The Ultimate Guide To Trauma Certifications
Navigating certifications for trauma and mental health can be confusing. It’s common to have questions like:
Can I help people with trauma if I’m not a therapist or counselor?
Am I legally required to be certified in trauma to help clients?
What certifications do I need, and what are the different options?
If you’re asking these questions, you’re not alone. The certification process for mental health practices is extremely confusing. The great news is that there is currently a massive shortage of mental health practitioners, creating a huge opportunity for new practitioners (not just therapists) to enter the mental health space.
We wrote this article to help you navigate your options for education and certification starting from the ground up and how to confidently market yourself so you can offer services in trauma and somatics, even if you do not have a therapist or counselor’s license. This is a resource for those looking to expand their career and increase their literacy with trauma. This article is relevant for:
Licensed Therapists/Counselors,
Holistic Practitioners & Nutritionists
Coaches
Students or those new to the field completely
Licenses vs. Professional Certifications
It’s helpful to draw a distinction between a legal license and a professional certification. A legal license is required to practice under a particular scope and use industry language to describe your professional title and services. For example, to practice and market yourself as a therapist, doctor, massage therapist, or acupuncturist, you need to be licensed in your state.
Professional certifications are quite different. Certifications are professionally regulated, not legally regulated. That means the organizations “regulating” certifications do so as private entities. For example, to be certified in Somatic Experiencing, Emotional Freedom Technique, or Trauma Release Exercise, you are being certified by those professional organizations, not a government-regulated licensing board. To utilize their therapy and market yourself using their terminology, you are required to be certified by them.
Typically with certifications, there are multiple organizations offering similar certifications. Common trauma certifications include Certified Trauma Therapist (CTT), Certified Trauma Professional (CTP), and Certified Trauma Specialist (CTS). All of these certifications generally require short, 12-20 hour post-graduate courses to receive certification. Many of these organizations require you to be a licensed therapist or counselor to go through their certification program, but not all.
Again, these organizations are professional organizations that create and regulate their own terminology around trauma certification, not state-licensed organizations. It’s easy to confuse these with government organizations that mandate these certifications in order to practice any form of trauma-informed care. For therapists, certifications are not a strict legal requirement to work in trauma support but are highly encouraged.
While it is required to have a therapy license to practice as a “trauma therapist,” if you are not a therapist, there are other titles you can use to describe your practice, such as a “trauma coach” or a “trauma practitioner,” depending on your professional certification.
Every professional certification is unique, and studying the program deeply before enrolling in a certification track is crucial.
At the Aura Institute, we created a professional educational track for Integrative Trauma Practitioners™ (ITP). From our own experience taking trauma trainings, many programs have felt like a disconnected set of lectures from various professionals. Our certification is a highly intentional process designed to prepare you for real-world professional practice. It is is designed for both therapists as well as non-licensed practitioners working in the health and wellness space, including coaches, yoga teachers, holistic practitioners, massage therapists, nurses, and more.
If you are a therapist and you graduate from our program, you can legally refer to yourself as a “Trauma Therapist” or and “Integrative Trauma Therapist.” If you are not a licensed therapist and you graduate from the Aura training, you can refer to yourself as an Integrative Trauma Practitioner or Integrative Trauma Coach.
Am I legally required to be certified in trauma to help clients?
First, it’s essential to acknowledge that this looks very different whether or not you are a licensed therapist or counselor vs. someone who wants to support people with trauma outside the context of therapy or counseling.
Licensed Therapists/Counselors:
If you are already a licensed therapist or counselor, while it’s encouraged to receive some form of additional trauma training or certification, in most states, it is not a strict legal requirement. Most of the certifications available are from professional organizations (not licensing boards). This is an important distinction that often gets overlooked. Professional organizations often give themselves professional, bureaucratic-sounding names to make it seem like their certification is a legal requirement when this is often not the case. Some states may require at least one certification in order to promote yourself as a trauma therapist, so it’s important to check with your state’s licensing board to ensure you are staying compliant. Trauma is a relatively new field, and the certification landscape is scattered and loosely regulated.
