Unspoken Wounds

Content Description: 

Course Agenda

Unspoken Wounds

with Tasha Hunter, MSW, LCSW

Live Online Zoom Session 1 – Unspoken Wounds: Reclaiming Voice, Reality, and Self After Covert Trauma – Friday, December 5th -9-10:30am PST/12-1:30pm EST/5-6:30pm GMT

Session Agenda (90 minutes total):  

• Welcome, Grounding & Training Overview

  • Introduce facilitator and objectives
  • Establish community agreements
  • Brief grounding to orient participants
    

  0:05 – 0:20 (15 min)

  Understanding Covert Trauma: Patterns, Signs & Impacts

  • Define covert trauma: emotional minimization, gaslighting, erasure of inner reality
  • Review nervous system consequences of chronic invalidation
  • Identify common patterns (silencing, confusion, self-doubt)
  • Short reflective prompt: “Where do you see covert trauma showing up in your clients?”
    
    

  0:20 – 0:40 (20 min)

  Using IFS With Covert Trauma Survivors

  Part 1: Introducing Parts Language (Culturally Inclusive & Accessible)

  • Explain parts and Self using non-pathologizing language
  • Normalize protectors as survival strategies

  Part 2: Common Protectors in Covert Trauma Survivors

  • Fawn/appease
  • Hyper-independence
  • Overachiever
  • Invisible child
  • People-pleaser
  • Caretaker
  • Perfectionist/masking
  • Denial / “I don’t know” parts

  Part 3: Healing Is Remembering

  • Supporting clients in accessing exiled parts holding shame, confusion, or self-blame
  • How to help protectors feel safe enough for deeper work

  Methods: Lecture + short case vignette

  0:40 – 0:50 (10 min)

  Embodied Presence, Intuition & Rebuilding Self-Trust

  • Help clients reconnect with internal cues vs. internalized oppression
  • Practices for sensing intuition, “shaky yes,” and “shaky no”
  • Identify parts that interfere with trusting inner knowing

  Methods: Guided felt-sense exercise

  0:50 – 1:05 (15 min)

  Consent-Based Healing Practices & Boundary Clarity

  • Discuss emotional sovereignty and agency
  • Examples of consent-based interventions
  • Teaching clients to locate internal and external safety before truth-telling
  • Naming needs without shame

  Methods: Demonstration + group reflection

  1:05 – 1:20 (15 min)

  The Intersection of Systemic Oppression & Invisible Trauma

  • How racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, religious trauma, and classism compound covert trauma
  • Questions:
    • What do your clients name about systemic harm?
    • What do they not feel safe naming?
  • Clinician reflection: exploring bias, positionality, and power

  Methods: Small-group or paired discussion

  1:20 – 1:30 (10 min)

  Q&A, Closing Reflection & Resources

  • Invite questions and participant insights
  • Provide next steps and follow-up resources
  • Closing grounding or affirmation
  Methods: Discussion + brief closing practice

Let the Child Speak is designed to deepen clinicians’ understanding of how children communicate anger, fear, grief, and mistrust through protective behaviors-and how these emotional expressions are often misunderstood as defiance rather than indicators of unmet needs and unresolved trauma. This training guides participants in recognizing the impact of developmental and attachment trauma on emotional regulation and dissociation, while helping them develop an IFS-informed lens to honor children’s inner worlds. Participants will learn to identify their own activated parts in the presence of intense emotions, strengthen their Self-led presence, and learn somatic and relational tools that support co-regulation and safety in the therapeutic relationship. The goal is for clinicians to leave with a more compassionate, decolonized, and embodied approach to working with children’s anger and rage-one that centers attunement, trust-building, and the child’s lived experience.

Session Agenda (90 minutes total):  

• 0:00-0:05 – Welcome + Grounding

  • Introductions
  • Breathwork/settling practice
  • Group agreements

  0:05-0:10 – Review of Learning Objectives

  • 5 measurable learning goals
  • What participants will walk away with

  0:10-0:20 – Naming & Validating Inner-Child Anger

  • Protective vs. wounded parts
  • Quotes from Lama Rod Owens & Toko-pa Turner
  • Reframing anger as communication

  0:20-0:30 – Developmental + Attachment Trauma

  • Impact on emotional regulation
  • Parentification, instability, fear
  • Impact of caregiver loss
  • Trauma + dissociation in children

  0:30-0:40 – Clinician Parts Activation

  • Common clinician parts triggered
  • Micro-reflection activity
  • Return-to-Self strategies

  0:40-0:50 – Decolonizing Clinical Responses to Anger

  • Moving away from compliance-based approaches
  • Culturally responsive interpretations of anger
  • Honoring emotional truth, not pathologizing

  0:50-1:00 – Befriending Anger & Rage

  • Supporting the child in “big emotions”
  • Helping them know they aren’t alone
  • Clinician boundaries + child boundaries
  • Somatic safety cues

  1:00-1:15 – Somatic + Relational Tools

  • Body-based check-ins
  • Co-regulation practices
  • Creative + play-based tools
  • Home and school strategies
  • Decolonized emotional practices families can use

  1:15-1:25 – Case Study Practice: “Jayden”

  • Review of case
  • Group reflection questions
  • What parts show up in you?
  • How would you work with this child?

  1:25-1:30 – Integration, Thank You + Q&A

  • Key takeaways
  • Invitation to connect/work with you
  • Questions + reflections
  Closing regulation practice
  

Unspoken Wounds
with Tasha Hunter, LCSW, MSW

Learning Objectives

Session 1: Unspoken Wounds: Reclaiming Voice, Reality, and Self After Covert Trauma

1. Identify and describe at least three patterns of covert trauma-including gaslighting, emotional minimization, and erasure of inner reality-in client presentations.  
2. Apply at least two IFS interventions to support parts that internalize blame, self-doubt, or beliefs of being “too much” or “too sensitive.”  
3. Identify at least four systemic factors that intersect with covert trauma for marginalized clients and explain how these factors influence clinical presentation.
   
   

Session 2: Let the Child Speak: Making Room for Rage, Silence, and Survival

1. Name and validate at least three inner-child parts that express anger, mistrust, grief, fear, or shame using an IFS-informed lens.  
2. Describe two or more ways developmental and attachment trauma impact emotional regulation, dissociation, and relational rupture in children.  
3. Demonstrate two somatic and two relational tools to stay grounded, regulated, and attuned during intense emotional material. 

For beginning mental health professionals, including Psychologists, Social Workers, LPCs, and LMFTs.

Continuing Education

This program offers limited Live CEs/Contact Hours.

Continuing education credit/Contact hours are awarded on a per-session basis, with full attendance required for the entire 90-minute duration.  There is no additional charge for the CEs.  Application forms and other required CE materials will be available to participants by the Academy of Therapy Wisdom.

NOTE:  To receive continuing education credit, applicants must complete all CE materials, comply with attendance regulations, and submit an evaluation form for the session attended.  It is the responsibility of the attendee to determine if CE credit/contact hours offered by Academy of Therapy Wisdom meet the regulations of their state licensing/certification board.  

Psychology:  This course does NOT provide CEs for Psychologists.

Counseling:

Academy of Therapy Wisdom has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7370. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.  This program is approved for 1.5 CE Credit Hours for each live session for a possible total of 3 CE Credit Hours.

NY State Social Workers: Academy of Therapy Wisdom is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Workers as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers. #SW-0814.

NY State Mental Health Counselors: Academy of Therapy Wisdom is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0285.

Marriage/Family Therapy: See below for CAMFT information.

This course is $87 per month or $684/year. You can purchase it here.