EMDRIA CONFERENCE 2026

Continuing to Learn: Deepening My Work in Trauma-Informed Mental Health

I’m excited to be attending the EMDRIA Conference this week as part of my ongoing commitment to learning, growing, and expanding the ways I support clients at Wellkind Mental Health.

For me, continuing education is about more than staying current with clinical approaches. It’s an opportunity to slow down, listen to new perspectives, challenge what I think I know, and deepen my understanding of the experiences that bring people into therapy. This year, I’m especially looking forward to learning more about coercive control, perinatal mental health, and complex trauma: three areas that can have profound and lasting effects on a person’s sense of safety, identity, relationships, and well-being.

Understanding Coercive Control

Coercive control is an area I’m particularly interested in exploring more deeply because it can be difficult to recognize, both for the person experiencing it and for the people around them.

Unlike a single, easily identifiable incident of abuse, coercive control can involve an ongoing pattern of behaviors designed to create fear, dependence, isolation, or a loss of autonomy. It may show up through monitoring, manipulation, intimidation, financial control, isolation from friends and family, threats, or repeatedly undermining someone’s confidence in their own perceptions and decisions.

Because these patterns can develop gradually, people may find themselves questioning whether what they are experiencing “counts” as abuse or whether they are somehow responsible for the situation. The psychological impact can be significant. Over time, someone may begin to feel disconnected from their own needs, unsure of their judgment, or fearful of making decisions that once felt straightforward.

I’m looking forward to learning more about how coercive control intersects with trauma and how clinicians can provide care that is validating, empowering, and sensitive to the realities of a person’s circumstances. Understanding the context in which trauma occurs matters. Healing isn’t simply about asking someone to move forward; it’s also about helping them reconnect with their sense of agency, safety, and self-trust.

Perinatal Mental Health

The transition into pregnancy, birth, and parenthood can be an incredibly meaningful time, but it can also bring enormous emotional, physical, relational, and psychological changes.

Perinatal mental health encompasses the period during pregnancy and after birth, and emotional struggles during this time can take many forms. Depression and anxiety are well-known concerns, but people may also experience intrusive thoughts, significant changes in mood, birth-related trauma, grief, identity shifts, relationship stress, or feelings of disconnection from themselves or their baby.

There can also be tremendous pressure to experience parenthood in a particular way. When someone is struggling, they may feel ashamed, isolated, or afraid to tell anyone because their experience doesn’t match what they expected—or what they believe they are “supposed” to feel.

I’m interested in continuing to develop a deeper understanding of the unique mental health needs of people during this stage of life. Supporting perinatal mental health requires making room for the full experience: the joy and the grief, the connection and the uncertainty, the profound love and the very real overwhelm.

I want my work to help create a space where people can speak honestly about what they are experiencing without judgment, and where difficult emotions are met with curiosity and compassion rather than shame.

Exploring Complex Trauma

Complex trauma asks us to look beyond a single traumatic event and consider what can happen when someone has experienced repeated, prolonged, or interpersonal trauma—particularly when that trauma has occurred within relationships where they should have been able to feel safe.

The effects of complex trauma can be wide-ranging. Someone may experience difficulty trusting others, heightened vigilance, emotional overwhelm, difficulty identifying or expressing their needs, challenges with boundaries, or a deep sense of disconnection from themselves. Sometimes these patterns can look like anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, perfectionism, people-pleasing, or difficulty regulating emotions.

One of the things I value about trauma-informed work is the opportunity to become curious about what is underneath a person’s symptoms. Rather than asking, “What is wrong with you?” we can begin to ask, “What happened to you, and how did you learn to survive it?”

That shift can create room for compassion.

It also reminds us that coping strategies often develop for a reason. What may no longer serve someone in their current life may once have been an important way of navigating an unsafe or unpredictable environment. Healing can involve understanding those patterns, developing new ways of responding, and gradually building a greater sense of safety and connection.

Bringing Learning Back to Wellkind

I’m looking forward to attending EMDRIA not simply as a clinician collecting continuing education hours, but as someone who believes that good therapy requires ongoing curiosity and humility.

The more we understand about trauma, relationships, reproductive mental health, and the ways people adapt to difficult experiences, the better equipped we are to meet clients where they are.

I’m especially excited to bring what I learn about coercive control, perinatal mental health, and complex trauma back into my practice at Wellkind Mental Health. My hope is that continued learning allows me to offer care that is increasingly thoughtful, compassionate, empowering, and responsive to the complexities of each person’s story.

Healing is rarely linear, and there is no one-size-fits-all path forward. My role is not to tell someone what their healing should look like, but to walk alongside them with curiosity, respect, and evidence-informed support.

I’m grateful for opportunities like this to keep learning and to bring that learning back to the people I have the privilege of supporting.

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