Canadian Perinatal Mental Health Trainings

We offer various peer supervision options based on your practice level, including free drop-in sessions and group sessions tailored for community practitioners and counselors to better meet your needs!

Drop-in Peer Supervision Group:

Rita Girn (MA Counselling Psych CCC RSW PMH-C), the Director of Supervision, hosts a free Drop-In Perinatal Peer Supervision Group. It’s absolutely free to join this group!

Certification Supervision: Community Stream

These supervision groups are for individuals who support clients in community settings but do not provide counselling or therapy and who meet certain criteria.

PMH Supervised Certification Group - Community
- August 9th, 16th, 24th
- September 18th, 25th, and October 2nd

BRT Supervised Certification Group - Community
- August 7th, 14th, 21st

PGL Supervised Certification Group - Community
- August 6th, 13th, 20th

Certification Supervision: Counselling Stream:

These supervision groups are for graduates of our Certification Programs who need to complete their supervision hours. This stream is for individuals who provide therapy or counselling services to clients.

BRT Supervised Certification Group - Counselling Stream
August 12th, 13th, 14th

We keep these groups small to ensure everyone is able to feel supported, so make sure to grab your spot early. Access links to register and find more information in our linktree!

Relational-Cultural Therapy (RCT) is a psychological framework that emphasizes the significance of relationships and connectedness in human development and well-being. It was developed in the late 1970s by Jean Baker Miller and her colleagues at the Stone Center at Wellesley College.

RCT is based on the belief that humans grow through and toward connection, and that our culture influences our relationships. It acknowledges the crucial role of relationships in our daily experiences and how they shape our self-perceptions and emotions.

The goal of RCT is to establish and maintain Mutually-Growth-Fostering Relationships that are healthy, connected, and affirming.

Join us for this hands-on program created to help you feel more confident dealing with isolation, shame, humiliation, oppression, marginalization, and microaggressions as relational violations and traumas that cause suffering for our clients. This is especially helpful for perinatal clients as it offers a way to tackle many of the concerns they bring to sessions, such as feelings of disconnection, fears about attachment and attunement, relational confusion, loneliness, and societal roles and expectations for parents.

When: 8 weeks, starting October 25th
9:00-1:00 PT

A Soft Place to Land: Learn the Art of Leading Support Groups with Expressive Arts.

Join author, actor, and counsellor Nicolle Nattrass in a six-week program to discover the healing power of creativity in group settings.

In this program, you will learn how creativity can support the healing process, focusing on expressive journaling and group facilitation techniques. These techniques are perfect for starting support groups or integrating creative arts into your professional practice.

Throughout the program, you will explore creative journaling, process poetry, and active engagement with voice and choice. You will also:

- Experience the therapeutic effects of process-focused writing practices
- Learn expressive writing tools to guide others through processes of stress and anxiety
- Learn to facilitate engaging therapeutic groups to create a supportive community for shared experiences

Additionally, you will gain the skills to provide a safe space for emotional release and self-reflection, which can aid in processing and healing.

Course Details:
Every Monday afternoon from October 7th to November 18th (excluding Thanksgiving)
12:00-2:00 PM PT

You will also receive expert insights from guest speaker Olivia Scobie on applying creative journaling techniques to perinatal support groups.

Whether you are seeking healing, self-reflection, or the ability to help others, this program will provide valuable skills for group facilitation and creative expression.

We have seen firsthand the positive impact of IFS on our clients, and we are excited to share this transformative model with you through our Foundations of IFS for Perinatal Populations Certificate Program!

This program is specifically designed to address the unique needs of perinatal populations and will give you the knowledge needed to effectively support your perinatal clients in a safe and empowering manner.

Why IFS?

IFS helps us comprehend that we all have multiple parts, including feelings, diagnoses, traumas, roles, coping strategies, and a “Self” that represents who we truly are beneath all these parts. During the perinatal period, new parts, such as a parent part, a trying-to-conceive part, and a pregnant part, emerge, potentially triggering protector parts and old wounds.

