Developmental Trauma Training Institute

Developmental Trauma Training Institute We equip professionals with the skills to recognize and treat trauma.

We envision a world where children, adults, families & communities can access effective treatment and support healing from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) and truly thrive.

You can understand developmental trauma conceptually and still wonder what to actually do when it shows up in the room.D...
09/08/2026

You can understand developmental trauma conceptually and still wonder what to actually do when it shows up in the room.

Digging Roots 1.0 was built around that gap.

This 3-day in-person training in San Diego goes beyond information alone. The focus is on helping clinicians deepen their Brainspotting skills and walk away with tested, applicable approaches for working with developmental trauma.

We’ll look closely at attachment injury, shame, pacing, sequencing, and the kinds of layered responses that can make developmental trauma work feel complex.

The goal is not simply to know more. It is to leave with a stronger clinical lens and more ways to respond to what is actually happening with the person in front of you.

San Diego, CA | October 9–11, 2026
Brainspotting Phase 1 required.
Up to 40 CEs available.

Link to training in comments!

09/08/2026

Sometimes people want help. They may even know they need it. But getting from that place to actually finding someone can feel like an enormous distance.

In Part 3, Steve talks about what can sit underneath that distance:

• When you’re already exhausted, finding help can feel like another impossible task. Searching for providers, making calls, waiting for responses, explaining your story again — sometimes there simply isn’t much left to give.

• When reaching for help hasn’t worked before, reaching again can feel very different. Maybe you needed someone early in life and no one responded. Maybe you pursued therapy before and it didn’t help. Those experiences can shape what asking feels like now.

• Sometimes there has been help, but not connection. A mental health provider can have knowledge and training and still leave someone feeling unseen. For people who grew up without consistent attunement from parents or other important people, another experience of not feeling met can be especially significant.

This is not about someone “refusing help.” There can be a history underneath why moving toward another person feels difficult.

Earlier in the series:

Part 1: When self-reliance becomes the way you survive — and asking for help can feel harder than carrying things alone.

Part 2: When you’re unsure your pain is “bad enough,” don’t know how to be helped, or vulnerability has been used against you before.

Watch Parts 1 & 2 on the DTTI YouTube channel (links in comments) and join Steve for Part 3 as we continue exploring what can live underneath the question:
Why don’t people get help?

Why do people who need support sometimes move further away from it?Over the past two weeks, Steve Sawyer has been explor...
09/08/2026

Why do people who need support sometimes move further away from it?

Over the past two weeks, Steve Sawyer has been exploring that question in our three-part Facebook Live series: Why People Don’t Get Help.

PART 1 — When asking for help itself feels difficult

Steve explored:
• Fierce self-reliance and independence
• The emotional cost of asking someone else for help
• Shame connected to needing support
• What happens when someone has begun to believe change isn’t possible for them

Sometimes “I’ll handle it myself” is about much more than independence.

PART 2 — When you want help, but receiving it feels complicated

Last week, Steve went further into:
• Believing your pain isn’t “bad enough”
• Comparing your suffering to someone else’s
• Feeling like other people deserve help more
• Not knowing how to actually receive care
• Wanting connection while also protecting yourself from being known
• What happens when vulnerability has been used against you before

There can be an enormous distance between wanting support and feeling able to move toward it.

Tomorrow : Part 3.

Steve will continue this conversation and bring the three-part series together — looking more closely at what can sit underneath the ways people move toward, away from, and around help.

If you’ve been following along, join us for the final conversation.

Tuesday Sept 9 | 8 AM PT | Facebook Live

And if you missed Parts 1 or 2, you can still jump in. These conversations don’t require you to have heard the first one to recognize something in the next. Part 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfd9xbe5xoI&ra=m
Part 2 : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Txk2kBqRslg&pp=0gcJCRsMAYcqIYzv&ra=m

09/07/2026

Josh brings years of clinical experience, curiosity, and deep understanding of developmental trauma into the Digging Roots Community. We are excited to have Josh as a Digging Roots Educator - teaching, connecting and growing alongside this community!

Watch for his Digging Roots Courses and drop a hello in the comments!

Brainspotting Phase 1 is the beginning — not the whole pathway. One of the questions we hear often is: What comes next?A...
09/04/2026

Brainspotting Phase 1 is the beginning — not the whole pathway. One of the questions we hear often is: What comes next?

At DTTI, there are several ways to continue after Phase 1 depending on your clinical work and what you want to build next.

You can move into:

* Brainspotting Phase 2
* Digging Roots Foundations
* HAC — High Acuity Care

Digging Roots Foundations can also be taken as a stand-alone online course. If you want to continue into Digging Roots 1.0, you’ll need both Brainspotting Phase 1 + Digging Roots Foundations.

