EMDR Group

for Frontline Healthcare Professionals 

& First Responders

 

This is an one-of-a-kind EMDR Therapy Group for people who are actively managing "ongoing traumatic distress" as a part of their day-to-day work. This group follows a specialized group protocol using EMDR therapy to treat ongoing, unprocessed traumatic events. The persistent nature traumatic exposure in the workplace pile up to create a mound of trauma that seemingly doesn't stop growing. This is hard on your nervous system and can ultimately lead to burn out and other negative health consequences including PTSD. 

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Read more about EMDR here 

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Value of the Group

• Decrease negative impact of ongoing traumatic distress

• Increase day-to-day functioning

• Learn and practice effective coping skills

• Affordable 

• Short waitlist with ongoing groups offered

• Research shows clinically significant results using the EMDR Group Treatment Protocol for Ongoing Traumatic Distress for First Responders

• Belong to a community of people who are in a similar circumstance

• Guided by expert psychotherapists 

• Learn to better regulate your nervous system when you think about or are experiencing a stressful event

• Change negative thoughts, emotions and physical reactions connected to ongoing stressors

• Build self-confidence and feel empowered

• Option to remain anonymous in the online format

• You don't have to talk and "share" or hear other trauma stories also preserving  confidentiality and privacy and minimization of secondary exposure to trauma 

• Prevent career burnout and allow for optimal functioning at the workplace

• Gain hope for the future

 

About the Group

This group is for people who work in a field where ongoing distress is inherent. This puts a commonality and generally community "feel" to the group. Even the facilitators fit into this classification as we work with trauma on a regular basis as well making the process feel more credible and give a feeling that you are "in the right place".

 

Another thing that makes this group different is that this is not a typical "talking" support group. Members face their traumas and heal together without having to "share" and expose members to experiencing vicarious trauma. In this group people will be working on their own individual silent internal process among a group of people while the facilitators give directions and guide you through the process. This technique is called "blind to therapist" meaning you can do EMDR processing without the therapist-or in this case includes other group members knowing your "target". 

 

Sessions will start with a short intro, then a guided meditation to relax you and then we will merge into the "processing" of the ongoing trauma incidents and then close the session with a "containing" exercise. Participants will lastly be given a small period of time to share one positive part of their experience if they so chose. But speaking is optional and not required. This is the format of the group that will be repeated over 4 weeks.

 

Am I in Ongoing Traumatic Distress?

Remember, part of your reaction to traumatic experiences is based on your subjective emotional and psychological assessment of the situation and the "meaning" you assign to it. Also factoring into this is your perception of your ability to cope. This will determine the intensity of your reaction and how it negatively impacts different areas of your life. It also determines what mode you will go into in terms of fight-flight-freeze  or complete shutdown. In real life this can look like severe anxiety including PTSD, to feeling appearing numb and blank, or very depressed and fatigued. 

 

Even if you've never recognized yourself to be in a traumatic environment, or that you are being affected by negative experiences that happen everyday, it wouldn't be a stretch to imply that facing these experiences on an ongoing basis would take a negative toll on your brain and body. Have you just gotten used to it?  So the questions become, "can I go on like this?" , "Is the impact of the stress interfering in my personal or career goals?" "Is the ongoing distress interfering in my relationship with my loved ones?" , "Is it leading me down the path of burnout?". 

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Ongoing Distress vs Trauma From the Past

When people  are in ongoing distress they haven't had a "resting period" when the typical integration of memories would naturally attempt to occur. You typically live in fight/flight/freeze/collapse mode and it may impede your ability to reflect, focus have a sense of safety or peace. Traumatic experiences are often unable to be mentally, emotionally and physically integrated by humans without conscious effort such as reprocessing with a therapy of some kind. People will feel traumatized for days, months even years if they do not have a safety resting period to integrate experiences. Overtime the person may not be able to pinpoint trauma targets because there are multiple incidents that have stacked on top of each other and it feels like there is no beginning middle or end. An effort can be made to use EMDR therapy to desensitize and reprocess some incidents and its related psychological channels and it will help to a degree. Trauma from the past that may or may not related to the ongoing nature of your present distressed can be processed and put into long-term memory and feel like its in the past and not play such a present role in your life.  However because of the ongoing nature of your distress it will also be about "managing" your symptoms and increasing coping skills especially so they don't rise to clinical levels.

 

Other Ongoing Traumatic Distress Examples:

Examples of experiences of ongoing traumatic distress (This is not an exhaustive list):

• Exposure to war as a civilian or military personnel

• Experiencing or witnessing workplace bullying, or a toxic work environment

• Experiencing ongoing racism

• Experiencing ongoing sexism

• Experiencing/witnessing domestic violence

• Living in constant physical pain

• Exposed to or witnessing any form of abuse or neglect on a regular basis

• Experiencing ongoing homo-phobia

• Experiencing any kind of ongoing personal discrimination

• Living with the persistent symptoms of a clinical mental disorder

• Living with a serious medical diagnosis

• Being in a caregiving role that is very difficult

• Experiencing a high conflict divorce

• Pressures of daily living that add up

• Raising a child with special needs

• Living in a conflictual, or dysfunctional environment

• Consistent loss experiences in general or loss by death

• Recent exposure to a natural or manmade disaster

• Intergeneration trauma

• Issues related to drugs and alcohol other addictions

• Homelessness

• Unstable finances-debt

• MORE