In this workshop we will share lessons learnt from our work with those directly affected by the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017 and will frame those lessons within a broader model of working therapeutically with collective trauma. We will draw on experience from a broad range of terrorist attacks and other disasters that we have worked with over the past 20 years from 9/11 to the London bombings of 7/7 to Paris attacks, Manchester Arena attack, Grenfell Fire and the pandemic.  

The workshop will make use of Jelena’s lived experience as a bereaved 9/11 family member and psychotherapist involved in design and delivery of several post-disaster programmes, most recently the Manchester Attack Support Group Programme.  

Teachings of psychosynthesis, creative art forms and myth will be used throughout the workshop.

This one-day, interactive workshop will address the impact of disasters on those directly affected, such as bereaved relatives or survivors and on larger groups such as local communities or entire nations. It will outline therapeutic work in responding to disaster trauma from acute stage intervention to long-term integration on the personal and collective level. The examples will be drawn from the Manchester Arena as well as a number of other incidents.  

We will attempt to deepen our understanding of the relationship between collective and individual trauma and how to best use our therapeutic skills to help those who suffered a disaster. 

While there are many therapeutic methods for working with trauma on an individual level, there is much less available in terms of collective trauma that a disaster represents. As therapists, can we simply use what we know about individual trauma to apply it to mass trauma such as a terror attack?

In dealing with the additional impact of processes such as public inquiries,  commemorations and media reporting we will be looking at the dynamic interplay between personal and collective recovery.

Additionally, a great deal of conventional therapeutic thinking is based around "treating" pathological disorders such as  PTSD or complicated mourning.  In recent years, however, there has been a growing awareness of post-traumatic growth amongst those affected by trauma.

We will be looking at this idea both on the individual and collective level, examining whether such post-traumatic growth can occur at the societal level and how we as therapists could play a part in this change in culture.