Beyond the Hour: Foundations + Advanced Skills for Trauma Therapy Intensives
A Comprehensive Training for Therapists Offering Trauma Therapy Intensives – Led by Melanie Reese, LMFT, CCTP
Investment: $360
Date: August 14, 2026
Time: 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (CST with a one hour lunch break)
Continuing Education Credit: 6 credit hours
Questions: melaniereeselmft@gmail.com
COURSE OVERVIEW
Offered by Groundwork Trauma Education, this six hour training provides clinicians with a comprehensive framework for designing, structuring, and facilitating trauma therapy intensives. This course integrates foundational considerations such as readiness, pacing, safety, and ethics with advanced clinical skills for working moment by moment with trauma inside an intensive format.
Trauma therapy intensives amplify both opportunity and risk. Clinicians offering this model must be able to assess client readiness, structure time thoughtfully, track nervous system activation, and respond flexibly to trauma material as it unfolds. This training supports therapists in developing both the mindset and the clinical skills required to offer intensives safely, ethically, and effectively.
Participants will learn how to design different types of intensives, prepare clients for deeper work, facilitate trauma processing within extended sessions, and support integration and follow up care. Emphasis is placed on nervous system awareness, attunement, pacing, ethical decision making, and clinical judgment rather than rigid protocols.
WHAT YOU WIL LEARN
Foundations of Trauma Therapy Intensives
• What differentiates trauma therapy intensives from weekly therapy
• Assessing client readiness and appropriateness for intensive work
• Structuring half day, full day, and multi session intensives
• Ethical considerations, informed consent, and scope of practice
• Preparing clients before an intensive and planning follow up care
Advanced Clinical Skills for Trauma Intensives
• Tracking nervous system activation and regulation over extended sessions
• Pacing, titration, and containment in intensive trauma work
• Facilitating trauma processing within longer session formats
• Working with dissociation, shutdown, and heightened activation
• Integrating modalities such as EMDR, Brainspotting, IFS, and somatic approaches
• Responding to relational dynamics, rupture, and repair during intensives
• Supporting integration and stabilization after trauma processing
WHO IS THIS TRAINING FOR?
This workshop is designed for:
• Licensed mental health professionals interested in offering trauma therapy intensives
• Therapists currently providing intensives who want a stronger trauma informed framework
• Clinicians trained in trauma modalities who want guidance on using them in extended sessions
• Therapists seeking a structured yet flexible approach to intensive trauma work
This is an educational training. It is not a certification program. Completion of this course does not authorize participants to practice beyond their scope of licensure or training.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
Identify criteria for assessing client readiness for trauma therapy intensives.
Describe key components of structuring and pacing trauma therapy intensives.
Apply nervous system informed strategies to guide trauma processing within extended sessions.
Explain how to respond to dissociation, activation, and relational dynamics during intensive work.
Integrate trauma modalities ethically and flexibly within an intensive therapy framework.
Outline best practices for post intensive integration, documentation, and follow up care.
Register Today!
Groundwork Trauma Education has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7927. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Groundwork Trauma Education is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.