Developmental Trauma Training Institute

02/04/2026

How often do clients’ behaviors leave you puzzled—or stuck in patterns you don’t fully understand?

Shame can show up in subtle ways that influence relationships, choices, and wellbeing—long before clients can put it into words.

Join Josh Delahan, LCSW, as he explores what shame really is—and learn how to support clients more effectively in the upcoming 3-day Shame Course with Josh Delahan and Steve Sawyer ➡️
https://www.eventzilla.net/e/shame-the-land-between-living-and-dying--online-training-event-2138677752

02/03/2026

Why Brainspotting?

Self-healing capabilities live deeply within us. In this FB Live, Steve shares both his personal why and the scientific why behind his passion for Brainspotting as a powerful healing modality.

He explores how our stress responses develop and explains how Brainspotting gently accesses the brain and body’s innate capacity to heal. Steve highlights three key ingredients of the process: attunement, interoceptive body access, and the pointer—and how engaging the periaqueductal gray can rapidly release deeply held, reflexive responses to pain.

Ultimately, healing unfolds when an internal dysregulated storm meets a calm nervous system.

✨ A grounded, compassionate conversation about how healing happens from the inside out.

Interested in learning about the Brainspotting modality? Steve has several Phase Phase 1 tranings coming up:
🌱Feb. 5,6 Porland ME: https://www.eventzilla.net/e/brainspotting-phase-one--inperson--portland-me-2138678801
🌱March 20,22 Wichita KS : https://www.eventzilla.net/e/brainspotting-phase-one--inperson--wichita-ks-2138679397
🌱April 24-26 Bloomington MN: https://accswi.com/etn/brainspotting-phase-1-bloomington-mn-april-24-26th/
🌱May 1-3 Bozeman MT: https://www.eventzilla.net/e/brainspotting-phase-one--inperson--bozeman-mt-2138678530
🌱June 5-7 Rapid City SD: https://www.eventzilla.net/e/brainspotting-phase-one--inperson--rapid-city-sd-2138675750

02/01/2026

When therapy isn’t moving, the question may not be “Why won’t this change?”
It may be “What is being protected — and how do we work with it?”

In developmental trauma work, activation avoidance isn’t resistance or lack of readiness.
It’s protective intelligence shaped by early experiences where activation led to danger, overwhelm, abandonment, or relational rupture.

Join Conversations with Jenn Cobb as she explores:

• What activation avoidance is
• Why it makes sense for the nervous system
• How it shows up in therapy — with clients and clinicians
• Simple, nervous-system-informed ways to work with protection without forcing activation

A clinical conversation about pacing, protection, and creating conditions where activation doesn’t

Check out the event on 2/27 via zoom:
Conversations with DTTI: A Monthly Gathering - Activation Avoidance

01/30/2026

Did you know there are TWO ONLINE opportunities starting on Feb 11th to:

🥳 earn 16 hours of NAADAC approved continuing ed hours
🥳 learn from your own space and at your own pace
🥳 enjoy live integration sessions with Steve Sawyer and the rest of your cohort
🥳 widen your lens of understanding developmental trauma, brain science, and attachment and how they intersect with healing

👇 Here's what Melissa had to say about her Cut from the Herd journey

https://youtu.be/OFeHHaYPp7g?feature=shared

📌 join us for Cut from the Herd online Course with live cohorts if you're ready to take what you know about addictions of all kinds and see it from a different angle with new techniques and tools

📌 join us for Digging Roots Foundations 0.5 online course with live cohorts if you're ready to deepen your understanding of the impact of developmental trauma and how to heal.

📌 ready to submerge yourself in TWO POWERFUL online courses?? Join us for both!!

2025Melissa talks about her experience in the Cut from the Herd course. www.dtti.co

01/29/2026

Many therapists and somatic practitioners spend their days tracking others—listening closely, noticing shifts, responding with care. Over time, this outward focus can subtly shape how the body is lived in, often prioritizing responsiveness over internal choice.

Choice-based movement offers a way to return to the body as a place where decisions come from the inside rather than from instruction.
Continue Reading : https://openviewyoga.home.blog/2026/01/29/choice-based-movement-autonomy-and-nervous-system-awareness-for-therapists-and-somatic-practitioners/

01/29/2026

We are excited to be collaborating with Developmental Trauma Training Institute to bring this training to Indiana!

This is for BrainSpotting practitioners to enhance their skills and dig deeper into working with developmental trauma. 🤩

01/28/2026

When we’re working with developmental trauma, we’re not just working with stories.

✨️ We’re working with nervous systems ✨️

So much of developmental trauma lives below words — in reflexes, patterns of protection, and the body’s learned expectations of danger, disconnection, or overwhelm.

This is why Brainspotting can be such a powerful companion in this work.

Brainspotting helps us:
🧠 Access subcortical, body-held trauma without forcing narrative
🧠 Work at the pace of the nervous system instead of the pace of insight
🧠 Bypass defenses that formed before language
🧠 Support deep regulation, integration, and repair — not just symptom management

For clients with developmental trauma, “talking about it” often isn’t enough.

