Developmental Trauma, CPtsd & the Brain Series

A Trauma-Trained Framework for Foundational Knowledge and Skills for Developmental Trauma CPtsd Recovery

Designed for professionals seeking advanced CPtsd education.

Certification is optional. CEU hours available for eligible professionals.

DEVELOPMENTAL trauma  impacts
THE BRAIN

Developmental trauma isn’t just psychological - it changes how the brain builds memory, emotion and identity.

  • 62 % of Australian adults report at least one adverse childhood experience; 23 % report four or more

  • The more adversity a person experiences, the greater the risk - those with 4+ ACEs are 4-12 times more likely to develop depression, addiction, autoimmune illness or early death.

  • These early experiences alter the brain’s structure and chemistry, wiring it for protection instead of connection.

DEVELOPMENTAL TRAUMA IS a Hidden Epidemic

What happens in childhood shapes adult capacity for connection, learning, and trust.

  • Up to 1 in 3 adults meet criteria for developmental or complex trauma.

  • One in three Americans experienced abuse or neglect before age 18.

  • The economic cost of child maltreatment exceeds US $800 billion annually in lost productivity and healthcare.
    Symptoms often hide beneath labels like anxiety, burnout, or personality disorder — leaving trauma untreated and misunderstood.

Healing the professionals Through NeuroSynqt™

Working with trauma carries emotional load and cognitive fatigue.

  • Around half of helping professionals report moderate-to-severe burnout every year.

NeuroSynqt™ restores coherence between thinking, feeling, and relating - for both client and practition

  • The NeuroSynqt™ process heals the healer and the client simultaneously, using experiential, brain-based integration.

  • By working inside the brain’s adaptive logic, it transforms protective wiring into patterns of safety and authentic connection.

💡 Take the Developmental Trauma & Brain Impact Quiz

Explore how early experiences may have shaped your brain’s patterns for safety, connection, and learning.
This brief, anonymous reflection includes two parts - a developmental trauma self-check and a brain impact overview - designed to help you reflect if CPtsd has impacted memory, focus and identity formation. It also includes the tests your professional can do to help you in these areas too. No email required.
✅ Anonymous | 🕒 3 minutes | 🧩 Educational only

Core Unit 1  – MPCTC Accredited Professional Certification Pathway
Master Practitioner of Complex Trauma Coaching (accredited globally) 
Certification is optional. CEU hours available for eligible professionals.

  • Accredited Trainer – Linda Meredith
  • Course Level: Advanced (Professional Training)
  • Payment Plan available
Write your awesome label here.
  •  Time: 14 hrs
 Portfolio: 1
 Exams: 1
 CEU: 6

👉 Core Unit 1 of the Master Practitioner in CPtsd Recovery (MPCTC Accredited).
 CEU hours available for eligible professionals.

International Complex Trauma Association
Healing from Complex Ptsd

Write your awesome label here.

Write your awesome label here.

Write your awesome label here.

Write your awesome label here.

Core 1 overview

Every practitioner encounters clients who appear insightful yet remain stuck in cycles of self-sabotage, emotional flooding, or disconnection. What looks like resistance is often the brain’s survival logic still running the show. This course helps you see beneath those patterns to the real story the brain is telling.

Trauma and the Brain lays the foundation for every NeuroSynqt™ course. You’ll learn how developmental trauma reshapes perception, memory, and behaviour by interrupting the brain’s natural integration processes. When survival patterns form early, the adult client’s decisions, emotions and relationships are filtered through protection rather than possibility. Understanding this is the first step toward effective recovery.

Through clear explanations, reflective tools, and experiential activities, you’ll see how key brain regions - such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex - adapt to chronic threat, shaping identity and self-trust. You’ll explore why traditional approaches focused only on emotions or behaviour often fail, and how a brain-centred, experiential approach reconnects the person to their own sense of safety, curiosity and agency.

By the end of this unit you’ll recognise survival patterns as adaptive design, not dysfunction. You’ll be able to translate complex neuroscience into simple, compassionate language that clients can relate to, building the bridge between understanding and integration. This isn’t just theory - it’s the entry point into helping clients rebuild a working relationship with their own brain.

