Category: Healing

The Dark Side of Western Individual-Focused Psychotherapy

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How it Severs Our Connections to our Families, Ancestors, and Community—and How to Fix It

By Patrick Dougherty, M.A., L. P.
Nov. 1, 2025

Reflections on racism, war and patriarchal violence toward women

Ever since I became a therapist nearly 50 years ago, I’ve loved what I do. I love the feeling of continuously honing my craft, challenging myself, and finding new ways to help my clients. And over the years, I’ve watched, filled with awe and inspiration, as our field has made exciting breakthroughs in trauma treatment. But for a long time, when I was the one sitting on … Read More

Patrick Dougherty awaits a helicopter at the end of his tour.

How To Heal Personal and Collective War Trauma

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Image: Patrick Dougherty awaits a helicopter at the end of his tour in Vietnam.

I couldn’t talk about my war trauma until 1976, which was five years after I left Vietnam. This was four years before post-traumatic stress disorder was even formally recognized as a medical diagnosis. In 1979, I went to the Veterans Affairs for help. They told me I didn’t have enough war experience to warrant any support from them; that all my trauma actually came from my traumatic childhood, and had nothing to do with Vietnam. This is what they told just about every veteran back then.… Read More

Enduring or Evolving – that is a choice

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2-3-2020

A letter to my clients, a letter to the world

Hi all, It has been several months since I wrote addressing the difficult world we are living in and thought the start of the year would be a good time to send out an email. What a year we have had collectively, let alone personally. And we have several months left in this year of this ongoing collective trauma that is causing so much social despair and anger, and also is often exasperating our personal issues. The toll on the mental health of the world, or our nation, and … Read More

Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service — Until You Welcome Me Home

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It has been fifty years since I was with the Marine Corps infantry in Vietnam, and time and distance have allowed me to see and feel some things more clearly. Two things surprise me: one is that I now actually feel some pride for serving my country. And the second is my clear sense that something could change for me and many vets with your help, significantly, and the surprise is that I am willing to say to you, “Please help us come home.”

War is an ugly business, and those of us who come home can carry painful baggage. … Read More

Our Nervous System Never Experiences Secondary Trauma: It is always Primary

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Our Nervous System Never Experiences Secondary Trauma: It is always Primary
How to reduce the personal cost of our work helping those suffering from collective trauma.

Our nervous systems cannot understand our minds’ belief that we are experiencing “secondary” trauma. We tell ourselves it is secondary because the people we are working with have experienced a trauma that is direct to them, and because we are working with them it then indirectly affects us. But the nervous system doesn’t care about our rationalizing.

When we have heard enough stories from the refugees we work with who have fled their troubled … Read More

Healing Unprocessed Collective Trauma

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This is a webinar I did on Nov 7, 2018, for a great group called Psychology for Peacebuilding (find them on FB). Here is how it was posted.

Healing Unprocessed Collective Trauma, Nov 7, 2018, for Psychology of Peacebuilding (FB)

Patrick Dougherty, M.A., L.P. is a licensed psychologist with 40 years of clinical work and social activism. He is part of an international group working with and developing models dealing with collective trauma. (www.pocketproject.org) He is a former US Marine who served in Vietnam and is leading a group specifically working with the collective trauma of armed violence, genocide and … Read More