In addition to teaching as an adjunct clinical professor for the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver, I provide training services to organizations on issues related to mindfulness, self-compassion, trauma-informed practice, and increasing team-based resilience to vicarious trauma and empathic distress. I am currently offering the following trainings, which may be offered online or in-person:
This multi-modal workshop is designed to assist helping professionals in two distinct ways: (1) The content and experiential exercises will increase participants’ active awareness of the “signs and symptoms” of vicarious trauma and empathic distress often present in high- stress human service work; (2) The content and experiential exercises will provide participants with a clear and practical process to identify and apply specific coping strategies to prevent the problem of vicarious trauma and empathic fatigue in today’s challenging work spaces. I am offering these courses over zoom or in-person, tailor-made to suit your team’s specific needs. I also provide the option to include confidential pre- and post-test measures to evaluate your team’s progress in increasing its sense of well being and satisfaction for the work. The following is a brief outline of the training program:
- Brief Overview of Vicarious Trauma Prevention Training
| Pre-Training Activities: | Team Assessment, Completion of Mixed-Methods Pre-tests & Identification of Organizational “Champions” |
| Training Session #1 | CULTIVATING AWARENESS |
| SECTION ONE: Review of Existing Self-Care Practices & ProQOL Results | |
| SECTION TWO: Defining the Problem | |
| SECTION THREE: Defining the Solution | |
| Compassion as a component of psychological resilience to vicarious trauma and empathic fatigue. | |
| Review of Compassion-Training Home Practice, Questions and Answers | |
| Inter-Training Activities: | Coaching “Check-Ins” with Team Members |
| Training Session #2 | SKILLS ACQUISITION |
| Home Practice Review & Questions | |
| SECTION ONE: Introduction to Mindfulness Skills | |
| SECTION TWO: Introduction to Self-Compassion Skills | |
| SECTION THREE: Critical Thinking, Exercising Choice, & Strategic Use of Professional Boundaries | |
| Review of Home Practice, Questions & Answers | |
| Inter-Training Activities: | Coaching “Check-Ins “with Team Members |
| Training Session #3 | APPLICATION OF SKILLS |
| Home Practice Review & Questions | |
| SECTION ONE: Introduction to Practical Interventions for Working with Traumatic Material | |
| Group Analysis of Team-developed Case Study | |
| SECTION TWO: Ecological-Based Practices | |
| Final Review, Questions & Answers | |
| Post-Training Activities: | Completion of Post-tests Immediately Following Training Session #3 |
| Review of Initial Post-Test Results with Team Members | |
| Sustainability Assessment: | Completion of Secondary Post-Tests 6 Months Following Completion of Training Session #3 |
| Delivery of Secondary Post-Test Results with Team Members |
2. Essential Skills for Coping with Anxiety – Online Pre-Recorded Workshop
This workshop will equip you with a practical framework for understanding the potential causes of your anxiety. The same framework will be used to help you gain an understanding of the steps to cultivate daily habits that may provide you with long-term relief from overwhelming anxiety and other distressing emotions.
In addition, Dr. Madril will review a practical set of tools and techniques to increase your ability to successfully manage your anxiety symptoms over time. These skills have been thoughtfully assembled and drawn from treatment modalities demonstrated through science to be helpful in resolving anxiety such as: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and self-compassion practices.
This training integrates various modes of instruction including experiential exercises, mindfulness meditation, yoga/mindful movement, periods of silence, video, didactic-style teaching, and home-based practices.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
- Practical knowledge about the potential causes of your anxiety.
- Practical tools to cultivate daily habits designed to generate enduring feelings of peace and well-being.
- How to integrate CBT tools into your daily life to prevent anxiety from becoming overwhelming.
- How to integrate simple body-based practices into your self-care program that will contribute to your overall emotional health.
Individuals who have experienced prolonged early traumatic experiences are at risk for developing complex posttraumatic stress disorder (cPTSD), which includes adverse symptoms such as a harshly deprecating self-view, emotional dysregulation, and difficulty creating and maintaining interpersonal relationships. In fact, such individuals may often react to reminders of the trauma with defense mechanisms learned early in life that interfere with their ability to meet personal goals and aspirations. While participating in therapy may appear to be a viable solution to resolving these deep-seated emotional issues, the therapeutic relationship itself may represent a “reminder of the trauma” leading to autonomic activations of subcortical neural networks and abreactions that threaten the quality and longevity of the relationship between client and therapist. Still, caring clinicians are faced with the challenge of understanding and competently responding to the intense emotional—and sometimes illogical—responses from the client while attempting to maintain a sense of equanimity as the professional “leader” of the helping process when the client is momentarily incapacitated by emotion and traumatic reenactment.
