Intergenerational Trauma Conference
If trauma can be passed down through the generations, so can healing.
Break the Cycle for the next generation.
19th & 20th January 2021
If trauma can be passed down through the generations, so can healing.
Break the Cycle for the next generation.
19th & 20th January 2021
The 2nd Intergenerational Trauma Conference will take place, virtually, on 19th and 20th January 2021 .
This important international event brings together world-leading authorities and experts in the field of intergenerational trauma and trauma recovery. Understand and be aware of the many factors surrounding intergenerational trauma and look deeper into inherited behaviours and epigenetics. As trauma is passed down from generation to generation, the impact it has on the expression of our genes can be hugely significant. This new field of study uncovers the roots of pain so that present generations may be healed and future generations might not be impacted.
The Intergenerational Trauma Conference will have a global reach, will give practitioners the latest knowledge and understanding and empower you to “Break the Cycle” and deliver positive outcomes for future generations. Open your mind and understand the effects of intergenerational trauma, along with the methods of treatments and processes for healing.
Public Speaker, Post conflict/atrocity mental health specialist
Peter is The Director of The Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies located at Keene State College, New Hampshire.
Having worked in Northern Ireland for most of his career, he is a post conflict/atrocity mental health specialist with a wide range of skills and experience in the development of mental health and wellbeing services after community experiences of ethnically motivated violence, atrocities and genocide.
He has worked on the influence of trauma on the capacity of individuals, groups and communities to engage in peace-making and reconciliation processes, concluding that the characteristics of the experience of trauma - specifically large group experience - mitigates against successful reconciliation processes.
He has most recently worked with USAID in South Sudan training frontline staff on the role of trauma in atrocity prevention, and works regularly with the Auschwitz Institute for The Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocity in their international training programmes.
He was the founder, 20 years ago of Carecall, now called Inspire Workplaces, which is the largest provider of workplace wellbeing services in Ireland. Peter was Group CEO of Inspire for the past 10 years until 2019.
Peter has held multiple public chairmanships including two government roles, one dealing with openness and transparency across the health service following the hyponatremia inquiry, the other dealing with the legacy issues of the Magdalene laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. He was the chair of NICVA, and Million & Me - a BBC Children in Need initiative to improve the mental health of young people across the UK.
Peter is a well-known conference and public speaker on these issues both locally and internationally.
Resilience Ninja, Writer, Speaker and Consultant
It would be easy to say, you’ve never met anyone like Jaz before.
Her passion for the potential we can uncover in ourselves when we are just 2% braver and her insight into how to remove the barriers that hinder connection between us and those we seek to influence make Jaz one of those people you will never forget.
Jaz’s story is one of growing up in the midst of most appalling abuse, poverty and hardship during which she encountered five teachers (and, importantly, one pimp) whose belief in her literally saved her life.
She shares her fantastic journey of how saying yes first allowed her to progress from council estate and foster care to advising international governments on education policy.
There are many messages leaders take away from listening to Jaz as she shares her story across the UK, in the US (where she’s being called ‘The British Oprah’!) and elsewhere. Clearly, the impact that we have to transform lives comes through loud and clear but there is more to it than just that.
Jaz also embodies the idea of bravery and the willingness to be defined by what you’ve tried even if you fail, rather than by what you could have done.
Both her (very) brief stint on TV’s The Apprentice and her career as a stand up comedian are good examples of this. And she shows that a human being can be subject to the worst depravities of her fellow humans and not only survive, but thrive – and do so without anger or bitterness.
It is true, we are more than our stories, and Jaz shares ideas and insights from her life in her work with leaders and educators with humour, energy, honesty and an unswerving optimism in people and in authentic connection in particular.
Full of practical advice, her message is neatly summed up in her own words to those five teachers from her past and the title of her best selling book - Because Of You - This Is Me..
Professor, Lecturer, Psychologist, Author.
Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D. is a Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, and Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
She is also the Mental Health Director at the Bronx Veterans Affairs.
Dr. Yehuda is a recognized leader in the field of traumatic stress studies and has authored hundreds of papers and 10 books in the field of traumatic stress and the neuroscience of PTSD.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and federal grants. Her current interests include PTSD prevention and innovative approaches to treatment, the study of risk and resilience, epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of trauma and PTSD.
She has recently established a Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at Mount Sinai.
