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COMING EVENTS

NYCATT Monthly Forum 

NYCATT continues to plan new events and ways to enhance and grow our community. With that objective, we are pleased to announce a new series of gathering opportunities. The monthly sessions will each last 1.5 hours and will be conducted via Zoom on different days and times, presenting different options for members of the community to participate and learn from experts and distinguished guests. Stay tuned for further details.

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Upcoming Events 

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October Monthly Forum with Lorna Littner MPH LMSW

What Trauma Therapists Need to Know about Sexuality and What Interferes with Communication About It.

The session will begin with a brief discussion that explores the complexity of the concept of sexuality. We will reflect on the components of sexuality that reflect its true nature recognizing that it is multi-faceted, personal, and shaped by development. The session will then explore some of the common barriers that can make communication about sexuality difficult. We will look at practical ways to move through those barriers so these conversations can be more comfortable, concrete, and nonjudgmental. Finally we will share examples of sexuality related issues that have may have posed difficulty in the work and how they were handled.

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Our Presenter:

Lorna Littner MPH LMSW is a certified social worker and sexuality educator. She has taught in a variety of settings including public and private schools, undergraduate and graduate programs, child and family service agencies and community centers. In addition, she has served as a consultant to other educators and health care providers, aiding them to work together more effectively with clients when the issues they are working on are related to sexuality.

Most recently her work has been centered specifically on sexuality education for students with a range of cognitive disabilities and on training direct service and child and family service workers on issue of child sexual abuse.

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November Monthly Forum with Nancy Bravman LCSW

This two-hour workshop presents a range of options for integrating IFS into EMDR therapy. When EMDR becomes
stalled or derailed, there are often parts requiring attention and engagement.  Integrating parts’ perspectives and concerns allows EMDR to proceed at a safe and respectful pace, adding meaning and depth to the process. At times, integrating Self as an “attachment resource”, followed by IFS witnessing, retrieval and unburdening enhances Self-to-part connections and expands the pathways for healing.

Our Presenter:
Nancy Bravman LCSW is the Associate Director of NIP’s Integrative Trauma Program and a faculty
member of its Integrative Trauma and Psychotherapy Integration Programs. She is an EMDRIA (EMDR
International Association) approved Consultant, and a Certified IFS Therapist, with additional training in
Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Her psychotherapy practice is located on
the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and she offers 6-week courses in Internal Family Systems (IFS) for
therapists. www.nancybravmanlcsw.com

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December Monthly Forum with Irina Wen, PhD

Trauma Through the Lens of Attachment: What Every Trauma Therapist Should Know About Relationships

Trauma does not happen in isolation, and neither does healing. Our earliest attachment experiences shape how we experience safety, regulate emotions, and navigate closeness and vulnerability in relationships. Trauma can profoundly disrupt these capacities, often creating patterns of disconnection, emotional reactivity, and protective withdrawal.

In this workshop, we will explore the intersection of trauma and attachment through the lens of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), an experiential, attachment-based model of psychotherapy. We will examine how trauma shapes relational patterns, how attachment injuries and unmet needs contribute to emotional distress, and how intimate relationships can become both sources of threat and powerful resources for healing.

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Drawing on attachment science, EFT principles, and clinical examples, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to recognize and work with attachment dynamics in both individual and couples therapy. Particular attention will be given to identifying protective strategies, accessing underlying emotions and attachment needs, and fostering emotional safety and corrective relational experiences.

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Our Presenter:

Irina Wen, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in couple and relationship therapy and in the treatment of trauma, posttraumatic stress, and complex trauma. Her work integrates attachment theory with trauma-focused practice, and she has spent over a decade training clinicians to bring the two together.

Dr. Wen is the founder and clinical director of Touchstone Psychology, PLLC, a New York group practice specializing in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and attachment-based treatment for individuals, couples, and families. She is a certified EFT therapist and supervisor in both Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFCT) and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT), and serves as Executive Director of the New York Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy (NYCEFT).

She holds an academic appointment as Clinical Associate Professor at NYU Langone Health, where she helped establish the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Center and developed trauma-focused services for veterans and military families. She teaches, supervises, and consults widely on EFT, attachment, and trauma, and is known for a practical, clinically grounded teaching style. Across her clinical, training, and academic work, Dr. Wen continues to explore what it means to feel fully alive and safely connected to the people who matter most.

