Full Course Description

The Anatomy of Racial Trauma

Racial trauma rarely shows up in a clinical intake as itself. It surfaces instead as hypervigilance mistaken for anxiety, withdrawal read as avoidance, or disengagement that goes unexplained. Most training on the topic builds awareness without giving clinicians a framework for what surfaces in the room. This workshop draws on the work by Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, Professor at Drexel University and Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships, to map the critical invisible wounds of racial trauma and examine the Self of the Therapist dynamics that can support or undermine effective care.

Attendees will leave able to:

Describe racial trauma's psychological, relational, and intergenerational impact
Apply a racially sensitive, trauma-informed assessment framework
Identify treatment strategies that center race, oppression, and resilience
Examine their own Self of the Therapist factors in this work

Program Information

Objectives

Describe the psychological, relational, and intergenerational impact of racial trauma on People of Color, families, and communities.
Apply a racially sensitive, trauma-informed framework to assess and address the hidden wounds of racial trauma in clinical and community-based settings.
Identify treatment strategies that center race, racial oppression, resilience, and healing throughout the therapeutic process.

Outline

The Anatomy of Racial Trauma

The centrality of whiteness
The dynamics of oppression
The relationship between oppression and suppression

Invisible Wounds of Racial Trauma

Internalized devaluation
Generalized suspicion
Intangible loss
Assaulted sense of self

Clinical Strategies for Treating Invisible Wounds of Racial Trauma

Counteracting devaluation
The VCR method
Rechanneling rage
Rehumanizing loss
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Self of the Therapist Considerations

Developing relational muscles
Developing a racial lens
Developing a racial sense of self

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/16/2026

When Racism Comes Home

Couples often carry wounds that were never created inside the relationship. Yet therapists are typically trained to focus on communication, attachment injuries, and family-of-origin history, with little attention to systemic oppression. The result: race-based survival strategies get misread as pathology or poor communication. Akilah Riley-Richardson introduces a liberatory framework, including Relational Privilege and the PRIDE Model, for recognizing when the system, not the couple, is driving the distress.

Attendees will leave able to:

Distinguish race-based survival adaptations from attachment wounds
Recognize how oppression shapes conflict and safety in BIPOC couples
Apply the PRIDE Model to rebuild emotional safety and connection
Use culturally responsive questions to assess systemic trauma in couples

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate race-based trauma from attachment injuries and describe its impact on relational functioning.
Assess the role of relational privilege and systemic trauma within BIPOC couples using culturally responsive assessment strategies.
Implement at least three interventions from the PRIDE Model to strengthen emotional safety, connection, and mutual care.

Outline

Why Traditional Couples Therapy Misses the Mark

Common ways systemic trauma is overlooked in couples therapy
Understanding race-based trauma as relational trauma
The neurobiology of chronic oppression
Attachment, nervous system regulation, and relational safety
Why communication strategies often fail

Recognizing Systemic Trauma in Couple Dynamics

Introducing Relational Privilege
How oppression shapes conflict cycles
Survival adaptations versus pathology
Case examples
Clinical assessment questions
Distinguishing attachment wounds from systemic trauma

The PRIDE Model for Liberatory Healing

Overview of the PRIDE Model
Clinical interventions for restoring emotional safety
Demo videos and clinical application
Helping couples move from survival to connection
Therapist reflections and common mistakes
Integrating the model into existing couples therapy approaches

Limitations and Ethical Considerations

Cultural humility versus cultural competence
Avoiding therapist overgeneralization
Recognizing within-group diversity

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/16/2026

The Cost of Healing in Silence

Racial trauma can shape a client's sense of safety, identity, relationships, and engagement in treatment. Yet it's often missed when clinicians rely on conventional trauma screening or avoid naming racism in the therapy room, leaving hypervigilance, grief, anger, somatic distress, or mistrust addressed as symptoms while the racial and systemic context goes unaddressed. Trauma therapist and Therapy Fund Foundation founder Ashley McGirt-Adair, LICSW, teaches clinicians how to recognize the individual, vicarious, collective, historical, and intergenerational dimensions of racial trauma, and how to respond with culturally responsive assessment and intervention.

