Post Traumatic Growth: Finding Meaning and Strength After Trauma
Presented by
Dreya Blume, LCSWParticipants will learn to recognize the signs of growth alongside distress and understand the factors that support clients in moving toward personal development and empowerment.
Overview
Continuing Education Credit Hours 1.5 CEs Meets Criteria for Health Equity or Cultural Competence Recorded: April, 2026
Trauma can profoundly disrupt a person’s life, but it can also be a catalyst for growth, resilience, and transformation. This training introduces psychotherapists to the concept of posttraumatic growth, exploring how individuals can discover new meaning, strengths, and possibilities after experiencing trauma.
Participants will learn to recognize the signs of growth alongside distress and understand the factors that support clients in moving toward personal development and empowerment.
Through case examples, discussion, and practical exercises, attendees will explore therapeutic strategies to foster resilience, facilitate meaning-making, and help clients re-author their narratives in ways that honor their experiences while cultivating hope.
Therapists will leave with tools to guide clients toward integrating trauma into their life story, promoting healing, insight, and renewed purpose.
Workshop Objectives:
Develop an understanding of the concept of post-traumatic growth and its distinction from recovery or resilience. Learn strategies to help clients identify personal strengths, meaning, and opportunities for growth following trauma. Identify interventions to facilitate narrative re-authoring, meaning-making, and resilience-building in trauma-affected clients.
About the Presenter
Dreya Blume (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator. Dreya began working in the mental health field in 2004 in southwest Virginia, where she spent almost two decades serving the local transgender community as a gender therapist. She recently moved to Durham, NC, where she focuses on offering continuing education training to therapists and coaching for private practice clinicians who want to expand their business uniquely. Dreya loves to write and is the author of several books, including, “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” “Journaling the Tarot,” “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” and “Tarot for Transformation: Using the Major Arcana to Discover Your Best Self and Create a Life Worth Living.” All of Dreya’s books (under her former name, Andy Matzner) are available here: https://dreyablume.com/books. Dreya is also passionate about teaching. Before becoming a mental health clinician, she spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in places such as Japan, Australia, Thailand, and Hawaii. Once in Virginia, Dreya worked as an adjunct professor for almost twenty years at Hollins University, teaching gender studies and sociology in their Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition, she spent twelve years teaching future social workers in the human services program at Virginia Western Community College. Learn more about Dreya on her website: https://dreyablume.com/.