Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Researcher | Relationship Scientist
Neuroscience-Informed, Trauma-Responsive Approach to Staff Mental Health, Stress Transformation, and Relationship-Driven Impact
Relationship-centered caregivers—teachers, social workers, counselors, and human-service professionals—are on the front lines of supporting others’ growth, healing, and well-being. Their work is emotionally demanding, relationally intense, and often conducted under high stress, making them vulnerable to burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress.
The Light You Cast™ curriculum and experiences provide professional development that explicitly supports caregivers’ mental health and well-being.
We equip participants to:
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Maintain emotional regulation and resilience, so they can respond effectively rather than react to stress.
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Sustain the quality of their relationships, which are the core of their impact.
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Prevent burnout and preserve their calling, allowing them to continue serving others with presence, care, and effectiveness.
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Model healthy behaviors, showing those they serve how to navigate stress and regulate emotions.
Even with one powerful professional development session, when caregivers are supported through The Light You Cast™, their ability to support others is strengthened. Making professional development that prioritizes mental health not optional, but essential.
"This was the best professional development session I ever attended."
High School Teacher
Every Professional Development Session includes
NERVOUS SYSTEM HEALTH
PRACTICES
designed to melt tension, reduce cortisol levels, regulate and "re-fine" nervous system, soothe an overactive mind, and elevate the mood while strengthening the physical body.
We will also integrate specific movemindfully® practices by Kathy Flaminio to expand your tool kit of strategies to metabolize stress and trauma reactions in your own body, and you can take these practices forward and use with your students, clients, or patients.
CURRENT RESEARCH and BEST PRACTICE on STRESS TRANSFORMATION
designed to help you recognize early signs of burnout, compassion fatigue, and chronic stress fatigue, this program guides you in navigating the stress cycle, preventing toxic stress from building up and blocking your body’s natural healing and repair capacities. Through our signature, trauma-responsive Burn Balanced™ process, you’ll learn how your thoughts shape your emotions and actions. By gently reframing unhelpful patterns, you restore clarity, emotional steadiness, and choice—learning to respond with intention rather than react from stress.
"PUT INTO PRACTICE"
HANDOUTS
that detail concrete, transformational tools and reflective practices with beautiful illustrations by Minneapolis-based artist, Jinjer Markley, that can be immediately implemented and applied to one's professional and personal context and used with the youth you serve.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Community support reduces stress and strengthens mental health by offering space for reflection, care, and shared connection. Belonging nurtures resilience and sustains the relational health that holds the whole community in balance.
Standalone Professional Development Formats
Select your session length
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One to Four Hour --- Single PD Event
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One Day Immersive Event | 6 hours | 6 Clock Hours
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Two Day Event | 4 - 6 hours per day | 8-12 Clock Hours
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Three Day Event | 4 - 6 hours per day | 12-18 Clock Hours
Select your preferred session focus
Browse the most in-demand PD topics and know that during your complimentary consultation, we will customize a session that speaks to your staff and aligns with your desired intent for impact.
The Source of Inner Empowerment
Explore the core features of your calling; your purpose, strengths, and values, and how acting in alignment with these fuels motivation and energy, prevents burnout, and creates natural boundaries that protect your calm, focus, and inner peace.
The Science of Safety & Your Stress Appraisal System
Learn how your nervous system works, how your particular nervous system perceives and responds stress physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, and behaviorally, and how to balance the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses; protecting yourself from the burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma stress cycle.
Stress, Tension, and Transformation
Burnout and compassion fatigue symptoms are protective, not defective. Learn the difference between safe and toxic stress, the 4 E's of the stress/ trauma response, how to read the symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress, and discover how resilience is built through the stress cycle, learning to work with tension and failure, rather than against it so it becomes a catalyst for grow, development, and self-actualization.
Compassion as the Connector in Restorative Relationships
Explore research in psychology and neuroscience showing how practicing self-compassion activates the brain’s soothing systems to a regulated state where you can listen, reflect, and repair; core functions of restorative dialogue. Learn to identify stress-inducing self-talk, understand its underlying triggers, and apply a 4-step CARE strategy to transform self-criticism, shame, and anxiety into self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-agency (the three core elements that prevent burnout).
Mirroring and Modeling Mental Health through Resonant Relationships
Learn to interpret behavior through a nervous-system lens where you are able to instinctively see actions as signals rather than problems and practice co-regulatory, relational strategies that help others feel safe, understood, and supported. Grounded in healing-centered engagement, this approach emphasizes the “what happened to you?” perspective, fostering connection, emotional safety, and social emotional learning.
The Miracle is in the Mirco
Discover how small, everyday interactions grounded in simple relational practices become powerful sources of energy and empowerment for both you and those you serve. Explore the science of relational attunement and discover how to create micro-miracle moments that set the conditions for others to move from surviving to thriving, leaving a lasting impact through connection and presence
