A Developmental and Relational Framework on Traumatization
Making Meaning and the In-Between
Learn from experts over 6 sessions
DATE
Oct 26 – Nov 30, 2026
FORMAT
Six 75-minute sessions – Online via Zoom
This 6-lecture series, created for the Trauma Research Foundation in collaboration with the Relational Dynamics Collaborative, explores how we construct meaning about ourselves and the world, and how this meaning is embedded in our biology through early relationships and ongoing development. Aimed at therapists, doctors, and educators, this powerful program emphasizes understanding trauma as a complex and contextual process rather than isolated major events.
By shifting from traditional attachment frameworks to a “relational health” model, participants can better address client challenges. The series also highlights the therapist-client relationship, where unresolved issues from early relationships often manifest in adult clients, providing valuable insights for effective intervention.
Six Sessions, Six Experts
*CE credits available
Recordings Available
The Relational Dynamics Collaborative
Dr. Ed Tronick, PhD
Pioneer in Developmental and Clinical Psychology
EdTronick, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist and is recognized internationally as a researcher on infants, children, and parenting. He developed the Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm and videotaped microanalytic studies of infant en face interactions, pioneered studies of the effects of maternal depression on infants, and conducted numerous cross-cultural studies of infant and child development. His Mutual Regulation Model and Dyadic Expansion of Consciousness hypothesis are widely accepted accounts of social interactions and therapeutic processes.
Dr. Tronick was a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is director of the Child Development Unit, an Associate Professor Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard School of Public Health at Harvard. He is founder and chief faculty of the Early Relational Health Fellowship.
Dr. Claudia Gold, MD
Pediatrician & Author
Claudia M. Gold, MD, is a pediatrician and writer who practiced general pediatrics for over 20 years and now specializes in early relational health. She has clinical experience in a wide variety of communities and currently works at a volunteer clinic in rural Western Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the 8-year advanced scholars program of the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute and UMass Boston Fellowship in Infant-Parent Mental Health, where she was on the faculty for ten years. She is the author of 5 books on developmental science written for both general and professional readers, most recently Getting to Know You: Lessons in Early Relational Health from Infants and Caregivers (Teachers College Press, March 2025). She co-authored, with infant researcher Ed Tronick, The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs in Relationships are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust (Little, Brown Spark 2020). Dr. Gold speaks frequently to professionals from a broad range of disciplines both in the US and internationally.
Dr Beril Bulucu, MD
Pediatrician, Expertise in Infant Mental Health
Dr. Beril Bayrak Bulucu is a board-certified pediatrician with over 20 years of primary care experience with expertise in infant mental health, early relational health and community pediatrics. She is endorsed as an Infant Mental Health Clinical Mentor and Reflective Supervisor. She completed a Parent-Infant Mental Health fellowship at UMass Boston in 2017 and is NMT Level 1 certified.
Dr Bayrak serves as a primary care pediatrician in Lowell, MA. She serves as consulting faculty at the Brazelton Institute (Boston Children’s Hospital) and co-facilitates the AAP’s Infant Mental Health Special Interest Group. She provides reflective consultation to the Massachusetts Infant Mental Health Association and supports early childhood professionals across various systems of care.
As a co-founder of the Zeru Foundation, Dr. Bayrak is committed to supporting historically excluded communities. Her current work includes international trauma-informed caregiver training and disaster relief initiatives in Türkiye. She is a dedicated advocate for resilience, trauma prevention, and reflective practice in medicine.
