Tag: collective trauma

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