Trauma Training

Anti-Oppression and Liberation-Based Approaches for Clinicians

Trainer:  Lisa Hayes, MSW, LISW-S
On-Demand: Available with lifetime access for asynchronous learning. This course was recorded on February 26th, 2026. 

Oppression, colonization, and systemic violence don’t stay outside the therapy room. They live in bodies, relationships, and diagnoses. For trauma therapists committed to anti-oppression and liberation in trauma therapy, it’s not enough to “stay neutral” or rely on talk therapy models that ignore history, identity, and power.

In this live trauma training with clinician and educator Lisa Hayes, you’ll explore shared language, core principles of Anti‑Oppressive Psychotherapy, and an honest examination of our field. You’ll engage in intersectional analysis of your own therapeutic culture, map the impacts of oppression on clients and communities, and identify barriers that keep liberation work from taking root.

You’ll also discover what Liberation‑Based Healing looks like in real practice and walk away with practical, trauma‑informed strategies you can immediately begin weaving into assessment, treatment, and discharge.

In this anti-oppression and liberation in trauma therapy training, you’ll learn how to:

• Integrate anti-oppressive principles into every phase of therapy, intake, treatment planning, and discharge, so systemic harm is no longer treated as "background" to your client's trauma.
• Facilitate interventions that emphasize community, collective care, and cultural reconnection, not just individual coping.
• Use ethical self-disclosure to flatten hierarchy and foster authentic therapeutic relationships.
• Apply the Transgenerational Trauma & Resilience Genogram (TTRG) to uncover inherited patterns of pain and strength across your clients' lineages.
• Incorporate somatic and Polyvagal tools to address chronic threat activation from systemic oppression.
• Engage in structured self-reflection practices to examine bias, privilege, and positionality as a clinician

Lisa Hayes, MSW, LISW-S, is a Clinical Social Worker based in Columbus, Ohio, whose academic and professional focus has always included special attention to gender identity, sexuality, race, and social representation. She graduated with a master’s degree in Social Work from The Ohio State University, with undergraduate studies in Sociology and Gender Studies.

Lisa’s clinical experience includes work with complex trauma, complex PTSD, anxiety, panic disorders, interpersonal relationship health, residential alcohol and drug treatment; inpatient psychiatric hospitalization; significant life transitions; racial/ethnic and culturally specific trauma and identity; LGBTQIA+ specific support needs; depression; complex dissociation; Military Veteran experiences; sexual assault; and childhood sexual abuse. Her clinical practice has primarily focused on the treatment of adolescents and adults.

She currently works in higher education, maintains a part‑time private practice, is co‑owner of The Trauma & Wellness Institute, and serves as the Director of the EMDR Therapy Training Program for BIPOC Clinicians with the Institute for Creative Mindfulness.