"You don't need a war story to have trauma."
This is one of the most clinically misunderstood truths about PTSD — and during PTSD Awareness Month, it's worth saying out loud.
In trauma psychology, we often work with two categories:
🔻 Big T trauma — events involving actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. These are the events the DSM-5-TR recognizes as "Criterion A" for a PTSD diagnosis.
🔻 little t trauma — experiences that don't meet that threshold but quietly shape your nervous system over time: emotional neglect, chronic criticism, betrayal, repeated loss, growing up walking on eggshells.
Here's the part most people miss.
The brain doesn't rank threat the way a diagnostic manual does. When something feels overwhelming and inescapable — even if it would look "small" from the outside — the amygdala still fires the alarm, the hippocampus still struggles to file the memory in coherent time, and the body still stores the imprint.
That's why people who never lived through a single "Big T" event can still carry hypervigilance, shutdown, shame, or chronic distrust. Repeated little t can leave the same fingerprints as PTSD.
So many people dismiss their own pain because their story "wasn't bad enough."
It was bad enough. Your nervous system already knew.
Save this for someone who needs to hear it. 🤍
CompassionWorks
CompassionWorks was founded in 1998 by Jordan Shafer, MS, LPC.
It is now a multi‑partner LLC in Texas that provides EMDR Basic Training and Continuing Education opportunities for mental health professionals. CompassionWorks LLC provides EMDR training and Continuing Education opportunities for mental health professionals. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an evidence‑based therapy that helps individuals move beyond emotional distress so t
06/05/2026
You shouldn't have to pause your practice to grow it. 🗓️
That's why we built the 2026 EMDR Training Roadmap — online, in-person, hybrid, and on-demand options so you can train on your schedule.
Live cohorts are filling up (some are down to last spots 👀), plus workshops, bilingual options, and on-demand courses you can start today.
Swipe through to find your fit — then comment ROADMAP below and we'll DM you registration links + syllabus for every course. ⬇️
👉 See all courses and dates: https://compassionworks.com/courses/
06/03/2026
💡 External regulation isn't a failure of self-regulation. For a dysregulated nervous system, it's often the prerequisite.
🦎 Lizards know this. They can't generate their own body heat — so they move between sun and shade, using the environment to do what their body can't do alone.
Many of our clients live the same way inside their Window of Tolerance (Siegel, 1999): not by self-regulating, but by moving toward and away from external conditions.
A specific person. A room. A texture. A pet. A quiet car ride.
We sometimes treat this as a phase to outgrow. But for some nervous systems, mapping those external regulators IS the work — the foundation that has to come before window expansion is even on the table.
In June, the work is often:
➡️ Noticing what your client uses as their "sun" and "shade"
➡️ Treating those external regulators as legitimate clinical material
➡️ Building toward an expanded window on a timeline the nervous system actually supports
🗨️ What's your go-to external resource for helping a client regulate? Drop it in the comments — let's build a list together.
—
Reference: Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press.
06/01/2026
Calling all Supervisors!
Tired of the Supervision CEs that talk about ethics and remind you of what you are already doing?
Join us for a 4 hour training on using Assessments in your Supervisory work and learn an up-and-coming Communication tool to implement in your work!
✔️ 4 hours of CEs (4 hrs of Supervision CEs included!)
✔️Live Interactive online
✔️4 NBCC credits included
✔️For licensure supervisors, site supervisors, or those who are in a leadership role!
Link here: https://compassionworks.com/registration/assessment-supervision-june-2026/
05/29/2026
Some feedback gets filed 📥
Some gets framed 🖼️
We got the "framed" kind this month — from a clinician with 25 years of EMDR experience and 20+ years of training under their belt. Swipe to read what they said.
Here's the thing about feedback from senior clinicians: it's usually careful. Measured. Generous, but contained ✨.
When someone with that much time in the field reaches for a word like "EXCELLENT" — and writes it in all caps — that's not the kind of message that goes in a folder.
That's the kind we sit with for a minute ☕.
It's also the standard we want every cohort walking away with.
Our 2026 cohorts run year-round: online, in-person, and hybrid EMDR foundational training, advanced specialty workshops, supervision and consultation intensives — all built for licensed clinicians who take their craft seriously.
