Dil Wickremasinghe
Mental Health service provider, Broadcaster, Journalist, Radio Documentary maker, activist, actor, stand up comedian. Trainer in Mental Health, Diversity and Equality, Disability, Dignity in the workplace, Personal Development.
Thriving after Trauma
Dil has overcome a great deal of adversity in her life and experienced multiple forms of trauma including, witnessing domestic violence, sexual abuse, parental alienation, homelessness, discrimination based on her gender, sexuality and ethnicity. More recently she made national headlines when she spoke out against the misogynistic nature of Irish media and just 2 weeks later her award winning decade long radio show was cancelled. In addition to running her own mental health service, Dil is now training to be a psychotherapist.
Each time Dil experienced trauma she made a conscious decision to use it as an opportunity to grow, embrace a more authentic life and become a change maker. In her talk she will share her inspiring story and offer her perspective on how growth after trauma is possible.
About
Dil Wickremasinghe has one vision and that is to create an inclusive and equal Ireland where all residents can live a fuller and more authentic life. For a decade she was a Social Justice and Mental Health broadcaster and journalist and presented the award winning weekly programme “Global Village” on Newstalk 106-108. She then presented “Sparking Change with Dil” on the Head Stuff Podcast Network and now presents the “Insight Matters - Inspire Change in Self and Society” podcast. In addition Dil is also a regular contributor to Irish media and an international speaker.
Dil is a social entrepreneur and co-founded the mental health support service Insight Matters with her wife Anne Marie Toole in 2013. Along with a team of 60 psychotherapists they provide low cost, inclusive and culturally sensitive personal development, psychotherapy and counselling to over 400 clients per week in two centres in Mountjoy Square and Capel Street. Together they hope to “inspire change in self and society.”
Dil is an activist and campaigns for equal rights and has served on the boards of numerous NGO’s. She is a passionate Mental Health Ambassador for One in Four, Suicide or Survive and See Change and shares her story of recovery to break down stigma around mental health.
Dil is an occasional stand-up comedian and in 2012 she made her debut in Irish theatre in Box of Frogs with Mary McEvoy and John Moynes.
- In 2014 she was honoured with the Frederick Douglas Award as part of the Lord Mayor’s Awards for her outstanding contribution to civic life.
- In 2015 along with 9 other inspiring women Dil won the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Award for her work as a Marriage Equality campaigner.
- In May 2015 in the week of the historic Marriage Referendum, Dil and Anne Marie were overjoyed to welcome into the world their son, who they aptly named Phoenix!
- In August 2017 Dil and Anne Marie were thrilled with the arrival of their daughter Xavier.
- In 2018 Dil returned to college to train as a Counsellor and Psychotherapist. She is currently attending the B.A. Counselling & Psychotherapy in Dublin Business College.
Dil feels Irish as after living in Ireland 19 years she is a proud Irish and global citizen.
Antonia Bifulco
Professor of Lifespan Psychology, Director Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, Middlesex University, London
Models and measures of trauma – implications for therapeutic practice
Measuring trauma can be complex. It can be viewed as on a continuum of other negative life events. Dose-effects are critical, both in terms of severity of individual experience but also the multiplicity of experience in increasing disorder risks. Data from London studies using intensive measurement approaches will be used to illustrate the relationship between childhood and adult trauma and emotional disorder. Implications for lifetime models and measurement are discussed.
Understanding models of trauma and the intensity and diversity of trauma experience is of use in psychological practice. This aids with differentiating the adverse experience from the subjective response and can aid both treatment and understanding of impacts on the individual.
About
Antonia Bifulco is a Lifespan psychologist and Head of the Department of Psychology at Middlesex University. She is also Director of the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, which seeks to combine health, social care and criminological approaches to issues of abuse. Her research over 30 years has investigated the circumstances around childhood abuse, together with the consequences for later life adjustment, relationships, and psychological disorder.
The model utilised for understanding the consequences of childhood abuse is an attachment model. This argues that early maltreatment damages trust and leads to greater difficulty in making close supportive relationships in adulthood, through attachment styles which are overly anxious, avoidant or disorganised. However, these impacts can be reversed through positive relationships and treatment. Antonia has a particular interest in women’s experience and her research has involved hundreds of life history interviews, most with women, to understand the relationship between social context and psychological disorder.
She and her CATS team are also engaged in getting key research messages to practitioners. Her work is with voluntary agencies and local authority child protection teams and ‘Looked After’ services to advise on assessment methods and case analysis of abuse.
Bronagh Starrs
Founder & Director of Blackfort Adolescent Gestalt Institute and Programme Director for the MSc Adolescent Psychotherapy in Dublin Counselling & Therapy Centre
Trauma and Integrity in Adolescence
The focus of this presentation will be the illumination of the transformative potential of the therapeutic enterprise with adolescents. Drawing on her rich experience of therapeutic contact with adolescent clients, Bronagh will offer her insights into the dynamics of development and therapy with this age group. Demonstrating how presenting symptom issues are understood from a relational perspective, she will present a relational-phenomenological approach to stewarding lost, distressed adolescents through the process of healing, towards the authoring of a personally meaningful future.
About
Bronagh Starrs is Programme Director for the MSc Adolescent Psychotherapy in Dublin Counselling & Therapy Centre, in partnership with the University of Northampton, UK and Founder & Director of Blackfort Adolescent Gestalt Institute.