Given such uncomfortable symptoms and distress, it is important for clinicians to develop and test ways to help those with cPTSD “grow through” their unconscious negative responses to participating in trauma therapy and develop new ways to cope with relationship-based fears. This training is designed to equip trauma therapists with new techniques to maintain equanimity and promote synchronicity during relationship-focused treatment of complex trauma treatment. Therapists will learn how to integrate attachment and trauma theories into their clinical work with clients; they will learn interpersonal neurobiology-based micro-skills to develop attunement with clients; skills to effectively manage ego defenses that are activated during trauma reprocessing; skills to contain emotional abreactions; tools to promote the reintegration of clients’ projections onto the therapist; how to develop a two-person relational approach to managing countertransference, and skills to cultivate compassion for clients with challenging cPTSD symptoms.
4. Mindfulness-Based Strategies for Community Mental Health with a Special Focus on Psychosis
This multi-modal mindfulness-based educational workshop is designed to support training participants in the following ways: (1) the research-based content, reflective discussion, and experiential exercises will increase participants’ active awareness of how mindfulness meditation may enhance professional self-care and increase the quality of services to clients experiencing challenging mental health symptoms such as psychosis; (2) the experiential exercises, small group learning, mindfulness meditation, and periods of silence will increase participants’ mindful awareness and skillfulness at obtaining a state of equanimity in preparation for addressing hard-to-treat behavioral health symptoms; (3) the research-based content and reflective discussion will provide participants with a clear and practical process to understand how mindfulness techniques may help clients reduce maladaptive reactions to their psychotic symptoms; (4) the research-based content and reflective discussion will increase participants’ knowledge of evidence- based approaches to clinical work with clients experiencing mixed psychotic/mood symptomatology; 5) the research-based content, reflective discussion, and experiential exercises will provide participants with opportunities to introduce evidence-based mindfulness skills into their clinical practice with clients experiencing mixed psychotic/mood symptomatology.
5. A Systems-Oriented Approach to Assessing and Treating Complex Post-Traumatic Stress in Adults
This training provides an overview of multi-system level definitions of traumatic experience— historical, individual, interpersonal, family, organizational, and community. The emphasis is on clinical practice that is culturally responsive, growth-oriented, and strengths-based in which the study of trauma is approached from a theoretical base that perceives the trauma response as a response rather than a disorder. Trauma-informed assessment and interventions are examined that incorporate the three phases of treatment for Complex PTSD (safety, stabilization, and engagement; trauma memory and emotional processing; enhancing daily living), techniques to work within the “window of tolerance,” and clinical interventions to support the reintegration of dissociated ego states for clients who experience any level of dissociation. In addition, training participants will learn how to develop individualized treatment plans for clients that are congruent with sequenced ethical treatment for individuals with histories of repeated trauma.
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What People Are Saying…
Our office asked Tony to provide a 4-hour training to our direct services staff on vicarious trauma / compassion fatigue and the training was absolutely perfect. Participants shared how helpful the training was, giving them not only an understanding of what vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue was, but actually providing them the tools they needed to help address some of the challenges they faced in their day-to-day work. Tony created an environment that allowed our staff to be vulnerable and share very personal stories about client stories and even personal trauma they’ve experienced. Overall our direct services team of 50 staff were very grateful and hope to continue trainings like the one we received from Tony in the future.
–Nasim Khansari, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Los Angeles office
I found Tony to be thorough, organized, and helpful when preparing for the training and the delivery of continuing education units for our licensed staff. Tony is not only a respectful, dedicated and caring trainer; he truly lives what he teaches. The entire experience was a positive one, and we are looking forward to having him back soon.
–Susan Mayer-Zeitlin, MFT Wrap-around Services Supervisor, San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center
Everyone on my team who participated in Tony’s vicarious trauma prevention training
found it quite valuable. It’s been interesting to see the majority of my teammates
applying the concepts covered in the training to situations other than simply
interacting with challenging content and behaviors. For example, I’ve personally
found the breathing exercises to be very helpful when conducting difficult
conversations with colleagues. While a couple of folks previously felt as though
they had a complete handle on work-related stress, the training helped them realize
that there are indeed aspects of the job that have a greater impact on their lives
than they realized. This is a really nice revelation to have and a great mindset to
be in coming out of the training!
–David Watkis, Trust & Safety Lead for Automattic, Inc.
Previous Clients
- Automattic, Inc.
- San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice
- Pennylane
- Aspire Public Schools
- Chrysalis
- Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
- The Center for Nonprofit Management
- UC Davis Center for Human Services
• Anxiety Therapy 