Attendees will leave able to:

Distinguish racial trauma from single-event trauma and recognize its overlap with PTSD, anxiety, and depression
Use culturally responsive, permission-based questions to assess racial identity and safety
Respond to racial ruptures and microaggressions through accountability and repair
Identify risks like retraumatization, overidentification, and racial essentialism in treatment

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate at least three pathways of racial trauma (direct, vicarious, collective, historical, or intergenerational) and describe how each may appear in clinical assessment.
Apply at least three culturally responsive assessment or alliance-building strategies to a clinical vignette involving racism-related stress.
Develop a trauma-informed intervention plan that incorporates client-defined goals, cultural strengths, and at least two safeguards against invalidation, retraumatization, or racial essentialism.

Outline

Recognizing Racial Trauma in Clinical Practice

Racial trauma vs. single-event trauma
Direct, vicarious, collective, historical, and intergenerational pathways
Clinical presentations and protective responses, from hypervigilance to racial battle fatigue
Diagnostic overshadowing and decontextualized interpretation as barriers to recognizing harm

Culturally Responsive Assessment and Therapeutic Alliance

Permission-based questions for exploring racial identity, safety, and coping
Validation vs. agreement, and naming racism without centering clinician guilt
Strengths and resources alongside harm
Racial ruptures and microaggressions: accountability and repair

Intervention, Application, and Ethical Guardrails

Culturally responsive adaptations within evidence-based care
Grounding, narrative processing, identity affirmation, and strength-based practices
Case example: from presenting symptom to contextualized formulation
Risks: premature exposure, invalidation, overidentification, racial essentialism
Research limitations: cross-sectional data, measurement inconsistency, underrepresentation
One practice change for assessment, formulation, or repair

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/16/2026

Treating Racial Trauma Across Racial Differences

A client comes to therapy carrying the weight of racism they've lived through. Their symptoms don't map cleanly onto a PTSD checklist, so the trauma goes unnamed and untreated. Few clinicians are trained to recognize racial trauma for what it is, and fewer still know how to treat it when they don't share the client's racialized experience. Dr. Monnica T. Williams, developer of the Healing Racial Trauma Protocol and the Racial Trauma Scale, teaches clinicians how to assess racial trauma with validated measures and treat it using a three-phase protocol built for work across racial difference.

Attendees will leave able to:

Differentiate racial trauma from other trauma using DSM-5 criteria
Distinguish validating clinical responses to racism from invalidating ones
Match micro-intervention strategies to the client's situation

Program Information

Objectives

Utilize micro-intervention strategies to address microaggressions, matched to the client's relationship with the perpetrator and the safety of the situation.
List the three phases and core techniques of the Healing Racial Trauma Protocol for use in session planning.
Identify validated instruments (e.g., the Racial Trauma Scale, UnRESTS) to assess race-based traumatic stress and monitor symptom change over the course of treatment.

Outline

Understanding Racial Trauma

Differentiate racial trauma from general stress and trauma, and its relationship to DSM-5 PTSD criteria
Why racial trauma is under-identified and under-treated in clinical practice
Assess race-based traumatic stress using validated measures (Racial Trauma Scale, UnRESTS)

Therapist Prerequisites for Treating Racial Trauma Across Differences

Models of racial and ethnic identity development to the therapeutic alliance
Whiteness as a learned social system and its role in cross-racial treatment
Common CBT missteps that invalidate clients' accounts of racism
Building an anti-racist, empathy-centered clinical stance

Treating Racial Trauma: The Healing Racial Trauma Protocol

Apply the three phases of treatment: Stabilization, healing, and empowerment
Distinguish validating interventions from invalidating practices when clients report racism
Micro-intervention strategies to address microaggressions, matched to relationship and safety

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/16/2026

The Weight of Racialized Stress

Clients' emotional distress is often shaped not only by individual experience but by the cumulative effects of discrimination, microaggressions, stereotype threat, and systemic inequities. Many clinicians report feeling underprepared to assess and address these experiences in ways that are both culturally responsive and grounded in current research. Dr. Katherine Helm examines the psychological and physiological effects of racialized stress and offers practical interventions clinicians can bring directly into session.

