Epistemic Trust and Trauma

About this training

Epistemic trust is rooted in early development: through attachment relationships and caregiver responsiveness, children learn when and from whom to take in knowledge. Trauma and adversity derail this mentalizing process, leading to mistrust, hypervigilance, or credulity, and with it, difficulties in learning from others and adaptation. Psychotherapy can be understood as a re-developmental process: a context in which trust, recognition, and openness to learning are re-established.

This training will trace the developmental origins of epistemic trust, its breakdown across the lifespan, and its reactivation in therapy, showing how clinicians can recreate the conditions for growth and change in adulthood.

Aims of this training

• To explain the developmental origins of epistemic trust and its role in social learning.

• To identify how trauma and adversity distort epistemic trust across childhood and adulthood.

• To explore how psychotherapy functions as a re-developmental process to restore epistemic trust and enable change.

Who is this training for?

We welcome all psychotherapists and clinicians who work with children, young people, and adults to this training.