Helpful Resources

Our Center for Healing Childhood Trauma provides quality resources and education around the topic of early childhood adversity and trauma. You choose your topics, your speakers, and watch and learn at your own pace. There are courses on a wide range of topics, and for a wide variety of individuals. We hope these courses will help you be a better parent, teacher, counselor, case manager, or listener.

Trauma For Breakfast is a crowded table of wounded children, parents, spouses, caregivers and weary souls. Together we join in honest conversations about the behaviors and challenges of parenting children with trauma.There’s always room for one more at the table to share in the stories, science and healing as we learn to better understand and care for each other. We are a table without shame or judgement because life can be hard and lonely and we all know, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

The Allender Center Podcast features Dr. Dan Allender and his team engaging topics on healing and restoration through the unique intersection of theology and psychology. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join us to gain refreshing insight into understanding your story, handling relational struggles, recovering from trauma and abuse, and more.

The mission of The Allender Center is to help people tell their stories with awareness and integrity, and to train them to listen to the stories of others with care, artistry, and skill so that they may foster redemption and healing in their lives. The Allender Center is a pioneering organization committed to boldly engaging the impact of trauma and abuse, providing healing and teaching to individuals, couples, and communities, and training professionals to listen and enter into stories in a way that facilitates transformation and hope. For information on all our programs and live events, visit theallendercenter.org

In a world in which we experience such deep desire and such great grief, we find coursing through all of it our unquenchable longing to be known. But we don’t want to stop there, for we know in our bones and blood that we desire to be known in order for us to create and curate beauty and goodness in the world — together with our friends and, in our best moments, even our enemies — in every domain of life that we occupy.

With the Being Known Podcast, we will discover what it means to be truly known, exploring the intersection of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and Christian spiritual formation.

We believe that God’s good creation, in the language of neuroscience, is revealing in fresh ways what God has intended in Jesus from the beginning — that we are a people made for joy, for whom repairing ruptures is healing for our souls and our brains, and who are destined to create and become outposts of beauty and goodness, outposts of hope and healing for a world in which we experience fracture and disintegration far too often.

The Empowered to Connect Podcast a place where we come together to discuss an attachment rich, healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Powerful research, simple applications, and profound insight on self-love, identity, and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you beat yourself up, lack confidence and purpose, or struggle making strong decisions for yourself, this is for you.

Join your host, Tyson Bradley, as he unpacks the secrets to your brain, your spirit, and the life you’ve always wanted.

Addresses: Lying, Stealing, Self-Mutilation, Aggression, Defiance, Chores, Mealtimes, Hoarding/Gorging, Bedtime, Bath time, Brushing Teeth, Public Humiliation of Parents, Chattering, Clinging, Whining, No Eye Contact, No Touching, Too Much Touching, Poor Social Skills, No Conscience, Learning Difficulties and Sexualized Behaviors including Masturbation, Perpetration and Pet Perversion

Parenting Difficult Adopted, Foster and Diagnosed Children

Bryan Post speaks to parents about the challenges they face when dealing with behaviors that are often present for adopted children. He helps parents understand the impact of early life trauma and the impact of interruptions in the attachment process. Bryan’s straightforward, clear-cut approach has created peace and healing for hundreds of families; families who once operated in fear are now experiencing love

In this instant classic of developmental psychology, a renowned psychiatrist examines the effect that trauma can have on a child, reveals how PTSD impacts the developing mind, and outlines the path to recovery.

Born for Love is the definitive book on empathy. Renowned psychiatrist Bruce Perry has appeared on Oprah, CNN, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and other programs as an expert in this hot area of neuroscience, and has been cited as such in Newsweek, the New York Times, and The New Yorker (in a story written by Malcolm Gladwell). He and co-writer Maia Szalavitz explore empathy’s startling importance in human evolution and its significance for our children and our society. The authors of The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog present a powerful case that love is essential…and endangered.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

The adoption of a child is always a joyous moment in the life of a family. Some adoptions, though, present unique challenges. Welcoming these children into your family–and addressing their special needs–requires care, consideration, and compassion.

Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you:

• Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child
• Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders
• Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened

Parenting under the best of circumstances can be difficult. And raising children who have come to your home from “hard places,” who have their own set of unique needs, brings even more challenges. You may have discovered that the techniques that worked with your birth children are not working with your adopted or foster child.

Renowned child-development expert Dr. Karyn Purvis gives you practical advice and powerful tools you can use to encourage secure attachment in your family. You will benefit from Karyn’s decades of clinical research and real-world experience. Coauthor Lisa Qualls demonstrates how you can successfully implement these strategies in your home, just as she did in hers.

