Healing at the Root: Emotional Regression as a Transformative Clinical Tool

🎙️ Keynote Speaker Feature: Aaron Olson
Program Director, Cirque Lodge, United States
📌 Session Format: Oral Presentation (Onsite & Virtual)
📘 Session Title: WalkingBackwards: Using Emotional Regression as a Therapeutic Entry Point in SubstanceUse Disorders, Anger, and Grief

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🧠 Session Overview & Key Insights

▪ Central Theme: Re-envisioning emotional regression as a clinical opportunity that opens pathways to deep healing.
▪ Clinical Relevance: Highlights how substance dependence, persistent anger, and unresolved grief often stem from early relational trauma and emotional injury.
▪ Conceptual Integration: Draws from psychoanalytic foundations, family systems theory, and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT).
▪ Therapeutic Strategy: Demonstrates how accessing regressive emotional states helps clinicians move past cognitive defenses to reach core developmental wounds.
▪ Applied Techniques: Family identity mapping, genograms, guided imagery, somatic awareness, and narrative repair.
▪ Trauma-Sensitive Practice: Emphasizes safety, containment, and non-retraumatizing interventions.
▪ Clinical Impact: Supports improved emotional regulation, increased psychological flexibility, and strengthened self-compassion.
▪ Practice in Action: Case vignettes illustrating effective regression-focused interventions in SUD, anger, and grief treatment.
▪ Key Message: Regression work is a gateway to sustainable recovery—not an endpoint.

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👨‍⚕️ Speaker Profile

With more than three decades of experience in behavioral health, Aaron Olson has been a cornerstone of Cirque Lodge since 2009. His career spans juvenile justice, inpatient psychiatry, residential and outpatient addiction treatment, and community mental health settings.

▪ Expertise in substance use disorders and family systems therapy
▪ Strong ACT-based clinical framework
▪ Special interests include intergenerational trauma, clinician burnout, compassion fatigue, and emotional regression
▪ National speaker on advanced therapeutic approaches
▪ Program Director of Cirque Lodge’s Lodge Program
▪ Faculty member, University of Utah – College of Social Work, Substance Abuse Counseling Program

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🌐 Be Part of the Global Conversation

📍 InternationalConference on Addiction Medicine, Mental Health and Psychiatry
📅 March 23–25, 2026
📌 Singapore & Online
🔗 Conference Website: https://addiction.miconferences.com/

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