Being a member of Trauma Therapist Network is not about how many trainings you've attended or how many certifications you have collected over the years. 

This community is only for licensed therapists. If you're a therapist who is licensed in good standing, and you use trauma-focused therapy techniques with your clients who have trauma, you are welcome to join. 

Trauma therapy is political, for several reasons.  And what is going on in our world affects our clients and ourselves as therapists.

First of all, trauma survivors are a vulnerable group by virtue of their traumatic experiences.

Additionally, many survivors of trauma hold marginalized identities as members of historically oppressed groups based on race, ethnicity or culture, gender identity, sexual identity, religion, disability, and more.

As a social worker, I'm committed to advocating for the rights of marginalized individuals, families, communities and other groups.

And even though trauma therapy isn't new, many of the most cutting edge approaches to treating trauma are considered radical compared to the medical model that is still most prominent in the therapy world.

Anyone who has read the bestselling book "The Body Keeps the Score," by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, knows that traditional talk therapy alone is inadequate to heal trauma held in the body.  

In the Trauma Therapist Network community, we discuss trauma through a lens of social justice. We focus on working with trauma and dissociation in ways that bridge mind, body and spirit.

This means considering using mindfulness, expressive arts, parts work, the Structural Dissociation model, somatic techniques, movement and energy work in addition to typical talk therapy for our clients' healing.

You don't need to know how to use these methods to join, but you will hear about and have opportunities to observe and practice some of them in our meetings.

We talk about how to recover from carrying the weight of witnessing all of the social injustice, political violence, war and climate destruction going on around us that affects us and our clients without getting lost in despair and hopelessness.

And we talk about how to cope with our own personal issues that are happening in our own worlds as we support our clients.

If you need this, you are in the right place! Join us!

I hope you will find Trauma Therapist Network to be a supportive community where you can learn and grow as a therapist. 

Vicarious trauma is real and it causes us to feel isolated and hopeless. We begin to doubt our skills and wonder why we wanted to be a therapist at all. 

When we are isolated and hopeless, according to Polyvagal Theory, our nervous system is in Dorsal Vagal shutdown.  We want to be in the Ventral Vagal state where we can feel safe and connect with others.  Hopefully, that is what you will experience by being a part of the community - moving out of isolation and into connection. 

However, it might not be for you, and that's okay. If you decide to join, there's no minimum commitment and you can cancel at any time. 

Feel free to check out my podcasts, Therapy Chat and Trauma Chat. The way I show up there is how I show up in TTN, and if it resonates with you, then you're in the right place!

I hope you'll really consider whether or not you want to be a part of this community and join if it's right for you.  Our world needs as many healthy, well-adjusted trauma therapists as possible to meet the needs of the millions of traumatized individuals who are looking for help!