Dr. Richard Honigman, MD
Pediatrician, Expertise in Relational Health
Richard Honigman, M.D., F.A.A.P., is a Board-certified pediatrician with over 40 years clinical experience with an interest in developmental, relational and environmental aspects of early life and later outcomes following adversity. He was part of the initial NYS Project TEACH in 2010-2011, graduated UMass Boston Infant Parent Mental Health Post Graduate Fellowship Program (2013), completed Bessel Van Der Kolk’s online Traumatic Stress Studies (2015) and Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics Phase 1 (2018) and 2 (2020) trainings. He had a co-located mental health therapist in his office from South Oaks Hospital. He has been a speaker on Adverse Childhood Experiences for New York State American Academy of Pediatrics (NYS AAP) District 2 Chapter 2, and for the UMass IPMH program. He has served as a pediatric advisor for Adelphi University Developmental Psychology Infant Mental Health Program’s interdisciplinary conferences. Dr. Honigman also collaborated with Docs for Tots Help Me Grow/ Center for Youth Wellness in their ACES screening in the primary care office initiative. In 2019, Dr. Honigman was appointed NYS AAP District 2 Chapter 2 Developmental/Behavioral Pediatrics Committee Chairman, and elected to the Board of Directors of the New York State Association for Infant Mental Health. Dr. Honigman was awarded an AAP Special Achievement Award for his use of a National AAP Grant to increase primary care and developmental pediatrics collaboration. In his capacity as Committee Chair, Dr. Honigman has spoken in many regional academic conferences on various topics relating to neurodevelopment and adversity. For the past several years into the present Dr. Honigman has been a co-facilitator for the AAP Infant Mental Health Interest Group.
Since 2009, Dr. Honigman has been Reach Within’s (NYC-Grenada based NGO) Scientific Chair working to improve outcomes for children in residential homes affected by early life adversity in Grenada and the Caribbean, helping to devise somatosensory and psychosocial interventional programs. Additionally, Dr. Honigman has hosted and led international conferences in Grenada for child caregivers, assisted UNICEF in the Eastern Caribbean Region, was a 2018 Rome World Association for Infant Mental Health conference panelist, a presenter at the 2018 Bermuda ACES Awareness Conference and participated in Clinton Global Initiative/Clinton Action Network activities.
Dr. Robert Meeder, MD
Pediatrician & Researcher
Dr. Rob Meeder is a pediatrician with extensive experience both in general pediatrics and mental health. Starting as a general pediatrician who worked in full-scope pediatrics in an acute-care hospital setting for many years, he shifted his focus to mental health and behavioral medicine in a community-based setting. From 2020 to 2025, he was the first Medical Director of the Family, Child & Youth Mental Health Program at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care and is currently Physician Lead for Family Child and Youth Mental Health System Integration. He conducts research and clinical work in collaboration with local mental health agencies. He is an Adjunct Clinical Investigator at the Waypoint Research Institute. Dr. Meeder completed his medical education at McMaster University and Pediatrics residency at Western University before moving to Orillia. In 2024, he completed a Fellowship in Early Relational Health at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Meeder has developed curriculum and provided instruction for the Infant & Early Mental Health Program at Sick Kids. He is a member of the Canadian Pediatrics Society Early Years Committee and co-founder of the Canadian Early Relational Health Network. He is a member of the Relational Dynamics Collaborative with Dr. Ed Tronick – a group dedicated to bringing the principles of relational health to audiences around the world.
Dr. Michael Arenson, MD
Pediatrician & Researcher
Dr. Michael Arenson (Mike) is a pediatrician and researcher at Hennepin Healthcare and holds an affiliate faculty position at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He specializes in general pediatrics with a focus on promoting early relational health and addressing developmental trauma. His clinical expertise includes caring for children in foster care and supporting families facing adversity.
Mike is the Principal Investigator for Children’s HealthWatch’s Minneapolis Data Collection Site at Hennepin Healthcare. His research focuses on how systems (in particular, pediatrics) can better support strong, nurturing relationships between young children and their caregivers—especially those navigating poverty, housing instability, foster care, or other relational disruptions. He’s passionate about using research to inform policy and practice that help all kids and families thrive.
Session Schedule
Live sessions are held on Mondays from October 26 through November 30, 2026.
If you are unable to attend live, you may still participate in the program – the recordings will be available, and continuing education (CE) credits may be earned from live or recorded sessions.
1
Seeing Trauma Through The Relational Lens
Why relationships are both the problem and the intervention, not just the context.
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This session introduces the concepts of infant mental health and early relational health as foundational to trauma therapy. Using a typical clinical case of severe infant dysregulation—often presenting as persistent “colic” or disturbances in feeding and sleeping—we delve into the idea that early development is best understood as unfolding within relationships, rather than being merely influenced by them.
