Join SB CAMFT for our Fall CEU Luncheon
with
Dr. Deborah Smilovitz-Foster!
Mindfulness When Working With Children and Trauma: Further Understanding of How Intuition Works in the Therapeutic Setting
Theories of development suggest that psychologists who work with children experience a child to be naturally intuitive and scientific. Most studies, however, have not found the correlation between transference and neuropsychoanalysis, neuropsychological and cognitive behaviors, and levels of trauma in relation to intuitive capacity. There is a difference between children who have experienced severe trauma and those who experience mild/normal levels of trauma. Children are naturally intuitive, and those who have experienced severe trauma may have increased pathology and decreased intuitive capacity and exhibit behavioral manifestations of intuition in a skewed, hyper-vigilant, and sensitive manner. Intuition correlates with mutual emotional and cognitive responses in the psychotherapist. Children demonstrate that they intuitively know what they need to work on, where to go, and what path to follow, and have a greater capacity for intuition when having a mother present in their life (both psychologically and physically). These results further suggest that the relationship between intuition and transference is not separate and that intuitive response in the child relates to progress in therapy.
Learning objectives:
1. What is intuition and how does it affect overall health and psychological development?
2. Understanding from a neuropsychological perspective how trauma can affect the developing child.
3. How the therapeutic process of transference and intuition relate to progress in therapy.
4. Creating healing through mindfulness.
Deborah Smilovitz Foster, Ph.D., M.A. is an experienced, mental health practitioner for nearly twenty years. She teaches and gives talks as an authorized neuropsychology expert. Deborah has studied and worked with children for over 20 years as a nurse and teacher. Her research for 3-years at the internationally acclaimed Reiss-Davis Child Study and the Louis B. Mayer Treatment Center for kids provides a unique perspective and specialization in pediatric neuropsychology.
