Helping your Clients Heal from Toxic Relationships
Presented by
Kate Mageau, MA, LMHCThis course will teach therapists how to help their clients recognize the signs of being in a toxic relationship, help them rebuild their strength to safely leave it, and guide clients in how to rewire their neural pathways to heal from it.
Overview
4 CEs Recorded: Spring, 2025
This course will teach therapists how to help their clients recognize the signs of being in a toxic relationship, help them rebuild their strength to safely leave it, and guide clients in how to rewire their neural pathways to heal from it. One in three people has experienced a toxic relationship, so even if you don’t think you have clients who have experienced this abuse, you do. Knowing the tools to help them through current or past trauma will help your clients grow their self-esteem and positive self talk, which in turn will reduce their anxiety and depression symptoms.
Kate Mageau is an LMHC therapist, an intimate partner violence survivor, and an author. Kate has been living and breathing the subject of domestic violence since leaving her abuser in 2014. Since going through her healing journey, she taught and supported survivors with New Beginnings and in her internship at another domestic violence advocacy agency, created and led her Healing from Toxic Relationship support groups, helped numerous survivor clients heal, and written a 3-book educational memoir series and the Healing from Toxic Relationship workbook.
Kate Mageau teaches this course from her professional expertise in this subject, as well as with her heart and compassion for survivors. While engaging in this course, she encourages course participants to consider their own experiences in their heart and their clients’ experiences in their minds. This course will have opportunities for discussion, engagement, and practice guiding clients through their healing journeys. This course does not use genders, as people of all genders can be both survivors and abusers of toxic relationships.
Kate is ADHD, and a majority of her clients are ADHD, Autistic, or AuDHD; thus shecreated this course to be neurodivergent-friendly. She uses the “umbrella” term of toxic relationshipsto include domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and all kinds of toxic relationships, as this material applies to all of the above.
Objectives:
Gently teach clients about principles of toxic relationships, so they can discern for themselves whether they are in one, and what they want to do about it.
Help clients improve their self-esteem through the power of knowledge, understanding, and prevention; and through learning aids.
Teach clients to identify the themes of power and control, the mechanisms of abuse, the components of healthy relationships, and what to look for in future relationships; and how to recognize how the cycle of violence affected their relationships, and to prevent it from affecting them again.
Teach clients how to discern love bombing versus nice gestures, signs of codependent versus healthy relationships, and how to use grey and yellow rocking to protect their emotional mental health while still in toxic relationships.
Help clients understand how their brain protects them through trauma, how their neurotransmitters affect their mental health, how to create mental health resiliency plans, and how to rewire their brain to heal from trauma.
How to create a safety plan, and how to use the safety planning material to help a client remember the strengths they used to survive and escape an abusive relationship
About the Presenter
Kate Mageau, MA, LMHC (she/her) is a licensed mental health counselor, author, and advocate. As an ADHDer and a survivor of intimate partner violence, she has dedicated her career to supporting survivors and raising awareness about domestic violence. Since leaving her abuser in 2014, Kate has immersed herself in this work, drawing from both personal experience and professional expertise. She has provided guidance and support to survivors through her roles at New Beginnings and a domestic violence advocacy agency in Florida. Specializing in intimate partner violence, she has led “Healing from Toxic Relationships” support groups and helped countless clients heal through individual and group therapy. Kate is also the author of a three-book educational memoir series and the Healing from Toxic Relationships workbook, offering insights and tools for recovery.