Attendees will leave able to:

Define racialized stress and distinguish it from general life stress
Integrate culturally responsive assessment strategies into clinical interviews
Apply case conceptualization models that account for identity and resilience
Use evidence-based interventions that strengthen alliance and support resilience

Program Information

Objectives

Define racialized stress and describe its psychological, physiological, and relational effects on clients of color based on current empirical research.
Identify clinical indicators of racialized stress and incorporate culturally responsive assessment strategies into case conceptualization and treatment planning.
Apply evidence-based, culturally responsive interventions to address the effects of racialized stress while strengthening the therapeutic alliance and promoting resilience among clients of color.

Outline

Understanding Racialized Stress and Its Mental Health Impact

Racialized stress and distinguish it from general life stress and trauma
The latest research on the psychological, physiological, and relational effects of racism and discrimination
Common sources of racialized stress, including interpersonal, institutional, and systemic experiences
How racialized stress influences symptom presentation, diagnosis, and treatment engagement
Experiential activity to demonstrate racialized stress

Clinical Assessment and Case Conceptualization

Signs and symptoms of racialized stress in clients across diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds
Culturally responsive assessment strategies and interview questions into clinical practice
Differentiate racialized stress from other mental health conditions while recognizing their overlap
Case conceptualization models that incorporate cultural identity, resilience, and contextual factors

Evidence-Based Interventions and Best Practices

Trauma-informed and culturally responsive approaches for addressing racialized stress
Strengthen the therapeutic alliance through culturally affirming clinical practices
Key interventions that promote resilience, coping, empowerment, and identity development
Limitations of the current research on racialized stress, including gaps in diverse populations, methodological considerations
Potential risks associated with applying findings without consideration of individual, cultural, and contextual differences

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/16/2026

Bridging Brain & Body

Most clinical training on racial trauma builds awareness but stops short of giving clinicians a way to work with what shows up in the nervous system and the body. Standard trauma protocols, meanwhile, were largely developed without accounting for the layered, ongoing, and often intergenerational nature of racialized harm. Dr. Chinwé Williams will give you concrete somatic and EMDR-informed strategies for working with racial and intergenerational trauma.

Attendees will leave able to:

Name embodied trauma responses as adaptive, not pathological
Build somatic resourcing and safety before reprocessing work
Adapt EMDR history-taking and target selection for racialized material
Recognize research limits to avoid misapplication and retraumatization

Program Information

Objectives

Identify at least three ways racial and intergenerational trauma present in the body.
Apply two somatic resourcing and processing techniques adapted for use with clients carrying racial or intergenerational trauma.
Describe at least two modifications to standard EMDR history-taking, target selection and Phases 4-6 re processing protocols for racialized and ancestral trauma.

Outline

Foundations: Racial and Intergenerational Trauma in the Body

Quick-orientation framing on how racial trauma differs from single-incident PTSD: Chronic, cumulative, socially reinforced
Intergenerational trauma transmission: Attachment/relational pathways and current epigenetic research, at a clinically applicable level
Polyvagal-informed view of racialized threat response
Where standard trauma protocols fall short for this populations of color

II. Somatic Psychology Skills

Tracking and naming embodied trauma responses (hypervigilance, freeze, collapse) as adaptive, not pathological
Titration and pendulation techniques adapted for racial trauma material
Building somatic resourcing and safety before processing begins
Recognizing countertransference and clinician nervous system activation when race is present in the room

EMDR-Informed Adaptations: Current Research and Applied Practice

Adapting history-taking and case conceptualization to surface racial and ancestral targets
Resourcing and stabilization considerations specific to racialized clients
Target selection: Individual incidents vs. cumulative/ancestral material
What recent findings say about adapting or modifying resourcing/target selection for racialized and ancestral material

Scope, Limitations, and Risk

Limitations of current research: Limited racial/ethnic diversity in EMDR and somatic trauma studies, early-stage evidence for intergenerational/epigenetic claims
Risks of misapplication: Retraumatization, premature reprocessing, overclaiming epigenetic causation to clients

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/17/2026

Identity, History, and Healing Across the Lifespan

Identity-based stress and historical trauma shape emotional regulation, relationships, and treatment engagement across the lifespan. Clinicians often miss them, though, when clients don't name their experience as "trauma" or when symptoms present as more familiar diagnoses like anxiety or depression. John Weaver shows clinicians how to recognize identity-based stress and historical trauma at each developmental stage, and respond with assessment and intervention strategies built for the client in front of them, not a generic protocol.

