This course is for Year 2 Counsellors in Training or Diploma Level 4 Qualified Counsellors
Course OverviewThis course introduces Level 4 Counsellors to a trauma-informed framework grounded in the 4-Stage Model of Recovery. You’ll explore how trauma impacts the brain, body, attachment, and relationships, while developing the confidence to respond safely and effectively within the counselling space and integrate trauma-informed practices into your own modality.
Through a blend of theory, practical tools, and reflective exploration, you will learn to:
- Recognise trauma responses and attachment patterns in clients
- Support regulation, stabilisation, and safe relational connection
- Guide clients through the four stages of recovery:
- Establishing safety and trust
- Processing traumatic experiences
- Integrating new meaning
- Fostering reconnection in self and relationships
By embedding this structured approach into your practice, you’ll learn how to support clients in processing trauma safely—without re-traumatisation—while nurturing resilience, secure attachment, and post-traumatic growth.
Key Learning Areas
- The impact of trauma—including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—on the brain, body, attachment, identity, and relationships
- Attachment theory and the impact of trauma on attachment styles, relational patterns, and therapeutic dynamics
- Polyvagal Theory and the role of the vagus nerve in nervous system responses to threat, shutdown, and safety
- Recognising trauma and attachment states: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and collapse
- The neurobiology of trauma, attachment wounds, and nervous system regulation
- Trauma-informed principles for building safety, trust, and secure therapeutic relationships
- Grounding, stabilisation, co-regulation.
- Introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF): a non-pathologising model that reframes distress through the lens of power, meaning, and life experiences
- Working with complex trauma presentations, shame, dissociation, and relational trauma
- Facilitating resilience, attachment repair, meaning-making, and long-term healing