The Missing Link in 
CPtsd Recovery

Most trauma education stops at awareness. Clients understand their triggers but still live inside them. The missing link is not more emotional language or behaviour management - it’s understanding how the brain itself keeps replaying protection long after the danger has passed.

Complex trauma is not a failure of willpower or emotional maturity. It’s the brain doing exactly what it was wired to do under chronic threat - prioritise survival over reflection, connection or growth. When practitioners learn to recognise how survival states shape thought, memory, and decision making, they stop fighting the symptoms and start working with the brain’s logic instead of against it.

This unit shows why trauma recovery must start at the level of integration, not regulation. You’ll explore how the brain’s communication networks - especially those linking emotion, reasoning, and identity - become disconnected under sustained stress and how to safely guide clients back into coherence without triggering overwhelm.

Through the NeuroSynqt™ lens, you’ll see why integration creates regulation naturally. This approach reframes trauma recovery as reconnection - between hemispheres, between memory and meaning and between the client’s present self and their history. When connection returns, regulation follows.

Write your awesome label here.
Flexible Learning Support

🎧 Prefer to Listen While You Learn?

Complex trauma can make on screen reading feel heavy or disconnecting. Listening allows the brain to process the material more gently and helps you stay present as you learn.

You can now have your slides read aloud on any device using built in accessibility tools.

Full instructions for Mac, iPhone or iPad, Android, and Windows are included right inside this course.

💜 This feature is designed to support your learning style, not replace it.
🎙️ Linda’s teaching, coaching, and voice remain throughout every course. You will still hear Linda guiding you through the concepts, unpacking examples, and coaching from the slides as part of your learning experience.

👉 Use the Have Your Slides Read To You tab inside the course for device specific instructions and start listening your way through the course.

Write your awesome label here.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with…

By completing Core Unit 1, you’ll gain a clear, neuroscience-grounded understanding of how trauma reshapes the developing brain - and the tools to translate that knowledge into compassionate, practical support for clients.
You’ll be able to:

  • Recognise how developmental trauma interrupts integration across key brain regions responsible for emotion, reasoning, and self-identity.

  • Identify trauma-based perception loops that distort memory, decision making and connection, even when clients seem “high functioning.”

  • Explain the survival logic behind trauma-driven behaviour in simple, relatable language that dissolves shame and builds safety.

  • Map adaptive brain responses such as freeze, fawn, or shut-down to the client’s lived experience without pathologising.

  • Use experiential, brain-based interventions that restore coherence between thinking, feeling, and meaning.

  • Spot the seven key areas of impact that shape adult coping, boundaries, and relationships.

  • Understand why trauma memory is stored in fragments and how to support gradual narrative reconstruction.

  • Help clients reconnect with curiosity and reflection - the brain’s natural pathway out of survival states.

  • Develop confidence in brain-based counselling through a practical, trauma trained framework designed for real-world complexity.

  • Work safely with the brain’s pace of healing - guiding reconnection before regulation, so progress lasts.


The depth of the content and the support this course offers is phenomenal! If you’re on the fence, I’d highly recommend taking the leap

Candace Alley,
CEO candacealley.com

Over the past year and a half, Linda has helped me experience growth that I thought was impossible. In a loving and compassionate manner, she has taught me tools and strategies to manage my trauma symptoms. Most importantly, she made me feel heard, seen, and understood.

Lisa Armele,
Ed.S., MA., CAS.

Linda Meredith is a powerhouse when it comes to bringing research and information together to help us understand complex trauma. More importantly, she breaks things down in a way that is easily accessible. The homework isn’t about memorising terms - it’s about embodying the knowledge while healing ourselves and supporting our clients. practically and effectively. As a professional who has had burnout 3 times, Linda's work has helped me not only return to work but to do so in increasing good health whilst helping clients globally achieve the recover results they also desire.

Sherry Yuan Hunter,
CEO Sandwich Parenting

What Makes the 6 Courses Impactful?

The six courses that make up this elective are not stand-alone lessons - they are a progressive system of integration. Each module builds upon the last to help practitioners and individuals move from understanding trauma to working confidently within the brain’s adaptive design.

Core Unit 1 lays the groundwork by revealing how developmental trauma shapes identity, emotion, and meaning-making through the brain’s own survival pathways. When practitioners understand this, every later unit - from emotional development to attachment repair and spirituality - makes sense through a cohesive framework.