Attendees will leave able to:

Tell isolated events apart from chronic, cumulative, and intergenerational trauma
Recognize how identity-based stress shifts across the lifespan
Apply assessment strategies grounded in context and client meaning
Adapt interventions that affirm identity without over-pathologizing

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate identity-based stress, racial trauma, intergenerational trauma, and historical trauma and identify at least two ways these experiences may present during different developmental stages.
Apply at least three culturally responsive assessment strategies to evaluate the frequency, context, developmental timing, functional impact, and client-defined meaning of identity-based stress.
Develop a lifespan-informed clinical response that incorporates trauma-informed care, identity affirmation, protective cultural factors, and at least two developmentally appropriate interventions while addressing potential risks and limitations.

Outline

Understanding Identity-Based Stress and Historical Trauma

The line between identity-based stress, racial trauma, and intergenerational trauma, and why it matters clinically
How race, culture, gender, and other identities intersect with discrimination
Real clinical impairment, even when it doesn't fit neatly into DSM criteria
Protective factors that actually buffer harm: cultural identity, spirituality, community

Developmental Presentation Across the Lifespan

Childhood: behavioral shifts, somatic complaints, school avoidance
Adolescence and emerging adulthood: Identity formation colliding with peer pressure, depression, substance use
Adulthood: Racial battle fatigue and burnout that build quietly over time
Later adulthood: A lifetime of exposure, unresolved grief, and medical mistrust

Culturally Responsive Assessment and Case Formulation

Safety first, emotional and cultural, before any assessment begins
Client-defined meaning, not clinician assumptions
Structured tools that hold up: UConn RESTS, Racial Trauma Scale
Telling identity-based responses apart from PTSD, depression, and anxiety

Intervention, Healing, and Clinical Application

Validation before reframing
Trauma-informed principles in action: safety, trust, choice, empowerment
CBT, EMDR-informed work, ACT, and narrative therapy, adapted for identity and culture
Clinician bias in the room, and knowing when to refer

Limitations, Ethical Considerations, and Potential Risks

Racial trauma isn't its own DSM diagnosis
The risk of cultural essentialism and one-size-fits-all explanations
Pacing that respects client readiness
Discrimination reports aren't paranoia, context is everything

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/17/2026

Reimagining Justice Through Revolutionary Grace

Practitioners today are called to do more than respond to crisis. In this training, Dr. Bailey examines how individuals and systems can move beyond traditional models of advocacy and resistance, toward a vision of justice grounded in radical care, empathy, courage, and collective responsibility. Through critical reflection, dialogue, and connections to current events, attendees will be challenged to think expansively about the future and their role in shaping it.

Attendees will leave able to:

Apply revolutionary grace as a leadership framework balancing compassion and justice
Connect social work's legacy of dignity and inclusion to current challenges
Identify their role in collective action through "Each One, Get In Where You Fit In"
Engage in reflection and dialogue that strengthens leadership and collaboration

Program Information

Objectives

Examine care-centered leadership and its role in social justice during uncertain times.
Identify practical strategies for justice work at the individual, organizational, and community levels.
Apply empathy and collective action to build resilience and promote fair outcomes.

Outline

Reimagining Justice Through Revolutionary Grace

Move beyond crisis response to a justice-centered approach grounded in radical care, empathy, courage, and collective responsibility
Explore revolutionary grace as a leadership framework that balances compassion with a steadfast commitment to justice
Reflect on how practitioners can help shape more equitable and humane systems during times of uncertainty and change

Social Work as a Catalyst for Transformative Change

Examine social work's legacy of advancing dignity, inclusion, and meaningful social change
Apply trauma-informed, community-centered, and equity-driven principles to leadership and practice
Connect enduring professional values to current social challenges and opportunities for systemic transformation

Finding Your Role in Advancing Justice

Embrace the principle of "Each One, Get In Where You Fit In" by recognizing that everyone has a meaningful role in creating change
Identify how individual talents, relationships, and lived experiences can contribute to collective action
Engage in reflection and dialogue to strengthen leadership, inspire collaboration, and advance justice within communities

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 12/17/2026

When Negative Evaluation Isn’t Irrational

Fear of negative evaluation drives social anxiety treatment. But for clients from marginalized groups, that fear may reflect real social risk rather than distorted thinking. Automatically challenging it as irrational can invalidate the client's experience and misapply standard CBT technique. Dr. Janeé Steele shows clinicians how to distinguish stereotype confirmation concerns from traditional fear of negative evaluation, and how to adapt CBT accordingly.