Supporting Perinatal Clients

Expectant and new parents undergo a range of emotions, including anxiety, fear, excitement, and overwhelm. IFS assists them in exploring and addressing these inner conflicts, enabling each part to have a voice and understanding their unique perspectives and reasons for their presence. There are no bad parts in IFS, so clients are able to view themselves with compassion as they work through the healing process.

Course Highlights

- Core Principles of IFS: Build a strong foundation in the fundamental concepts and techniques of IFS therapy.
- Perinatal Applications: Learn to apply IFS principles to address your perinatal clients’ emotional and psychological needs.
- Practical Skills: Expand your therapeutic toolkit with practical IFS strategies to promote perinatal mental health.
- Flexible Learning: Manage your professional development through online learning, including case conceptualization, skills practice, and demonstrations.

Course Details:

- 18 hours over six classes
- Sept 12th - October 17th

Our Fall Registration is now OPEN!

We are thrilled to announce that our foundational programs have been updated to be more interactive and information-packed than ever before! Our comprehensive ‘Perinatal Mental Health Certification’ is back, and it includes four stand-alone courses:

• Foundations of Perinatal Mental Health - Sept 24
• Advanced Counseling Tools & Skills - Oct 22nd
• Specialized Topics in Perinatal Mental Health - Nov 19
• Working with Specialized Perinatal Populations - Dec 10

We’re also excited to announce that registration for our most popular modality programs from last year is now open!

• Internal Family Systems for Perinatal Populations - Starts Sept 12th
• Untangling Perinatal & Reproductive Trauma - Starts Oct 9

In addition, we’re thrilled to introduce three new programs:

• The Neuroscience of Perinatal Mental Health - Starts Sept 11
• Relational-Cultural Therapy for Perinatal Populations - Starts Oct 11
• A Soft Place to Land: The Art of Facilitating Support Groups - Starts Oct 7

If you have any questions about our fall programming, you can book a meet-and-greet with one of our faculty members to get all the information you need to decide if these trainings are right for you. The link is in our bio!

We’re here to chat, and we’re excited about the brilliant humans who came together to create and share these learning opportunities!

Join our “Neuroscience of Parenting and Perinatal Mental Health” program, tailored for healthcare professionals who want to understand how the brain changes during pregnancy and the postpartum period for both birthing and non-birthing parents.

In this course, we will explore the concept of “mommy brain” and address negative associations linked with the maternal brain. You will learn to reshape this perception, understand the parental brain, and integrate knowledge into strategies for providing appropriate support and interventions for your clients.

We will focus on understanding the brain changes associated with postpartum mood disorders and how factors such as mental load, stress, and disease can impact the parental brain. You will also gain insights into safeguarding the parental brain and exploring factors contributing to brain health and illness.

This program will provide evidence-based information about the remarkable changes occurring in parents’ brains. It will help you identify key brain areas essential for parenting and comprehend their roles in parental behaviour. By recognizing the brain networks necessary for emotional processing, decision-making, stress response, empathy, and attachment, you will gain a deeper understanding of the postpartum brain and learn strategies for promoting brain health.

This three-month course, led by .jodi_pawluski a prominent neuroscientist and researcher who literally wrote the book on “mommy brain,” begins in September. More information in our link in bio!

Tomorrow is the last day to register for our Birth & Reproductive Training Certification intensive, which starts on Monday!

The Summer intensive is designed to provide in-depth targeted processes and models to help families overcome difficult experiences such as birth trauma in just one week.

What does the CC-BRT program cover?

• In-depth exploration of counselling and trauma processing tools

• Practice of skills and case conceptualization
Provision of psychoeducational handouts for clients, intake and case conceptualization tools, assessment forms, and support resource guides

• Understanding the neurobiology of trauma and its connections to fertility, early loss, mid-pregnancy, termination, and postpartum experiences

• Exploration of the impact of intergenerational trauma on reproductive trauma and postpartum mental health
Addressing PTSD, complex PTSD, and trauma associated with birth, NICU stays, late loss, stillbirth, infant loss, and feeding challenges

• Professional support for burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma

What’s new in this session?

