In March of this year I attended the BACP Children, Young People &
Families Conference, ‘Breaking the Cycle of Trauma and Promoting Healing
and Hope’. It was a great one-day conference primarily looking at the impact of trauma and dissociation on children and their families and the kinds of therapeutic work that will support them..

The topics ranged from understanding complex trauma, its triggers, the role of Polyvagal theory in aiding clinical work, creative tools that may be useful when working with trauma and dissociation. It was a very informative day. However, I was almost immediately struck by how much knowledge of this topic I already held as only a second year trainee, with only a few months of practice under my belt. I had gone to the conference expecting to be out of my depth, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself on familiar ground. In many ways perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, as I had just recently gone through a few evenings of teaching at the Northern Guild on trauma and the neurobiology of psychotherapy. What this conference cemented in my mind was a thought, or rather a truth, that had been fledging for a
while, that the quality of teaching and training at the Northern Guild
is extremely good.

Sitting amongst a few hundred people I couldn’t help but draw comparisons and find with great pride that I really was receiving some of the best training, experience, practice and knowledge that is available in the UK.

As I head into my final year and think about final assessment and leaving the Northern Guild, I am filled with a sense of thankfulness and certainty that not only have I, myself, benefited from a great training with the Northern Guild, but the children and young people who I and my fellow trainees will meet will also benefit. And isn’t that what it’s all about.