• Do you understand your patient’s clinical presentation from a brainstem-based perspective?
• Do you know what core subcortical networks may have been sensitised due to developmental timing of early life shock and trauma?
• How might this impact on the capacity to turning towards the core pain underlying early life shock when processing traumatic experience.

In most therapeutic modalities, case conceptualisation, formulation, and treatment planning are rarely framed within the context subcortical brain systems.  Yet this is critical if we are to understand how early life shock and developmental trauma sensitises core brainstem-based networks linked to the formation of connection and the strategic organisation of attachment.  In this workshop you will be introduced to brainstem-based case conceptualisation.  Our aim is to consider two overlapping themes: first, how early life shock is organised within brainstem-mediated processes and how this can be identified with clinical precision; and second, how this understanding directly informs case conceptualisation and therapeutic scaffolding in preparation for trauma processing.  This will help to enable practitioners to work in ways that are aligned with the underlying functional organisation of brainstem-based systems rather than relying on more generalised ‘Window of Tolerance’ frameworks.