Trauma and the Brain: Actionable Neuroscience for Stress, Anxiety and Trauma 2026

Trauma and the Brain: Actionable Neuroscience for Stress, Anxiety and Trauma 2026 is organized by PTSD Trauma Workshops and will be held on Jan 16, 2026.

Description:
Understanding the neurobiology of intense anxiety, stress and trauma can help us re-frame the often highly distressing responses of our brain, nervous system and body. 

Far from being pathologising, it can be profoundly helpful to understand the mechanisms behind the threat response. In addition, it is empowering to know that we can translate this knowledge into practical applications to push back against the stress response.

Specifically, we will be taking a tour of this fast-evolving field, including:

• Understanding three types of stress (2 helpful, 1 unhelpful)
• Understanding the cascade of reactions that deposit adrenaline, acetylcholine and other chemicals into the body
• Understanding the way our early attachments calibrate our stress system
• Learning practical applications that we can use ourselves / with clients to manage our state of alertness.
• Understand how distinct breath patterns affect feelings of stress and alertness. Plus how we can utilise them.
• Understand how the visual system affects stress and alertness and how we can use the visual system to decrease threat arousal.
• How to work alongside our biological clock to promote effective stress coping
• How sleep interacts with the stress response
• Understanding the effect of physical exercise on stress reactivity.

In this workshop we will distil recent research findings from the neuroscience into usable knowledge in a way which invites a de-stigmatising view of high stress and anxiety. We will look at the neuronal networks of the stress response. Plus the cascade of reactions that set off the biological stress reactions into our bodies. Most importantly, we will learn some 'real time' interventions that can make a powerful difference to our internal biological state.

During the second half of this workshop we will look at how our earliest experiences of attachment, predictability and threat can predispose our adult nervous system into different levels of threat arousal. Particular attention is given to the embodied brain and the social-emotional nature of stress and anxiety.

After attending this workshop attendees should walk away with insights from the world of neurobiology to augment our psychological therapies to lessen worry, enhance wellbeing and inspire meaningful action.

Unlike our other workshops, there will be no simulated client practice session.