Healing The Grieving Heart: Effective Strategies For Helping Clients Heal From Grief, Trauma Break-Ups, And Other Losses While Creating Renewed Meaning In Their Lives
Course Content
For a long time the aim in grief work was acceptance and moving on. The client was meant to let go, and a continuing attachment was treated as something to be resolved. What the research has shown since is close to the opposite: people who adjust best are usually those who hold on to a bond with the person they lost, in a form that has changed but has not ended.
Courtney Armstrong builds the whole course on that. She treats grief as a form of separation anxiety, which explains the yearning and the seeking that clinicians often try to talk a client out of, and it changes what you are working toward. Not severing the connection, but helping a client find a version of it they can carry: what the relationship gave them, what they learned from it, what they take forward. Even where the relationship was difficult, and especially then.
Five hours, and it is practical rather than theoretical. She works with the emotional brain directly, which means imagery, ritual, music and mindfulness rather than reasoning, because reasoning is not what is affected. She sets out a step-by-step process for moving a client through grief, and she covers the situations that complicate it: relationships that were unresolved, deaths that were sudden or traumatic, break-ups and divorce, children at different ages, and the losses nobody acknowledges as losses. Her own background is in trauma-informed hypnotherapy and memory reconsolidation, so the harder cases get the attention they need, including clients who have got stuck.
You’ll walk away with
- Continuing bonds rather than letting go, and what that changes about the goal of the work
- Grief understood as separation anxiety, and what that explains about yearning and seeking
- A step-by-step process for guiding a client through grief, with the stages laid out
- What complicates grief, including unresolved or difficult relationships, and how to work with it
- Imagery, ritual, music and mindfulness used deliberately, and why they reach what reasoning does not
- Helping a client find what they carry forward from a relationship that was hard
- Break-ups and divorce, including the client who keeps going back and cannot say why
- Children and adolescents, with strategies adapted by age
- Ambiguous and disenfranchised loss, and helping a client whose grief nobody recognises
- Spiritual and cultural values, and how they shape what grieving is allowed to look like
- Psychological first aid, and what it looks like in practice after a sudden event
- Case material and video examples throughout, rather than description alone
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.
Format: includes video examples and experiential exercises you take part in, plus a handout.
Course Duration: 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.
Meet Your Instructor
Trauma and grief cases that resist traditional therapy approaches often transform rapidly when clinicians learn to work with the brain's natural healing mechanisms. Courtney Armstrong has spent over two decades pioneering trauma-informed hypnotherapy, becoming an international authority on memory reconsolidation and attachment-focused trauma treatment.
As founder of the Institute for Trauma Informed Hypnotherapy and author of three bestselling books - including Rethinking Trauma Treatment: Attachment, Memory Reconsolidation, and Resilience - Armstrong has trained thousands of clinicians worldwide in brain-based approaches that accelerate healing. Her recognition as a National Board Certified Fellow in Clinical Hypnotherapy and American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Approved Consultant reflects her mastery of therapeutic techniques that access clients' innate capacity for transformation.
Armstrong's expertise spans trauma-informed hypnotherapy, grief therapy, memory reconsolidation, attachment repair, and experiential therapy approaches. Her innovative methods combine clinical hypnosis with current neuroscience research, showing practitioners how to help clients process traumatic memories without retraumatisation. She specialises in cases where traditional talk therapy has stalled, teaching clinicians to engage the right brain and somatic systems that store traumatic material.
What sets her training apart is practical accessibility. Armstrong is renowned for her warm, engaging teaching style that transforms complex neuroscience into immediately usable techniques. Her "Therapeutic Aha!" approach helps clinicians create breakthrough moments that unstick clients from repetitive trauma patterns, while her memory reconsolidation methods show practitioners how to help clients update traumatic memories with new, empowering information.
For your practice, expect to gain specific hypnotherapy techniques for trauma processing, practical tools for working with complicated grief, and brain-based interventions that create rapid therapeutic change. Her methods particularly benefit clinicians working with clients who intellectualise their trauma, struggle with traditional exposure therapies, or need somatic approaches to healing.
Quick Win: Armstrong's "resource installation" technique helps clinicians quickly establish internal safety and stability in traumatised clients before processing difficult material - a foundational skill that prevents retraumatisation and accelerates treatment progress.
Qualifications
- M.Ed., Counselor Education, University of New Orleans, 1995
- BBA, Marketing and Psychology, Georgia State University, 1990
- Licensed Professional Counselor, Tennessee
- Approved LPC Supervisor, Tennessee
- National Board Certified Fellow in Clinical Hypnotherapy
- American Society of Clinical Hypnosis Approved Consultant
- Certificate in Traumatic Stress Studies, Trauma Center at JRI Boston
- Trained in EMDR with Somatic Attachment Focus
- Trained in Biofeedback and HeartMath
Selected Books (All W.W. Norton)
- Rethinking Trauma Treatment: Attachment, Memory Reconsolidation, and Resilience (2019, bestseller)
- The Therapeutic "Aha!": 10 Strategies for Getting Clients Unstuck (2015, bestseller)
- Transforming Traumatic Grief (2011)
Teaching & Roles
- Founder & President, Institute for Trauma Informed Hypnotherapy, 2018–present
- Chief Inspiration Officer, Courtney Armstrong Counseling and Training, 2010–present
- Author & International Trainer, Real World Therapy, 2015–present
- Education & Training Committee, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis
- Former Owner/Director, Tamarisk: A Center for Change and Growth, 2007–2017
Speaking & Training
- International presentations: Australia (2019), Europe, Asia
- Psychotherapy Networker Symposium presenter
- Developed clinical hypnosis training programs for U.S. Veterans Administration
Professional Memberships
- Member, Chi Sigma Iota Counseling Honors Society (1995)
- Professional affiliations: ACA, CAPA, TLPCA, AMHCA, ASCH
- Past President, Chattanooga Psychotherapy Association
Ready to help trauma survivors access their natural healing capacity? Discover how Courtney Armstrong's trauma-informed hypnotherapy methods can transform your ability to create breakthrough moments and accelerate client recovery.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 2
- Topics 5
- Duration 5 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English