Certified in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Certificant of MD Psychotherapy Association of Canada
Caring for Self
while Caring for Others
A program designed for healthcare providers, first responders and others working in high stress environments.
Since its inception in 2012, the Caring For Self While Caring For Others program has offered workshops and presentations to physicians and other health care providers and administrators.
This series of interconnected workshops addresses the fundamental root causes of stress and trauma-induced suffering. They are relevant and adaptable to a wide range of settings and needs.
Sessions can be offered stand-alone or in various combinations. Because sessions build on one another, we've been able to customize the series to accommodate different groups and interests; from one hour lectures to five day retreats.
All sessions include didactic and experiential components. A somatic exercise is integrated into each of our presentations.
“Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.”
Dr. Stephen Porges
Our series draws from:
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The trauma and burnout fields
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Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and the Comprehensive Resource Model
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Contemporary music, literature, television and film
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Blogs, print and online journalism
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Modern psychoanalysis
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Social media including physician-oriented sites
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Eastern practices including yoga, Qi Gong and schools of meditation
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Interventions such as journaling and art therapy
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The trauma-informed model
Our series emphasizes the importance of understanding and working with the survival physiology (or what Dave Grossman calls "the wild brain"), which is activated during states of unremitting stress and overwhelm. Over time continued functioning in survival mode endangers our health and wellbeing.
"We have a brain that was field-tested millions of years ago in the wild. I call it the wild brain to distinguish it from the logic brain so many people revere. The logic brain can’t do much for you once the situation becomes critical. The logic brain is plodding and unoriginal. It is burdened with judgment, slow to accept reality, and spends valuable energy thinking about how things ought to be, used to be, or could be. The logic brain has strict boundaries and laws it wants to obey, but the wild brain obeys nothing, conforms to nothing, answers to nobody, and will do whatever it takes. It is unfettered by emotion, politics, politeness, and as illogical as the wild brain may sometimes seem, it is, in the natural order of things, completely logical. It just doesn’t care to convince us of anything by using logic."
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman