Creative and Culturally-Sensitive Approaches to Trauma Recovery: Consultation & Training
Gain expertise in integrative, embodied and evidence-based approaches to trauma recovery.
Meet Jennifer!
A dedicated trauma consultant & trainer with a dynamic, engaging and interactive approach to learning.
Consultation Services
I provide trauma-focused consultation and training to mental health professionals (and other service providers) who seek expertise in integrative, evidence-based and culturally-sensitive approaches to trauma recovery, including complex trauma, sexual abuse and violence, interpersonal and relational trauma, and crisis intervention for all ages.
Over the past ten years of front-line trauma work and advanced trauma training in a variety of modalities, my approach to trauma recovery has evolved to be therapist-led yet client-driven, integrative and strongly influenced by leading trauma theories such as nervous system regulation and polyvagal theory.
In the helping professions, we want to feel helpful rather than helpless, and yet the weight of the trauma we work with can be overwhelming. I have learned that using a structured, phase-based model of trauma treatment can offer safety, security and reassurance to both you and your clients, so you know where you are going and how to get there.
My goal as a consultant is to offer clinicians the skills they need to safely help clients integrate experiences of trauma into their life narrative with a healthy, empowered sense of self and view of the world. I want to help clinicians honour the resilience in their clients and to support post-traumatic growth by enhancing positive self-concept and a deeper connection to one’s individual and cultural sense of purpose and meaning in life.
Who will benefit from trauma-focused consultation?
- Assessment: Safely and accurately assess for PTSD in both children and adults, including complex trauma, developmental impacts of trauma and dissociation.
- Treatment planning: Work collaboratively with clients to develop individualized, trauma-informed treatment plans so you and your client will know if the therapy is working.
- Effective interventions: Use interventions that increase stabilization and safely activate, titrate, integrate and repair the trauma memories, and creatively adapt these interventions to meet the individual needs of your clients.
- Cross-cultural practice: Increase your cultural competencies so you can sensitively and respectfully meet the individual needs of your clients with a curious, empathetic and non-judgmental attitude.
- Psycho-education: Information is powerful! Introduce your clients to helpful, non-pathologizing and normalizing psycho-education on post-traumatic stresss they can make sense of their symptoms and trauma reactions without feeling shamed or “crazy.”
- Working with trauma memories: Attend to both the explicit (verbal, cognitive) memories as well as the implicit (non-verbal, somatic) memories while keeping your client grounded and safe.
- Understanding trauma theories: Integrate leading trauma theories and approaches into your work, such as polyvagal theory and the neurophysiology of trauma, nervous system regulation, the neurosequential model of therapeutics, interpersonal neurobiology, somatic experiencing and other body-based approaches.
- Supporting family members and caregivers: Increase compassion, support and advocacy for your client by working with caregivers and family members, increasing your client’s support base and readiness for trauma healing.
- Grounding Techniques: Re-stabilize an overwhelmed client through grounding exercises and effective stress-reduction activities; build these self-soothing and emotional regulation skills so your client can apply them to situations outside of the therapy session as healthy forms of coping.
- Crisis Intervention: Navigate self-harm, suicidality and crisis intervention with trauma-sensitive risk assessments and collaborative safety planning.
My Approach
Trauma-focused treatment always begins with re-establishing a sense of internal and external safety, as well as building resources and resilience in your clients by giving them the skills to self-soothe, tolerate distress, regulate emotions, access support and develop healthy coping strategies. I call this first phase getting grounded with clients to illustrate the importance of being grounded, balanced and oriented to the safety of the present before taking the next steps. Consultation can help you learn which skills and resources will get your clients grounded so they can safely begin to observe and tolerate feelings, sensations, images and beliefs associated with unprocessed memories.
The middle phase of treatment involves moving through the trauma by incorporating evidence-based, body-centered and creative methods to break-down, reframe, reprocess, integrate and repair the trauma memories. When memories are integrated, they take their place on our timeline, in our life story, so they are no longer triggered and re-experienced in the present. Treating trauma means helping clients remember the past with a neutral or even empowering feeling (“I did what I needed to do to survive,” or “I am strong”). When clients move through the memory and make it to the other side, they know they are survivors.
This last phase provides closure and a sense of moving on. Moving on involves enhancing post-traumatic growth by healing in the relationship with one’s self, connecting with future goals (and developing the skills to meet them), and re-experiencing joy and wellness. When clients move on from the past with strength and direction, they know they are thrivers.
Clinical Specializations
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT)
- Mindfulness-based practice
- Creative arts therapies and trauma-informed art therapy
- Somatic, body-based psychotherapies (such as focusing-oriented therapy)
- Non-violent communication skills
- Play therapy
- Ethics and cross-cultural practice
Professional Registrations
- Certified Canadian Counsellor (CCC) with the Canadian Counselling Psychotherapy Association, member #4885
- Certified EMDR Therapist and Consultant-in-Training with the EMDR International Association, member #54365360
- Registered Canadian Art Therapist (RCAT) with the Canadian Art Therapy Association, member #200-R-16
- MA in Creative Arts Therapies from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
- Advanced Certificate in Aboriginal Focusing Oriented Therapy and Complex Trauma from the Justice Institute of British Columbia
Contact Me
If you, your team or your organization would like to build skills in any of my areas of specialization, please feel free to contact me with any questions or inquiries!