Professor, Author, Consultant
Dr Kenneth V. Hardy is a Clinical and Organisational Consultant at the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York, NY where he also serves as Director. He provides Racially Focused Trauma Informed training, executive coaching, and consultation to a diverse network of individuals and organisations throughout the United States and abroad. He is a former Professor of Family Therapy at both Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Syracuse University in New York, and has also served as the Director of Children, Families, and Trauma at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York, NY.
He is the author of:
- Culturally Sensitive Supervision: Diverse Perspectives and practical Applications
- Promoting Culturally Sensitive Supervision: A Manual for Practitioners
- Revisioning Family Therapy: Race, Class and Gender
- Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Strategies for Breaking the Cycle of Youth Violence
In addition to his consultation work, Dr Hardy is a frequent conference speaker and has also appeared on ABC's 20/20, Dateline NBC, PBS, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Founder and Director of Children in Crossfire
Richard’s story is an example of where triumph overcomes tragedy. As a young boy Richard had a tragic experience which resulted in his life changing forever. However he did not allow this experience to hold him back and has gone on to live an inspiring and fruitful life. He has been recognised globally for his charity work:
Richard is described by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as ‘His Hero and Friend’.
Psychiatrist, Author, Consultant
Dr Felicity de Zulueta is an Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Traumatic Studies at Kings College London.
She developed and headed both the Department of Psychotherapy at Charing Cross Hospital and the Traumatic Stress Service in the Maudsley Hospital which specialises in the treatment of people suffering from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using therapeutic modalities appropriate to each person’s culture and personality.
Born in Colombia, and brought up in 5 different countries spanning 4 continents, she studied biology and medicine in the UK.
Dr Felicity de Zulueta trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, systemic family therapy, group analysis, EMDR and Lifespan Integration.
She has published papers on the subject of bilingualism and trauma from an attachment perspective and is author of the book From Pain to Violence; the traumatic roots of destructiveness (Wiley-Blackwell; 2nd Edition, 2006).
She works as a freelance consultant psychotherapist and is now involved in developing setting up the London ACEs Hub to promote the study of ACEs and the application of trauma informed care.
Author, Speaker
~Dr. Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John M.A (hon.doc) is the award winning author, and is one of the new leading African Descent voices in the field of Mindfulness Approaches for Addiction. Co-founder of Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery MBAR an 8 week secular course for people with addictions and compulsive behaviours, and co-founder of 8 Step Recovery, Using the Buddha’s Teachings to overcome addiction, which is also an award-winning book. She tours internationally giving keynote talks, and training professionals in Mindfulness approaches for addiction. She is the President of the international organization Buddhist Recovery Network, BRN, and the chair of Triratna Vancouver Buddhist Centre.
An award- Author of 9 books, her most recent published 2020, I am Still Your Negro An Homage to James Baldwin, a timely book, and is currently editing an An Anthology. Afrikan Wisdom: New Voices Speak Black Liberation, Buddhism and Beyond.
Director of The Family Constellation Institute, Author and Speaker
Mark Wolynn is the director of The Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco, and is a leading expert in the field of inherited family trauma. A sought-after lecturer, he teaches at hospitals, clinics, conferences, universities and teaching centers around the world, including the University of Pittsburgh, the Western Psychiatric Institute, Kripalu, The Omega Institute, The New York Open Center, 1440 Multiversity, JFK University, and The California Institute of Integral Studies. Mark specializes in working with depression, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, fears, panic disorders, self-injury, chronic pain and persistent symptoms and conditions.
His book IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Viking/Penguin) is the winner of the 2016 Nautilus Book Award in psychology and has been translated into 19 languages . His articles have appeared in Psychology Today, Mind Body Green, MariaShriver.com, Elephant Journal and Psych Central, and his poetry has been published in The New Yorker
University Scientist, Professor, Polyvagal Theory Neuroscientist
Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is a distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium.
He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland.
He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioural & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award.
He has published more than 300 peer‐reviewed scientific papers across several disciplines that have been cited in more than 30,000 peer-reviewed papers. He holds several patents involved in monitoring and regulating autonomic state.
He is the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral, mental, and health problems related to traumatic experiences.
He is the author of The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation (Norton, 2011), The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe, (Norton, 2017) and co-editor of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Emergence of Polyvagal-Informed Therapies (Norton, 2018).
