Full Course Description

Women’s Mental Health Across the Lifespan: The Latest Techniques from CBT, DBT, and Mindfulness to Treat the Impact of Hormonal Shifts, PMS, PMDD, Postpartum, Perimenopause & Menopause

Hormonal shifts throughout a woman’s life can trigger mood swings, anxiety, insomnia, and attentional issues - often mistaken for mental health disorders.

Too often, misdiagnosis leaves girls and women frustrated, stigmatized, and without the right support.

Watch Kristine Spano, PsyD, expert in women’s mental health, for this comprehensive training that equips you with the knowledge and tools to identify and address these often misdiagnosed conditions.

Through an evidence-based lens, this course will equip you with actionable strategies to address hormonal conditions from Pre-Menstrual Syndrome to Menopause, as well as their impact on self-esteem, mood regulation, sex, gender dysphoria, appetite, chronic pain, and more. You will learn:

Practical assessment tools to differentiate mental health and hormone-driven changes for targeted treatment
Sensitive and easy ways to share empowering psychoeducation with women
Proven CBT techniques to help women combat issues with body image, role transitions, sexual changes, insomnia, and more
DBT and mindfulness strategies to mitigate stress and adrenal overload
How to help clients create personalized holistic self-care toolkits that address their needs

Plus, you’ll learn specialized skills and insights for diverse populations, including same-sex parents and transgender women.

Purchase now to gain the expertise you need to support your patients at every stage of life with sensitivity and skill.

Program Information

Objectives

Identify problematic symptoms associated with PMS/PMDD, postpartum anxiety and depression, perimenopause, and menopause.
Analyze the impact of hormonal changes on mood across the lifespan.
Differentiate between hormone-driven mood changes and primary mental health disorders using practical assessment tools.
Utilize CBT strategies to address the unique challenges women face at the intersection of hormonal and mental health changes.
Integrate DBT interventions to enhance emotional regulation.
Develop self-care toolkits tailored to the specific needs of women experiencing hormonal-related mental health challenges.

Outline

Hormonal Shifts Throughout the Lifespan

The roles of hormones: metabolism, growth, sexual health, reproductive system functioning
Impact on mood and emotions
Tour of the endocrine system
Thyroid disease, diabetes, stress, and more: Impact on endocrine system
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Assess and Diagnose Hormone-Driven Conditions

Affective, behavioral, and somatic indicators
Tools to differentiate from other conditions
Co-occurring conditions and DSM-5TR™ diagnoses
Common life transitions that coincide with hormonal shifts
Simple screens for PMDD, peri/post-natal anxiety and depression, and menopause
Tips for male clinicians

Hormonal Conditions and Adrenal Overload (Stress)

HPA Axis – how it works
Hormonal changes and impact on mood
nervous system reactions and how to quell them
Neurobiological keys of hormonal changes

Clinical Strategies to Address the Impact of Hormonal Change

Lifestyle changes for emotional regulation
Three powerful DBT strategies for mood stabilization
Target the gut-brain axis for appetite regulation
Psychoeducation: Dispel fears about gender dysphoria
Address physical pain: Mindfulness, yoga, and more
Routine-based interventions to enhance maternal-baby bonding
Sex; Top CBT, mindfulness-based therapies, and interventions for couples
Five CBT-I strategies to improve sleep
The role of neurotoxins, supplements, and medications

Special Considerations

The needs of girls with same-sex parents
Affirming care for LGBTQIA+ women
Ensure cultural humility

From the Glass Ceiling to Invisible Woman Syndrome

How to support women in their careers
Stop the spiral of negative body image and anti-aging views
Establish worth and agency in every life stage
Build a social network to mitigate distress and overload
Redefine self-care and build a customizable self-care toolbox

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners
Therapists
Art Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 06/02/2025

Reproductive Trauma: Essential Tools for Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, Birth Trauma, and Perinatal Mental Health Disorders

All clients have a reproductive story – whether they have children or not, whether they want children or not, regardless of their gender or sexuality.

