About this live event
Graduate school teaches clinicians the foundations of trauma: diagnostic criteria, symptoms, assessment, and evidence-based treatment. But some of the most important lessons about trauma aren't learned from a textbook. They're learned in the therapy room.
This 3-hour continuing education course explores 10 clinical realities of trauma that are often underemphasized in graduate education but essential to effective trauma-informed practice.
Participants will examine why trauma is not simply about what happened, how prolonged and interpersonal trauma can shape the nervous system, and why complex trauma may affect far more than traditional PTSD symptoms. Trauma-related adaptations can become intertwined with identity, relationships, attachment, emotional regulation, memory, and the body.
The course will explore behaviors such as hypervigilance, avoidance, dissociation, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional shutdown, and control through a trauma-informed lens—considering how behaviors that appear dysfunctional in the present may have once served an important protective function.
Particular attention will be given to attachment, implicit and explicit memory, somatic responses, dissociation, regulation, and therapeutic attunement. Participants will also consider an often-overlooked part of trauma treatment: the therapist's own nervous system. How might our expectations, emotional responses, assumptions, or desire for certainty influence what happens in the therapy room?
Through clinical examples, reflection, discussion, and experiential learning, participants will develop a more nuanced framework for recognizing trauma-related adaptations and responding with greater curiosity, flexibility, and clinical precision.
Slide deck and bonus resources included.
Recording: This class will be recorded and made available within 2 hours after the live lecture. Recordings are available for 90 days after the class.