• Innovative and collaborative case study approach focusing on the entire reproductive spectrum

• ‘Hot off-the-presses’ academic research from Canadian researchers

• New therapeutic models and tools to enhance learning and confidence in working with reproductive trauma

• Option to add on The Flash Technique Trauma Reprocessing training starting in the Fall

For more information, visit our link in bio!

Introducing the Flash Technique for Trauma Reprocessing!

Do you struggle to help clients overcome traumatic experiences?

The Flash Technique is a trauma reprocessing tool designed to produce fast and effective results, especially for clients experiencing dissociation.

This tool reduces the intensity of distress associated with traumatic memories and facilitates healing with your clients.

Why choose the Flash Technique?

• Standalone trauma reprocessing technique: The Flash Technique is used to reprocess distressing memories independently of EMDR.

• Effectiveness: Compared to other trauma reprocessing modalities, Flash has been quicker and better tolerated by clients.

• Versatile Integration: Flash can be integrated into various methods of psychotherapy to address trauma and memory-related distress.

• Dual-Attention Stimulation: This procedure, similar to EMDR, involves memory recollection combined with an activity or focus that requires attention. It is known as dual-attention stimulation (or bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements).

The use of dual-attention stimulus supports memory reconsolidation, which is the primary theory used to understand the working mechanisms of both EMDR and The Flash Technique.

Along with this reprocessing tool, you will gain a powerful grounding technique involving containing distressing memories using Zentangle drawings. This method offers a positive, engaging, and soothing experience that clients can revisit during sessions. This technique is easy and fun, and does not require any artistic skill!

Learn how to manage trauma confidently and provide your clients with a holistic healing experience that reduces distressing feelings and leaves them with a powerful grounding tool for everyday life!

Bundle the Flash Technique with the Birth & Reproductive Trauma Certification and save, more information in our bio link!

Get ready for the FALL session of the Canadian Certificate in Perinatal Mental Health (CC-PMH) program!

Our program is designed for mental health and reproductive healthcare professionals who want to support mental health during the perinatal period. It addresses a crucial need in our healthcare system by focusing on understanding the unique causes, concerns, and symptoms of perinatal mental wellness and how to work with this specific population.

We offer hands-on experiences and collaborative learning, so participants can apply their knowledge in real-world scenarios. Our training is evidence-based and incorporates the latest clinical research, combined with the professional experience of our faculty members.

Our goal is to enhance access to perinatal mental health resources and equip professionals with the necessary tools to make a positive impact on perinatal mental health.

Training includes a total of 32 hours split into four specialty workshops:

- Foundations of Perinatal Mental Health
- Advanced Counseling Tools and Skills
- Specialized Topics in Perinatal Mental Health
- Working With Specialized Parenting Populations

We are committed to fostering collective knowledge through collaboration, communication, and cooperation among individuals with different backgrounds and experiences. We aim to create a trauma-informed environment, with a curriculum centered on reproductive justice and equity-oriented healthcare.

Link to more Information is in our bio!

Has there ever been a more perfect review for our trainings?

We absolutely love going through our program feedback forms for many reasons!

One of the main reasons is that we genuinely want to improve our training with each session and understand how to create an experience that’s not only packed with information but also a lot of fun.

Of course, we also love reading about the things we got right and how our training impacts each individual and their work in the community. It always brings a smile to our faces and motivates us to keep building the best training possible. Who doesn’t like a compliment every once in a while?

Today, as we dove into our latest feedback forms (and yes, we go through every single one thoroughly), we stumbled upon this review!

To us, it couldn’t be a more perfect way to express how we want to exist in the world. Yes, we want to continue working with cutting-edge research and the newest information possible, but we also want to be able to share hard things, connect with each other in a real way, and share some laughs!

We know this is an anonymous feedback form, but we think this person needs to apply for a marketing role 😉

Love it!!