🔗 Curious what's currently open? Browse the full 2026 catalog at https://compassionworks.com/courses/
05/27/2026
"Online EMDR training is the lesser version of in-person." 🤔
It's one of the most common assumptions we hear from therapists weighing their basic training options — and one of the easiest to take apart once you look at the actual EMDRIA standards.
But the format question turns out to be the wrong question.
✨ The variable that actually predicts whether you'll leave basic training ready to use EMDR with a real client is something else entirely.
📚 Swipe through for the short version.
🔗 Full breakdown on the blog (link below): EMDRIA standards, the research caveat the marketing usually skips, and how to choose between online, in-person, and hybrid.
https://compassionworks.com/online-vs-in-person-emdr-training/
🏔️ EMDR phases 4–6, explained as climbing a mountain.
A question I get from EMDR therapists in consultation:
"My client hit SUDs 0, VOC was already a 7, body scan was clear. We closed out. Is there anything I could have done differently?"
Short answer: yes — slow down phases 5 and 6.
Here's the analogy I use: We're Sherpas walking our clients up a memory mountain.
🔹 Phase 4 → the climb (reprocessing toward SUDs 0)
🔹 Phase 5 → the summit (don't rush past it — let the positive cognition land)
🔹 Phase 6 → the descent (body scan confirms the path down is clear)
Once your client reaches the top, let them stand there. Strengthen the connection between the memory and the new positive cognition. Add a few bilateral sets while they're in that calm, integrated state. Let them feel the work they just did.
Then walk them down the mountain — don't push them off the summit and onto the bus.
💡A clean session isn't just hitting the metrics. It's giving your client time to actually land in the new state.
📌 Save this for your next phase 5.
🔁 Share it with your EMDR consult partner.
05/14/2026
If compassion has started to feel performed instead of felt—that's clinical data, not personal failure. 🧠
Burnout in therapists isn't a sign you're bad at your job. It's a sign the workload is unsustainable and the system around you isn't catching you.
A distinction worth keeping clear:
🔶 Burnout: emotional exhaustion + depersonalization + reduced sense of effectiveness. Tied to workload and systemic conditions.
🔷 Vicarious trauma / Secondary Traumatic Stress: trauma-like symptoms (intrusions, avoidance, hyperarousal) from repeated exposure to clients' material.
You can have one, the other, or both.
Early signs clinicians miss:
▪️ Dreading specific clients
▪️ Emotional numbing in session
▪️ Cynicism about clients or outcomes
▪️ Sunday-night dread that starts Saturday
▪️ Intrusive images from session content
What helps isn't a bubble bath. It's consultation groups, real clinical supervision, caseload audits, body-based practices between sessions, and changes to the conditions themselves.
You are not a bottomless resource.
📌 Save this for the week you need it. 🔁 Share it with the colleague you've been worried about.
05/09/2026
May's animal is the hummingbird. 🐦
Beautiful. Fast. Constantly moving. And quietly exhausted.
Hummingbirds are the only birds that have to enter torpor — a deep rest state — just to survive the night. Without it, their bodies would give out from their own pace.
👀 Sound like anyone you know? Maybe a client. Maybe yourself.
High-functioning isn't free. Every sympathetic push has a cost — and rest isn't a reward for productivity. It's the thing that makes productivity possible.
👉 Do you recognize the "hummingbird crash" in your clients — or in yourself? Let's discuss in the comments.
Save this and share it with someone who needs the reminder. 💚
05/07/2026
Your 2026 EMDR training roadmap is here. 🗺️
Whether you learn best online, in-person, hybrid, or on your own schedule — we built a format for every kind of clinician.
✔️ 4 Live Online cohorts (summer + fall)
✔️ 2 In-Person Texas locations
✔️ 3 Hybrid options (on-site + online combined)
✔️ 6 Live Online workshops
✔️ 4 On-Demand workshops you can start today
Save this post so you don't lose it. Share it with the colleague who keeps saying "I really need to get EMDR trained."
Comment ROADMAP and we'll DM you the full syllabus + direct registration links for every course. 💌
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