Core concepts are presented from an infant mental health perspective: the importance of a child’s ability to appropriate energy and information; the role of relational scaffolding in growth and development; mutual regulation, which illustrates how primary relationships process and transmit traumatic stress.
Additionally, we conduct a thorough analysis of the Still-Face paradigm. Therapists will learn to view the Still-Face not only as a laboratory experiment but also as a real-time window into the pre-verbal origins of dissociation, relational terror, and somatic collapse in infancy, particularly when mutual regulation fails.
Dr. Ed Tronick, PhD & Dr. Claudia Gold, MD
- Oct 26, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
2
Repair, Infant Agency, and the Pre-Verbal Blueprint
How does the external world get integrated into the infants’ internal world ?
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Building on Session One, this session further develops our understanding of the infant-caregiver relationship by viewing the infant as an active participant in the shared process of meaning-making.
We will examine dyadic interactions within a broad ecological context , exploring how the external world becomes integrated into the infant’s psychobiological organization, and introducing the Buffer Transduction Model and its varied clinical applications with children and families.
Therapists will learn to recognize communicative exchanges between dyads as essential mechanisms for relational health and resilience against trauma, including the real-life barriers to interactive repair.
Across these levels, the caregiver-infant dyad functions not as a mere risk or protective factor but as a transforming interface—and this model of buffering extends to psychotherapy, where the therapist-patient dyad can offer regulation and repair.
The aim isn’t to erase earlier pathways, but to build alternatives with enough recurrence and relational force to hold outside treatment. In both development and therapy, repair reshapes not just feeling, but which resources, meanings, and future states become available to the person.
Dr. Ed Tronick & Dr Beril Bulucu, MD
- November 2, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
3
Brain, Body, and the Somatic Timeline of Early Threat
How experience writes itself into the developing nervous system.
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This session provides a clinical overview of dyadic development during fetal and early childhood, focusing on how different prenatal and postnatal factors, states and infant developmental stages influence ongoing survival strategies, stress responses and setpoints, psychological and physiological health and dysfunction for both the infant and their caregiver(s). Instead of relying solely on detailed anatomical brain mapping, we take a practical phenomenological approach, highlighting how an infant and caregivers’ resulting meaning-making capacities and capabilities alternate between states of stress and calm.
We will explore how subcortical systems—responsible for assessing safety, threats, and life stressors—interact, especially in situations of early relational adversity to affect higher sequential brain functions, future meaning-making, relational health and one’s sense of the world.
Additionally, we will discuss how maternal experiences of early life adversity and prenatal stress can impact the developing fetuses and newborns as well as influence the dyadic relationship. Furthermore, we will look at how culturally desirable pre- and postnatal environments can influence newborn and dyadic development.
Dr. Richard Honigman, MD
- November 9, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
4
From Positivism to Phenomenology: Reframing Pediatric "Disorders" as Relational Adaptations
Process over symptom
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We live in a culture that leans heavily toward an empirical, reductionist, and positivist view of mental health. This perspective often overlooks the holistic, relational, and embodied experiences of individuals navigating the complexities of life. In this session, we will contrast traditional, symptom-focused psychiatric diagnostic models with a more process-oriented, relational framework for understanding early childhood distress.
We will explore how subcortical systems—responsible for assessing safety, threats, and life stressors—interact, especially in situations of early relational adversity to affect higher sequential brain functions, future meaning-making, relational health and one’s sense of the world.
Additionally, we will discuss how maternal experiences of early life adversity and prenatal stress can impact the developing fetuses and newborns as well as influence the dyadic relationship. Furthermore, we will look at how culturally desirable pre- and postnatal environments can influence newborn and dyadic development.
Dr. Robert Meeder, MD
- November 16, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
5
The Clinical Moment: Not-Knowing and Reflective Inquiry
What you actually do differently in the room
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The meeting of an infant and a caregiver, whether at birth or through adoption, represents the prototype of human relationships, as each gets to know the other in a messy, imperfect, and uncertain process. This session will apply the lessons from our first relationships to guide clinical work with clients across the lifespan. Drawing on core principles of early relational health addressed in the four prior presentations, we will see how these concepts inform the moment of clinical engagement. Participants will learn the model of “listening in”: listening from a not-knowing stance with a willingness to make mistakes and to be surprised. Clinical case material will reveal the power of playing in the uncertainty to facilitate transformative moments of growth and connection.