Attendees will leave able to:

Distinguish anxiety-driven predictions from stereotype confirmation concerns
Conceptualize fear of negative evaluation within sociocultural context
Adapt cognitive restructuring and exposure work to fit clients' lived experience
Build behavioral flexibility while accounting for real social risk

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate fear of negative evaluation from stereotype confirmation concerns.
Construct a culturally responsive CBT formulation that integrates identity, situational cues, realistic social consequences, and anxiety-maintaining processes.
Apply adaptations to cognitive restructuring, behavioral experiments, or exposure when working with clients who fear confirming a negative stereotype.

Outline

Understanding Stereotype Confirmation Concerns

Stereotype confirmation concerns and distinguishing them from traditional fear of negative evaluation
The research linking stereotype confirmation concerns to anxiety, avoidance, and functioning
Clients and presenting concerns in which stereotype confirmation concerns commonly emerge

Adapting CBT for Stereotype Confirmation Concerns

Conceptualize fears of negative evaluation within clients' sociocultural context
Modify cognitive restructuring to incorporate clients’ lived experiences with stereotyping and discrimination
Adapt behavioral experiments and exposure exercises to address stereotype confirmation concerns
Limitations of the current evidence, potential risks, and ethical considerations

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Race, Culture, and Power in Clinical Supervision

Supervisees often know the multicultural theories, but supervision check-ins stay task-focused. Race, culture, and vicarious stress rarely come up directly. Left unaddressed, that gap shows up as a supervisee who stops disclosing, disengages from cases touching on identity, or reaches burnout before anyone names it. Dr. Erlanger "Earl" Turner will give you the tools in this training to broach race, culture, and power directly, and turn multicultural theory into active supervisory practice.

Attendees will leave able to:

Differentiate vicarious trauma, burnout, and racial trauma in supervisees
Apply broaching language to reduce supervisee nondisclosure
Recognize early indicators of vicarious racial trauma
Build supervisory practices that support psychological safety

Program Information

Objectives

Identify at least four early indicators of burnout and vicarious trauma in supervisees.
Apply at least three evidence-informed supervisory strategies to explore racial trauma in supervision.
Develop two approaches for fostering a psychologically safe and trauma-informed supervisory relationship.

Outline

Understanding Vicarious Trauma, Burnout, and Racial Trauma in Clinical Supervision

Differentiating vicarious trauma, burnout, and racial trauma in supervisees
Latest research on racial microaggressions in supervision
Impact of structural racism on the supervisory relationship
Early indicators of burnout and vicarious trauma in supervisees

Trauma-Informed and Culturally Responsive Supervisory Practices

The five core principles of trauma-informed supervision
Introduce broaching behavior in supervision
A multicultural orientation (MCO) framework and its link to supervisee nondisclosure
Key guidelines on power dynamics and cultural identity in supervision

Applying Supervisory Strategies: Case Application and Practice Considerations

Case application: Identify vicarious racial trauma and practice a broaching statement
Organizational practices for psychological safety: Validation, protected time, rupture repair, workload monitoring
Limitations and risks of current evidence and broaching techniques

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Nurses
Psychotherapists
Marriage and Family Therapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Decolonizing Practices for Mental Health

Although many mental health professionals have received training on Western forms of well-being that center individual perspectives, these modalities may not reflect effective strategies when working with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) clients. As mental health diagnoses disproportionately impact BIPOC communities, it is of paramount importance for clinicians to consider how cultural dynamics and systemic forms of racism and oppression may impact BIPOC mental health. This engaging session outlines the importance of decolonizing mental health perspectives, provides specific strategies for culturally responsive treatment, and empowers attendees to use culturally embedded strategies for self-nourishment and wellbeing.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate the importance of decolonizing mental health perspectives in creating mental health practices that work for everyone.
Analyze critical concepts grounded in decolonized mental health practices that help clinicians unlearn negative “cultural scripts.”
Use culturally responsive self-nourishment and wellbeing strategies with BIPOC clients.

