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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

Our Bodies Were Not Designed To Process Social Despair and Collective Trauma Alone

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Patrick Dougherty, M.A., L.P. October 16, 2018

Many of us are experiencing an overwhelming amount of collective turmoil, chaos and trauma in the world today and are feeling adrift when trying to figure out how to cope with it all. For some of us, the social fabric that held us together feels like it is being torn apart, more and more every week. Old patterns and structures of power and oppression many of us thought were dying, have shown themselves not just to be alive, but to be growing.
Certainly, most of us don’t know what to do when the … Read More

Therapist Peer Groups – The “Emotional Lifeboat – Self-care isn’t always enough

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One morning, a few days after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, a female client left me a voicemail just minutes before her 8 a.m. appointment. Her voice shook as she struggled to speak. An hour earlier, her son had showed her pictures on Twitter of a classmate posing with an assault rifle. The day before, this classmate had been beaten up for mocking students who cried after hearing about the Parkland attack. “I might be a little late to our appointment,” she said. “I’ve already spoken about this with the police, and I’m waiting for a call back from … Read More

Reducing the stress for those who work with personal and collective trauma

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April 20, 2018
movingthroughit.org

There is no such thing as “secondary trauma” to the nervous system. We use that term to help us know that the impact of working with traumatized people can be overwhelmingly stressful and needs our attention. And when you work with groups of people suffering from any form of collective trauma, such as battered women, refugees, the homeless, those displaced by war, etc., your own nervous system can easily feel not just stressed, but traumatized.

When working with these populations it is normal at times to feel overwhelmed, anxious, angry, hopeless or dissociated. These are all … Read More

Who Carries the Collective Trauma of War

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Although I have been studying, teaching and writing about collective trauma for many years, I had a breakthrough of understanding recently. In June, I joined a group of 150 people from 39 countries who traveled all the way to Israel to begin a deep and rich training about Collective Trauma (CT) and its impact on our social psychology.

And I learned some things I think I had to leave the country to see more clearly. Namely, the extent of the Collective Trauma of war in the US and its impact on our veterans, me being one of them. I also … Read More

Helping your Brain and Body Survive the Collective Trauma of 2017

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(Originally published in thesaltcollective.org on June 13, 2017)

Already, 2017 has been an extraordinarily difficult year for liberals and progressives. In my practice as a psychologist I have talked with people who are experiencing everything from outrage to dazed disbelief. Myself, I vacillate between the two.

On the basis of these conversations I believe many of us are experiencing what psychologists call Collective Trauma. The technical definition of collective trauma is a blow to the basic tissue of social life that damages the bonds attaching people to one another and impairs the prevailing sense of community.

For the last few … Read More