Clarity is Complex Again: Advanced Parts Work Skills for Trauma-Related Dissociation LIVE IN PERSON - Dr Catherine Hynes

Early Birds save $150 until July 23rd, 2026

Join us at the delightful Henry Jones Art Hotel: 25 Hunter Street, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 7000

Prerequisites: No prerequisites, but this workshop presumes that you have foundational skills for working with dissociation, and are developing a more expert skill set. Those who are new to complex trauma and dissociation work would benefit from first taking Complexity to Clarity (link). All therapeutic orientations are welcome.

Who is this Workshop For? Mental health practitioners who have foundational skills in working with dissociation, who are looking to:

• work through complex blocks in their treatments
• acquire a deeper knowledge of parts work interventions
• work with perpetrator imitating parts
• work through shame
• work with non-verbal parts

The focus is on adult therapy clients.

Is there any Practicum? Yes, there are opportunities to role play skills in this workshop.

What Will I Learn? You will learn:

1. Neurobiological formulation of dissociation from an attachment perspective
2. Relational and other holding aspects of therapeutic context
3. Detailed look at how to do parts work
4. Detailed look at overcoming blocks in doing parts work including: working with perpetrator imitating parts, shame, child parts, resistant parts, non-verbal parts
5. How to structure your therapy
6. Memory Work, Integration and the role of Hypnosis

General Summary

This training is for mental health practitioners who have prior experience working with clients with complex trauma and dissociative disorders, who are looking to hone their advanced level skills in offering parts work interventions. Catherine’s approach to working with trauma and dissociation is grounded in neurobiology, and is therapeutically integrative, involving strategies from the Model of Structural Dissociation, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Schema Therapy, Coherence Therapy and other evidence-based approaches. She also synthesises wisdom from experienced clinicians, including Kathy Steele, Janina Fisher, Richard Kluft, and Frank Putnam, among others. The training is a mix of didactic and interactive experiential demonstrations, and Catherine includes insights and videos from her own clinical work.

Please be aware that this advanced training assumes that participants can agree with the following:

• I have experience working with trauma
• I have some experience working with dissociation, and know the basis of assessment, formulation and treatment

For those who are not so confident, you will likely get more out of this training by first doing an introductory training in dissociation, for example: Complexity to Clarity, or by reading a text such as Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation (Steele, Boon & van der Hart, 2017).

Detailed Content Summary

Day 1:
Context of Therapy

• Therapy for dissociation is relational and emotional
• A close look at risks to the therapeutic relationship
• Strategies to mitigate the emotional intensity and repair ruptures

Definition of Dissociation

• A neurobiological and developmental contextualising of dissociative disorders
• A look at trance and dissociation
• Inner Wisdom and Inner Self Helper Phenomena

What is a Part?

• Detailed look at several therapeutic models of parts
• A critique of models looking at strengths and weaknesses
• Development of an integrative approach to parts work

How do you do parts work?

• Details on Accessing Parts
• Details on Mapping Parts
• A Strategic Guide to Parts Work

General Principles of Parts Work

• Straightforward, Non-technical Therapy
• Equanimity and its Challenges
• Unresolved Dialectics and Polarisations
• Grounding Therapy in Neurobiology

Day 2:

Phases of Therapy

• A close look at the 3 Phases of Trauma Therapy with details on strategies in each phase
• Richard Kluft’s 9 Phases of Therapy

What Types of Part Exist?

• Detailed look at functions and types of parts
• Development of a parts inventory with treatment considerations
• Problem parts in treatment with specific solutions, including:
  • Anger
  • Shame
  • Affect Avoidance
  • Recalcitrant Toddler Parts
  • Perpetrator Imitating Parts

Memory Work in Dissociative Disorders

• A detailed look at the timing and process of memory resolution work in dissociative clients

Integration Processes

• The how and why of integration in dissociative disorders

Hypnosis

• The role of hypnosis in treatment
• Specific techniques to enhance dissociative treatment

About the Trainer

Catherine has a passion for helping people to achieve wellbeing by harnessing the brain’s healing potential. She is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Brisbane, who works with adults who have experienced adversity and trauma, often in childhood and throughout development. She is the director of Wellbeing Wisdom, a business devoted to training psychologists to provide high level interventions in trauma and dissociation while practicing thoughtful self care, and to sharing wisdom from the therapy room with the general public.

Catherine offers training and consultation across Australia and internationally on the treatment of trauma and dissociation. She graduated from the University of Toronto, Canada, where she studied philosophy and neuroscience. She completed a Masters Degree at Dartmouth College, USA in Biological and Brain Sciences, where she completed her thesis on the functional neuro-imaging of social cognition. She obtained a PhD from the University of Queensland, in clinical psychology and clinical neuropsychology, where her thesis developed neuropsychological assessments for social and emotional difficulties following traumatic brain injury. She is a an EMDR consultant with the EMDR Association of Australia, and a member of the Australian Association of Psychologists, and the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

Catherine’s current therapeutic work is founded on her lifelong interests in the philosophy of consciousness and the neurobiology of social cognition. She works integratively, and draws on therapies whose mechanisms are consistent with brain science. She uses EMDR therapy, embodied mindfulness therapies, Parts Work Therapies, Coherence Therapy, Compassion Focussed Therapy, Schema Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in her treatments.

She develops her clinical case conceptualisations from a social neurobiology perspective, and avidly follows developments in neuroscience to guide her therapeutic and educational projects.