Full Course Description
The Trauma-Informed Assessment
Although many mental health agencies and organizations are legitimately expressing the need for clinicians to be “trauma-informed,” the reality is, the definition of that phrase is open to much interpretation. In this part of the training we will explore what “trauma informed” really means, and we will address the importance of applying trauma informed concepts in the earliest phases of treatment.
Program Information
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Physicians
- Physician Assistants
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Objectives
- Explain at least three core concepts that are indicative of “trauma informed” care.
- Identify and implement at least six questions that offer an indirect, safer, and less triggering approach to gathering intake information.
- Identify and implement at least four clinical questions designed to focus on clients’ strengths while heightening safety and trust in the therapeutic relationship.
- Describe how to slow down and safely pace the gathering of trauma material when clients don’t have the ability to pace themselves.
- Implement at least four questions that respect the need for cultural sensitivity.
- Implement at least three strategies to enhance external safety for traumatized clients in the earliest stages of therapy.
- Identify the difference between therapists’ perspectives on therapy and traumatized clients’ perspectives, and how that impacts the therapeutic alliance.
- Explain the impact that counter-transference can have on the assessment phase of treatment.
Outline
- Being a trauma-informed therapist
- What is the mental health field getting wrong when treating trauma?
- The rationale for a “trauma-informed” assessment
- Setting the stage
- Less threatening assessment questions
- Slowing down the runaway train
- Inherent challenges in the assessment process
- Treatment from the clinician’s perspective vs the client’s perspective
- The impact of cultural differences
- Assessment and counter-transference
Copyright :
08/14/2024
Attachment and its impact on Affect Regulation and Dysregulation
In this part of the training, we will explore the four main attachment patterns children can experience in early childhood. We will discuss the pivotal role that secure versus insecure family of origin attachment has on a child’s subsequent ability or inability to self-soothe, regulate their emotional states, and allow for trust and vulnerability in all their subsequent relationships. Participants will learn about the profound reverberating emotional and neurological impact of neglect as well as dismissive, ambivalent, and disorganized attachment patterns. We will also process the challenge that abused and neglected children face, and the price they pay, when they are forced to attach to caretakers who are emotionally unavailable or toxic. We will address the window of tolerance and its impact on hypo-arousal and hyper-arousal. Therapists must make sure that clients are in the optimal window during sessions, otherwise, insight and integration cannot occur.
Program Information
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Physicians
- Physician Assistants
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Objectives
- Explain the relationship between, trauma, attachment, and affect regulation.
- Distinguish between co-regulation and auto-regulation.
- Describe the four attachment styles and their impact on a child’s cognitive and emotional development.
- Describe the ways in which disorganized attachment manifests in the parent-child relationship.
- Explain the challenge of attaching to unavailable or abusive caretakers and the resulting need to take “ownership” of the abuse.
- Describe the manifestations of affect dysregulation and the impact of hypo-arousal and hyper-arousal.
- Describe the “Still Face Experiment” and what it has taught us about the impact of insecure attachment.
- Explain the role that digital technology has in compromising secure attachment.
Outline
- In the beginning: infants and attachment
- Processing insecure attachment patterns
- Processing disorganized attachment
- Co-regulation and auto-regulation
- The challenge of attaching to abusive caretakers and the price kids pay
- The Still Face Experiment
- Attachment and subsequent relationship dynamics
- Defining trauma and the meaning-making that mitigates or exacerbates it
- Caretaker as perpetrator
- Inevitable, necessary, creative childhood coping strategies
- The adult manifestations of childhood abuse and neglect
Copyright :
08/27/2024
Using Parts Work and Creative Modalities to Enhance Affect Regulation
In this section, we will identify and experience a wide range of creative treatment strategies designed to help traumatized clients develop and enhance affect regulation skills. Participants will learn about the power of integrating the left and right hemispheres of the brain for deeper processing and healing. These strategies will help to promote internal and external safety, grounding, containment, self-soothing, self-compassion, and emotional stabilization. Participants will learn and practice techniques including the creation of a safe place; soothing breath work; somatic resourcing; journaling and creative cognitive re-framing; using art therapeutically; and flashback halting protocols. We will explore many of these strategies within the context of “parts work,” discussing ways to access and comfort the “Inner Critic” as well as helping clients to access their wisest, most compassionate part. Clients’ artwork and journal entries will be incorporated into the training. We will identify the most appropriate questions for processing clients’ artwork, so the meaning-making comes from them and not the therapist. Demos will also help to model how a variety of creative strategies can be introduced and processed in sessions.