You will learn how to simplify your approach using scripts, nurture your child, combat chronic fear, teach respect, and develop other valuable tools to facilitate a healing connection with your child.

The Connected Parent will help you lovingly guide your children and bring renewed hope and restoration to your family.

The Whole-Brain Child distills the wisdom of the neurosciences into a series of simple messages that work for everyone, parents and professionals alike. It’s simple and filled with mnemonics to help parents remember the concepts. There are even tools at the end of each chapter to help teach children about their brains.

Getting to Calm is a dream come true for parents of teens: It contains numerous strategies for parenting teens, all based on the central fact that effective parenting begins and ends with staying calm.

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control covers in detail the effects of trauma on the body-mind and how trauma alters children’s behavioral responses. The first four chapters help parents and professionals clearly understand the neurological research behind the basic model given in this book, deemed, ‘The Stress Model.’ While scientifically based in research, it is written in an easy to understand and easy to grasp format for anyone working with or parenting children with severe behaviors.

The Gospel Coalition Top Books and Outreach Resource of the Year

Finding the Root of All Shame

We’re all infected with a spiritual disease. Its name is shame.

Whether we realize it or not, shame affects every aspect of our personal lives and vocational endeavors. It seeks to destroy our identity in Christ, replacing it with a damaged version of ourselves that results in unhealed pain and brokenness. But God is telling a different story for your life.

Psychiatrist Curt Thompson unpacks the soul of shame, revealing its ubiquitous nature and neurobiological roots. He also provides the theological and practical tools necessary to dismantle shame, based on years of researching its damaging effects and counseling people to overcome those wounds.

Thompson’s expertise and compassion will help you identify your own pains and struggles and find freedom from the lifelong negative messages that bind you. Rewrite the story of your life and embrace healing and wholeness as you discover and defeat shame’s insidious agenda.

In the face of personal and global suffering, is it possible to live with hope rather than despair? Join psychiatrist, speaker, and award-winning author Curt Thompson, MD as he shows us how God transforms our grief into a lasting peace that surpasses all understanding.

Suffering is a defining reality of life. Yet so many of us are so focused on avoiding discomfort that we’ve never learned how to actually suffer. But what if we could move from anxiety to durable hope?

In The Deepest Place, Thompson invites us to explore how the Apostle Paul’s experience of love, secure attachment, and the deeply felt sense of God’s abiding presence carried him through the challenges he faced–and how it can help us not just survive, but flourish in the presence of suffering.

Combining scripture with his own professional insight, Thompson helps us discover that:

• Suffering can increase our sense of security rather than our fears
• Hope is something we form in community
• Faith can grow out of anger, cynicism, and doubt
• Perseverance changes our brain and reshapes our imagination
• Listening to our bodies helps us find new hope in loss

As Thompson reminds us, those who have suffered greatly, including the Apostle Paul, are able to see their stories with a new understanding of God’s presence and unfailing love. Let The Deepest Place show you how to do the same.

A Spiritual and Neurobiological Redemption of Desire

We are people of desire.

In The Soul of Desire, psychiatrist Curt Thompson suggests that underneath all our longings is the desire to be known―and what’s more, that this fundamental yearning manifests itself in our deep need to make things of beauty, revealing who we are to others. Desire and beauty go hand in hand.

But both our craving to be known and our ability to create beauty have been marred by trauma and shame, collapsing our imagination for what God has for us and blinding us to the possibility that beauty could ever emerge from our ashes.

The Soul of Desire is a mature, creative work that:

• Weaves together neuroscience and spiritual formation by drawing on Thompsons work in interpersonal neurobiology and clinical practice,
• Opens up new horizons for thinking about the nature of the mind and what it means to be human, and
• Presents a powerful picture of the capacity of the believing community to reshape our imaginations, hold our desires and griefs together, and invite us into the beauty of God’s presence.

In this New York Times–bestselling book, Dr. Daniel Siegel shows parents how to turn one of the most challenging developmental periods in their children’s lives into one of the most rewarding.

Between the ages of 12 and 24, the brain changes in important, and oftentimes maddening, ways. It’s no wonder that many parents approach their child’s adolescence with fear and trepidation. According to renowned neuropsychiatrist Daniel Siegel’s New York Times bestseller Brainstorm, if parents and teens can work together to form a deeper understanding of the brain science behind all the tumult, they will be able to turn conflict into connection and form a deeper understanding of one another.

