Trauma Therapy: What It’s Really Like with Dr. Jacob Ham and Elizabeth Ferreira

In this very special episode, Dr. Jacob Ham and associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira join me to discuss their work as trauma therapists. They talk openly about the messy, unglamorous reality of struggle, mistakes, and repair that characterizes trauma work, its nature as both art and science, how their work has changed over time, and what they’ve learned along the way. Topics include self-disclosure, working with shame and grief, dealing with situations where the client wants an apology, the difference between trauma work and more manualized approaches, therapist training and supervision, and “polishing the mirror.”

I loved listening to Dr. Ham and Elizabeth talk during this episode. It’s a truly unique one, and I hope you enjoy it.

About our Guest: Dr. Jacob Ham is a clinical psychologist, Associate Clinical Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the Director of the Center for Complex Trauma there. He's the clinician featured in Stephanie Foo’s wonderful book What My Bones Know.

Key Topics :

0:00: Introduction and nervousness

6:21: The role of disclosure

11:34: Mistakes, rupture, and repair

23:20: Sharing grief

33:04: Supervision and parallel process

36:29: Therapy as an art form

47:52: Structure, flexibility, and 'opening the hand'

52:50: A listener question: how to let it all go

1:02:40: How trauma work changes you

1:07:46: Recap

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