Certificate in trauma counselling for mental health professionals: Level 1 trauma training

Strengthen assessment, intervention, and resilience strategies for trauma-informed care.

This six-day trauma certificate will provide the most current information on the biopsychosocial phenomenon of trauma, along with training in how to assess and respond ethically and appropriately to adult clients, given the parameters of the workplace.

The trauma issues experienced by adult clients/consumers may include: early childhood trauma, violent crime, domestic violence, sexual assault and chronic and terminal illness. This trauma training will examine how workers and organizations are affected by and respond to working with traumatized individuals and develop trauma-informed approaches to work that enhance personal and professional resilience.

Learning objectives:

• Identify:
  • Participants will learn to identify and understand the range of reactions traumatized individuals my experience such as: Acute PTSD, PTSD, Grief/Bereavement Reactions, Complex Trauma, Developmental Trauma, chronic frustration and misery, dissociative reactions and anxious and disorganized attachment patterns.
• Assess:
  • Participants will learn key questions to ask clients in acute and complex situation to assess and guide interventions.
• Intervene:
  • You will learn strategies that will assist clients in adaptive coping and overcoming that debilitating effects of: Hypo/hyperarousal, affect dysregulation, sleep dysregulation, intrusive imagery, flashbacks and nightmare management, guilt shame, blame, client paralysis and therapeutic impasses.
  • The objective with clients who have experienced a single incident trauma is to help clients recover to base-line functioning by using psychoeducation and symptom management strategies.
  • The objective with clients, who have experienced complex/developmental trauma, is to mitigate layers of human suffering that has manifested in entrenched rigid maladaptive patterns. Our work with clients is to bring clarity to the origin, presence and manifestations of these patterns and to develop a systematic process for changing the core belief system/schema that drives these patterns.

Our comprehensive level 1 trauma certificate covers the following key areas:

1. Advanced Neurobiology of Trauma
   • Impact of fear on brain function
   • Role of dissociation
2. Trauma Reaction ‘Stuck Points’
   • Acute therapeutic conversations for ‘unsticking’
   • Flight, fight, freeze, engage, conscious submission, robotic submission
   • Range of dissociative reactions
3. Trauma Nomenclature
   • Stress reactions, acute stress disorder, PTSD, chronic PTSD, delayed PTSD
4. Clinical Interventions
   • Trauma risk factors
   • Flashback management strategies
   • Sleep dysregulation regulation
5. Comparative Trauma Studies
   • Trauma vs. bereavement
   • Core impacts of chronic trauma
   • Developmental trauma, complex trauma, borderline personality disorder
6. Advanced Treatment Approaches
   • Schema therapy
   • Internal family systems
   • Imagery rescripting and reprocessing therapy
   • Dialectical behavioral therapy
7. Professional Resilience
   • Four key strategies for enhancing worker resilience
8. Attachment and Complex Trauma
   • Intersection of attachment styles and complex/developmental trauma
9. Treatment Planning and Assessment
   • Goals and assessment tools
   • Overview of effective rapid PTSD Treatments (CBT, CPT)
   • Contraindicators for rapid PTSD treatment