Full Course Description

Healing the Hidden Wounds of Trauma and Disconnection: Featuring Millennial Therapist Sara Kuburic

Clients are coming to us saying things like: “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life” … “I feel like I’m just going through the motions” … “What’s the point of it all?” … “I don’t know who I am anymore?” … “I’m afraid of living with regret.”

They are feeling lost, overwhelmed, confused and without reason for hope – trying to find happiness and fulfillment and fearing that they never will.

Few therapies equip us with the tools we need to effectively navigate these concerns. That’s why more and more therapists are turning to Existential Therapy -- With the latest in cutting-edge insights from decades of research and practice, existentialism provides us with exactly what we need to help our clients feel better, address mental health concerns, AND answer life’s big questions.

Whether you work with children, adolescents or adults - anxiety, depression, trauma or relationships - chronic illness, major medical conditions, or end-of-life concerns - or simply individuals who are feeling unsure about themselves and their future …. this workshop will give you tools from Existential Therapy to guide your clients to discover the deep sense of identity, meaning, and purpose they are so desperately seeking.

Now, in this all-new exclusive workshop, existential therapy expert Dr. Sara Kuburic is here to offer you the practical guidance and techniques you need to provide your clients with the transformative healing they’ve been searching for. You will discover how to:

Differentiate between mental health struggles and broader existential concerns
Develop an effective treatment plan that addresses both mental health and existential issues
Skillfully address life’s big questions and break them down into achievable therapeutic goals
Navigate your own existential and identity concerns without it interfering with your client’s journey

PURCHASE NOW to discover how much farther you can take our clients when you combine mental health recovery with a journey towards true identity and desire for life.

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate existential interventions as a therapeutic approach for reducing mental health symptoms among individuals who have undergone life-altering events
Assess the significance of freedom, choice and responsibility as key components in existential therapies
Conduct at least two existential interventions to promote self-awareness
Discuss the significance of emotional awareness as a crucial factor associated with posttraumatic growth following adverse experiences

Outline

The core components of Existentialism and its unique contribution to psychotherapy
The hidden source of suffering we didn’t know we were missing
What happens when we lose sight of who we are: From identity crisis to mental health crisis
21st century reasons everyone seems to be having an existential identity crisis
The relationship between Self-Loss and mental health struggles
Everything you need to know about the Self of your clients … and yourself
An existential path towards healing: Tools for answering life’s biggest questions
The possible risks and challenges of helping clients discover who they are
Limitations in the study of Self-Loss and where we can go from here

Target Audience

Psychologists
Counsellors
Psychiatrists
Social Workers
Case Managers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counsellors
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 14/11/2023

Narrative Therapy Techniques for Navigating Grief and Uncertainty

The pandemic has served as a reminder that we never know what’s around the bend. I was fourteen when both of my parents got cancer at the same time. My mother died when I was eighteen and my father died when I was twenty-five. Life was hard after that. I felt very alone in the world and unsure of my purpose. But through it all I wrote -- writing had always been my outlet and eventually it became my salvation. As a therapist I’ve found it to be one of the most powerful tools for working with grieving clients. In this session, I will share narrative exercises you can use to cultivate self-compassionate, facilitate emotional expression, and help clients find peace and connection in times of uncertainty and crisis.

Program Information

Objectives

Use personal narrative exercises to help clients manage grief related anxieties.
Use journaling and grief letters to help promote continuing bonds in grieving clients.
Apply narrative approaches to help clients cope and empower them to construct meaning following loss.

Outline

Personal narratives to help manage anxiety and overcome the fear of losing more
Journaling and grief recovery letters to promote continuing bonds
Narrative approaches to help clients construct meaning following loss
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 28/04/2022

Neuroplasticity in Trauma Recovery

More so than ever, being trauma-informed means understanding the ways that neuroplasticity allows clients to flourish after traumatic experiences. If we can help them change the way their traumatic memories are stored and take responsibility for the narratives that define their lives, we can foster post-traumatic growth. As clients feel stronger, more self-accepting, and have an increased sense of purpose and belonging, their symptoms will decrease, their relationships will deepen, and they can access greater joy, appreciation, and connection. This interactive workshop will empower you with practical tools—such as the six pillars of resilience—to facilitate a strength-based approach to trauma recovery. You’ll learn to:

Guide clients in revising their trauma narratives in a way that supports growth

Help clients attend to the impact of traumatic events on the body so they can build vagal tone and vagal efficiency—an embodied experience of safety and receptivity

Harness client’s inherent resilience by building on protective factors that help prevent PTSD

Help clients integrate new movement resources and release traumatic activation

Program Information

Objectives

Describe the role of neuroplasticity in healing trauma.
Identify resilience and protective factors against the development of PTSD.
Apply two neuromodulation interventions to support mind-body health and emotion regulation.