Outline

Rates of Mental Health Distress Among BIPOC Communities
Moving Beyond the Standard Mental Health Perspective
Decolonizing Mental Health
Constructs to Consider (i.e., collectivism, colonial mentality, colonization histories, systemic oppression, intergenerational trauma, etc.)
Strategies for Understanding and Unlearning Cultural Scripts
Culturally Responsive Strategies for Self-Nourishment and Wellbeing
Risks and Limitations Associated with Decolonized Practices

Target Audience

Counselors
Educators
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professionals

The Modern Abolitionist

Somatic abolitionist. It’s how Resmaa Menakem, popular trainer, speaker, and bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands, defines himself. He’s managed military counseling services for more than 50 bases in war-torn Afghanistan, consulted on trauma and healing for large school districts and police departments, and trained with top trauma and somatic experts to refine and teach his particular healing path of Cultural Somatics: an embodied, antiracist way of living.

For years, he’d watched as well-intentioned therapists tried reading, talking, and thinking their way past the intangible, living nature of racism in order to do good, culturally aware work. But white supremacy lives in the body, just as racial trauma does.

In this talk, Menakem will be joined by Talisa Beasley, transformational leader, speaker and author, who will show us how intergenerational trauma comprises brutal experiences and realities, compounded over time, from which our ancestors couldn’t heal. They’ll offer a road map for learning how to slow down enough to discern, in ourselves and others, historical from personal pain, and the role we may be unwittingly playing in keeping the effects of racism alive in our bodies.

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate the stress signs and symptoms of racialized trauma.
Integrate a basic model for treating racialized trauma into clinical practice.
Choose one resourcing technique to use with clients experiencing racialized trauma.

Outline

Racialized Trauma: The myth of race and historical trauma
How the body carries racialized trauma
Resilience and community in healing
A roadmap for healing
Risks and limitations of treating racialized trauma

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Physicians
Psychologists
Addiction Counselors

Grief & Trauma in the Bones: Mindfulness & Indigenous ways of healing

Experience Dr. Marianela Medrano, Ph.D., LPC, CPT, a writer and mindfulness teacher, as she walks you through innovative interventions that you can use to help your clients move from mourning into the spiritual experience of grieving and healing from Historical Trauma and Grief. Drawing on her expertise as a scholar, researcher, and psychotherapist, Dr. Medrano blends case studies with creative strategies for long-lasting transformation in your client's lives. Explore the interfacing relationship between historical/contemporary events, the ensuing trauma, and the impact that the erasure of indigenous ways of grieving via rituals has had on many peoples, and how to creatively and culturally appropriately facilitate the mourning process aborted for some. Unresolved Historical Grief is pernicious and travels intergenerationally; learn the power of ancient wisdom to heal personally and collectively. In other words, the long-range impact of unresolved grief among the BIPOC populations is a must-focus for consciously aware clinicians.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate traditional healing practices suitable for individuals, groups, and families coping with grief and loss.
Develop strategies to counter narratives of extinction, erasure, and cultural/religious/racial superiority that contribute to historical grief and trauma.
Implement interventions aligned with the collective mindset of individuals and groups affected by historical grief and trauma, fostering a sense of empowerment and cultural affirmation.

Outline

I. Understanding the Spiritual Nature of Grief and Mourning

A. Definition of grief as a spiritual outcome of mourning

B. Importance of mourning in ritualizing feelings

C. Risks and Limitations

II. The Consequences of Restricted Mourning

A. Explanation of how restricted mourning stifles grief

B. Discussion on how unresolved grief can manifest as illness

III. Integrating Compassion-Based Rituals into Grief Work

A. Introduction to the concept of Karuna (compassion/mercy)

B. Exploration of different compassion-based rituals

C. How Karuna guides individuals through the process of loss and grief

IV. Conclusion

A. Recap of the significance of mourning in spiritual grief work

B. Emphasis on the importance of compassion-based rituals in facilitating the grieving process

C. Encouragement to embrace the wisdom of grief as guided compassion practices

Target Audience

Addiction Professionals
Licensed Clinical/Mental Health Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Psychologists
Social Workers