And while for some that story goes as imagined, many clients go through the quiet devastation of any number of unanticipated traumas.

These stressors create unique mental health challenges that are different from what therapists were trained to treat. Infertility and pregnancy loss aren’t typical grief. Birth trauma isn’t typical trauma. Perinatal mood issues aren’t just depression and anxiety.

Unseen and unacknowledged, these traumas can shatter clients’ sense of self and shake the foundations of their intimate relationships.

Whether clients are presenting to your practice to work specifically on symptoms related to reproductive trauma – or whether reproductive trauma comes up as relevant in the context of other clinical work – you need to be prepared to help them navigate these complex struggles.

Join Janet Jaffe, PhD, co-founder and co-director of the Center for Reproductive Psychology and acclaimed clinician and author, for this dynamic 1-day seminar designed to help you:

Assess clients’ reproductive story and its impact on self and relationships
Utilize the latest approaches to treat reproductive trauma
Create opportunities for posttraumatic growth – whether clients eventually have children or not
Manage issues of therapist self-disclosure and countertransference

Register today and be ready to respond to the unique reproductive mental health challenges of your clients!

Program Information

Objectives

Assess clients’ reproductive story as it relates to case conceptualization.
Differentiate reproductive trauma from PTSD to inform treatment interventions.
Demonstrate cognitive restructuring for challenging clients’ self-blame after reproductive trauma.
Utilize problem solving techniques to assist clients with managing decisions related to their desire to become parents.
Utilize narrative therapy techniques intended to foster posttraumatic growth after reproductive trauma.
Determine indicators for self-disclosure of the clinician’s reproductive history.

Outline

The Reproductive Story as a Foundational Understanding: Your Client’s Unconscious Guideline for the Creation of Self and Family

Development and elaboration of the reproductive story
Screening clients you suspect might have reproductive trauma
Assessment techniques to discern clients’ core assumptions of pregnancy
Psychological parenthood
Intersectionality, culture, and reproductive story

Identify Impacts of Reproductive Trauma: Infertility, Loss, Birth Trauma, and Perinatal Disorders Change the Script

Ways the reproductive story can go awry
What makes reproductive trauma different from other types of trauma
Differentiate reproductive trauma from PTSD
Disenfranchised grief: not just loss of wouldbe baby
Individual and couple impacts – self and relationships, meaning and purpose
Case conceptualization for reproductive trauma
How to cope in a child-centered world
Case example: assessing reproductive story
Case example: grief, loss, and coping after miscarriage and infertility

Healing Through the Lens of the Reproductive Story: Cognitive, Psychodynamic, and Narrative Approaches

Support clients searching for reasons in the face of disrupted schema
Create rituals for mourning and locating consistent support
How to help clients considering fertility treatments
What to do when clients decide to stop trying to conceive
Top strategies for challenging self-blame, guilt, and shame
Essential cognitive interventions when ideas about parenthood are shattered
Build insight around the meaning of family and parenthood
Techniques to help clients rewrite their reproductive story
How to facilitate posttraumatic growth for clients with reproductive trauma
Case example: use of decision tree with client contemplating using a donor
Case example: reproductive story work where there is intergenerational trauma

Clinical Considerations

The clinician’s reproductive story – does it interfere or enhance?
Evaluate clinician biases that can impact treatment
Self-disclosure – when, why, how much?
Taking care of oneself while taking care of others
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Art Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Psychiatric Nurses
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 02/12/2025

Infertility Grief and Trauma

“Do you have kids?”

This common intake question is intended to gather information, forge connection, and build context around your clients’ lives.

But for your clients experiencing infertility, it is a major trigger. And it activates the grief and isolation inherent in involuntary childlessness.

As more individuals start their families at older ages and the presence of reproductive challenges increases, infertility trauma and grief will show up in more therapy practices.