Outline

Neuroplasticity and Trauma Recovery

Understanding Neural Networks
Stress-Induced Neuroplasticity
Cultivating Positive Neuroplasticity through a Strength-Based approach to Care

Neuropsychotherapy and trauma treatment

How to Build Vagal Efficiency
Neuromodulation and Vagus nerve stimulation
Supporting clients with Embodied Self-Compassion Practices
How to support somatic repatterning
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Soul work in Psychotherapy

Embodied Spirituality as an intersection of Science, Soma, and Soul
Enhancing a sense of purpose with Clients’ Meaning Making
Aligning clients with their Values

Integration, Resilience, and Post Traumatic Growth

The 6 pillars of resilience
Factors of Post Traumatic Growth
How to help clients build their Resilience Recipe

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Physicians
Psychologists
Addiction Counselors
Nurses

Copyright : 21/03/2025

The Anatomy of Our Anxiety

We will explore a paradigm-shifting approach to managing anxiety, based on the understanding that anxiety is not all in our heads, but also in our bodies. We'll discern the difference between avoidable anxiety and purposeful anxiety, learning how to help our patients eliminate their unnecessary anxiety and allow their purposeful anxiety to guide them toward meaningful action. This is essential for any clinician supporting patients who are struggling with anxiety, providing practitioners with safe, actionable, and accessible strategies for helping patients find relief from anxiety.

Program Information

Objectives

Categorize anxiety as either avoidable or purposeful.
Implement clinical strategies to reduce avoidable anxiety.
Utilize purposeful anxiety to align with goals in treatment.

Outline

Identifying Avoidable Anxiety

Sleep deprivation
Inflammation
GI disturbances
Micronutrient deficiencies
The effects of caffeine and alcohol

Actionable strategies for addressing avoidable anxiety

Ways to support early and middle insomnia
Techniques for reducing inflammation
Techniques for addressing GI disturbances
Realistic ways to promote better nutrition
Compelling reasons for reducing caffeine and alcohol consumption, and strategies for mitigating resistance and withdrawal

Target Audience

Addiction Professionals
Case Managers
Dieticians
Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counsellors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychologists
Social Workers
Teachers/School-Based Personnel

Copyright : 22/11/2022

Transforming Regret: How to Forgive Oneself to Improve the Future

People talk about regret more than any other emotion except love. And these days, ever-increasing choice, speed of technology, and social-media shaming have all made us particularly prone to regret. When it spirals into shame, rumination, and intense self-criticism, it can lead to depression, anxiety, sleep problems, and avoidance. By helping clients respond constructively to regret, they’ll be able to leverage it to improve their lives. You’ll discover how to:

Increase self-compassion using meditation, guided imagery, somatic techniques, and expressive writing
Improve emotional awareness and reduce rumination by expanding emotional vocabulary, differentiating emotions, locating them in the body, and enacting them
Stimulate radical acceptance of both feelings and reality, and identify common thinking traps involved in regret to boost flexibility
Use regret to clarify what’s important in life, make amends, and improve future actions

Program Information

Objectives

Determine when regret becomes problematic leading to mental distress.
Use meditation, guided imagery, somatic techniques, and expressive writing to engender self-compassion.
Practice expanding emotional vocabulary, differentiating emotions, locating them in the body, and enacting them to improve emotional awareness and reduce rumination.
Determine 4 practical interventions for working with both feelings and reality, and identify common thinking traps involved in regret to boost flexibility.
Demonstrate interventions designed to leverage the experience of regret to clarify client values improve future actions.

Outline

Identify when regret becomes preservative and counterproductive
Engender self-compassion by using meditation, guided imagery, somatic techniques, and expressive writing
Improve emotional awareness and reduce rumination by expanding emotional vocabulary, differentiating emotions, locating them in the body, and enacting them
Stimulate radical acceptance of both feelings and reality, and identify common thinking traps involved in regret to boost flexibility
Leverage regret to clarify what’s important in life, make amends, and improve future actions

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counsellors
Counsellors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 09/02/2022

Undoing Shame: The Key to Trauma Healing

More than any other obstacle, shame can block the joy and peace traumatized clients seek in therapy. Feelings of worthlessness prevent them from metabolizing positive experiences. Rather than seeing their accomplishments and strengths as accurate reflections of who they are, shame sabotages their progress. Paradoxically, as clients get better in treatment, standing up for themselves more and reaching their goals, these shifts can evoke other forms of shame, like self-doubt and self-judgement. In this workshop, you’ll explore. You’ll explore how to:

Understand and accept the role of shame in surviving traumatic events
Undo negative beliefs rooted in traumatic events that fuel feelings of inferiority and unworthiness
Connect with and move through feelings of shame to make space for more pride and self-love

Program Information

Objectives

Summarize the role of shame and self-loathing as symptoms of trauma. Identify the neurobiological effects of shame.
Discriminate the physiological and cognitive contributors to chronic shame.
Describe the survival advantages of shame.

