs that individuals cannot meet alone
• Clinical application: using this map in the therapy room (10 min) How to introduce this frame with clients; somatic inquiries and parts-based questions; considerations for cultural humility and systemic awareness
• Closing integration and reflection (5 min) Brief closing practice; invitation to carry one thread forward

The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human

with Mariah Rooney, MSW, LICSW

Learning Objectives

Session 1: The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human

1. Participants will be able to identify at least 3 distinct nervous system responses to chronic threat (e.g., sympathetic activation, dorsal vagal shutdown, dissociation) and describe how each functions as a protective adaptation rather than a symptom of pathology.
2. Participants will be able to articulate 2 clinical reframes for rage and grief as meaning-making or protective responses, and apply at least one somatic inquiry to explore these responses with a client.
3. Participants will be able to name 3 signs of moral injury or cumulative stress in their own clinical practice and identify at least one embodied self-tending practice to support nervous system regulation during periods of polycrisis.

Session 2: The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing

1. Participants will be able to name and describe at least 4 of the 6 basic needs in the presented framework (safety, place, protection, nurturance, support, limits) and articulate how the unmet version of each shapes at least 1 somatic or relational pattern in clients.
2. Participants will be able to apply 2 somatic inquiry questions rooted in the basic needs framework when working with a client whose presentation suggests developmental or relational trauma.
3. Participants will be able to distinguish between at least 2 clinical presentations that are commonly pathologized (e.g., emotional dysregulation, avoidant attachment, chronic self-sufficiency) and reframe each as an adaptive response to an unmet fundamental need, using language accessible to clients.

For Intermediate mental health professionals, including Psychologists, Social Workers, LPCs, and LMFTs.

Continuing Education

This program offers limited Live CEs/Contact Hours.

Continuing education credit/Contact hours are awarded on a per-session basis, with full attendance required for the entire 90-minute duration.  There is no additional charge for the CEs.  Application forms and other required CE materials will be available to participants by the Academy of Therapy Wisdom.

NOTE:  To receive continuing education credit, applicants must complete all CE materials, comply with attendance regulations, and submit an evaluation form for the session attended. Information on how to obtain the CEs will be emailed to all participants who qualify within two business days of the live broadcast. It is the responsibility of the attendee to determine if CE credit/contact hours offered by Academy of Therapy Wisdom meet the regulations of their state licensing/certification board.  

Psychology:  This course does NOT provide CEs for Psychologists.

Counseling:

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 1.5 CE Credit Hours for each live session for a possible total of 3 CE Credit Hours.

NY State Social Workers: Academy of Therapy Wisdom is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Workers as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers. #SW-0814.

NY State Mental Health Counselors: Academy of Therapy Wisdom is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0285.

Marriage/Family Therapy: See below for CAMFT information.

This course is $49 per month. You can purchase it here.