Most trauma certifications are tied to continuing education credits, and there are several certifications available for trauma therapy, depending on the type of therapy being practiced.
Therapists and counselors are required to do continuing education hours, and most organizations offering trauma training design their certifications also to satisfy the required hours to maintain a license.
Even though trauma-informed therapy is loosely regulated, it is important for therapists to have training in trauma therapy in order to treat individuals who have experienced trauma effectively. Therapists and counselors should have a comprehensive understanding of the effects of trauma, as well as the various approaches to trauma therapy, before treating it clinically.
The Aura Institute Trainings are a way for existing therapists and counselors to receive a foundational professional certification in a variety of leading trauma-informed modalities while receiving continuing education credits. We regularly work to get our trainings certified by more professional organizations and help our students apply their hours to their desired continuing education credit.
In summary, trauma therapy is professionally regulated but largely unregulated at the legal level. It is NOT legally required by most state licensing boards to receive a certification in trauma to see trauma patients in a therapy context. However, it is generally encouraged to receive some form of training, as well as ongoing education, if you’re going to promote yourself as a trauma specialist. Check with your state licensing board to ensure you are legally compliant.
Non-Licensed Therapists/Counselors:
If you are not a licensed therapist or counselor, and you’d still wish to help people with trauma, you can still do so. Perhaps you are a holistic practitioner, a coach, a teacher, or a mentor and want to add trauma-informed practices to your existing practice. If you’re in this boat, there’s slightly more red tape around how you market yourself and your services and what specifically you can practice.
First and foremost, you can never legally refer to the services you offer as “therapy” or “counseling,” nor can you refer to yourself as a “therapist.” These terms are legally regulated by state licensing boards, and you cannot legally use these terms. You also cannot say you “treat” or “heal” specific conditions, or refer to your clients as “patients (you must use the term ‘client.”).
However, with proper training and certification, you can refer to yourself as a “trauma coach,” “trauma support specialist,” or “trauma mentor.” You’re also able to add trauma-informed practices into your current practice, as long as they are not referred to as “therapy” or “counseling.”
You are well within your legal right to create a practice marketing yourself as one of these terms, and there is generally a lot of demand in the market for alternative or integrative trauma support outside of conventional therapy. At the Aura Institute, the term we utilize is “Integrative Trauma Practitioner” or “Integrative Trauma Coach.”
Without a therapy license, it becomes increasingly important to receive some form of professional certification if you want to support others with trauma. There are many organizations that offer various professional certification options for trauma that can be utilized outside traditional therapy.
One of the limitations of the training and certification process for both therapists and non-therapists is that it’s difficult to establish a strong foundation in a variety of trauma-oriented modalities and develop professional competence in order to support clients who have trauma. That’s why we created the Aura Institute Training program.
What certifications do I need to help people with trauma?
As mentioned above, this depends primarily on whether or not you are a licensed therapist or counselor. If you are a licensed therapist or counselor, in most states, you don’t legally need a certification to practice in the field of trauma. However, it is highly encouraged to receive professional training, and the certifications are often tied to required continuing education hours, which you’ll need to do anyway.
What are my certification options?
There are hundreds of different certification options within the field of trauma. It’s important to understand that most trauma-informed therapy certification programs are run by doctors or therapists who invented these modalities and self-regulate the use of their practice. For Example:
Somatic Experiencing Training Certification
Trauma Release Exercise (TRE)
Brain-Spotting
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
Parts Integration
These modalities all have different philosophies and approaches to treating trauma. There are also organizations such as the International Trauma Training Institute, or The International Trauma Professionals Association that offer a variety of different short trainings, primarily for continuing education credits.
In general, there are so many different options for certification. Regulation is still pretty loose, and the most important thing to consider when getting certified in trauma-informed therapy is to choose a program that you feel inspires you and gives you the best professional preparation to safely and effectively bring trauma-informed practices into your work.
For those new to the field of trauma, we felt it important to establish a strong foundation in a number of different modalities before committing to diving into hundreds of hours of education in a single modality. That’s why our Level 1 and Level 2 trainings give you a comprehensive introduction to a variety of different trauma modalities, enough to start building them into your practice.