Nervous System Informed Trauma Counselling

Trauma is not only an event that happens to a person—it is an experience that lives within the body and shapes the nervous system. This course invites you into a deeper, more compassionate understanding of trauma by exploring how it is held, processed, and expressed through the nervous system.

Nervous System Informed Trauma Counselling is designed to support counsellors work more effectively with trauma by understanding and responding to the nervous system in real time. Clients won’t always clearly ask for trauma counselling and this course was designed to help you look through a nervous system informed lens. It will equip you to ask, “What has this nervous system experienced, and how has it adapted in order to survive?” From this perspective, your clients struggles and obstacles can be explored as the result of intelligent responses that once served a protective purpose.

Across this course, you will develop a foundational understanding of trauma—what it is, how it forms, and how it impacts neural pathways and internal experience. You will explore the difference between single-event and chronic trauma, and begin to recognise the subtle and often unseen ways trauma shapes perception, behaviour, and relational patterns. This training equips you with practical ways to recognise, track, and respond to physiological states that shape your client’s experience.

A central focus of this training is the nervous system itself. You will be introduced to key concepts such as nervous system cycling, neuroception, and the principles underlying the Polyvagal Theory. These frameworks offer practical insight into how safety, connection, and threat are experienced in the body, and how these states influence our clients lived-experience and the counselling process.

In day two of this course the attention shifts into the counselling room. You will learn to recognise the hallmarks of trauma in adults—particularly caused by developmental/childhood trauma—and gain insight into the traumatised brain. Through case studies and practical tools, you will begin to integrate theory into practice, cultivating the ability to respond to clients nervous system needs.

Finally, you will be introduced to a structured Nervous System Informed (NSI) counselling approach. This includes core principles and a four-layer framework that you can use to guide your sessions—from establishing safety, to working with activation, to supporting integration. The aim is to give you a clear, flexible method that can be adapted to your existing counselling style.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Recognise and track nervous system states in your clients
• Respond appropriately to activation, shutdown, and support regulation
• Create and maintain safety in the counselling relationship
• Apply nervous system-informed interventions in real time
• Work more confidently with trauma in a grounded, structured way

This training is designed to be immediately applicable. You should be able to take what you learn here directly into your counselling practice, supporting your clients in ways that are not only effective, but also sustainable and deeply attuned to how trauma shows up in the body, mind and relationships.

About the Presenter

I’m a 31-year-old social worker and specialist wellness counsellor from the Netherlands, as well as a mom—roles that have deeply shaped both my professional path and my understanding of care, connection, and resilience.

After completing my training with Humanitas, I felt a strong pull to specialise in trauma. Through both my work and personal experiences, I saw how trauma—especially in childhood—can significantly impact a person’s ability to form and sustain healthy relationships and distort their sense of self in adulthood. I wanted to understand why, and find best practices on how to bring awareness to how our past is influencing our present.

That lead me to key works such as The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and Re-Regulated by Anna Runkle, as well as a trauma counselling course led by a trauma-informed yoga teacher. These experiences helped me bridge theory with practical nervous system informed counselling approaches that actually empower our clients and give them a way forward.

This course was created to share that integration—offering counsellors an accessible, practical way to understand and work with trauma through the nervous system informed lens. My aim is to support you in feeling more confident, equipped, and grounded when working with clients who carry the impact of trauma.

“Nervous System Informed Trauma Counselling” was curated as part of our new Humanitas Graduates’ initiatives programme that empowers our Counselling Course Graduates to become course developers.

Each course developed by our graduates undergoes a thorough review process to guarantee its excellence.