The collective trauma in our country is in our–and in our clients’–bodies. Here’s what we can do about it.

With massive waves of disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the eruption of unhealed collective trauma of slavery and ongoing oppression and social injustice, and political chaos tearing at our country’s very seams, we are in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis. Given we are heading into winter, the fallout of it all may worsen.

As mental health providers we are first responders. And as citizen therapists, we are in the same situation as our clients. If we don’t recognize how all of this affects us and tend to it, we won’t be as able to recognize how it affects our clients or be able to help them.

In this online, interactive webinar, you will learn a brief and concise overview of what collective trauma is, its personal and collective symptoms, and how to respond to it. We will do this by attending to how collective trauma affects us, personally and as a group, and how it emerges somatically, in our own bodies.

Collective traumas are best attended to in a collective of like-minded people with a shared intention. Groups have a tremendous capacity to not only have a much greater ability to see what the untended trauma is doing to the individual and collective, but also offers a much greater capacity to treat the symptoms and make it possible to attend to the collective trauma in our clients.

The webinar includes two short didactic sessions, two breakout processing triads, two brief periods of mindful body movement, one guided somatic meditation, large group sharing, resource sharing, and reflection on where we might go from here.

Conversation held by:

Patrick Dougherty, M.A., L.P. is a clinical psychologist and has been working with helping to heal collective trauma for decades. Three years ago he went through a year-long training focusing on inter-generational and collective trauma (pocketproject.org) and has been involved since with doing research and learning protocols with others from around thew world to help heal collective trauma.

Jessi Leader, MA, LMFT, is a relationship and sex therapist. She helps folks transform their relationships at her Minneapolis private practice, moodyoctopus.com.

Tom Glaser, MS, LP, is a psychologist with over 30 years of experience. He is author of the amazon.com bestseller Full Heart Living: Conversations with the Happiest People I Know and is about to complete Yoga Teacher Training.