Taking care: Frontline workers’ Strategies to Support Self-Regulation

The metaphor of the Airlines safety measure “Put your oxygen mask on first so you can help others” has never carried more meaning than now. Whether you are on the front lines providing an essential service, working in your office or working remotely from your home.

The most important part of coping with the intensity of the work is to acknowledge its impact on mind, body and spirit. It may be that we have never been more tested in our capacity to cope with this intensity given how much our world has changed in the last few years and how it continues to change. How do we navigate through these times and find ways to support self-regulation and sustainable practice in order to support our family, friends, colleagues, clients and community?

With this in mind, this in-person workshop will explore:

• Coping with the unknown: How our nervous systems perceive threat and experience stress.

• Caring for Self: Ways to foster self-regulation and resilience.

• Caring for Others: Ways to foster co-regulation and collective resilience

Participants will have the opportunity to explore some somatic-based self-soothing practices that work with the wisdom of our bodies to promote self-attunement and encourage curiosity about what we can do to support ourselves in our work and life.

This training is catered to professionals, including but not limited to: social service workers, peer support workers, first responders, educators, law enforcement officers, supervisors, managers, and directors working in the social service, education, or healthcare sector.

Location: In-person at Commonwealth Community Recreation Centre

Refreshments will be provided.

Cost: the cost to participants is highly subsidized by REACH Edmonton.

Early Bird (ends April 5) - $15

Regular (after April 6) - $25

Space is limited—register early!

Refreshment included.

Kathleen Gorman is a long-time visitor on Treaty 6 territory. She has been working in the fields of trauma, grief and loss, mental health and addictions, as well as domestic and sexual violence for over 40 years with Indigenous families and communities, government services, and not-for-profit agencies. She has held various leadership, clinical counselling, and community development positions in rural, remote and urban locations. Her private practice is trauma-informed/specific, wholistic, decolonizing, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist: Incorporating Somatic Experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, attachment-based approaches, EMDR, CBT, expressive arts and other contemporary modalities and traditional Indigenous ways of knowing and healing according to her teachings. Kathleen’s areas of specialization include trauma resolution from PTSD (traumatic life events including sexual and domestic violence, natural and human-made disasters, accidents, work-related secondary trauma), developmental and complex trauma, anxiety, and depression. She works primarily with adults and also provides trauma-informed clinical supervision to clinicians and counsellors. In her consulting work, areas of focus include vicarious/secondary trauma, trauma-informed practice, historical trauma, and supporting agencies to develop trauma-informed service delivery approaches. She’s a registered social worker in Alberta, CAN, a certified trauma treatment specialist with the international Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists and a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Training Assistant and Credited Somatic Experiencing Personal Session/Consultation provider (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels). She’s been a sessional instructor for the University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work since 2015 and provides individual/group counselling at Aboriginal Counseling Services in Alberta on a part-time basis. Kathleen holds a BSc in Psychology, a Graduate Degree in Health Administration, a Masters in Health Law and a Masters in Social Work, Clinical Social Work Practice. Kathleen is a frequent speaker at local, provincial, national and international conferences including topics on vicarious trauma, trauma-informed approaches and decolonizing trauma work. She is passionate about supporting those who work in trauma-exposed environments with ways to develop sustainability practices (mind-body-spirit).

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