Â鶹ԭ´´ Private Practice conference 2026

Navigating the complexities of trauma: exposure, response and healing

Trauma presents in many forms and can be deeply overwhelming for both clients and practitioners. Everyone's experience evokes different emotional responses, and the therapeutic journey often requires patience and a collaborative search for safety and meaning. Healing emerges through understanding, regulation, and working towards positive, sustainable outcomes.
This conference will explore best practice in trauma work, drawing on evidence based, trauma informed approaches. Through theory, clinical insight, and practical tools, we aim to support practitioners in deepening their confidence and competence when working with the complexities of trauma in the therapy room.

Additionally, the conference provides an opportunity to network with peers, with a space to share and learn from other members experiences, challenges, and successes.

The Private Practice conference presents an opportunity for members to come together for this highlight in the Â鶹ԭ´´ annual calendar. It will once again be a hybrid event, combining networking opportunities of the live event at a central London conference venue, with the nationwide participation through the live streaming of the full event on the day.

Book your place

The Private Practice conference 2026 is a hybrid event. Our hybrid events provide you with the opportunity to attend and engage both in person and online. In person attendance includes networking opportunities, lunch, refreshments and the chance to engage with divisional representatives and Â鶹ԭ´´ staff. Online access includes interactive Q&A's, a chatroom to network with peers, and interactive polls.

This keynote will explore intergenerational trauma through a culturally informed lens. Kemi aims to discuss and explore how trauma impacts certain cultures and how resilience and survival strategies are developed and passed down the generations. By the end of the session there will be a deeper understanding of intergenerational trauma through a culturally informed lens with the hope of developing more culturally informed approaches to therapeutic work with individuals and families from diverse communities.

This session is available in person and online as part of strand one.

Keynote

This session is available in person and online as part of strand one.

Medical Trauma (MT) and its aftermath can have lifelong consequences that challenge one’s personal relationship with safety, meaning making and trust. Often mistakenly identified as PTSD (symptoms of which can be present but not always), MT develops through a series of complexities that include some or all of the following: the medical setting, environment, procedure/diagnosis and patient/clinician interaction. MT differs from other trauma in that further occasional or repeated exposure to any medical environment can lead to chronic hyper vigilance, never feeling safe in one’s own body and medical avoidance, resulting in secondary crises. This session invites participants to be curious about MT and how to work in a trauma informed care way. (TIC) It aims to generate learning and awareness of MT's diversity, not just through a psycho-educational and neuro sensitive lens but via a deeper understanding of the implications of the lived experience. It aims to highlight the importance of the unseen person and unheard voice, advocating agency, how some modalities may not be as suited to supporting MT survivors and how personally and vicariously it can affect us, potentially creating conflict for healthcare professionals.

This session is available in person and online as part of strand one.

Ìý

The aim of this session is to provide a safe environment to explore key aspects of working with trauma in terms of communication and active listening to fragmented, trauma-impacted narratives. The session will introduce members to the way in which memory and dissociation work in trauma and the way in which they impact an individual’s ability to communicate in counselling and other contexts. This will involve aspects of self-fragmentation, dissociation and amnesia.

Further, attention will be given to often-missed ways in which survivors communicate ‘the unspeakable’, including through verbal and non-verbal means across various channels and media as well as body and the use of space.

The session will refer to sexual and developmental trauma, including Complex Trauma and its impact (polarisation, regulation). It will include an outline of existing research, including case studies to illustrate communicative patterns across modes and media and an opportunity for members to engage with real-life scenarios to apply learning in practice as well as reflect on the applicability of the proposed strategies to client work.

This session is available in person and online as part of strand two.

This session offers an introduction to how an intersectional lens can deepen understanding and response within trauma-informed practice. While trauma is often conceptualised as an individual response to discrete events, some forms of harm are cumulative, identity-shaped, and contextually embedded, and may therefore be less readily recognised in clinical work.
Drawing on contemporary clinical realities, including the wider geopolitical and transgenerational context in which practitioners and clients are situated, the session considers the increasing complexity of trauma presentations and the demands this places on practitioners. It introduces intersectionality as a way of understanding the whole person in context, and explores how this perspective may support more nuanced and attuned clinical practice.
Using a fictionalised, composite case-based illustration, the session will highlight how broadening formulation can support a deeper understanding of distress and inform more contextually attuned responses.
The session aims to support practitioners to reflect on their current practice, identifying areas of strength and potential development in relation to working with trauma through a more contextually informed lens, and to consider how this may support more inclusive, responsive, and attuned trauma-informed practice.

Ìý

This session is available in person only as part of strand three.

Ìý

This session is available in person and online as part of strand one.

Ìý

Ìý

Ìý

This session is available in person and online as part of strand two.

This session is available in person only as part of strand three.