Throughout my career, I have had a passion for working with Trauma survivors. One of the things that I love most about being a counselor is the opportunity to watch people grow and overcome the circumstances of their life. I find myself so often in awe of people’s power and, most of all, their resiliency to the challenges that they face. As a result, trauma work has always called to me because there are so many times I have had the pleasure of watching people overcome their unique challenges that can seem so insurmountable, where the easy choice would be to give up and instead they thrive.
So in my pursuit of better understanding trauma and how to help clients to navigate it, I am excited to announce that I have just received a Certified Clinical Trauma Professional designation. This certification is presented by the International Association of Trauma Professionals, an organization founded to create “a stable organization of professionals involved in traumatic stress treatment, education and research.” This in-depth training is centered around understanding the fundamentals of trauma in all of its forms, including survivors of abuse, neglect, combat, PTSD and more. The goal of the IATP is to ultimately help practitioners to identify “traumatic stress conditions and employ the active ingredients of trauma treatment that spans cultural and theoretical frameworks.”
This certification has given me additional tools to help focus on the safety, stabilization, and integration of traumatic memories which will help lead clients to a resolution of trauma. While the past cannot be changed, our integration of trauma and how our body and mind copes with our life circumstances can be. As we re-integrate our trauma into our life story, we begin to make our fragmented past become whole again, which allows us to come to a place of peace and to begin to move forward.
I am excited at the additional tools that this certification has brought to my practice and have already witnessed some of the immediate effectiveness of these techniques for my clients. Whether working with combat veterans or with survivors of a variety of other traumatic conditions, I can work together with my clients to find an effective mix of treatment modalities to help you overcome the traumatic events you have endured.