EMDR Advanced Training

EMDR Approaches to Intergenerational and Ancestral Trauma

This Didn't Start With Me

Trainer: Erica Bonham, LPC
On-Demand: Available with lifetime access for asynchronous learning. This course was recorded on January 9th, 2026.

Some wounds run deeper than a lifetime. Intergenerational and ancestral trauma leave powerful imprints. Sometimes quiet, sometimes overwhelming. They always ripple across families, communities, and identities. If you’re ready to help your clients break cycles of inherited pain and unlock resilience in themselves and their lineage, this advanced EMDR training is designed for you.

Led by acclaimed trauma therapist and educator Erica Bonham, this course will equip you to recognize, process, and transform generational traumas, even when stories are fragmented, memories are lost, or wounds are collective.

Leave with protocols, scripts, and a holistic, polyvagal-informed approach for honoring pain, reclaiming gifts, and building new neural pathways to healing, at every layer of the family tree. 

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Erica Bonham

Why TTI

Built for Learning. Designed for Belonging.

Shame-Free Space for Learning™

Because the best learning happens when you feel safe. Ask freely, show up fully, and learn in a relational, non-judgmental environment built for practitioners like you.

Expert Clinical Training

Expect real case examples, clear guidance, and a teaching style that makes even complex topics feel approachable so you can confidently use what you learn in session right away.

Where Learning Meets Community

Join a community of clinicians learning side by side, sharing real case insights and peer support so you can grow your skills with confidence alongside your peers in meaningful connection.

Practical Skills

Practical Interventions You'll Learn

  • Learn to map family trauma and uncover hidden patterns of ancestral lines that shape clients' lives.
  • Harness ancestral ally visualizations with bilateral tapping to build resilience and unlock wisdom from supportive lineage.
  • Use a modified EMDR float back to trace intergenerational “embers” of trauma through body sensations, images, and metaphors.
  • Open new healing pathways through somatic and energetic reprocessing when clients lack consolidated trauma memories.
  • Apply a polyvagal-informed generational assessment to reveal how trauma reshapes baseline nervous system states across family lines
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What You Get

What's Waiting for You Inside This Training

What changes when you bring an intergenerational lens into your EMDR work:
Ego States Integration (EMDR)

Map family trauma across generations

Trace patterns through ancestral lines and surface the hidden imprints shaping your client's symptoms, relationships, and sense of self.

Work with fragmented or unspoken stories

Use specialized reprocessing and resourcing techniques when memories are lost, non-verbal, or held only in the body.

Apply the 8 phases to lineage trauma

Adapt the full EMDR protocol to generational and family line trauma cases, with protocols built for this specific work.

Use ancestral ally visualizations with BLS

Build resilience and access supportive lineage through bilateral tapping paired with ancestral resourcing.

Trace intergenerational embers through the body

Apply a modified float back to follow trauma through sensation, image, and metaphor, even when narrative isn't available.

Read the nervous system across family lines

Use polyvagal-informed generational assessment to reveal how trauma has reshaped baseline autonomic states in your client's lineage.

Navigate the ethical and cultural terrain

Work with decolonizing frameworks and non-appropriative ritual, so cultural reclamation deepens the work without overstepping it.

Carry forward gifts, not just heal wounds

Support clients in claiming ancestral strengths and resilience, so what gets passed forward shifts.

Is This For You?

Who Is This Training For

This course is designed for EMDR-trained clinicians who want to:

  • Confidently address generational, ancestral, and collective trauma in clients.

     

  • Go beyond standard protocols to integrate family, cultural, and systemic context into EMDR work.

     

  • Support clients with inherited anxiety, complex trauma, or multi-generational grief, even when stories are fragmented or unspeakable.

     

  • Use ritual, somatic, and polyvagal-informed tools to deepen resourcing and healing across generations.

     

  • Bring more humility, creativity, and courage to conversations about ancestry and nervous system repair.


Whether you practice in private therapy, agencies, schools, or community settings, if you’re committed to transforming cycles of suffering for individuals, families, or entire communities, this course will equip you with the advanced tools and confidence you need.

Enroll And Empower Your Practice

Meet Your Trainer

About Your Trainer

Erica Bonham

Erica Bonham

LPC

Erica Bonham is a licensed professional counselor, somatic and attachment EMDR clinician, consultant, trainer, bestselling author, speaker, ketamine-assisted psychotherapist, and nervous system regulation coach. She’s passionate about redefining leadership as a practice of presence, resilience, equity, and joy. Erica supports individuals through the messy, beautiful work of healing and remembering their true nature: that we are always and already enough and still have work to do. Her work bridges personal healing with collective transformation. 

Investment

Ready to Get Started?

Course Price

$210
  • Lifetime access to the course - Refresh your skills anytime at your own pace. Get on-demand access after the live date.
  • Immediate clinical application - Walk away with tools you can use in your next session.
  • Flexible payment plans - Options to fit your budget.
  • CEs - Earn EMDRIA, ASWB, and NBCC CEs.

Free Resource

Not Ready Yet? Take This With You.

Ancestral Genogram Starter for Therapists TTI Free Download Graphic

Additional Information

Course Details

Agenda

  • Welcome, objectives, agreements, resourcing, grounding practice, and presenter introduction

     

  • Part 1: Opening the Circle & Framing Generational Trauma

     

  • Approaches to addressing generational trauma

     

  • Part 3 continued: Embodied Practices & Integration

     

  • Part 4: EMDR Phases 4–7 with Generational Trauma and Demonstration

     

  • Part 5: Decolonizing, Ritual, and Psychedelic Approaches

     

  • Part 6: Ancestral Resilience, Collective Healing & Integration

     

  • Wrap-up, key takeaways, journaling prompt, and Q&A

Learning Objectives

  • Identify at least three clinical indicators of generational trauma in client case presentations.

  • Apply the eight phases of EMDR therapy to at least one case conceptualization involving generational trauma.

  • Demonstrate the use of at least two specific resourcing strategies for clients presenting with generational trauma.

  • Formulate EMDR targets that incorporate transgenerational themes in a culturally responsive manner.

  • Implement at least two interventions to address blocked or dysregulated processing related to generational trauma.

  • Analyze the connection between generational trauma and its impact on larger social issues.

Prerequisites
  • EMDR Basic Training
Continuing Education

Trauma Therapist Institute is an approved continuing education provider. ACE, NBCC, and EMDRIA CEs are available for this course. APA CEs are not available for this course.

Participants must complete the full training to receive credit.

ACE Approved Provider

Trauma Therapist Institute, #1869, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 1/16/25 - 1/16/28. Social workers completing this course receive clinical continuing education credits.

NBCC Approved Provider

Trauma Therapist Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7033. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Trauma Therapist Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

EMDRIA Approved Provider

Trauma Therapist Institute is an EMDRIA Approved Training Provider. TTI courses are individually approved. CE Certificate will contain course approval number.

Course Completion
To receive a CE certificate, participants must complete the entire course, complete the post-test with a score of 80% or above, and complete the course evaluation. You may retake the post-test as needed. Once completed, a CE certificate will auto-populate to your online account.
Cancellation Policy
Please reference our cancellation policy here (bottom section of this page).
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Take The Next Step

Ready to Begin?

Help Your Clients Change What Gets Passed Forward

Some wounds didn't start with your client, and they won't end on their own. This advanced training gives you the protocols, the scripts, and the polyvagal-informed framework to work with intergenerational and ancestral trauma at every layer of the family tree.

Register Now