Integrating Mindfulness Into Psychotherapy for Trauma: A Clinician’s Guide to Using Mindfulness Processes to Facilitate Healing and Reduce Suffering

A comprehensive, transdiagnostic, and process-based approach to effectively integrate mindfulness into psychotherapy for treating trauma.

As you know, mindfulness is a powerful tool for treating a variety of mental health issues, from anxiety and depression to eating and substance use disorders. However, if you’re a clinician treating clients who have suffered from trauma, you are also aware that mindfulness can sometimes cause significant stress or discomfort. So, how can you incorporate mindfulness into your treatment--safely and effectively--for improved outcomes?

Integrating Mindfulness into Psychotherapy for Trauma offers a transdiagnostic, process-based approach to treating trauma with mindfulness, with interventions that are practical, simple, and easy to teach--so you can help your clients gain new personal insights and make lasting positive change. You’ll learn how to form individualized, trauma-informed case conceptualization and treatment plans, and integrate mindfulness into psychotherapy with a focus on four interconnected mindfulness mechanisms:

• Attentional focus
• Body awareness
• Emotion regulation
• Changes in perspective on the self

You’ll also find a framework for targeting specific trauma symptoms, with an emphasis on when and how to effectively integrate mindfulness into sessions, and a variety of mindfulness practices to help your clients make and sustain treatment gains. Strategies for how to intervene when difficulties such as panic attacks or painful memories arise during a mindfulness practice are also provided, along with discussions of therapist mindfulness and trauma stewardship.

With this flexible, transdiagnostic approach, you’ll be well equipped to integrate mindfulness into your practice to help your clients heal and make lasting change.

Terri Messman, PhD, is a professor and distinguished scholar at Miami University, formerly the O’Toole Family Endowed Professor from 2013-2018, former director of clinical training, and former interim deputy title IX (sexual assault) coordinator. Her research program focuses on trauma and interpersonal violence, mindfulness and self-compassion, and emotion dysregulation. She is a licensed psychologist and certified kundalini yoga instructor.

Noga Zerubavel, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and co-founder of Arise Psychological Wellness and Consulting and an assistant consulting professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center. She is the former director of the Stress, Trauma, and Recovery Treatment (START) clinic at Duke, where she led a trauma consultation team and supervised psychiatry residents, clinical psychology interns, and fellows in trauma-informed psychotherapy. Zerubavel led mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) groups at Duke from 2014-2020 and supervised psychiatry and psychology learners in providing mindfulness-based CBT.