He is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol ™ , which currently is used by more than 1500 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing, state regulation, and spontaneous social engagement.
Consultant Forensic and Clinical Psychologist
Dawn is a Consultant Forensic and Clinical Psychologist, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and an Accredited Psychotherapist.
She has worked in both the public and private sectors for over 20 years where she gained extensive experience of working with people who have experienced trauma. She previously owned and worked as clinical lead in a private psychiatric hospital that specialised in working with people with a history of complex trauma, and has designed trauma informed rehabilitative interventions for forensic settings.
She developed and delivers BPS accredited training to organisations in trauma-informed/responsive practice and regularly supervises other therapists working in the trauma field.
Dawn is a firm believer in the relational aspect of healing, with a focus on working within a blended framework of neuroscience, somatic-cognitive connection, respect, trust, collaboration and intuition.
Dawn has found ILF Neurofeedback to be a powerful psychotherapeutic tool that successfully addresses a range of mental health problems, including severe dissociation and believes it has been a “game changer” in her psychotherapeutic practice.
Writer, Therapist and Lecturer
Judith Simon Prager, PhD, is a writer, therapist, lecturer, and award-winning instructor in the UCLA X Writers’ Program. She has trained physicians, nurses, first responders, and counsellors in the protocol she co-developed called Verbal First Aid™, lecturing across the United States and around the world.
Her books include The Worst Is Over: What to Say When Every Moment Counts (co-authored with Judith Acosta, LISW), and her latest, What The Dolphin Said.
Contemporary Psychotherapist
Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called “parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s.
IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and and classrooms.
In 2013 Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Founder and CEO, Lightwork
Founder and CEO, Lightwork: A charity with a mission to give everyone the knowledge, tools and skills to sail through life’s storms, flourish and thrive.
Kerry has more than 20 years’ frontline experience supporting people through emotional crises, life transitions and trauma recovery. Kerry has worked in residential and community support with Womens Aid, Simon Community and Community Family Support Teams. Accredited by CPCAB and QQI as a life coach, she is an EFT Advanced practitioner and trainer with a busy private practice working with young people and families, foster carers and staff teams.
Being by nature, innovative and solution focused, she became frustrated and alarmed at the escalating crisis in young people’s mental health in Northern Ireland.
Kerry is a firm believer in the power of experiential learning to change behaviour: Repeated use of a regulation technique, with scientific understanding and biofeedback has the power to change the impulsive, unhealthy choices young people make by offering a viable, reliable alternative they can trust. In 2018, she founded Lightwork and created a preventative programme for young people, to give them the knowledge tools and skills we all need for social and emotional health. Qualitative research, underpinning an evidence and logic model were developed in collaboration with Queens University Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation and she is excited to present it at the conference
Author, Speaker
Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma, which he has developed during the past 50 years. He is the Founder of the Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Institute/Foundation for Human Enrichment and the Founder and President of the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education™. His work has been taught to over 50,000 therapists in over 45 countries. Dr. Levine served as a stress consultant for NASA in the early space shuttle development and has served on the American Psychological Association task force for responding to the trauma of large-scale disasters and ethnopolitical warfare. He holds doctorates in both Biophysics and Psychology and is the author of several best-selling books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, which is published in over 29 languages. He is currently a Senior Fellow and consultant at The Meadows Addiction and Trauma Treatment Center in Wickenburg, Arizona and continues to teach trauma healing workshops internationally.
Develop professionally through CPD Accreditation
Learn from 13 world-renowned trauma experts
A rare opportunity to interact with world-leading experts
Participate in 5 different workshops
Providing systems of support for delegates
Network and make connections with professionals around the world
Please Note: Times listed below are in UK time. You can convert these to your local timezone here.
Please note the conference schedule may be subject to change.
Clive Corry
Director & Founder of Action Trauma
Peter McBride
Intergenerational Trauma, Wisdom & Resilience - Exploring Trauma Affected Communities
Examining Collective, Cultural & Historical Abuse and how it can be avoided for future generations. Exploring their multiple functions and complex effects. Understanding the health and social challenges this brings. This keynote will bring a greater understanding of how to break the cycle within communities for the benefit of future generations.
