How do you choose the best therapy following a traumatic humanitarian incident or burnout?
Here is a look at choosing the best therapy for humanitarians as recommended by guest author Amanda Lee. Find Additional information about her services here.
A humanitarian aid worker inquires as to how one goes about choosing the “right track” for therapy following a traumatic incident during humanitarian deployment. How do you know which therapeutic methodology is right for you? Is it important that a therapist has field work experience? Do you have to confront traumatic memories in order to heal?
Dear Amanda,
May I ask for your opinion? I want to start therapy after an incident that occurred during my field mission. I have been very overwhelmed by choices and the number of different therapy practices available. I understand that different things will work for everyone. I do get that.
However, how does a person know if they are on the right track? How do I make sure my therapist understands what I went through?
Also do you think it is important to process traumatic memories to be able to heal and move on?
Thank you very much for all that you do.
Best wishes,
Seeking to Heal
Dear Seeking to Heal,
I acknowledge your courage to reach out and ask these pertinent questions. I want you to know that the act of inquiring as to the best healing pathway for you in itself is a major step! I feel it is important to recognize this and appreciate yourself for the strides you are making. When we want something better for ourselves than what we’ve had, this signifies a growing sense of self-worth. You do deserve the best facilitated process for your healing! You are worth it!
I am familiar with the struggle to navigate what can feel like treacherous roads of therapeutic recovery. I openly question the ethics of mental health services. It seems to me that the burden of choosing the best healing methodology is often carried by the person seeking services. I have to admit that this seems rather backwards to me.
Most of us haven’t spent 8+ years in university specializing in psychological treatment for trauma when we’re seeking support to heal from a traumatic incident or burnout. Yet we’re expected to know which form of treatment should be best for us. Or worse, a psychologist that we find ourselves vulnerably sitting in front of, tries to convince us that their brand of healing is the BEST WAY. Many people spend years of their lives and tons of their hard earned money trying to fit the pathway of their healing into someone else’s idea of the perfect road.
I think you deserve to have a pathway tailored to FIT YOU!
I can speak to you from the standpoint of what has worked best for me following traumatic incidents while on humanitarian deployment and what I have seen work best for my clients. I prefer to share from a basis of knowledge rather than theorizing on what “could work” for someone else.
How do you know if you’re on the right healing track?
1. Are you safe?
Do you feel safe in your living and work environments and relationships? If you do not, I suggest you work on this question prior to focusing on anything else. If you need support or advice in next steps towards personal safety, please contact a close friend or family member, the police, ask me, or contact your local domestic violence, or sexual assault centre or crisis line.
2. Who is in your support network?
Recovery from a traumatic incident, ongoing abuse, or burnout is an intense experience. You do not have to do it alone. Many humanitarian workers have tried the solitary road and it did not work for them. They found themselves alone at the bottom of many bottles, risking their lives prematurely returning to the field to prove their strength, or sleeping in strangers’ beds to lose themselves in physical pleasure. There are many support communities and services available 24/7 and this is exactly what some find they need. Flashbacks and symptoms are not regulated to working hours. Consider making a list of the people you consider to be part of your support community; this will help you in those moments when you feel isolated. Find out what time windows are ok to contact them, when they’ll be available. It can be especially helpful to have contacts in different time zones.
3. Do you have the energy for this?
How long will therapy take? Healing can be a long road. Anyone who claims to know exactly how long it will take you to heal, or specifically how many sessions you need, is probably “full of shit and trying to sell you a bottle of snake-oil.” I have worked with clients who suffered a single incident war trauma, who after two sessions felt fully reintegrated and able to return to work. There are other clients I’ve worked with who suffered from childhood abuse and who also experienced compounded incidents over time. This demanded a longer term healing commitment.
Allow yourself to not force everything to happen all at once. It’s perfectly okay to start and stop and then start again. The most important thing is to focus on your self-care. We can not erase the effects that the incident, or burnout, has had on your life, however each day you can live in a healthier way and slowly shift your relationship with the trauma. You deserve to reclaim your life. You deserve to develop clear boundaries around your needs in work and life.
4. Which therapy is right for you?
This is really the “million dollar question” isn’t it? I would love to tell you that I have the guaranteed answer for you, but that would be a lie. I can tell you that working with a therapist who is certified in multiple therapeutic methodologies has been the best answer for me, and why I became an integral healer. I have found it essential that humanitarian staff care therapists and healers have humanitarian field experience themselves, as paradigms are often not translatable. It is okay for you to ask, and to have a provider who personally understands the challenges inherent in humanitarian work.
As mental health providers, we must ensure that we fit ourselves to client needs rather than clients having to fit themselves to one modality; or fit themselves to a therapist. It seems backwards to me for a client to feel the need to accommodate therapists’ or healer’s limitations.
It is essential that a therapist or healer integrate their approach into 4 Areas:
- Mental
- Emotional
- Spiritual
- Somatic (Physical)
The integration of these 4 areas will support a comprehensive healing process. An additional resource I can not recommend more highly for those who are survivors of childhood sexual assault or incest is The Courage to Heal Book and Workbook. These two books have given my clients and myself a pathway and structure to traverse. I would not advise working on these 2 books without the support of a healer, therapist, or recovery community.
5. Do you have to remember every detail to heal?
I do not believe that anyone has to re-traumatise themselves to heal. Some will have flashbacks, dreams, or memories that return during the healing process. Others will want to go through the process of hypno-regression or EMDR. I think the principal thing is to come to a place in the healing process where you are able to accept the process as it is rather than trying to force anything to happen or be remembered. I find that whether it’s remembering or trying to forget, if one is in opposition to wherever they are in their natural healing rhythm then they are being abusive to themselves. You need to have compassion for yourself while you heal. I recommend the Self-Compassion book to many clients, and find it tremendously helpful as a resource to work through alongside a mental health professional.
Feel free to reach out to Amanda at exexexa@gmail.com if you need support or have additional questions related to self-care within the humanitarian aid sector.
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Please note: the views and opinions expressed on this blog are that of my own and do not represent the opinions of any agency mentioned.