This coming Sunday and Monday, November 10-11, 2019, I will be teaching a workshop at the Israel EMDR Association, together with my colleague Dr. Karen Alter-Reid from the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in NY. The workshop will take place at the Metropolitan Hotel, 11 Trumpeldor Street, Tel-Aviv. More information (in Hebrew) can be found by clicking this link.
People who have been exposed to catastrophic events might carry within them relational and developmental wounds and might suffer from emotional, physical and cognitive symptoms related to post-traumatic reactions, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. War and genocide often lead to uprooting and mass migration of survivors who lost their way of life and their communities, forcing them to cope with many novel challenges and develop new skills in order to cope and adapt to their new environment. It is critical to understand the complexity of symptoms related to trauma and the ways in which these might restrict the capacity of survivors to adjust to post-trauma life. The social support given to survivors after the end of the original trauma to facilitate their social and interpersonal re-integration might be more critical in determining their mental health and well-being than the exposure to the trauma itself.
EMDR has been shown to be an effective method for many people in processing persistent intrusive symptoms. EMDR has been recognized by many international mental health associations as an evidence-based technique that transforms painful experiences of trauma, which often remain vivid and disturbing for a long time after the trauma ended, and helps them become experienced as past memories which are no longer so overwhelming.
Irit Felsen
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