Traditional trauma education often separates emotion, cognition and behaviour. NeuroSynqt™ brings them back together.

By learning how trauma changes neural communication between regions such as the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, you’ll see why so many clients relapse into old patterns despite insight or motivation. Insight alone doesn’t heal disconnection - integration does.

Each of the six courses offers a piece of the map back to wholeness, addressing trauma where it actually lives - inside survival-coded neural pathways. Together, they give you the language, the neuroscience, and the experiential tools to create change that lasts, both for you and your clients.

🧰 Made for Those Who Work in the Messy Middle of Healing

  • Counsellors, psychologists, and social workers seeking advanced training in CPtsd and narcissistic abuse recovery.
  • Allied health and pastoral care professionals supporting trauma-bonded or abuse-impacted adults.
  • Educators and community leaders wanting a neuroscience-based, trauma-trained framework for complex trauma recovery.
  • Students and emerging practitioners building professional credibility with CPtsd-specific, brain-based practice.
  • Practitioners working toward certification and CEUs in CPtsd Recovery.
  • Individuals with lived experience pursuing structured, professional-level CPtsd education and personal integration.

🌟 The Shift You’ll See in Clients (and Yourself)

Imagine working with a client who says, “I understand why I react this way, but I still can’t stop it.”

That gap between insight and change isn’t resistance - it’s disconnection. Their brain is still coded for protection, not reflection.

Through this course, you’ll begin to see clients differently - not as stuck or avoidant, but as operating within a survival architecture that once kept them alive. You’ll develop the ability to translate what looks like emotional chaos or shutdown into clear, brain-based understanding.

Professionals report that once they learn this framework, their sessions shift from firefighting symptoms to building connection. Clients begin to:

  • Recognise why they can’t just “think” their way out of trauma.

  • Feel genuine relief when their responses finally make sense.

  • Experience fewer shame spirals because they understand their brain’s logic for protection.

  • Reconnect with curiosity, creativity, and hope as integration begins.

For practitioners, the change is just as powerful.
You’ll find yourself:

  • Approaching complexity with calm confidence instead of burnout.

  • Knowing exactly where to start when a client’s system feels “all over the place.”

  • Using experiential, brain-based tools that create visible shifts in real time.

The NeuroSynqt™ approach restores compassion - for both practitioner and client - by showing that healing isn’t about fixing broken people. It’s about helping the brain remember connection, coherence, and safety from the inside out.

Course 1

Understanding the Trauma Impacted Brain

Course 2

How CPtsd Impacts Daily Functioning

Course 3

Key Areas the Brain Learns to Adapt

Course  4

Why the Brain Leans Toward Threat - and How We Work With It

Course 5

Trauma, Identity & Meaning (TIM)

Course 6

Recognising Triggers Without Becoming Them

Course 1 - Understanding the Trauma Impacted Brain

How prolonged trauma reorganises brain function, emotional processing and sense of self
Course includes 47 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:

    1. Define trauma types and differentiate acute, chronic and complex trauma.

    2. Recognise developmental trauma as prolonged exposure that reshapes the growing brain.

    3. Explain the timeline of trauma research from Herman to van der Kolk and beyond.

    4. Understand how trauma alters self-perception and creates fragmented identity.

    5. Identify early relational trauma as the foundation for adult emotional dysregulation.

    6. Describe how the brain encodes trauma through implicit, non-verbal memory networks.

    7. Recognise the duality of self between present-day awareness and trauma-based responses.

    8. Support clients in understanding why talk therapy alone fails for CPtsd recovery.

    9. Explain the role of safety, curiosity and experiential work in rebuilding brain integration.

    10. Lay the foundation for brain-based recovery, where reconnection precedes regulation.

Course 2 - How CPtsd Impacts Daily Functioning

How trauma driven brain patterns shape behaviour, capacity, relationships and decision making
Course includes 50 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:

    1. Recognise how prolonged trauma rewires the brain and alters thinking, emotion, and behaviour.

    2. Explain the triune brain model and its relevance to developmental trauma.

    3. Identify survival dominance patterns and their impact on memory and attention.

    4. Understand the amygdala hijack and why clients experience emotional flooding.

    5. Describe prefrontal cortex disengagement and its effect on logic, planning, and self-control.

    6. Recognise the physical and cognitive consequences of chronic stress and oxygen deprivation.

    7. Apply a biopsychosocial-spiritual model to address the full scope of trauma impact.

    8. Introduce proprioception and breath awareness to support reconnection with the present.

    9. Support clients to differentiate trauma self and adult self for safe internal awareness.

    10. Build foundations for authentic recovery, integrating neuroscience, awareness, and practical daily habits.

Course 3 - Key Areas the Brain Learns to Adapt


Mapping the primary domains shaped by survival based brain adaptations
Course includes 18 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:

    1. Describe the seven core areas of CPtsd impact identified by Dr Judith Herman and how they shape lifelong functioning.

    2. Recognise how chronic trauma alters brain development, creating fragmented self-awareness and disrupted identity.

    3. Identify emotional regulation challenges linked to prolonged survival dominance and blocked integration.

    4. Explain cognitive effects such as concentration issues, intrusive memory, and distorted self-perception.

    5. Understand relational impacts including attachment disruption, fear of intimacy, and cycles of isolation.

    6. Recognise the loss of meaning and purpose as a survival outcome, not a personality flaw or moral failing.

    7. Support clients in rebuilding trust and agency through safe, consistent, experiential practice.

    8. Integrate reflection tools that help clients observe internal patterns without self-judgement.

    9. Apply a brain-centred recovery map to track progress across emotional, cognitive, and relational domains.

    10. Encourage self-awareness as the first layer of integration, guiding clients from observation to choice.

Course 4 - Why the Brain Leans Toward Threat - and How We Work With It

The neurobiology of threat bias in trauma impacted brains
Course includes 20 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:
    1. Define the brain’s negativity bias and its purpose in detecting threat and preserving safety.

    2. Explain how trauma strengthens negativity pathways, reinforcing risk and rejection.

    3. Recognise the amygdala’s role in storing unprocessed threat memories and driving automatic emotional reactions.

    4. Understand how positive memories fade faster, leaving survivors anchored in cycles of fear and self-doubt.

    5. Identify automatic negative thoughts as brain-based habits rather than conscious belief systems.

    6. Support clients to notice procedural memory patterns that replay survival responses without awareness.

    7. Teach strategies to reframe negative bias, using connection and rewiring.

    8. Integrate reflective practices that engage the hippocampus to strengthen positive memory.

    9. Help clients translate awareness into choice, recognising that awareness interrupts automatic reactivity.

    10. Guide clients in practical brain-based tools that balance realism with hope and build resilience over time.

  • Define the brain’s negativity bias and its evolutionary purpose in detecting threat and preserving safety.

  • Explain how trauma strengthens negativity pathways, reinforcing hyper-focus on risk and rejection.

  • Recognise the amygdala’s role in storing unprocessed threat memories and driving automatic emotional reactions.

  • Understand how positive memories fade faster, leaving survivors anchored in cycles of fear and self-doubt.

  • Identify automatic negative thoughts as brain-based habits rather than conscious belief systems.

  • Support clients to notice procedural memory patterns that replay survival responses without awareness.

  • Teach strategies to reframe negative bias, using attention redirection and micro-pattern rewiring.

  • Integrate reflective practices that engage the hippocampus to strengthen positive memory recall.

  • Help clients translate awareness into choice, recognising that awareness interrupts automatic reactivity.


Course 5 - Trauma, Identity & Meaning (TIM)

How trauma impacts identity formation, self concept and meaning
Course includes 27 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:

    1. Recognise how prolonged trauma rewires the brain and alters thinking, emotion, and behaviour.

    2. Explain the triune brain model and its relevance to developmental trauma.

    3. Identify survival dominance patterns and their impact on memory and attention.

    4. Understand the amygdala hijack and why clients experience emotional flooding.

    5. Describe prefrontal cortex disengagement and its effect on logic, planning, and self-control.

    6. Recognise the physical and cognitive consequences of chronic stress and oxygen deprivation.

    7. Apply a biopsychosocial-spiritual model to address the full scope of trauma impact.

    8. Introduce proprioception and breath awareness to support reconnection with the present.

    9. Support clients to differentiate when old survival patterns are shaping present reactions,

    10. Build foundations for authentic recovery, integrating neuroscience, awareness, and practical daily habits.

Course 6 - Recognising Triggers Without Becoming Them

Differentiating triggered states from present day functioning in recovery work

Course includes 16 slides
Completing this course will help you work competently in:


    1. Recognise the early warning signs of overwhelm and track the brain’s progression toward emotional flooding.

    2. Understand triggers as implicit memory activations, not overreactions or personality flaws.

    3. Teach clients to map thoughts, emotions and actions that occur in the hour leading up to emotional overload.

    4. Use reflective questioning techniques to help clients identify brain-based patterns driving recurring distress.

    5. Guide clients in naming layered emotions, building language for subtle shifts before full escalation.

    6. Integrate body awareness exercises that reconnect physical sensations with emotional understanding.

    7. Introduce journalling for brain–body integration, helping clients translate unconscious patterns into conscious choice.

    8. Use somatic and movement-based strategies to retrain the brain’s association between safety and stillness.

    9. Help clients develop emotional sequencing awareness, identifying “lesser” emotions that precede collapse or rage.

    10. Support gradual change through micro-practice, guiding clients to make safety-based adaptations one small step at a time.


Developmental Trauma, CPtsd & the Brain Series Outline

Join today

💻 Learning That Fits Real Life ➡️

Accessible. Practical. Designed for the trauma-trained mind.

Because true recovery requires integration, not just information.

Your course access includes:

  • 24/7 online learning that fits your daily rhythm

  • Immediate access to all six modules

  • Printable resources, client-ready visuals, and worksheets

  • Experiential exercises that turn theory into transformation

Trauma-trained learning means the education process mirrors the healing process — gradual, safe, and built for integration.

🌱 Free Weekly Supervision & Study Space

Free weekly supervision is included with your course enrolment.
You’re welcome to come along each week - to study, ask questions, or simply sit in community.

Supervision provides a safe, supportive environment to:

  • Deepen your NeuroSynqt™ and CPtsd understanding

  • Develop reflective practice and professional confidence

  • Receive real-time discussion and mentorship

  • Reconnect with the “why” behind your work

📍 Access your Supervision Module inside your student account - it explains the schedule, what’s included, and how supervision supports your professional growth and personal integration.

💬 “No one heals in isolation - we heal through safe, structured connection.”

CPtsd Education

Six in-depth modules (Neuroscience, Recovery, Identity, Family Roles)

Extra CPtsd Information

8 Units of extra Complex Trauma information

Homework Canva Templates

Homework books, canva templates for clients ~ apply your own brand

Client Materials

9 Units of client materials for coaches. Professional infographics, diagrams, and client handouts.

Business Development

11 Business Units to help develop your coaching business

Extra Coaching Tools

7 Units of coaching tools. Lifetime access to all course updates and materials
Free Canva Course - Canva is used to complete Portfolio material (We also use pdf's)

🧠 The NeuroSynqt™ Difference

Connecting the mind, soul, and body for seamless integration

Adults with Complex PTSD have lived in trauma states for so long that dissociation, fragmentation, and survival scripts feel normal. Many do not recognise they are dissociating until explicitly taught how to begin reconnection and how to recognise that the brain is the driver.

Most models (polyvagal, IFS, bottom-up somatics) assume regulation is the starting point. In reality:

  • Regulation is not an entry point.

  • Regulation is a byproduct of integration.


Most recovery models focus on either emotion or behaviour.
NeuroSynqt™ is a brain-based, experiential recovery modality that uses side door entry points. Regulation is not forced; it emerges naturally as a consequence of integration. NeuroSynqt™ recognises that trauma lives deeper - in the brain’s survival patterns and identity systems that form long before language.

Developed by Linda Meredith, a peer reviewed, certified complex trauma educator, counsellor and coach, this neuroscience-based approach helps clients reconnect before regulation.

Dr Dan Siegel

"Every form of self regulation we've been able to look at -

  • regulating attention
  • regulating emotional affect
  • regulating mood
  • regulating thought
  • regulating physiology
  • regulating relationships
  • regulating behaviour
all those terms come under the broad term "Self Regulation"

Every aspect of regulation we could explore depends on integration of the brain"

Why Being Trauma-Trained Changes Everything

Beyond trauma-informed into truly brain-based care

Trauma-informed language is compassionate.
Trauma-trained practice is transformative.