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January  Monthly Forum:  Ruth Cohn MFT
Too Much of Nothing: Recognizing and Understanding Neglect Trauma
This presentation shines a light on a client population largely overlooked by the trauma field, and thus glaringly underserved: survivors of early childhood neglect. Because these clients often lack narrative memory of an overwhelming event, they may believe “nothing” happened to them. In an important sense, that is precisely true: in early infancy, they subsisted in a void of essential attachment experiences. They may consequently present with
an identifiable symptom cluster without understanding its cause and can slip under the radar—unrecognized in their families, in the larger world, and even within the mental health and trauma field. The very act of being seen and recognized, and having their trauma recognized, named, and validated, can itself be a powerful intervention. Their most painful symptoms frequently emerge in the realm of relationship, accompanied by shame and a sense of responsibility for difficulties that seem to have no clear cause. This presentation will explore why “nothing” matters, introduce the basic neuroscience of neglect trauma, and help clinicians begin to recognize what to look for in clients whose histories may otherwise go unseen.  For more information and to register, click here:

Our Presenter: 
Ruth Cohn, MFT, is a psychotherapist living and practicing in the San Francisco Bay area. She
has been specializing in work with survivors of trauma and neglect, their intimate partners, and
families since 1988. She is a Certified Sex Therapist, certified in Neurofeedback, EMDR,
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and Imago Relationship Therapy. Ruth is also the author of
numerous articles on sexuality, trauma, and neglect and three books: Working With the
Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory
Techniques in Clinical Practice, Coming Home to Passion: Restoring Loving Sexuality in
Couples With Histories of Childhood Trauma and Neglect, and Out of My Mind: Late Night
Contemplations About Trauma and Neglect. Learn more at https://ruthcohnmft.com/

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Past Events:

September Monthly Forum with Abigail Nathanson, DSW

Grief is nearly universal in trauma therapy, yet many clinicians receive far more formal training in trauma than in the science and practice of grief. As a result, grief is often understood through a trauma lens, an approach that highlights important areas of overlap but can also obscure the unique processes of mourning. This workshop explored the similarities and distinctions between grief, Prolonged Grief Disorder, and PTSD, drawing on contemporary grief research and clinical practice to help clinicians develop a more nuanced framework for working with bereaved clients. For clinicians whose formal grief education began and ended with the five stages, or whose understanding of grief has been shaped primarily through clinical exposure, this workshop offered an opportunity to deepen their knowledge with the research, theory, and evidence-informed practices that have transformed the field over the past several decades.

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June Monthly Forum with Janina Fisher, PhD

Why does trauma result in fragmentation? Because traumatic experiences are too overwhelming to be tolerated or processed, especially by a child’s still developing brains. The mental ability of dissociation provides a way for children to mentally distance from what is happening. The child watches from a distance and observes what is happening to that other child. Fragmenting helps us to survive the moment and, in traumatic environments, becomes a chronic response to ongoing danger facing the individual every day. Understanding the effects of trauma rather than focusing on the events that caused them opens up a new pathway to healing even for survivors who have had many years of therapy. Rather than pathologizing trauma-related symptoms and the parts that carry them, the Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment approach emphasizes a mindfulness-based acceptance of the implicit memories of parts. By helping clients befriend their wounded, vulnerable parts and their darkest, most destructive parts, we can help them find wholeness, self-compassion, and healing.  To see the video of this and other events, click here:

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May Monthly Forum with Debra Ruisard, DSW

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study conducted in the 1990s established a correlation between traumatic childhood experiences and multiple mental and physical health issues including substance use disorders. Since then, ACEs research has been informing psychiatric and community interventions for trauma survivors. The substance use treatment field has been slower to adopt a trauma informed approach as this requires a paradigm shift in how we think about addiction and how we interpret and respond to the behaviors commonly seen in individuals with substance use disorders. Through the lens of complex trauma, this session included a trauma informed approach to addiction treatment to assist clinicians in creating trauma-sensitive environments and providing effective trauma-focused interventions. This presentation is a core module for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s Trainer Training Curriculum of the Complex Trauma Training Consortium.  To see the video of this and other events, click here:

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April Monthly Forum with Lana Epstein:  Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and EMDR

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy senior trainer Lana Epstein offered an engaging exploration of how Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing can be integrated to enhance trauma treatment. This forum examined how body-based awareness and bilateral processing work together to help clients safely process traumatic experiences and move toward healing. Participants gained an overview of key principles from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, learned practical strategies for integrating somatic and EMDR interventions, and discussed clinical considerations for working with PTSD. The forum included case examples and time for free discussion and exchange of ideas.

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​​​​​March Monthly Forum with Michelle Lepak and Gregory D. Carson:  Presence Psychotherapy

Presence Psychotherapy is a relationally-attuned trauma model that integrates spirituality with parts work and somatic inquiry.  Two Presence Psychotherapy articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals.  It has been named by both US News & World Report as an effective treatment for trauma and grief, and by Bruce Ecker in Unlocking the Emotion Brain, 2nd Ed. as an experiential modality that carries out memory reconsolidation.  Presence Psychotherapy is practiced in 6 countries. 

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In this workshop, the theory and practice of the model was introduced through didactic presentation, video demonstration, and experiential process.   To see the video, click here.

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​​​​February Monthly Forum with Hatti Figge:  Therapist as Embodied Instrument

This event was truly an exploration of what it truly means for us as therapists to be embodied in our

ourselves and our clinical practices; the value of and how we can cultivate grounded, present

relationships with ourselves, understand and use this awareness as a tool in our personal lives

and clinical work.  To view of a video of the event, click here: 

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Stay tuned for updates by becoming a member and following us on social media.
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