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Follow-up Workshop after the Symposium

Rethinking Childhood Trauma: A Brain-Based Perspective for Helping Professionals

Many helping professionals encounter challenges with clients who endured adverse childhood experiences (ACE): resistance to change, stalled progress, and limited time for in-depth interventions. This half-day workshop, co-led by psychologist Prof. Jee Hyun KIM and psychiatrist Dr. William CHUI, provides a brain-mind perspective on how trauma shapes memory, emotion, and behavior, and what we can do about it.

 

Prof. KIM Jee Hyun explores the neurobiology of memory and forgetting in childhood trauma, highlighting their roles in mental health across the lifespan, age- and sex-specific mechanisms, and implications for trauma-informed care.

 

Dr. CHUI Wing Ho, William examines how ACE disrupts brain development and entrenches fight–flight–freeze–fawn patterns. He will share practical steps that can accumulate into meaningful change in the brain-mind system, with the goal of out-growing the ACE.

 

Seats are limited, don’t miss this opportunity to learn together!

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Workshop Details

 

📅 26 November 2025 (Wednesday)
🕘 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
📍  FellowSPACE
       28/F, Tower A, Southmark, 11 Yi Hing Street, Wong Chuk Hang

🗣️ Conduct in English

💰 HK$800 per head

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👥 Target Participants​

  • Social workers

  • Counsellors

  • Psychologists

  • Pastors

  • Nurses

  • Medical practitioners

  • Others in helping and caring professions

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Registration Deadline: 11 November 2025
CPD & CNE Points: 4 (In application)

Attendance Certificate will be provided to all participants

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Rundown

08:45-09:00

Registration

09:00-11:15

Speaker
Prof. KIM Jee Hyun
Professor, School of Medicine Deakin University
Australia

The Science of Forgetting: Memory, Trauma, and Healing in Childhood
 
Abstract:
Learning and memory are fundamental features of humans adapting to an everchanging environment. They have been extensively studied and we have progressed significantly in our psychological and biological understanding of their role in mental disorders. In contrast, the role of forgetting is a recent topic of interest, with the increasing recognition that “to understand how we remember, we must also understand how, and why, we forget”. For example, the ability to forget helps us to adapt by focusing on the present and be creative. Importantly, forgetting allows us to manage living with ghosts from the past.
 
My vision is to understand the role of memory and forgetting across the lifetime in mental disorders and to translate the findings into the clinic. The key to finding effective therapies may lie in how we remember and forget emotionally significant events that have occurred in childhood.
 
In this workshop, we will explore the latest research in age-specific forgetting behaviours and their underlying neurobiology, which suggests that it is possible to reduce or change the emotional content of bad memories. Emerging sex-specific findings in forgetting will also be discussed, which is crucial in promoting personalised strategies for healing.

11:15-11:30

Coffee Break

11:30-13:00

Speaker
Dr. CHUI Wing Ho, William
Specialist in Psychiatry

Action Plan for Outgrowing ACE: Brain-Based Steps for Everyday Practice

Abstract:
In this session, Dr. William Chui explores how adverse childhood experiences (ACE) disrupt brain development, amplifying fear and anger via toxic stress, and entrenching fight-flight-freeze-fawn patterns. He shows secure attachment's role in recalibrating this system and fostering core beliefs of worth and trust, alongside neuroplasticity's dual potential for risk and recovery. We will identify "toxic mental traps" like self-blame and people-pleasing, embrace a growth mindset, and learn practical tools: boundaries, nonviolent communication, prefrontal cortex regulation, and self-soothing. This session translates insights into action: support those with ACE to mobilize resources for safety and learning, build mastery through repetition of healthy routine, and write their narratives with an adult mode of brain. This actionable plan equips busy professionals with brain-based steps for ACE recovery.

​13:00

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