Trauma Recovery After Loss: Skills for Diagnosis and Treatment
Your client’s husband died of a heart attack. Their world has come apart, they have almost every symptom on the list, and criterion A says it is not PTSD. So you sit with a code that does not describe what you are looking at, and you get on with the work anyway.
Jennifer Sweeton’s starting point is that a great deal of what walks into your room is loss that nobody has named as loss. Not only death. Lost years, lost work, lost relationships, plans that quietly stopped being possible. It presents as anxiety, as flat mood, as a partner drinking more than they used to, and the diagnostic manual gives you a narrow set of words for it.
Sweeton was a neuroscientist before she was a clinical psychologist, and the spine of this course is what loss does inside the brain. An amygdala turned up past where it needs to be. An insula and a reward system dialled down, so the dog, the music and the friend stop registering as anything. A prefrontal cortex running weak. And underneath all of it, connections that run strong upward and weak downward, which is the reason telling yourself it will be fine so rarely makes you feel fine.
That map does something practical. It gives you a rule for choosing. Body-based work when the amygdala is the problem. Cognitive and narrative work when you are building meaning and post-traumatic growth. Behavioural and relational work when the reward system has switched off and nothing feels like anything. Six hours, with the exercises walked through as she would run them with a client.
You already own more techniques than you use. This is the course that tells you which one, and why.
You’ll walk away with
- A plain-language account of what loss does to the amygdala, insula, reward system and prefrontal cortex, and what each one looks like when a client is sitting in front of you
- A rule for choosing between a body-based and a cognitive technique based on what needs to shift, rather than on which approach you happen to like
- Clear diagnostic ground for the client who has the symptoms but not the qualifying event, including where prolonged grief disorder and the other specified categories sit
- Wording for explaining that diagnosis to a client without it landing as though their experience is being minimised
- A resource scan you can run in session to help a client locate strength or safety in the body, and how to adapt it when working with complex trauma
- Bilateral tapping used two ways, slowly to build a resource and quickly to reduce distress, usable without EMDR training
- Breathing and progressive muscle relaxation taught at low intensity, so clients learn to catch tension early rather than only once it is obvious
- Narrative and values work, including the tree of life and legacy exercises, that supports growth without ever implying the loss was worth it
- The notes-to-self technique for capturing a client’s clearer perspective on a good day so they can reach it on a bad one
- Behavioural and relational prescriptions for the client whose life has gone monotonous, including pattern disruption, structuring anchors, and using your own breathing and posture to steady a session
Watch the course trailer
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: 6 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 5
- Topics 0
- Duration 6 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English