Dr. Claudia Gold, MD
- November 23, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
6
Re-imagining Systems in an ERH Ecosystem
What we need to change in culture and society
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Throughout this series, participants have explored how meaning is constructed through early relationships and how those experiences become biologically embedded across development. This final session asks a natural next question: if relationships are foundational to health and healing, how should our systems change?
Rather than viewing healthcare, education, mental health, and social services as separate and “broken,” we will acknowledge that – like the clients we serve – they grew to meet the needs of a specific time and circumstance, and examine how they can adapt and grow to support developmental and relational health.
Drawing on examples from pediatric practice, public health, and community systems, we will explore how an Early Relational Health framework can serve as a new organizing principle for practice, policy, financing, and culture. Participants will leave with a practical vision for building systems that not only treat adversity but also intentionally create the relational conditions in which children, families, and communities can thrive.
Dr. Michael Arenson, MD
- November 30, 2026
- 12:00 -1:15pm ET
- 1.25 CE
Register for the Program
CE Credit
Full Program - with CE
$275
- All six live sessions, Q&A
- Session replays (via course hub)
- *CE credit for live or recorded viewing
No CE Credit
Full Program - No CE
$225
- All six live sessions, Q&A
- Session replays (via course hub)
Refund Policy: We understand that circumstances can change, so we want to make our refund policy clear. Registration fees for this webinar are fully refundable if you submit your request in writing to info@traumaresearchfoundation by October 21 at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. Unfortunately, requests received after this date, as well as any no-shows, will be non-refundable. Please note that theTrauma Research Foundation reserves the right to deny refunds for any registrations that do not comply with these guidelines. Thank you for your understanding.
Series Learning Objectives
By the end of this series, participants will be able to:
- Understand how, guided by the principle that all biological systems must gain energy and information to grow and develop, early relational experiences, biology, and trauma interact across early childhood through the concepts of meaning-making, mutual regulation, mismatch and repair, and the buffer-transducer-enhancing model of development
- Transition from traditional, deterministic symptom-based psychiatric models (such as tracking isolated behaviors) toward a deeper clinical appreciation of the ongoing dynamic processes and relational experiences affecting development, for better or worse.
- Track and work explicitly with the embodied, non-verbal mind-body connection and meaning making between an infant/young child and their caregiver.
- Demonstrate a clinical "not-knowing" stance modeled on the prototype relationship of infant and caregiver getting to know each other in a messy uncertain process.
- Consider how current systems and culture undermine a more holistic and rich understanding of mental well-being and relational health and how systems and society should change to promote this.
*Continuing Education Credits (CE) Information
→ You can earn up to 7.5 live or enduring CE credits total by attending live sessions, viewing recorded materials or a combination of both.
→ If you cannot attend the live sessions, you can still earn all 7.5 enduring CE credits via recorded materials.
→ Each of the sex sessions offers 1.25 CE credits for a total of 7.5 credits available.
→ Live CE credits must be claimed within 30 days of program completion, by December 30, 2026.
→ Enduring CE credits must be claimed within 3 years of program completion, by November 30, 2029.
Individuals Eligible for Credit.
The following individuals/professionals are eligible for credit (as designated below) through attendance and/or participation in the CEAs described below.
1. Physicians: AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
2. Nurses: ANCC NCPD contact hours
3. Pharmacists: ACPE CPE contact hours
4. Physician Associates: AAPA Category 1 Credit
5. Dentists: ADA-CERP CME credit
6. Psychologists: APA CME Credit
7. Social Workers: ASWB-ACE Credit
8. Dietitians: CDR CPEUs
9. Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer: BOC
Other Participants.
Any participants who do not fall within the categories identified in subsection (A)(c)(i) shall receive a “Certificate of Participation” that can be presented to his/her licensing board for acceptance. Pinnacle does not guarantee the participants that his/her licensing board will accept the Certificate of Participation or otherwise award any credits in connection with the same.
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