Peter McBride
Jaz Ampaw-Farr
The Power of Everyday Heroes
Jaz shares her powerful journey of how a child survives when the system fails. Jaz's resilience drove her from appalling abuse at the hands of her parents to running away from foster care and life as a teen on the streets, to advising governments and speaking internationally. Jaz has a disarming ability to share her story with humour and humility and without anger or bitterness. Jaz will share how healing can span generations. Jaz lives out her words around risk taking and resilience as her career (all while raising three children) are testament to. Jaz gives you the feeling you can do the impossible so that the next time you face adversity and challenge, you’ll be ready.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr
Rachel Yehuda
Epigenetics - How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations
The new field of epigenetics shows that genes can be turned on and off and expressed differently through changes in environment and behavior. Rachel Yehuda is a pioneer in understanding how the effects of stress and trauma can transmit biologically, beyond cataclysmic events, to future generations.
Rachel Yehuda
Kenneth V Hardy
Race Matters - How to Talk Effectively about Race and Trauma
Examining racial trauma and exploring strategies for healing and transformation. Racial oppression is a traumatic form of interpersonal violence which can lacerate the spirit, scar the soul, and puncture the psyche. Without a clear and descriptive language to describe this experience, those who suffer cannot coherently convey their pain, let alone heal. The source of their hurt is often confused with distracting, secondary symptoms ranging from hopelessness to 'acting out' behaviours. As with other forms of trauma, we ask the wrong question about struggling youths of colour. Instead of asking “What is wrong with them?” we need to ask the trauma-informed question, “What has happened to them?”
Kenneth V Hardy
Jaz Ampaw-Farr
Peter McBride
Rachel Yehuda
Peter Levine
Making the Invisible, Visible: A Trauma Healing Journey from Hauntings to Wholeness, an exploration of Transgenerational Trauma
We tend to believe in free will. That it is we who ultimately determines our fate; that we are the captains of our own ships. When working with healing trauma, this belief is often challenged, as we become aware of repetitive patterns of suffering and unhappiness that can span generations. This pattern is grounded in an energetic presence of unresolved trauma responses that were once activated for protection and have now passed on from generation to generation. These lingering “ghosts” can still have powerful influences on our emotions, reactions, behaviors, and choices.
Dr. Levine will lead us through how, unbeknown to us, we may be influenced by events and circumstances that our ancestors (and their ancestors in turn) have experienced during their lifetimes. These influences are often far out of conscious awareness. By exploring our unconscious connection to our lineage, that neither time nor distance alters, we can be capable of connecting to the complexities of our family line with healing reverence.
Clive Corry
Director & Founder of Action Trauma
Richard Moore
Freedom in Forgiveness
A story that started as a tragedy and ended as a triumph of the human spirit in overcoming adversity. A unique perspective on trauma, resilience, reconciliation and forgiveness, Richard's story looks at the purpose of forgiveness and how sometimes people get justice, but they are no happier at the end of it.
Richard Moore
Felicity De Zulueta
Born to love, driven to destroy: The current human tragedy
Author of a book on the traumatic origins of violence due to damage to our attachment system, Dr Felicity de Zulueta will focus on making sense of our current inability to cooperate within countries and across countries to deal with the challenge we face due to the climate and environmental crises linked with its associated Covid pandemic.
She will show how cultures born of violence are intrinsic to our current civilisation and how they also lead to high numbers of individuals developing insecure attachments due to adverse childhood experiences and a resulting propensity for competitive and destructive behaviour.
Just as we need a different way of living to save our environment, so do our brains need a safer and more loving early environment if we are to survive. She will show us that we now have the knowledge to do this and how we can set about doing it, as is already happening in some parts of the world.
Felicity De Zulueta
Valerie Mason-John
Breaking the Intergenerational trauma cycle
Drawing on her own experiences with abuse and addiction, Valerie Mason-John uses well-grounded meditations that transform anger, hatred, and fear to heal emotional trauma. Look at how to deal with toxic emotions and how to release them. After years of abuse and struggles with addiction, Valerie Mason-John was mired in anger, resentment, and fear. But through and willingness to forge a new path, she learned how to disarm such toxins and find peace.
Valerie Mason-John
Mark Wolynn
Do We Inherit Trauma?
Can the traumas of our parents, grandparents and even great grandparents live on in us - particularly if they are unresolved? If you are triggered by something and don't know why, the answer may lie in your family history. Understand the tools to help people to get to the root of difficult or bewildering issues and Mark's strategies for freeing yourself from harmful patterns.