From Digging Roots 1.0, you can move into Digging Roots 2.0 or Advanced Clinical Immersion.

Digging Roots and HAC work especially well together, connecting developmental trauma understanding with high-acuity clinical application.

And Advanced Clinical Immersion gives experienced practitioners the opportunity to observe multiple live clinical demonstrations, explore real clinical material, and study the moment-to-moment process of the work.

There isn’t only one way forward. This carousel is meant to make the pathway easier to see and help you decide what may fit next.

Save this for when you’re ready to keep building your Brainspotting practice.

What if “I can do it myself” isn’t always confidence?Sometimes fierce self-reliance begins long before we have words for...
09/03/2026

What if “I can do it myself” isn’t always confidence?

Sometimes fierce self-reliance begins long before we have words for it.

You learn not to need too much.
Not to ask.
Not to inconvenience anyone.
Not to let people see when something is hard.

And eventually, it can stop feeling like something you do and start feeling like simply who you are.

You become capable. Dependable. The person who figures it out. The person others lean on.

But underneath that competence can live something much more relational:

What happens if I need someone and they aren’t there?
What happens if needing makes me vulnerable to rejection, disappointment, or shame?

So not needing anyone can begin to feel safer than risking what it might mean to need them.

That is one of the complexities of shame: it doesn’t always look like hiding or feeling “bad” about yourself. Sometimes it becomes a way of surviving relationship.

And healing isn’t about taking someone’s strength away.

It can be about creating enough room for strength and connection to exist together — where receiving care no longer has to mean losing yourself.

Learn more - Shame: The Land Between Living and Dying
A virtual training exploring shame through a developmental, relational, attachment, and clinical lens.

Learn more and register through DTTI.co - link in comments

Have you been wanting to learn more about Digging Roots as a Brainspotting practitioner? Now’s your chance.Join Josh Del...
09/02/2026

Have you been wanting to learn more about Digging Roots as a Brainspotting practitioner? Now’s your chance.

Join Josh Delahan, LCSW, Digging Roots Educator, for a FREE virtual talk exploring the Digging Roots Brainspotting approach and how it brings a developmental trauma lens into Brainspotting practice.

If you’ve been curious about how early attachment experiences, developmental trauma, and nervous system patterns can shape the work we do in Brainspotting, this is a great place to begin.

Digging Roots Brainspotting: St. Louis, MO and Beyond
September 25
11 AM CT
Virtual
Free for Brainspotting practitioners

Register using the QR code on the flyer or check out the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/SKWkZLi_SOyQDNhAD3DyVw #/registration

09/01/2026

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t asking for help. It’s believing your pain deserves to be seen.

In Part 2 of our three-part Facebook Live series, Why People Don’t Get Help, Steve Sawyer explores some of the quieter reasons people may hold back from reaching out.

Sometimes people don’t believe their pain is “bad enough.” They compare their experience to someone else’s, minimize what they are carrying, or convince themselves that other people deserve help more.

Sometimes they simply don’t know how help works or how support will actually practically change things. We often talk about asking for support as though it should come naturally, but for some people, receiving care is something they have had very little experience with.

And sometimes vulnerability has been used against them. Steve shares about a community with extensive services available but help was not being engaged. The primary culprit was breaks in Confidentiality. They may deeply want connection while also protecting themselves from being fully known.

Continuing on this topic line, he also addresses the issue of stress related how vulnerable shares will be shared forward when helpers are writing down notes. What are they writing? Where is that information going?

These responses can make a lot more sense when we understand what someone has lived through—and what they may have learned about needing other people along the way.

Part 3 continues next Tuesday at 8 AM PT.

You can also watch Part 1 on YouTube — the video is linked in the comments.

Last week, Steve started exploring why people don’t get help — including fierce self-reliance, the cost and shame of ask...
09/01/2026

Last week, Steve started exploring why people don’t get help — including fierce self-reliance, the cost and shame of asking for help, and what happens when someone no longer believes change is possible.

Tomorrow, we continue the conversation with Part 2.

Because when someone doesn’t reach out, refuses help, or keeps pulling away, there is often much more happening underneath than simply “not wanting help.”

Join Steve tomorrow at 8 AM PT as we keep looking beneath the surface — with curiosity, compassion, and a developmental trauma lens.

Why People Don’t Get Help — Part 2
Tomorrow | 8 AM PT | Facebook Live

If you missed Part 1, watch the video in the comments — then join us tomorrow for the next conversation.

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