Our online courses were originally designed and created for the professional development of practitioners in the field of mental health. Over the last few years, however, there was an increase in interest from our clients, their caregivers and others to find out more about trauma.
We hope to expand your knowledge of how the complexity of trauma may be an underlying basis of many mental health issues such as eating disorders, addiction, and also distressing sexual behaviours.
Our classes are based on the latest evidence-based resources and also offer an understanding about the neuroscience underlying specific symptoms and behaviours.
Courses are self-guided and consist of short episodes - this allows you to watch them in parts and easily integrate them into your daily schedule. Each video clip comes with accompanying information, and we provide a list of further readings and podcasts.
A little bit about us...
Jace Cannon-Brookes and Dr Sophie Reid established the Birchtree Centre in 2015 to address the pressing need to provide a safe place to welcome, hold and heal adult survivors of childhood trauma. The Birchtree Centre has also run a number of workshops and trainings on complex trauma for clinicians.
Dr Sophie Reid
Sophie holds a Masters of Clinical Psychology and a PhD in Child and Adolescent Psychology. Understanding families, relationships and the day to day challenges of both growing up and raising children underpin her clinical work. A passion for child advocacy has lead Sophie to focus her clinical work on helping people heal from the trauma of childhood difficulties and trauma, and to assist people to become a more peaceful integrated self and return to the person they were born to be. Sophie specialises in helping both individuals and families to recover from trauma, anxiety and depression, eating disorders, grief and loss, addictions, relationship issues, workplace and childhood bullying, and childhood illnesses.
Jace Cannon-Brookes
Jace began her career as a Registered Nurse, working within Acute and General Psychiatry, Drug and Alcohol, Palliative Care and Eating Disorders. It was during these years that she retrained as a Clinical Psychologist. For fourteen years Jace then worked within the field of addiction in a variety of roles. It was through these professional experiences that Jace developed an interest and passion for working with survivors of complex trauma. She recognised and holds as deeply important the need to shift from a frame that asks ‘what is wrong with someone’ to one that questions ‘what happened to this person’. Jace believes in the importance of creating a safe space that holds and contains both clinicians and survivors, enabling them to come together to focus on healing and recovery.