People with a trauma history tend to be highly sensitive individuals. Trauma shapes their behaviors, choices, and even their life trajectories. As both a trauma expert and a trauma survivor herself, Jennifer Sweeton knows intimately the impacts of trauma on the human experience.
Dr. Jennifer Sweeton is a world renowned trauma psychologist, speaker, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and developer of a new cutting-edge PTSD treatment, Neural Desensitization and Integration Training (NDIT). She is also the owner of a mental health clinic in the Kansas City area where she provides specialized trauma treatment in a private practice setting. She is also a professional coach, providing brain optimization tools and techniques to high achieving and high performing career professionals.
Dr. Sweeton also writes books on trauma psychology and the neuroscience of mental health. She is a best-selling author whose expertise is in high demand from publishers like PESI, W.W. Norton and Company, and New Harbinger. Her 2019 release, the Trauma Treatment Toolbox, is an Amazon #1 Best-Seller in Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Psychology. Her most recent book, Eight Key Brain Areas of Mental Health and Illness, has been named the Amazon #1 New Release in Cognitive Psychology after its November 2021 release. “Eight Key Brain Areas” thoroughly explains the main areas of the brain and their involvement in mental health and illness in a way therapists can easily understand and apply in practice.
Given her expertise in neuroscience-based applications to heal the brain, many are curious about how Dr. Sweeton applies these techniques to her own life.
“The one thing that has been the biggest contributor to my success to date is the willingness to take chances. In doing so, I have to be willing to fail or to be rejected. While this can be painful, it can also be rewarding, and over time I’ve found that getting good at failing is a skill that can be acquired. With repeated practice failure hurts less and I’m more able to focus on how to pick myself up and continue setting goals.”
In clinical mental health, this sort of behavioral approach is called exposure therapy. It was developed to help people confront their fears by exposing themselves to the very objects, activities, and situations that scare them or cause anxiety. Repeated exposure to the stress stimulus helps a person retrain their mind and body’s automatic response to the stressor, decreasing negative feelings and reactions.