About the Course
This training provides a clinical framework for mental health professionals working with children exposed to domestic violence and coercive control. Grounded in the Duluth Model and Mark Nickerson’s Breaking the Cycle framework, the course moves beyond basic crisis intervention to explore the chronic disruption of relationship connection. Participants will learn to identify survival fight energy and understand how a child’s response to threat leads to adaptive behaviors such as hypervigilance, withdrawal, and appeasement. The curriculum emphasizes the therapist's role in establishing a foundation of safety and regulation before attempting trauma repair. Significant focus is placed on the ethical and legal complexities of domestic violence cases, including court-safe documentation, the limits of clinical roles in custody disputes, and practical, age-appropriate safety planning and identifying high risk environments.
Your Instructors
Lindy Swimm, LCSW
Thistle Newcomb, LPC
Lindy has over thirty years’ experience working with individuals, adolescents, children, and families. She specializes in attachment and trauma modalities that are well researched in their effectiveness to treat and mitigate mental health concerns. An Integrative Child-Parent approach is available for Attachment and Trauma needs for families and children. Also, individualized expressive therapy interventions such as art, sand tray, play therapy, and music are incorporated into therapy sessions. Lindy is a certified EMDR therapist. EMDR treatment is a highly effective treatment offered to assist in resolving complex conditions such as developmental trauma, PTSD, complicated grief and loss, and foster care and adoption issues. Specialties include relational problems, grief, and loss, treating victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, family therapy, dissociative behaviors in children and adolescents, families in the foster care system, and pre and post-adoption support services.
Thistle Newcomb has been working with families in the mental health field since 1996 and has specifically focused on children, adolescents, and families. She has extensive experience in settings including residential crisis shelter, domestic foster care/adoption social services, intensive in-home counseling, outpatient private practice, supervision of LPC Residents, and a trainer/presenter to the community. Thistle is trained in several modalities such as EMDR, trauma, Parts Work, Somatic Interventions, and is well versed in Complex Developmental Trauma for clients aged infants to grandparents. Specific interests include emotional regulation, resolving trauma, grief/loss, family dynamics, the impact of trauma on developing brains, and stress reduction. Thistle is a Licensed Professional Counselor, an EMDRIA Approved Basic Trainer, an EMDR Approved Consultant, and has been certified as an Expert Witness in Trauma in the 16th District Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court system in Virginia. She has conducted multiple trainings on a variety of trauma treatment focused topics for audiences ranging from beginners to advanced.
In addition to being a founding partner of Riverbend Counseling Group, Thistle is also a Trainer and LPC Resident Supervisor at Riverbend Integrative Trauma Treatment.