Mark Wolynn
Stephen Porges
Intergenerational trauma through the lens of the Polyvagal Theory
This keynote will discuss how features of intergenerational trauma can be explained through the lens of the Polyvagal Theory. The theory emphasises the role that the autonomic nervous system has in mediating the valence and intensity of our reactions to events and individuals. The theory helps explain the transgenerational features in our environment, often shaped by family and cultural institutions, that personalize and redefine the cues that trigger states of safety and threat across generations. The process promotes consistent intergenerational defensive and aggressive strategies instead of feelings of trust and connectedness with others. Healing the intergenerational trauma starts by understanding the cultural programming of cues that shift autonomic state and promote defense. Through an understanding of how our nervous system detects risk and embraces feelings of safety (i.e. neuroception), interventions can retune autonomic state to enable spontaneous social engagement and trust.
Stephen Porges
Clive Corry
Stephen Porges
Dawn Harris
Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback therapy offers an alternative form of treatment for symptoms of childhood abuse, complex trauma and PTSD. It supplies information to the brain that helps to regulate the body’s autonomic stress response. One of the common threads amongst these conditions is chronic Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) dysregulation.
Neurofeedback therapy works at a deep subconscious level, breaking the cycle of trauma and post-traumatic symptoms. By identifying and training the areas of concern, neurofeedback can help you shift out of these patterns and back into a natural, neutral state of calm
Judith Prager
Introduction to Verbal First Aid™
"Verbal First Aid" uses words and images to set a course for recovery and resilience. Judith Simon Prager, PhD, has been teaching the protocol of Verbal First Aid from 2001 - What to say in medical emergencies to calm, relieve pain, promote healing and save lives. The protocol is taught to firefighters, emergency medical personnel, doctors, nurses, and police officers around the world. This workshop will explain how the right words said in the right way at the scene of an emergency or crisis, or in times of pain and fear, could shift the perception and interpretation to one that allows healing and short-circuits the impulse toward a traumatic memory.
Richard Schwartz
Evolution of the Internal Family Systems model(IFS)
IFS is a comprehensive approach which includes guidelines for working with individuals, couples, and families. The IFS Model represents a new synthesis of two already-existing paradigms: systems thinking and the multiplicity of the mind. It brings concepts and methods from the structural, strategic, narrative, and Bowenian schools of family therapy to the world of subpersonalities.
Kerry McWilliams
An invitation to ‘Try This’
‘Try This’ is a ten week programme designed to impact the escalating crisis in the mental health of young people. Designed for delivery in classrooms, the programme delivers measured outcomes in the social and emotional health of young people, improved cognitive and academic performance and improved relationships. The approach is practical, playful and innovative, based on the latest research in behaviour change, self-regulation and trauma recovery.
Created by Kerry McWilliams with qualitative research, underpinning evidence and logic, the model was developed in collaboration with Aideen Gildea from Queens University Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation.
After two and a half years of research, focus groups, testing, evaluation and trials, adjusting in response to feedback from almost 3000 young people, and hundreds of teachers and parents, we’re ready to tell you the story and present the programme.
To quote some year 12 (15/16-year-old) students… “I didn’t think this would work, but it totally does - I use it every day“, “It’s a game changer.” and even “makes me melt inside and gives me goosebumps”
If you can't find the answer to your question in the list below, please email us at contact@actiontrauma.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible with an answer.
This event is being held online.
Conferences are expensive to run. Speakers and their costs must be paid for. There is also the planning and promotion to pay for.
Action Trauma is committed to increasing the awareness of psychological trauma, its many causes, widespread effects and the various ways of treating and healing it. We are a not-for-profit company and the delegate fees are struck at a rate which tries to cover operational costs. For what we offer, we are told that our fees are much less than most other similar events.
Yes, you can get an invoice for the conference. Please email contact@actiontrauma.com
Yes, the hours you complete will equate to the amount of CPD points earned. You will complete a short quiz to test your knowledge of the speakers and topics covered. Once this has been completed, you will receive your certificate of attendance with CPD points.
The Intergenerational Trauma Conference will be available for viewing for six months after the event.
Yes, we have incorporated two breaks into the daily schedule. This will give you the opportunity to take a break or join our online breathing exercises.
There will be a technical team available to help during the two days to help with any queries.