Without specific training in infertility grief and trauma, you won’t be effective at challenging inadequacy beliefs, negative self-worth, shame, worry, irritability, depression, body issues, and relationship conflict these clients experience - nor be equipped to navigate the myriad of heartbreaks they face.

Don’t let therapy be a place where clients coping with current or previous infertility feel further stigmatized.

Watch Dr. Loree Johnson, LMFT, fertility counseling and reproductive trauma expert, for this dynamic one-day training that will give you the skills you need to process infertility grief and trauma with your clients. Using the lens of cultural humility, you’ll learn strategies to:

Ask the right questions to get to the heart of your clients’ infertility experience
Intervene with individuals and couples using EMDR, somatic and emotion-focused techniques, and more
Assess your clients’ intersectional identity to contextualize their reproductive story
Utilize the dual process model to support grief at all life stages

Packed with case studies, exercises, and compelling self-reflections for the therapist, this training will have you ready to meet the growing need for support around infertility.

Purchase today!

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate the DSM V-TR™ definition of trauma as related to infertility.
Investigate infertility grief in the context of clients’ intersectional identity.
Utilize techniques to decrease the stigma of infertility.
Employ interventions to reduce emotional distress related to infertility in individual clients.
Assess the impact of infertility on intimate relationships.
Investigate the potential risks and benefits of therapist self-disclosure related to fertility.

Outline

Infertility Trauma and Your Client

The most surprising facts about infertility
Where is the line between infertility stress and infertility trauma
Social infertility
Top questions to understand your client’s experience
Cultural humility as a critical element
Tips for assessing your client’s intersectional identity
Exercise – therapist self-assessment
Case study – mental health symptoms alongside ongoing fertility treatments

Reproductive Grief: Thrust Against the Margins

Infertility and reproductive grief as disenfranchised loss
Embracing and avoiding loss - dualprocess grief model
Best practices for assessing and monitoring your client’s grief
Infertility loss grief interventions
Strategies for decreasing grief stigma
Grief and cultural humility
Case study – termination for medical reasons after IVF

Trauma-Informed Therapy for Infertility

EMDR and somatic resourcing techniques
Adapting EFT and Gottman Method for infertile couples
Strategies to strengthen attachment, reduce emotional distress, and facilitate grieving
Common partner communication challenges: resentments, intimacy, financial strain, and more
Crisis management techniques to address immediate trauma
Foundational strategies to address chronic experience of infertility
Exercise – resource development for infertility distress
Case study – couple contemplating involuntary childlessness

Clinical Considerations

Tailoring interventions to clients’ unique identities
Self-disclosure and how culture influences it
Management of countertransference and therapist reactivity
Limitations of the research and potential risks

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychiatrists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Psychiatric Nurses
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals

This Didn't Go as Planned: Practical Approaches to Validate and Process Reproductive Grief

Pregnancy loss, reproductive challenges such as infertility, birth trauma or the experience of a perinatal mental health disorder leave millions of people each year feeling "this wasn't supposed to be this way." Left to sort through the resulting grief that’s seldomly validated by society, they can find themselves in your office looking to make sense of it all and find a way forward. In this session, you’ll view expert Dr. Julie Bindeman as she shows you how you can validate these clients’ losses and help them cope with practical strategies you can start using immediately in your practice.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess for disenfranchised losses that can occur within the reproductive years.
Develop treatment plans that include normalization and contextualization of these kinds of reproductive losses.
Utilize strategies to help clients manage the myriad of feelings that are experienced within the framework of reproductive loss.

Outline

Disenfranchised grief and reproductive trauma
The unseen losses of infertility, pregnancy loss, birth trauma, and perinatal mental health disorders
How clinicians can help clients recognize and label these losses (even those in the distant past)
Strategies to help normalize and process reproductive losses
Research, risk and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Nurse Practioners
Psychologists
Social Workers
Other Mental Health Professions