Their system doesn’t need more explanation. It needs new experiences of safety, attunement, and compassion.

Brainspotting gives us a way to listen to the body’s wisdom — and follow it.

When we pair Brainspotting with a strong developmental trauma lens, we’re not just helping clients cope.

We’re helping their nervous systems reorganize. 🌱

Join us in Portland, Maine for Brainspotting Phase 1 and add this really effective, brain-science based tool to your toolbox!

01/27/2026

Today’s live explored the difference between reacting and responding. Often, what looks like a reaction is actually acute stress—our nervous system organizing as if a past experience is happening right now. David Grand calls this a “24-hour flashback.” Many of these responses are shaped by early experiences that influenced core beliefs about safety, control, and connection, showing up automatically in the present. Taking time in nature or stepping away from constant social media feeds can help the nervous system settle and give perspective on what is truly happening in the moment.

Responding isn’t about control—it’s about creating predictability within ourselves so we can stay present. As Steve noted, we also carry a collective stress response; slowing down and orienting allows space for a thoughtful response instead of an automatic reaction. Small moments of awareness, whether in nature or simply unplugging, can shift how we move through the world.

Interested in learning more? Check out the Developmental Trauma Training Institute: https://www.dtti.co

01/27/2026

A beautiful but icy trip to North Carolina this weekend. A big congratulations to the 32 therapist we trained or retrained in Brainspotting Phase 1. With a weather emergency declared we had to pivot to a hybrid zoom for 1/2 of the training to keep everyone safe. At DTTI we do truly believe this attunement based model is best trained in person. Thanks to Tabitha Westbrook and her team for pulling the group together and keeping us all well feed when the stores/restaurants were all closed. The biggest thanks to the facilitators that sacrificed their weekend with their families to support the learning journey, Jennifer Cobb, Emily Smith, Navre Barbee-Bogos and Donna Fone.

01/24/2026

For those of you who’ve already been digging roots and feel ready to go deeper 🌱 This advanced integrative lab is for practitioners trained in Digging Roots 1.0 who want time and space to refine, practice, and integrate the work—not just learn more concepts.

A central focus of this lab is “trenching the tap root”—one of the Digging Roots topics that often asks a deeply integrative practice. This is nuanced work, especially through a developmental trauma lens, and it benefits from being witnessed, practiced, and explored together.

You’ll have the opportunity to:
• Practice skills with support
• Track your own process as a practitioner
• Witness Steve work with others and hear his thinking in real time
• Explore how Brainspotting unfolds when we’re working with early, layered experiences

This lab is less about doing it “right” and more about staying with the process, noticing what emerges, and allowing your skills to deepen in ordinary, human moments of practice.

If Digging Roots 1.0 planted something that’s still growing—and you’re curious what happens when you stay with it—this space is for you: https://www.eventzilla.net/e/digging-roots-intergrative-lab-1-day-hybrid-event-2138677187

Join Digging Roots Foundatuins & 1.0 in LA right before the integrative Lab - in person in LA March 6-8 2026: https://www.eventzilla.net/e/los-angeles-digging-roots-foundations-amp-in-person-digging-roots-10-2138675951

01/21/2026

Addiction isn’t just about substances.
It isn’t just about behaviors.
And it isn’t about “lack of willpower.”

So often, addiction is rooted in aloneness.

Not just being physically alone - but feeling unmet, unseen, unheld, and unjoined in the places that matter most.

When nervous systems grow up without enough safe connection, the body learns to self-soothe in the only ways it can find.

Substances, screens, food, work, chaos, perfectionism - these aren’t the problem. They’re attempts at survival.

From a developmental trauma lens, addiction is less about “what’s wrong with you” and more about:
👉 What happened that made your system learn it had to do life alone?

Healing doesn’t start with taking something away.

It starts with adding something new:
❤️ Safety.
❤️ Connection.
❤️ Being met in the presence of another regulated nervous system.

Because the opposite of addiction isn’t just sobriety.

It’s belonging.

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Join us for our upcoming ONLINE Cut from the Herd online Course with live cohorts

You'll work through the course at your own pace from the comfort of your home - then join us in community as we have live touchpoints to integrate, process, and be in community.

01/20/2026

Most people don’t turn to substances because they want to lose something—they turn to them because they’re getting something: relief, steadiness, belonging, or a way to feel less alone.

In a recent DTTI Facebook Live on addiction and trauma, Steve spoke about recovery through the lens of a web of support. When we focus only on consequences, we miss a critical opportunity to shift what substances are providing toward relationship. From a trauma perspective, healing happens when people are supported back into connection—with others, with community, and with themselves. Recovery isn’t just about stopping a behavior; it’s about no longer being cut from the herd. Relationships matter.

Interested in learning more : Cut from the Herd, Understanding Childhood Trauma and Its Ties to Addiction
Professional Cohorts Start Feb 11: https://courses.dtti.co/cut-from-the-herd-guided-practitioner-cohort-1