About The Workshop

In recent years we have witnessed a wave of disasters, from terror attacks, earthquakes, fires and the pandemic. As a psychotherapist or counsellor, you are likely to feel compelled to use your skills to alleviate the suffering but may not feel that the skills you learnt about individual trauma incidents are sufficient for the needs of those affected by collective trauma. 

To address this need for therapeutic interventions following collective trauma, we have been delivering this course for nearly a decade now, updating it with learning from our work with the bereaved relatives, survivors, responders and others affected by terror attacks and other forms of disaster or collective trauma.

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 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 drawn from psychosynthesis, creative art forms and myth will be used throughout the workshop.

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.

 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.