Treating Complex Trauma (PDF)

This forward-thinking volume outlines several approaches to therapeutic treatment for individuals who have experienced complex childhood and adult trauma, providing a framework for helping challenging patients and emphasizing the importance of maintaining good therapeutic relationships. Responding to the intense disagreement and competition among clinicians championing their own approaches, the book identifies the strengths and limitations of multiple theories of treatment, addressing the need for qualified clinicians to be versed in multiple theories and techniques in order to best benefit their patients.

Among the topics discussed:

• Difficulties in diagnosing cPTSD among other similarly presenting disorders
• Cultural and ethnic considerations in trauma treatment
• Addressing avoidance when talking to patients
• Maintaining the therapeutic relationship with aggressive patients

Treating Complex Trauma:Combined Theories and Methods serves as a practical guide for therapists looking to applying multiple approaches in their practice, with the aim of providing the most effective treatment strategy possible for each individual.

"Dr. Tamara McClintock Greenberg provides perspicacious insight and clinical wisdom only a seasoned career therapist can yield. Offering sophisticated and nuanced distinctions between complex trauma and PTSD, she shows how treatment is necessarily contextual and tailored to the unique clinical and personality dynamics of the sufferer that is thoroughly client specific within the therapeutic dyad."

"Dr. Greenberg has written an invaluable book on treating complex trauma. She delves into multiple approaches, assessing what techniques the client can tolerate at a given therapeutic stage. She covers how to maintain consistency and connection through a flexible approach and avoid pitfalls. This is a must read for clinicians wishing to treat clients with complex PTSD."

--Louann Brizendine, MD, Clinical Professor UCSF; author of The Female Brain