Reflections on Fear, Anxiety and Depression (Free event)

This year the Complex Trauma Institute is pleased to be one of the York Festival of Ideas partners alongside the University of York

Fear is the body’s response to threat. It evolved as a set of powerful physical reactions for surviving predators – not just the energy boost of fight and flight, but also energy collapse, similar to a faint.  In modern life we face very different threats, but the same ancient, automatic fear responses are triggered. These reactions are not well adapted to dealing with many present-day threats, and they have a huge impact on our physical and mental health, our behaviour, our capacity to think clearly and our ability to relate to each other.

Join Michael as he brings together the science of the body and lived experience, to illustrate the range and power of our fear reactions.  He explains how these cause much human misery including anxiety and depression and considers how we can free ourselves from the grip of unnecessary fear.

This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. Upon completing the registration process, you will immediately receive a link to join the event. Additionally, reminders will be sent to you 1 day and 1 hour before the event begins to ensure you have the information readily available. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout. 

Please note: ‘Reflections on Fear, Anxiety and Depression’ is also being held in- person on Saturday 1 June - (York, the UK, yorkfestivalofideas.com)

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About the speaker:

Michael Guilding is a psychotherapist and trainer. After a career in senior management in Royal Mail, Michael retrained as a therapist and worked in private practice for 25 years, and for over a decade in the NHS, where he was Head of Primary Care Counselling within the York and Selby NHS trust.  For a number of years his clinical supervisor was Dr Una McCluskey of the University of York who introduced him to her own work on therapeutic attunement and to the work of Dorothy Heard and Brian Lake on adult attachment.  This sparked his interest in the biological fear-system and its impact on our patterns of relating to others.

Michael has written several papers for the Complex Trauma Institute’s Journal on the theory of complex trauma (which he sees as a biological fear-system disorder) and on the practical applications of this theory for psychotherapy. He runs workshops and exploratory groups for therapists on the interaction between our fear and attachment systems including two workshops for the Complex Trauma Institute’s C-PTSD Practitioner course.