Outline

The Role of Shame in Traumatized Individuals

How shame supports the dorsal vagal or submission response
Procedural learning of survival responses
How shame can be adaptive in a dangerous environment

The Neurobiological Effects of Shame

Flushing, gaze aversion, collapse, loss of speech
How somatic symptoms of shame become belief systems

Survival “Advantages” of Shame

Inhibiting behavior that might elicit abuse
How shame supports loyalty to family over self
Shame as a non-threatening response to perpetrators

Interventions for Addressing Shame

Developing a mindful relationship to the shame as implicit memory
Cognitive re-structuring of shame as a survival response
Treating the shame as a child part humiliated by an inner critic

Limitations of the research and potential risks

Evaluating risk in use of mindfulness-based or cognitive restructuring techniques
Identifying clients appropriate or inappropriate for these approaches

Target Audience

Counsellors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Physicians
Psychologists
Addiction Counsellors

The Grief of Medical Trauma, Injury and Illness

A line forever between what was and what will be, those impacted by medical trauma and chronic illnesses feel every loss. Struck with a sudden or gradual forfeiture of abilities, independence, self-esteem, freedom, comfort, hope and so much more, the grief of what has been taken from them can make a path forward seem unattainable. In this timely session, Dr. Sacha McBain will show you how clinicians can work with the grief that often follows medical trauma, help clients cope with and adapt to their losses, and support them as they shape a new sense of identity and purpose for themselves.

Program Information

Objectives

Utilize the ecological model of medical trauma to develop a trauma-informed case formulation.
Tailor trauma-informed and trauma-focused treatment to the address the unique loss and grief experienced by medical trauma survivors and their families.
Utilize clinical strategies from the fields of health and rehabilitation psychology to target health-related factors that contribute to difficulty with adjustment to illness or injury and perpetuate complicated grief.

Outline

Overview of medical trauma
Aspects of medical trauma that may elicit grief and/or loss
Assessing for medical trauma and disenfranchised grief
Strategies to support adjustment to injury or illness
Risks, research and limitations

Target Audience

Counsellors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Nurse Practioners
Psychologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professions

The Trauma of Endings

The data is clear: most of us will author more than one love story in our lifetime. We talk a lot about the skills and paradigms that individuals and couples need to create an intimate relationship. But we don’t talk nearly enough about the skills and paradigms that individuals and couples need in order to end an intimate relationship. Learning relational meta skills can help clients approach endings—and new beginnings—with more integrity and Relational Self-Awareness, reducing collateral damage to both self and others. In this workshop, discover an integrative approach for helping your clients better understand the thoughts, feelings, and common issues that arise during a breakup as well as integrating the loss and preparing to begin dating again. You’ll explore:

How to teach Relational Self-Awareness as an essential meta skill to navigate clarify boundaries and make sense of relationship endings
How to help clients advocate for their relational needs with romantic partners
An integrative approach to helping clients move from fear and relational ambivalence toward empowerment and clarity

Program Information

Objectives

Identify how to help clients set boundaries and advocate for their relational needs with new romantic partners.
Determine with clients the importance of Relational Self-Awareness in creating a successful romantic relationship.
Identify common therapeutic pitfalls when working with clients who are ending a relationship or beginning a new one.

Outline

The Psychology of Goodbye

Internal dynamics: cognition, emotion, somatic, psychodynamics, narrative
Relational dynamics: ambivalence, boundaries, power
How we process grief
Developmental considerations: emerging adults, folks at midlife

Self-of-the-Therapist

Working with Relational Ambivalence
Keeping a relational frame (Individual Therapy for Couple Problems, Gurman)

Integration of Loss

“The best way to get over someone is to get under someone new!”
Working with your client’s indirect system Indicators of readiness to begin again

Dating after Loss

First Date Data
Pacing
Sexual Boundaries

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Physicians
Psychologists
Addiction Counselors