Clinical Strategies for Treating Clients with Distressing Obsessive Thoughts
Can you just make this thought go away. Most clinicians have been asked some version of that. By the time the client asks, they have already argued with the thought, disproved it, drowned it out and waited it out, and they are asking you for the thing that finally works.
Jennifer Sweeton’s answer is that you cannot, and that trying is part of what keeps it running. Emotion is how the brain marks what matters. Every time a client reacts hard to a thought, they tell the brain the thought is worth keeping, and it comes back with more force. The content was never the problem. The relationship to it is.
That changes what you do in the room. Cognitive restructuring is not wrong and it helps a great many people, but for a client who has already restructured the same thought ten thousand times, restructuring has become one more way of engaging with it. Defusion goes the other way. Leave the content alone. Change what the thought is allowed to do.
Sweeton covers what that looks like across the conditions where these thoughts turn up, which is most of them: OCD, the anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD and adjustment. She works through the five steps of defusion, the exercises that build the noticing skill, and the exposure techniques that speed desensitisation, including how to change the way a thought sounds and the way an image looks so that neither carries the same weight. Two and a half hours, drawn from ACT, EMDR, exposure and response prevention and prolonged exposure, with the skills separated out so you can use them without being trained in any of them.
The thoughts do get quieter. That arrives as a consequence of the work rather than its aim, and it is worth saying so to the client in the first session.
You’ll walk away with
- A way to explain to a client why arguing with a thought tends to strengthen it, using how the brain decides what is worth remembering
- A basis for choosing between cognitive restructuring and defusion for a particular client, rather than defaulting to whichever you were trained in first
- The five steps of defusion, from catching the thought early to putting real distance between the client and it
- A short trainspotting meditation clients can practise between sessions to build the noticing skill the rest of the work depends on
- Ways to change how a thought is experienced without touching its content, including voice, speed, volume, singing it, and repeating it until the words come loose from their meaning
- The equivalent adjustments for intrusive images, shifting them to black and white, blurring them, moving them back and out to the periphery
- A method for pairing deliberate repetition of a distressing thought with muscle relaxation and slow breathing, so the body stops confirming the alarm
- The bilateral movement component drawn from EMDR and neural desensitisation and integration training, usable without full training in either
- A clear line between an intrusive thought about harm and genuine suicidal intent, and Sweeton’s reasoning for why these techniques are not the right tool when a client is actively suicidal
- How to spot when the search for what a thought means has itself become a new rumination, which happens often with perfectionistic clients, and what to do instead
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CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This course is included with your Tatra Training membership, along with every other course in the library.
Course Duration: 2.5 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records. Your certificates are yours to keep.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Revisit Anytime: Come back to the course as often as you like while your membership is active, whenever you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Trauma survivors whose PTSD symptoms resist traditional therapy approaches - and clinicians struggling to understand how neuroscience can enhance treatment - may need more than generic trauma protocols to help create lasting healing. Jennifer Sweeton has spent her career bridging cutting-edge neuroscience research with practical clinical application, becoming an internationally recognised expert who has revolutionised how practitioners understand and treat trauma through brain-based interventions.
As a Stanford-educated clinical and forensic psychologist with doctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine and a master's degree in affective neuroscience, Dr. Sweeton represents the pinnacle of scientific rigor applied to trauma treatment. Her Amazon #1 bestselling book Trauma Treatment Toolbox and recognition by Shortform as one of the "100 Best Trauma Books of All Time" demonstrate her ability to translate complex neuroscience into practical tools. Her recent completion of her JD from the University of Missouri-Kansas City adds crucial legal expertise to her forensic psychology practice, making her uniquely qualified for complex cases involving legal proceedings.
Dr. Sweeton's expertise spans PTSD treatment, the neuroscience of mental health, forensic assessment, women's issues, anxiety disorders, and legal aspects of mental health. Her approach integrates evidence-based trauma therapies with cutting-edge understanding of neuroplasticity and brain-based healing. She is the developer of Neural Desensitisation and Integration Training (NDIT), an evidence-informed modular psychotherapy for PTSD that specifically targets neuroplasticity in key brain regions. Her specialisation includes complex trauma presentations, forensic evaluations for legal proceedings, and cases where standard trauma treatments have been ineffective.
What sets her training apart is rigorous science combined with practical application. As a world-renowned trauma treatment expert, Sweeton doesn't just teach trauma techniques - she shows practitioners how specific interventions create measurable changes in brain structure and function. Her experience training over 60,000 mental health professionals worldwide demonstrates her exceptional ability to make neuroscience accessible to practicing clinicians.
For your practice, expect to gain brain-based trauma interventions, specific techniques for treatment-resistant PTSD, and forensic assessment skills for legal cases. Her approach particularly benefits clinicians wanting to integrate neuroscience into their trauma work, those dealing with complex forensic cases, or practitioners seeking advanced training in evidence-based PTSD treatment.
Quick Win: Sweeton's "neural pathway mapping" technique helps clients understand how trauma affects specific brain regions - helping to reduce shame and increase treatment engagement by showing that PTSD symptoms reflect brain changes, not personal weakness.
Qualifications
- PsyD, Clinical Psychology, PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, 2012
- MS, Clinical Psychology, PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, 2010
- MA, Personality Psychology (Affective Neuroscience), Stanford University, 2007
- BS, Cognitive Psychology, University of Kansas, 2004
- JD, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2025
- Licensed Clinical & Forensic Psychologist
- Training: Stanford University School of Medicine, Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, National Center for PTSD
Authored Publications
- Traumatic Stress Recovery Workbook (2025)
- Trauma Treatment Toolbox (Amazon #1 bestseller, Shortform's "100 Best Trauma Books of All Time")
- Eight Key Brain Areas of Mental Health and Illness
- Train Your Brain Card Deck: 100 Techniques to Heal Trauma and Build Resiliency
- Multiple book chapters and professional publications
Leadership & Teaching
- Founder/Co-owner, Kansas City Mental Health Associates (group private practice)
- Former President, Greater Kansas City Psychological Association & Oklahoma Psychological Association
- Adjunct Faculty, University of Kansas School of Medicine & University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
- Developer, Neural Desensitisation and Integration Training (NDIT) for PTSD
Professional Experience
- Director of Behavioral Health, Clinton Service Unit, Indian Health Service, 2015–2016
- Telemental Health Psychologist, Oklahoma City VA Medical Center, 2013–2015
- Combat Stress Recovery Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center/Oklahoma City VA, 2012–2013
Training & Speaking
- Trained over 60,000 mental health professionals internationally
- Keynote speaker, trainer, and workshop leader worldwide
- Sought-after expert for legal, corporate, government, and community education events
- Developer of continuing education programs serving 50,000+ licensed mental health providers
Ready to integrate cutting-edge neuroscience with trauma treatment? Discover how Dr. Sweeton's brain-based interventions can transform your ability to help trauma survivors achieve lasting recovery through evidence-based approaches that target specific neural pathways.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 3
- Topics 0
- Duration 2.5 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English