TRM® Level 1

Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM)® Level 1 is a three-day course designed to teach skills to clinicians working with children and adults with traumatic stress reactions. TRM® explores the biology of fear and threat and the automatic, natural defensive responses that occur when faced with a life-threatening and/or dangerous situation. Most importantly, this model explores the concept of resiliency and how to restore balance to the body and the mind after traumatic experiences. When the focus is on normal biological responses to extraordinary events, there is a paradigm shift to symptoms being described as biological rather than as pathological or as mental weakness.  As traumatic stress symptoms are normalized, feelings of shame and self-blame are reduced or eliminated. Symptoms are viewed as the body’s attempt to re-establish balance to the nervous system.

 The training is a combination of lecture, discussion and small group practice.

“I’ve been so appreciating the ability to use the tools you gave us in my sessions since the training. I’m realizing how simple and effectively organized your model is — and has streamlined, and operationalized what used to be a fleeting or sporadic process.

Your model is truly like a portable therapy kit that I can supply each person and myself in sessions. I have to say even the model of how you trained us over the weekend — really successfully created lasting neural pathways — as I am able to recall and use the tools almost intuitively — just from the weekend! So THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to you and your beautiful team!

I’ve already used TRM in my sessions with people from Syria, Sudan, Bangladesh, Armenia, Russia, El Salvador and more! And have had opportunities to practice briefly teaching the model to my staff and colleagues over the weeks! The fun of learning and solidifying this skill is only just beginning!”

       — Carol Gomez, Clinical Director

Program for Torture Victims, Los Angeles 

Learning Objectives

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

Objective 1

Describe three or more key concepts of the Trauma Resiliency Model®

Objective 5

Describe and utilize the nine skills of TRM®.

Objective 2

Describe three or more ways traumatic experiences affect the mind and body based on current scientific research.

Objective 6

Describe the six skills of the Community Resiliency Model®.

Objective  3

Describe the parasympathetic and sympathetic arms of the autonomic nervous system including the impact on traumatic stress symptoms.

Objective 7

Identify two or more ethical considerations with regard to implementing TRM®.

Objective  4

Describe TRM®’s definition of trauma.