Program Information
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Physicians
- Physician Assistants
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Objectives
- Describe and implement strategies to enhance internal safety in traumatized clients.
- Identify at least three protective functions of the “Inner Critic” and explain why it is the byproduct of trauma and often activated in response to expressive modalities.
- Identify the secondary gain of inner criticism and shame.
- Implement at least two breathing exercises designed to calm and soothe traumatized clients.
- Explain the concept of somatic resourcing and implement at least four strategies to enhance grounding and soothing.
- Describe at least three benefits of journaling and implement at least two journal prompts to increase positive self-talk.
- Explain and apply the concept of “remembered resource” as a means to increase self-compassion.
- Describe and implement at least three art prompts that are designed to illustrate emotion, obstacles and supports, and containment.
Outline
- Creating safety
- addressing the fact that safety doesn't resonate for trauma survivors
- establishing internal safety with a “safe” place collage
- Incorporating a “parts” perspective
- understanding and working with the “Inner Critic”
- the “protective” function of the Inner Critic: guilt, shame, and secondary gain
- writing experiential- acknowledging the Inner Critic
- Addressing the two antidotes to shame: curiosity and self-compassion
- the power of self-talk
- writing experiential: the power of inner monologues
- shifting to kinder self-talk
- working with the “Remembered Resource”
- the healing nature of the therapeutic relationship as it pertains to modeling compassion
- processing the benefits of journaling
- bringing curiosity to therapy
- Trauma and somatization
- experiential: addressing hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal with breath work
- somatic resourcing for containing and comfort: experientials
- hand in hand meditation- experiential
- Amy Cuddy’s power poses to embody empowerment
- Using art therapeutically
- the basic ground rules and limitations
- processing clients’ artwork: the do’s and don'ts
- the power of open-ended questions
- bringing art into therapy sessions: drawing emotions, working with mandalas
- processing art prompts and clients’ work: crystal ball, inside/outside persona, obstacles/supports, the “bridge,” PTSD and PTG
- Working with dissociation
- the paradox of “checking out”
- flashback halting protocol: Erickson’s 5,4,3,2,1
- additional strategies to short-circuit dissociation
- using aromatherapy
- Summarizing how to best help traumatized clients
Copyright :
11/04/2024
Live Consultation with Lisa Ferentz - Certificate in Trauma-Informed Therapy
Copyright :
06/24/2025
Live Consultation with Lisa Ferentz - Certificate in Trauma-Informed Therapy
Copyright :
07/21/2025
Live Consultation with Lisa Ferentz - Certificate in Trauma-Informed Therapy
Copyright :
08/12/2025
Cultivating Post-Traumatic Growth: Hope from the Very First Sessions
Have you ever been working with a traumatized client, compassionately bearing witness to their symptoms, but unable to shake the feeling that you’re overly focusing on their pain? You’re not alone. We all want clients who’ve survived trauma to chart a path forward. Fortunately, there are ways to help them heal and grow while still acknowledging what happened to them---even in the very first sessions. In this experiential recording, we’ll explore creative ways to help trauma survivors navigate the impact of traumatic events while guiding them to a place of newfound hope, resiliency, and healing. You’ll learn:
- Why the meaning clients attach to trauma is so important
- How to incorporate the body in trauma work, plant the seeds of hope in your earliest sessions, and identify and nurture tangible markers of post-traumatic growth
- Creative strategies like internal and external resourcing, before-and-after imagery, two-handed writing, and future-self visualizations
Program Information
Objectives
- Analyze the concept of post-traumatic growth and how it relates to traumatic stress.
