Trauma-informed, somatic, and culturally grounded education.
Trauma-informed, somatic, and culturally grounded education.
About TIES
Trauma Informed Education Services was built on a simple premise: that the clinicians working with the most complex, most underserved clients are often the ones with the least specific training for the work they are doing.
This is not a criticism of helping professionals. It is a structural problem. C-PTSD is not in the DSM. Somatic approaches are rarely taught in graduate programs. Indigenous perspectives on trauma and healing are almost never integrated into clinical training, and when they are, they tend to appear as a module at the end rather than a thread woven throughout.
TIES exists to change that, one course at a time.
Who Is Behind TIES
My name is Ist’tłā (Wanda Wiwcharuck). I am Tahltan on my mother’s side and Gitxsan on my father’s side, a member of the Tsesk’iye (Crow) Clan. I live and work on Ts’msyen Territory in Kxeen (Prince Rupert), BC.
I came to this work from the inside. I carry C-PTSD. My healing journey began over thirty years ago, long before I had language for what I was living. Over time that journey deepened into formal training in trauma-informed education, somatic coaching, and somatic EMDR. That combination of lived experience and clinical training is not incidental to TIES. It is the foundation of it.
I am also a qualified BC educator and have worked for more than two decades in education and social development. I know what it looks like when helping professionals are doing their best without the specific framework the work requires. TIES exists because that gap is closeable.
Credentials and Training
Certified Trauma-Informed Coach
Certified Somatic Coach
Somatic EMDR Certification
Qualified BC Educator
20+ years in education and social development
Why TIES Exists
Most clinical training programs teach PTSD. They do not teach C-PTSD.
The result is that clinicians working with some of the most complex, most underserved clients, people whose trauma began in childhood, whose nervous systems were shaped by chronic relational threat, whose symptoms have been misread as borderline traits, treatment resistance, or personality disorder, are doing that work without the specific framework it requires.
Add to that the near-total absence of somatic training in most graduate programs, and the consistent failure of clinical education to integrate Indigenous perspectives as foundational knowledge rather than a cultural competency checkbox, and you have a significant gap between what helping professionals are trained to do and what their most complex clients actually need.
TIES exists to close that gap. Not through abstract theory, but through grounded, practical, clinically rigorous training that professionals can bring into their work the following week.
A Note on Indigenous Lens
The Indigenous lens in TIES courses is not a module. It is not a land acknowledgment at the beginning and a cultural competency checklist at the end. It is woven throughout, because that is the only way it is honest.
I bring this lens as a Tahltan and Gitxsan woman who has spent her life navigating the intersection of Indigenous experience, intergenerational trauma, and Western systems of care. I know what it costs when that intersection is misread. I know what it means when a clinician has the framework to meet it with accuracy and care.
The goal of the Indigenous lens in TIES training is not to make professionals feel guilty or overwhelmed. It is to give them something useful: a way of understanding trauma that is more complete, more accurate, and more honouring of the full human experience their clients bring into the room.
Sister Platform
TIES is built for helping professionals. If you are a survivor of complex trauma looking for resources, community, and support for your own healing journey, you are welcome at CPTSD Warrior.
CPTSD Warrior is a survivor-led platform offering education, grounding practices, and a community for people living with C-PTSD. It is where lived experience takes centre stage.