How to deal with trauma?

Celia Dawson & Dzmitry Karpuk
​
​Our journey from our old organisation, Health Minds, to our present new and exciting existence, Complex Trauma Therapists, Network in the UK, has been fascinating, rewarding and full of learning.
 
We have now connected with many hundreds of people on their personal and professional journeys and have found some particularly vital topics that many of us have in common. The most important of these is the question, “How to deal with trauma?” This is quite a new field in the area of Psychotherapy and it is now evident that working through the body and the use of experiential therapies, such as gestalt therapy, art therapy and psychodrama are the most effective.
 
Although we use elements of many different approaches, we have found that Focusing Oriented Therapy is particularly useful here. It starts with a “felt sense” of an issue in the body which then changes in a gentle but powerful and healing way. We have developed a number of courses, which are available to new, as well as to experienced therapists, to demonstrate this approach to trauma work.
 
Of vital importance, when working in this difficult field of trauma, is the safety and well-being of the therapist. It is so easy for boundaries to become blurred and for us to pick up the fear and panic of our clients and take it home with us. For this reason, we build into our courses elements of self-care to help us and to remind us not to become enmeshed in our clients’ difficulties. Our new website exists also for therapists of obtain help, support and advice on this issue.
 
One extremely important element that we have found when working with trauma is that no model of therapy will work if the client does not feel safe and has not found some resources within him/herself. How often have we have had clients who came for only one session and then disappeared? Some foundation work is essential we have built this into all of our courses.
 
We are looking forward with eager anticipation to developing this website to help us all with our work and to make available effective ways to deal with the suffering of our clients. 
​