In Brainstorm, Siegel illuminates how brain development impacts teenagers’ behavior and relationships. Drawing on important new research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, he explores exciting ways in which understanding how the teenage brain functions can help parents make what is in fact an incredibly positive period of growth, change, and experimentation in their children’s lives less lonely and distressing on both sides of the generational divide.

How many parents have found themselves thinking: ‘I can’t believe I just said to my child the very thing my parents used to say to me! Am I just destined to repeat the mistakes of my parents?’ In Parenting from the Inside Out, child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, MD, and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell, MEd, explore the extent to which our childhood experiences actually do shape the way we parent. Drawing upon stunning new findings in neurobiology and attachment research, they explain how interpersonal relationships directly impact the development of the brain, and they offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories, which will help them raise compassionate and resilient children.

“All behavior makes sense”

‘”It most certainly does not!”, is probably your first reaction.

Parenting and neuroscience expert Robyn Gobbel is here to reveal how all behavior, no matter how baffling, can be explained and remedied. You just need to look past the behavior and understand what’s going on inside.

Robyn decodes the latest brain science into easy-to-understand principles and metaphors to help you become an expert in your child’s behavior. She reveals simple ways to help you regulate and connect with your child, with brain-, body- and sensory-based strategies to overcome day-to-day challenges. She also provides you with the knowledge to understand and regulate your own brain so that you don’t flip your lid when your child flips theirs.

Let this be your lifeline for parenting or caring for any child with baffling behaviors and hidden challenges, including kids who have experienced adversity, or with additional needs.

From a distinguished clinician, pioneer in working with behaviorally challenging kids, and author of the acclaimed The Explosive Child comes a groundbreaking approach for understanding and helping these kids and transforming school discipline.

Frequent visits to the principal’s office. Detentions. Suspensions. Expulsions. These are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don’t abide by school rules, have a hard time getting along with other kids, don’t seem to respect authority, don’t seem interested in learning, and are disrupting the learning of their classmates. But there’s a big problem with these strategies: They are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied.

It’s time for a change in course.

Here, Dr. Ross W. Greene presents an enlightened, clear-cut, and practical alternative. Relying on research from the neurosciences, Dr. Greene offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn’t effective at addressing these difficulties. Emphasizing the revolutionarily simple and positive notion that kids do well if they can, he persuasively argues that kids with behavioral challenges are not attention-seeking, manipulative, limit-testing, coercive, or unmotivated, but that they lack the skills to behave adaptively. And when adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and teach kids the skills in increments they can handle, the results are astounding: The kids overcome their obstacles; the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes; and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced.

Have you ever given up on God? Or been close to giving up on Him? I have. This is the story of a spiritual journey: from feeling abandoned by God to feeling embraced by God. For years I’d felt an oppressive weight bearing down on me: the burden of anger against God. Why did it feel like He never stuck up for me? Why didn’t He rescue me from the abuse, loneliness, and pain of a troubled childhood? Why didn’t He stop my parents from abandoning me to the foster care system? With every disappointment, I became more and more convinced He wasn’t there, wasn’t guiding me through my struggles. He either could not or would not comfort me during the hard times; the times I needed Him most. I didn’t fear God, and secretly despised Him.

It was the drowning death and resuscitation of a young girl that forced me to rethink my contentious and unhealthy relationship with God. Knocked hard out of my irreligious complacency, I came to see tragedy, hope, suffering, and overcoming with new clarity and understanding. Adversity, I realized, can be one of God’s greatest blessings. This spiritual epiphany has filled me with immeasurable gratitude: for the breath of life, the goodness around me, and even for the sad, troubled past I had to overcome. This is a story about rediscovering God, and gaining awareness of His presence.

Rapping Dad Derek Clark’s book I Will Never Give Up is a revelatory story of resilience and redemption. A once deeply distressed and mistreated child, Derek Clark suffered parental abandonment and unthinkable child abuse before age five, when he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. His thirteen years in the San Francisco Bay Area foster care system were colored by extremes of humiliation, aggression, emotional distress, and overwhelming anxiety that left him “labeled” and “misdiagnosed.”

Derek learned to cope in adversity and defied the artificial limitations imposed upon him by parents, adults, neurologists, psychologists, speech therapists, and social workers who mislabeled him. Eventually, he found hope and unexpected support from loving foster parents and a passionate social worker.

Derek knows firsthand that the obstacles of dire circumstances can be a path to great accomplishments. His past has never held him back from achieving what he sets in his heart and mind to do.

Former foster child/youth, Derek Clark, reveals how to connect to your child and build trust. This is his special memoir that will inspire you with hope and the strength to make it through great adversity. His story will inspire you to have hope and to never give up.