Blogs and Free Resources
Here at PESI, our mission is to provide professionals like you with FREE practical and valuable tools, strategies,
and resources to assist with the great work you do. Find expert tips, helpful worksheets, demonstration videos, CE, news,
and more here. Happy learning!
Enhancing Self-Regulation Through Play Therapy
Free trauma-informed play therapy demonstration & worksheets
Many children with big behaviors need help learning how to regulate themselves more quickly or more effectively. PESI author Paris Goodyear-Brown provides a simple sensory-soothing activity that can be particularly helpful for children who struggle to close their eyes and relax.
Excavating Hard Things
Free trauma-informed play therapy intervention
When a child is experiencing the intrusive or avoidance symptoms of PTSD, building a coherent narrative becomes essential to treatment. Paris Goodyear-Brown, MSSW, LCSW, RPT-S, demonstrates an exercise designed to help children verbalize their big emotions.
15 Books Therapists Should Already Have on Their Shelves
Clinical resources addressing trauma, psychopharmacology, ethics, and more
Discover essential reads for new practitioners and seasoned experts in this list of our top resources for mental health professionals.
When the Unthinkable Happens
5 Strategies to Help Children Work Through Tragedy and Traumatic Grief
In the wake of recent tragedies that have directly impacted children, PESI author Andrea Dorn, MSW, LISW-CP, shares strategies for clinicians and caregivers to mindfully approach and work through this difficult topic with children.
12 Books Every Educator Needs on Their Wishlist
Top titles in topics like ADHD, social-emotional skills, trauma, and more
Whether you’re looking for tools, worksheets, and exercises to support students or self-care strategies to support yourself, PESI Publishing has no shortage of titles for educators. Here are 12 of our favorites that we think every teacher should have on their shelves.
Finding Healthy Attachment
Discover how attachment-based relationships provide a foundation for healing trauma
Christina Reese has dedicated her life’s work to helping those with trauma live healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives. Learn how her newest book, Trauma and Attachment, can guide clients from a place of fear to healthy attachment.
Learning to Transcend Trauma
Dr. Frank Anderson introduces his newest book
Frank Anderson sits down to talk about the culmination of his career and how it manifested into his newest book, Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems.
Connection & Co-Regulation: Using Self-Awareness to Model Self-Regulation
Learn from a leading voice in the healing of PTSD & complex trauma
As a therapist, developing your own embodied awareness can help you better attune to clients’ somatic patterns of autonomic arousal and allow you to bring co-regulation into therapy.
How Post-Traumatic Symptoms Reflect Our Trauma History
When Our Nervous System Adapts to Threat in the Absence of Danger
Individuals who have been exposed to chronic and repeated trauma often have a nervous system still mobilized for danger, evoking trauma responses of fear, fight, or flight long after the threat has passed.
Desperate Efforts to Regulate a Traumatized Nervous System
Understanding the Vicious Circle of Addictive and Self-Destructive Behavior
Confused and frightened by intense feelings and physical responses—and tormented by their negative thoughts—many trauma survivors feel desperate for relief. Drugs, alcohol, self-harm, and many other compulsive behaviors provide brief periods of respite, but unfortunately, the relief is short-lived. As the body develops tolerance for these addictive or self-destructive impulses, they eventually become worse than the trauma symptoms themselves.