The Complex Trauma Training Hub

It's hard to be 'the somebody who is there' if there's nobody there for you

Join The Complex Trauma Training Hub, and grow and develop as a therapist and become who you need to be in order to work effectively with complexity.

It is my contention that trauma takes root in us not because bad things happened, but because at the moment those things happened, and in the long aftermath, there was nobody there. There was nobody to help us regulate, nobody to help us process, and nobody to help us make sense of it.

The core therefore of working with complex trauma is the therapist becoming 'the somebody who is there'.

A lot of trauma training tells you what to do to a client, and offers techniques, protocols and phases. That has its place, but this work is not really about what we do to somebody. It is about who we are in the room with them, what therapist and client co-create between them, and whether they can build the kind of relationship that really heals.

You don't achieve that by reading about it, or accumulating CPD certificates. Instead, you need to take the knowledge and the learning and let it transform you. You won't work effectively with complexity unless you're willing to invest in becoming the therapist that clients need you to be.

That is what the Hub is for.

Train with me every week, and stop doing this on your own

On Fridays at 2pm I teach live. Each session is brand new training content, which we then reflect on and discuss together as a group. Once a month the Friday session is led by Sally Atkinson, who helps us to integrate what we have been learning and apply it to our actual practice. If you are unable to attend live, session recordings are uploaded within 24 hours.

From 4 September we begin a new series called 'Shame in the Therapy Room'. It's a continuation of the series on Working with Complex Trauma and Attachment and follows on from everything we have explored in 'Becoming a Sensitive Attachment Figure'. There are two people in the room, and there are two people's shame. We will look at both, and at how to heal it and reduce its impact on the work. The series grows organically rather than running to a fixed number of sessions, so joining part-way through doesn't matter.

More than 100 hours of recordings from previous live sessions are already in there. There are also discussion spaces where members share referrals, raise topics they want to think about together, and help each other with the practicalities of running a therapy practice. And you have full access to the library as well, including the new attachment course below.

Working alongside me

Sally Atkinson

Sally is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and clinical supervisor. She runs the Rutland Therapy Centre in Oakham, and she tutors on the Level 7 MSc in Integrative Psychotherapy at Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute.

In other words, Sally is doing this work week in, week out and she is exceptionally good at developing therapists. She brings complementary skills so that between us we offer a blend of left-brain and right-brain emphases, and different perspectives from both chairs in the therapy room.

As well as leading one Friday session each month, Sally runs a separate monthly process and supervision group. It is a space to think about what this work does to you, rather than about what to do about the work.

On a monthly basis, we also run a welcome and onboarding session for new members of Hub Live, and the next one is this Tuesday, 25 August. If you join today, you can be at it. Come along and meet us, meet other new joiners, and find your feet.

Brand new  ·  Only in the Hub

Working with Complex Trauma and Attachment, Part 1

'Becoming a Sensitive Attachment Figure'

A 24-session video course. More than twelve hours of CPD.

Many of us have done attachment training, and on a good day we may be able to name the various attachment styles. But so what? What difference does it make? Knowing your client's attachment style does not change it, and in any case how does your own relational history create something unique in the room with this particular client? What does the training say about that?

So this series starts somewhere else. It starts with Mary Ainsworth's finding, that secure attachment develops in response to something very specific, very observable and, thankfully, very learnable. She called it sensitivity, and she meant noticing the client's signal, interpreting it accurately, and responding appropriately and in a timely manner.

That sounds simple, but it really is not. So across the series we get granular about it. We take the appropriate response apart across five dimensions – contingency, accurate match to need, intensity calibration, developmental fit and respect for autonomy. Then we look at timing, because a good response that arrives four minutes late is not a diluted good response. It is something else entirely.

Along the way we also cover:

• Noticing the signals your client has spent a lifetime making sure nobody sees
• Why being listened to and feeling listened to are two different things
• Your role as a secure attachment figure, mapped onto the 4D Framework: protection, co-regulation, developmental support and reflective scaffolding
• Why insight alone does not shift the deepest grooves, and what does
• Rupture in its full range, from the explosion to the ten seconds your attention drifted, including the structural ruptures built into how we do therapy
• Repair, in six components, and the five things that make it hard to offer
• Needs, neediness and the shame of asking, and why the frame should fit the problem you are trying to solve
• Your own attachment history, and what it is doing in the room whether you like it or not

It is demanding material, and it will very probably take you into your own history, because it's hard to take a client where you haven't been yourself. It is offered with compassion rather than criticism, and from the working assumption that you are already good enough. Ed Tronick found that even the most sensitive mothers are attuned around 30% of the time, so the pass rate is 30%. Getting it wrong is not the deal-breaker. Not repairing it is.

'Becoming a Sensitive Attachment Figure' is the first series of Working with Complex Trauma and Attachment. The second series is 'Shame in the Therapy Room', which begins in Hub Live on Friday 4 September 2026.

If you can't attend live: Hub on Demand

If the live sessions don't work for you, whether that's because of the time zone, the day, your working hours, or because you are not eligible for Hub Live, then Hub On Demand gives you access to eleven online courses to work through at your own pace. It is open to everyone, including survivors.

There is no live element and no community element in Hub On Demand. It is designed for self-paced study, so it is the right choice if what you want is the content of the training rather than the process of the learning together.

While you are a member, you will have access to the following courses:

• NEW: Becoming a Sensitive Attachment Figure
• Dissociation and DID: The Fundamentals
• Working with Dissociative Disorders in Clinical Practice
• Working with Relational Trauma: Dealing with Disorganised Attachment
• Trauma and the Body: Dissociation and Somatisation
• Mental Health and the Body: Treating Trauma
• Child Sexual Abuse: Hope for Healing
• Dealing with Distress: Working with Suicide and Self-Harm
• Working with ShameWorking with Terminal Ambivalence
• Avoiding Secondary Trauma
• More new courses as they are released

Membership also provides access to:

• Four trauma webinars
• Visual resources: posters, infographics and slide decks
• Audio resources, including podcast episodes
• 'Unshame' in full, as text and as an audio recording
• Video clips and excerpts from previous training
• A CPD certificate for each course you complete
• Availability 24/7 on the web and in the app

Bought separately, the ten standalone courses in that list come to £625. Hub On Demand is £30 per month, or £300 for a year, which is two months free. You can cancel at any time, and you can upgrade to Hub Live at any point if you become eligible.

Any questions?

Please get in touch if you have any questions at all about the Hub! We’ll get back to you ASAP. Email: [email protected].