She maintains a private practice in Omagh, Northern Ireland, as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, writer, presenter and trainer, specialising in working with adolescents. As well as her work as a parenting consultant with many families, schools and agencies, she is also an experienced therapist working with children, adults and groups.
Bronagh is a renowned adolescent development specialist and has considerable experience teaching and presenting throughout Ireland and internationally on the developmental implication of trauma on the adolescent journey. Her approach to therapeutic intervention with adolescents is both innovative and deeply relational.
She has authored numerous articles and chapters on the subject and has contributed to the collected volume: Relational Child: Relational Brain (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group/Gestalt Press). Her recently published book “Adolescent Psychotherapy - A Radical Relational Approach” (Routledge 2019) has received international acclaim.
Jess van der Hoech
Founder & Director of The Gap, Bedfordshire, UK
Working with Children affected by trauma
Children who have experienced early trauma can often display behavioural symptoms which can be likened to those which require a mental health diagnosis. Without the correct therapeutic interventions, there are a growing number of children who are becoming lost in a system where their needs are not being adequately met. Jess's presentation explores the impact of traumatic experience on the developing brain, how this manifests and why children who are traumatised appear to present with behavioural issues. Sharing a unique case study and her own experience, Jess offers a variety of tools, techniques and a trauma informed language that has been helping therapists, teachers, social workers, parents and carers to be alongside a child as they begin to heal.
About
As a young, single parent, Jess van der Hoech began her career by volunteering for her local Citizens Advice Bureau while attending night school to gain a diploma in Law. After gaining her qualification, Jess started her first paid role as an outreach adviser for CAB in the National Probation Service. This was where Jess's interest in the impact of trauma first began to develop. Jess went on to work and volunteer in Victim Support, supporting clients in the immediate aftermath of traumatic experience, quickly working her way through training, until she was supporting people who had been witness to or subjected to extreme violence and high risk and complex situations.
Jess wanted to take this training further and after qualifying as a counsellor in 2014 she focused her continuing professional development on the impact of early trauma, fast becoming a specialist in this area. After discovering the need for a service in her local area that provided specialist trauma treatment therapy for children and young people, Jess founded 'The Gap (Bedfordshire) Limited'. Jess is a member of the BACP and the ESTD (European Society of Trauma and Dissociation).
Brendan McKiernan
B.A.Mod. (Econ), M.Sc. Psychotherapy (Systemic), Certified Chemical Dependency Practitioner (Hazelden, U.S.A.), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner(S.E.P.), M.I.C.P., F.T.A.I., E.C.P.
Trauma - A New Paradigm
In Brendan’s presentation, he will look at the reasons for and implications of taking a trauma-informed perspective on mental health. He will highlight the importance of looking at the role of the autonomic nervous system in both understanding the impact of psychological trauma and in moving towards resolution. In particular, Brendan will look at the message of Stephen Porges’s “ polyvagal theory” and how it points to the importance of the “social engagement system” in restoring balance to the traumatised nervous system. He will go on to look at the implications this message has both for mental health and society.
About
Brendan has worked in the area of addiction and trauma for over twenty years. From his original training in Hazelden in Minnesota to his work in Keltoi (an HSE residential rehabilitation facility for long-term methadone users that uses a systemic approach), where he was senior clinician and manager for 12 years, he has been committed to helping individuals to develop better coping mechanisms to deal with overwhelm in their lives.
This journey has involved the completion of a published outcomes study while at Keltoi, as well as the completion of a feasibility study on setting up a residential centre for psychological trauma in Ireland. As a member of the HSE working group on residential treatment and rehabilitation, Brendan has highlighted the need for a more holistic approach to working with addiction, and his specific recommendations in relation to trauma-informed care were included in the national clinical guidelines for opioid substitution treatment.
Brendan is passionate about the importance of looking at mental health through the lens of psychological trauma and in particular the role of the autonomic nervous system in restoring balance to people’s lives. A registered family therapist, Somatic Experiencing® practitioner, addiction counsellor, and clinical supervisor, he is currently working as a family therapist in private practice in Dublin.
Christina Enright
RN, BSc Psychology, MA Integrative Arts Child Psychotherapy, Dip in Family Therapy, Clinical, Dip Clinical Supervision.
Safe Access to the Inner World: Using Creative Arts to Heal Trauma
Overwhelming trauma fragments the human psyche and soma; it can be severe enough to quash a person’s spirit and extinguish their voice and authentic connection with themselves.
It is well understood that the act of creating in itself is therapeutic. The arts provide a scaffold in enabling people to approach and process thoughts and emotions which may not be directly accessible to conscious memory and verbalisation or may be too painful to speak out. Creative expression provides a safe container within which to capture, symbolise and express pain and suffering, enabling people to find their voice and gain mastery over what once felt helpless and catastrophic.
In this workshop, Christina will demonstrate how different creative mediums such as art, writing, puppets and sand tray, can be used in psychotherapy and counselling work as a means to helping clients develop insight, process painful experience, as well as develop a deeper connection with their authentic selves.
About
Over the past 15 years, Christina has worked as a psychotherapist in a variety of settings with children, adolescents and parents who have endured complex trauma. Christina has a wide range of experience of training on attachment and trauma within mental health, education and social care settings. She is passionate about disseminating information about trauma across services for professionals and non-professionals, so that through a deeper understanding of people’s difficulties and suffering, together we can provide compassionate support to build a more self-aware and resilient society.
.jpg)
