Trauma Training
Trauma-Informed Addiction Treatment Training
The Trauma Beneath the Craving: A Neurobiological Approach to Addiction
Trainer: Sarah Osborne, LPC, LADC, NCC
On-Demand: Available with lifetime access for asynchronous learning. | This course was recorded on October 9th, 2025.
Addiction and trauma are not parallel problems. For many clients, addiction is the trauma response. Substances, compulsive behaviors, and survival loops exist because the nervous system found them effective, at least for a while. Treating the addiction without addressing the trauma underneath it is why so many clients relapse, and why so many therapists feel stuck.
This trauma-informed addiction treatment training with Sarah Osborne, LPC, LADC, NCC, gives you a neurobiological framework for understanding the trauma-addiction connection and a concrete set of clinical tools for working with it. Sarah brings rare dual expertise as both a licensed alcohol and drug counselor and a certified EMDR therapist and EMDRIA-approved consultant, meaning this training is grounded in real addiction specialty knowledge, not just general trauma-informed awareness applied to substance use.
You will leave with a clear roadmap for integrating trauma-focused care, harm reduction, and evidence-based modalities into your clinical work with clients navigating addiction and co-occurring trauma.
Practical Interventions You’ll Learn
In this trauma-informed addiction training, you'll learn how to:
- Use SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment) to stratify addiction risk levels and guide clinical next steps
- Apply motivational interviewing strategies to collaboratively set treatment goals with clients in early recovery, when ambivalence is highest
- Teach urge surfing as a delayed gratification skill, helping clients ride out cravings without acting on them
- Use ACT-based interventions to help clients replace compulsive behavior with value-driven choices
- Apply CPT interventions to process the trauma memories underlying substance use and relapse patterns
- Facilitate recovery planning by mapping emotional, cognitive, physical, and social triggers to addictive behaviors
What You'll Learn
By the end of this training, you will be able to:
- Describe how trauma is connected to vulnerability to addiction, including how ACEs, complex trauma, and attachment wounds shape the brain and nervous system in ways that increase risk for substance use and compulsive behavior
- Explain the neurobiology of addiction, including how trauma affects the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, and how this neurological wiring drives craving, seeking, and numbing behaviors
- Identify maladaptive positive feeling states that reinforce addictive patterns, and use this framework to explain the function of addictive behavior to clients without shame
- Use trauma-informed history-taking questions to uncover hidden trauma and assess risk factors that may complicate addiction recovery
- Apply harm reduction, stabilization, and treatment planning strategies that keep clients within their window of tolerance during early recovery, when biological and chemical changes are most destabilizing
- Differentiate between early recovery presentations and trauma symptoms, and build a treatment approach that addresses both without conflating them
Who is this training for?
This course is designed for therapists who are encountering addiction in their trauma caseloads and want a neurobiologically grounded, trauma-informed framework for working with it. No prerequisites are required.
Trauma-Informed Addiction Treatment Training is a strong fit if you are:
- A trauma therapist whose clients present with substance use or compulsive behaviors alongside their trauma histories, and you want a framework that addresses the neurobiological connection rather than treating addiction and trauma as separate clinical problems
- Working with clients who have relapsed or struggled to sustain recovery, and wanting to understand what the trauma beneath the craving is and how to address it clinically
- Wanting to understand the neurobiology of addiction well enough to explain it to clients in language that reduces shame and builds treatment motivation
- Looking for concrete, named clinical tools including SBIRT, motivational interviewing, urge surfing, ACT, and CPT as applied to addiction and trauma, rather than general guidance on trauma-informed care
- Working in settings where clients navigate co-occurring addiction and trauma, including community mental health, private practice, or residential settings, and wanting an evidence-based framework for harm reduction and recovery planning
- Seeking NBCC and ASWB/ACE continuing education at the intersection of trauma and addiction in a flexible on-demand format with 4 CEs
About Your Trainer, Sarah Osborne, LPC, LADC, NCC
Sarah Osborne is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and Nationally Certified Counselor with over ten years of EMDR practice. She is also a Certified EMDR Therapist, EMDRIA Approved Consultant and Advanced Credit Provider, and an HAP Accredited Facilitator.
Sarah specializes in the treatment of addiction, complex trauma, and dissociation. Her clinical background spans both community mental health and private addiction treatment centers, and she is deeply committed to integrating EMDR therapy into addiction care across all levels of treatment. Her dual training as both a trauma specialist and a licensed addiction counselor is rare in this space and informs every element of this course.
Sarah offers individual and group consultation to EMDR clinicians and consultants-in-training, sponsors a local EMDR professional group, and works closely with a local trauma response team supporting first responders. She is also co-owner of a perinatal group practice focused on supporting families through the transitions of parenthood.
She brings warmth, clinical depth, and a steadfast commitment to helping therapists feel equipped rather than overwhelmed when addiction and trauma show up together in the therapy room.
