What if, with complex trauma, understanding the story is not always the place to begin?
What if safety needs to come first?
That is one of the questions Dr Silvia Zanotta will bring to the RTI Second World Conference 2027 in Erlangen, Germany.
Her message is beautifully simple:
“Safety before insight. Regulation before narrative.”
For therapists working with complex trauma, those words invite us to look beyond the story and pay closer attention to what is happening in the body, the senses and the nervous system.
When the nervous system is still responding to danger
Trauma is not experienced through words alone.
When we feel threatened, survival responses can take over. For people living with complex trauma, those responses may continue long after the original danger has passed.
That changes what may be needed in therapy.
Before asking a client to explore or explain an experience, we may first need to help them feel safe enough to be present with it.
Silvia’s keynote, Resource Therapy for Complex Trauma?, will explore this through sensory processing, grounding and supportive resources.
She will also look beyond our familiar five senses.
Proprioception, the vestibular system and interoception can all be important when we are paying attention to how trauma is experienced in the body.
This brings another dimension to our Resource Therapy work.
Resource Therapy meets the body
Resource Therapy gives us a clear way to identify and work directly with the part that needs help.
Silvia brings a somatic perspective to that work.
Rather than focusing only on what a client can tell us, we can also become curious about what their body and nervous system are communicating.
Where is the activation?
What changes when safety is established?
What does this part need right now?
And what resources can help?
This is where “regulation before narrative” becomes more than a good phrase.
It becomes a clinical question.
From keynote to practical experience
Silvia won’t only be talking about these ideas in Erlangen.
She will also take us further into the work in her workshop:
Resource Therapy for Complex Trauma: Practical Insights.
The workshop will explore how trauma-related difficulties can involve unconscious resources and personality parts, alongside signals from the body and nervous system.
Participants will see practical interventions and demonstrations and have opportunities to learn through exercises.
I particularly like this aspect of Silvia’s contribution.
I want our World Conference to give clinicians more than interesting ideas.
I want us to see the work.
Experience it.
Ask questions.
And leave with something useful to take back into our therapy rooms.
Who is Silvia Zanotta?
Silvia is a psychologist and psychotherapist based in Zurich, Switzerland.
She works with children, adolescents, adults and families and has extensive experience in traumatic stress, anxiety, phobias, OCD, autism and somatic symptoms.
She is a certified trainer and supervisor with Resource Therapy International and Ego State Therapy International, and also works with somatic approaches to trauma.
Silvia teaches internationally and has presented at conferences across Europe, Canada and South Africa.
She is also the author of Somatic Ego State Therapy for Trauma Healing: Whole Again.
It is this combination of clinical experience, Resource Therapy and somatic trauma work that I’m particularly excited for Silvia to bring to Erlangen.
Why this conversation matters
Our theme for the RTI Second World Conference 2027 is New Directions in Parts Therapy.
For me, new directions do not mean abandoning what works.
They mean staying curious.
Looking more closely.
Learning from experienced clinicians.
And asking how we can continue to develop the way we understand and practise Resource Therapy.
Silvia’s presentations give us an opportunity to do exactly that.
How do we listen to the part and the body?
What can sensory processing tell us?
What happens when the nervous system needs something before words?
And how might this deepen our work with complex trauma?
These are conversations worth having.
Together.
Join us in Erlangen
The RTI Second World Conference 2027 brings our international Resource Therapy community together in Germany from 17–19 June 2027.
Our theme is New Directions in Parts Therapy.
Silvia Zanotta will join us as both a Keynote Speaker and Workshop Presenter.
And I am very much looking forward to the conversation she will start.
17–19 June 2027
Erlangen, Germany
RTI Second World Conference 2027
New Directions in Parts Therapy
Early Bird registration is now open.
Philipa Thornton
President
Resource Therapy International
Preserving. Connecting. Growing. Together.