Presented By: Sarette Zecharia, PhD, DCEP, C-EHP, CIHMP

Event Schedule
11:50 am - 12:00 pm Check In
12:00 - 1:30 pm Presentation

Program Description

This program examines how dreams and lucid dreaming can support trauma recovery while honoring diverse cultural, spiritual, and communal frameworks of meaning. Drawing on contemporary neuroscience and trauma research, participants will explore how dreaming contributes to emotional regulation, memory integration, and the processing of traumatic experience across individual and collective levels.

Emphasis is placed on culturally humble, trauma-informed engagement with dream material that centers client-defined meaning and resists interpretive dominance. This approach promotes inclusion by validating multiple ways of knowing, fosters unity by bridging psychological science with cultural and spiritual traditions, and supports advocacy through ethical, non-pathologizing clinical practice, particularly when working with historically marginalized populations.

Participants will gain evidence-based tools to engage dream material in ways that enhance psychological repair, strengthen therapeutic relationships, and contribute to more equitable and responsive mental health care across diverse communities.

Program Level: Intermediate

Learning Objectives

1. Identify three functions of dreaming and three limitations of dream recall relevant to trauma-informed, patient-focused care.
2. List three principles of culturally responsive dreamwork and four culturally grounded dream symbols.
3. Identify two strategies to engage different types of dreams to support affect regulation, patient-defined meaning, and trauma processing.

1.5 CE credits will be available to attendees.

For additional program information regarding instructor credentials, including relevant professional degree and discipline, current professional position, etc., please contact admin@azpa.org.