Being trauma-trained means understanding:

  • How narcissistic patterns entangle with CPtsd survival mechanisms

  • Why clients appear “functional” but remain in trauma loops

  • How to build relational safety that rewires identity, not just regulates emotion

When we work with trauma through the brain - not just behaviour - change lasts.


📊 Grounded in Science, Guided by Humanity

Bringing research and lived experience together

Recent studies show:

  • 🧩 Up to 80% of adults raised by narcissistic or emotionally unavailable parents show symptoms consistent with complex trauma

  • 🩺 1 in 3 mental health professionals report moderate to severe burnout (APA, 2024)

  • 🧠 Neuroscience confirms that trauma impacts perception, not just emotion - changing how clients interpret safety, power, and connection

This course bridges clinical research with experiential recovery, giving professionals language that resonates with both the data and the heart.


Trauma Informed vs Trauma Trained

Meet your instructor

Linda Meredith


Passionate, Innovative, and Dedicated to
Complex Trauma Recovery


An Advanced, Neuroscience-Based Approach for Mental Health Professionals

Linda Meredith is an accredited trainer, counsellor, and creator of the NeuroSynqt™ modality for CPtsd recovery. Known as a Professional Brain Untangler, Linda combines advanced neuroscience, lived experience, and years of client practice to develop trauma-trained education that’s both practical and deeply human.

Her work has been peer-reviewed and accredited by trauma specialists, ensuring every course is grounded in professional standards as well as real-world application.

👉 Want to know more about Linda’s background, qualifications, and journey? Read Linda’s full story here ➜
Write your awesome label here.
Write your awesome label here.

Real reviews. Real professionals. Real impact.

Write your awesome label here.

01 

"Linda Meredith is a powerhouse at making complex trauma understandable and accessible. Her program is flexible, practical, and deeply supportive — allowing me to go at my own pace and truly engage with the material. What stands out is how the homework helps me embody the knowledge, not just memorise it. It’s sparked real ah-ha moments about how to support my clients more effectively. Linda’s generosity shines through everything she creates — from beautiful workbooks to business tools that make it easier to succeed as a coach. It honestly feels like she’s in my corner 24/7. This program is exactly what I needed. Thank you, Linda — you’re a gift. "
Write your awesome label here.

02

"I don’t know if anyone else can resonate, but I’m so hungry for more critical information to better serve my coaching clients that I simply cannot get enough of the material Linda creates! The Complex Ptsd survivors around the world are so fortunate to have someone as amazing as Linda Meredith creating courses for helping professionals! The depth of the content and the support this course offers is PHENOMENAL! If you haven’t started taking the course and you are on the fence, I would HIGHLY recommend you take the leap and sign up

Thanks Linda for what you do!"
Write your awesome label here.

03

“Linda has a warm, caring attitude with a sense of humour to boot about the effects of CPtsd on someone. Her insight, videos, articles, and support have helped me over humps and I have seen the effect it has had on others too. Linda speaks not only through her education, but also from her own experience. She understands what brings about CPtsd and how to help you address that trauma in a caring, kind, compassionate, and sometimes firm fashion. I highly recommend her if you are looking to heal from trauma you’ve experienced or even if you’re looking to understand more about the impact of CPtsd. Be kind, be understanding, and do yourself a favour and learn from Linda’s materials!.”

📚 Explore Other Courses

🏆 Certification Pathway
The NeuroSynqt™ by Linda program offers some of the most practical and effective online education available in the complex trauma field. Rooted in neuroscience and trauma-trained practice, the program is designed specifically for professionals working with CPtsd and developmental trauma.

You can choose flexible pathways:

  • Individual Courses - like Core Unit 7, focusing deeply on identity repair
  • Full Certification - becoming a Master Practitioner of Complex Trauma Counselling, accredited globally and eligible for CEUs

This certification has been peer-reviewed and accredited by professionals in the trauma field, ensuring credibility and recognition worldwide.

Developed by Linda Meredith through years of study and application with both clients and her own recovery, the NeuroSynqt™ framework is a unique, brain-based approach that delivers results in real-world practice.

Created with