- Evaluate at least three examples of meaning making that exacerbate trauma and three examples of meaning making that mitigate the sequala of trauma.
- Practice at least three strategies designed to increase self-compassion.
- Catalogue and describe the five arenas of post-traumatic growth.
- Demonstrate at least four creative strategies to enhance the arenas of post-traumatic growth that are identified in the PTG Inventory.
Outline
- What is post-traumatic growth as it relates to PTSD
- Risk and limitations of working with PTG and areas of further research
- The power of “meaning making”: core beliefs that mitigate trauma and core beliefs that exacerbate the impact of traumatic events
- Processing clients’ artwork
- Personality traits associated with post-traumatic growth
- Shifting clients from “why?” to “what can I do about it?”
- Planting the seeds of PTG in therapy
- Processing a case through a strengths-based vs pathologizing lens
- Exploring the client’s inner monologue: the power of self-talk
- Self-compassion in PTG
- Remembered resource two handed writing experiential
- Addressing double standards
- Using the Post-traumatic growth inventory
- Re-discovering personal strengths- client story and video
- Experiential: somatic resourcing
- The Post-traumatic growth inventory
- Belief in New Possibilities- client’s artwork
- Art prompt: before and after collage
- Client video demonstrations and artwork
Target Audience
- Psychologists
- Physicians
- Addiction Counselors
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Art Therapists
- Nurses
- Other Behavioral Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/10/2022
Guilt, Shame, and the Traumatized Client
Although trauma can affect clients’ inner lives in countless ways, most survivors grapple with deep-seated feelings of guilt and shame. Until these powerful and debilitating emotions are specifically addressed, it’s difficult for clients to fully heal. In this recording, learn how to compassionately help clients understand the root causes of shame and guilt, and offer creative strategies for releasing themselves from the grip of these toxic emotions. You’ll explore:
- The difference between guilt and shame, and why shame is so difficult to resolve
- The specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame
- How secondary gain and “protective parts” affect clients’ willingness to let go of shame
- How to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance the two antidotes to shame: self-compassion and curiosity
Program Information
Objectives
- Determine the difference between guilt and shame for clients, and why shame is so difficult to resolve.
- Determine the specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame.
- Evaluate how secondary gain and “protective parts” impact clients’ willingness to let go of shame.
- Assess the role the therapeutic relationship plays in helping clients process shame.
- Determine how to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance clients’ self-compassion and curiosity to help them let go of shame.
Outline
- Explain the difference between guilt and shame for clients, and why shame is so difficult to resolve.
- Guilt as a byproduct of an interpersonal exchange or a behavioral choice versus core feelings of worthlessness or being inherently damaged or “bad.”
- Apologizing and making amends versus fundamentally changing one’s sense of self
- Determine the specific dynamics of trauma and early childhood coping strategies that promote and sustain shame.
- Witnessing abuse, survivor guilt, the shame of keeping silent, the shame of “participating” in sexual trauma, misunderstanding the freeze response
- Taking ownership of trauma to preserve familial loyalty
- Explore how secondary gain and “protective parts” impact clients’ willingness to let go of shame.
- Reducing expectations, the risk of failing or disappointing others
- Rationalizing self-destructive and addictive behaviors
- Inner critics using shame to “motivate” and prevent abandonment
- Consider the role the therapeutic relationship plays in helping clients process shame.
- Modeling self-compassion and positive self-talk
- Using psychoeducation and curiosity to release clients from self-blame
- The healing impact of attunement
- Describe how to cognitively, somatically, and creatively enhance clients’ self-compassion and curiosity to help them let go of shame.
- Using the “crossroad of a thought” and “double standard” cognitive strategies to let go of shame
- Using “remembered resource,” sand tray work, art strategies, two-handed writing, and spirituality to creatively enhance compassion
- Using “focusing,” body map, and somatic resourcing to understand the somatic impact of shame and bring comfort to the debilitating emotion
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
03/18/2021