How can we look after ourselves

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How can we look after ourselves

• ..in the business of helping and supporting
  asylum seekers and refugees?

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Will the dam hold?
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Will the dam burst?
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Presentation Plan

• 1. What are your feelings when engaged in a
  consultation with a refugee or asylum seeker?
• 2. What are we dealing with here from a
  psychological perspective?
• 3. What can happen to us?
• 4. In the light of this, what can we do?

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2. What are we dealing with here?

• What is TRAUMA?

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Blackwell Counselling and Psychotherapy with
refugees and asylum seekers (2005)

• Exposure to extreme levels of violence, terror
  and destruction stirs up the most primitive
  feelings and anxieties, to a degree where many
  peoples normal defensive structures are unable
  to cope.
• Fear of annihilation, engulfment, disintegration,
  abandonment, loss, castration

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What does the psyche do with the volcano.?

• Psychic numbing/dissociation

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Fragmentation

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What does the psyche do with the volcano.?

• The need to remember and the wish to forget.

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• The adult and the infant
• Traumatic transference
• Trust
• Victimisation
• Repetition

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Mind/body split
• The mind that has no vent in tears makes other
  organs weep.. Henry Vaughan

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Victim and Survivor

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Survivor Guilt

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Overwhelming Rage

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What does the psyche do with the volcano?

• Shame

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3. What can happen to us?
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TRAUMA IS CONTAGIOUS

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Burn Out
• Secondary Traumatic Stress

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COUNTERTRANSFERENCE

• Conscious response to patient
• The domino effect
• The unconscious response to patient

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BURN OUT
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PTSD STS (After Figley
C.R.)POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS
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STS AVOIDANCE
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STS INCREASED AROUSAL Figley C.R.2002
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Effects upon case workers of working with
survivors of torture Davies. C. 2003
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What kind of help?

• Personal counselling or psychotherapy
• Supervision
• Workload/boundaries
• Humour and other stress reduction methods
• A supportive team
• Team sports/group activities
• Adequate rest
• Mindful of health of colleagues
• Environment

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Bearing the unbearable (BUSTOS)