therapy and consultancy for post-conflict trauma

War and conflict are soaring around the globe. Today, around two billion people are affected by fragile political systems, conflict or violence and millions of people are forced to leave their lives and homes behind every year. According to the UNHCR, at least 100 million people were forced to flee their homes during the last 10 years.

The UNHCR’s Global Trends in Forced Displacement report stated that at the end of 2019 there were:

79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, of which
45.7 million were internally displaced people
26 million were refugees
40% of those 79.5 million were children below 18 years of age

Conflicts affect all aspects of a nation, a community and a family. The many layers of violence, fear and loss impact people in many different ways. Mental health approaches for people who have lived through conflict and human-rights violations or people who have had to flee their home should thus focus not solely on the individual, but also on social relations and social transformation. A fixed program that merely concentrates on symptoms of post-conflict trauma denies the complex reality of people’s lived experiences. There is a need for context-specific, cultural-sensitive trauma support for people coming out of war and conflict.

‘Efforts to intervene in the psycho-social well-being of people who continue to live lives of exposure to violence, uncertainty, and betrayal involve more than just the talk-therapy of conventional post-conflict trauma healing and psycho-social programs. They require fundamental transformations of self, social relations, and social conditions’
– Sharon Abramowitz, Anthropologist and Sociologist

Body-orientated

Creative

Non-verbal

Empowering

Building Resilience and Community

Individual and Social Transformation

Organisations working with refugees, asylum seekers and war survivors can contact Esther to work with their clients. With the help of Moving Through Trauma you can offer your clients trauma support services and therapy that is body-orientated, creative and partly non-verbal. This combination makes it a very suitable approach to work with trauma with people who have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. You can choose to hire Esther to work with individual clients or in groups. Esther can also be hired for consultancy or education in the fields of post-conflict trauma, intercultural trauma-sensitive support and international psycho-social initiatives.

Esther draws on her international experience in offering body-based trauma support services and creative activist work for social change in different countries and contexts. She has worked with children and women in Uganda, Greece, England, the Netherlands, Zambia, and more. Her background in psychomotor therapy, trauma-sensitive yoga, anthropology and philosophy offer a broad perspective on global mental health, post-conflict trauma and psycho-social well-being. Learn more about her commitment to trauma support here.

cHILDREN's ACCeLERATED TRAUMA TREATMENT

The Children’s Accelerated Trauma Treatment (CATT) is a trauma-focused and well-established psychological treatment for PTSD and complex PTSD that is internationally applied. CATT offers a proven step-by-step method of dealing with trauma in children. The method is based on narrative and creative therapeutic techniques and cognitive behavioural therapy.

RECOVERY TECHNIQUES

The Recovery Techniques program by the Children and War Foundation is a widely used method for reducing the psychological after-effects of war or disasters. Their method teaches children skills that help them prevent the development of trauma disorder after coming out of a traumatic situation.

A program to prevent a childs' need for treatment through teaching them coping skills
A program consisting of 5 sessions for groups of children between 8 - 18 years
Proven effective in reducing post-traumatic stress reactions and other mental consequences of war and disaster across diverse cultures and situations

Trauma-sensitive yoga

Organisations working with vulnerable groups can hire Esther to offer specialised trauma-sensitive yoga sessions to their clients. Trauma-sensitive yoga is currently used with, for example, refugees, victims of human trafficking and homeless women. Group interventions for vulnerable groups can be used as an intervention in itself or as a supplement to other psychological trauma treatments.

A series of yoga sessions tailored to the needs of the demographic your organisation works with
Adding a new, body-based support service that is suitable and accesible to highly traumatized clients
Trauma-sensitive yoga is proven to decrease symtpoms of PTSD, depressive symptoms and negative tension-reduction behaviour. It is proven to improve people's relationship to their body and their self-regulation (arousal/emotion) skills.

psychomotor therapy and training

Moving Through Trauma offers psychomotor therapy and training for organizations working with groups of traumatized people. Esther can offer suitable, creative and body-oriented trauma support services either through training or through therapy. Both will be tailored to the needs of the group and the request for help from the organization. For more general information or an indication of a plan, timespan and cost, please contact Esther.

A psychomotor training aims to teach people coping skills that help them deal with their trauma. Such skills-based training, based on learning through the body, play and practice, will give participants a safe space from where to learn new behaviour. Such trainings can focus on, for example, stress reduction and relaxation, emotion and/or aggression regulation, self-confidence and resilience or communication and contact.

Esther can also provide psychomotor therapy, either on an individual basis or in a group, to your clients. A psychomotor therapy plan will be designed to support clients to address, process and integrate their traumatic experiences.