For most patients, the COVID-19 crisis has created a “new normal.” They may be stuck at home, unable to work, or feeling isolated from dear friends and family.
This all can leave people feeling helpless.
So what can we do to help patients regain a sense of agency during the pandemic? Bessel van der Kolk, MD has several ideas.
Take a moment now to hear them in the video below.
Just one note before you watch: there’s a section that Bessel specifically asked us to leave in, even though we’d normally remove it. However, this time he wanted you to be able to hear it for yourself.
According to Bessel, there are insights we can draw from trauma therapy that could help patients when they’re feeling helpless or reeling from the unpredictability of life during a pandemic.
Now think of the patients you’ll be seeing this week. Is there a strategy from the video that one of them might find particularly helpful?
We understand that not everyone will agree with Bessel’s politics, and we appreciate that we have a community of practitioners from both sides of the aisle. But for the comments we’d like to focus on what we all have in common: our work with patients.
Please let us know a strategy that one of your patients may find helpful in the comments below.
Thank you! Extremely useful! On top of all the fear and uncertainty of the COID-19 we have been dealing with a political virus for certain! I’m befuddled at how this impacts ones clinical and diagnostic skills!?!
It is my understanding that the majority of people have experienced trauma in their lives. Clinical and diagnostic skills would be negatively impacted if a clinician’s awareness that personal trauma was retriggered by an unpredictable and unstable national leader was not in their consciousness. I hope this makes sense to you.
Excellent, practical advice
Thank you for this. I found this very helpful. I think what ever your political opinion is a hot potato issue at this time which makes it a good universal example. The fact that we are feeling these two fronts medical and political was very useful. We sometimes can’t see what we have coupled up and need to be aware before we can untangle.
Blessings to you all.
I find it fascinating that individuals discuss being traumatized simply by hearing someone’s opposing political views yet they completely ignore the facts pertaining to said politician’s actions. Additionally, it’s shocking to me that people in this field can blatantly ignore the repeated transgressions of someone in power with so little regard for human life.
Thank you for not cutting out the political views. I found them validating and truly refreshing. While I have had many discussions with people who have opposing political views, I still cannot understand humans ignoring the facts and negative affects by the actions of this man on our wonderful country. It’s sad and baffling.
Excellent video, emphasising the importance of predictably in an unpredictable world is very helpful and something I will be heavily emphasising with my clients.
Many of my patients are in therapy because the reality they lived was never validated therefore “I must be crazy, wrong, bad, etc. Thank you for validating the reality (based on facts) we are all experiencing.
It’s a shame you aren’t going to learn the excellent strategies he suggests for helping your clients. You can take what you like and leave the rest in terms of his politics. Just because someone has a different political view than you, does not mean that they have nothing to say of value. The more open both sides can be to at least listening to one another, the less divided we become. Why dig your heels in?
I am grateful for you, Bessel, speaking truth and wisdom in a time of yes, pre-trauma. Thank you for your candor! Lisa Burns, Ph.D.
YOUR idea of truth.
I like the comment about structure and organizing your day to keep from disassociation.
It made sense Unpredictability is a large part of trauma. What I did not see coming (unpredictable) and admittedly may have hit on my own trauma was the dehumanizing comment from someone I viewed as embracing safety and a non-judgmental stance. He could have said the same thing using the language we were all taught. In the future if it contains political opinions I would prefer knowing a head of time so I can choose whether to listen.
Bessel, you are and have been an inspiration. Thank you. Rose Ann Vita
We are professionals. Dr. Van der Kolk’s comments were relevant to trauma and unpredictability. We had many examples of unpredictability last week when the President said that we were going to be back to work by April. He later changed his mind. His leadership is triggering to people without mental health and trauma experiences or diagnoses. It is RELEVANT that we understand the complexity of trauma under the lens of control and feeling the loss of control. Everything is political and motivated by power and money. This is reality.
Thank you for ALL of this very relevant and helpful information.
As always Bessel, simply insightful and do-able. I agree about your statement of the connection between Covid and our political situation, even here in England.
I honoured Earth Dsy on Saturday, because I truly believe there is a subtle yet deadly connection between climate change and these new mutations being able to take hold passed from animal to human and to human contact, this is the scary fact. We don’t have the cold winters to kill off the bugs.
As a Nurse with a complex trauma history I totally resonate with the isolation I have just been in for possible Covid 19. Now I am medically fit I need to get back out there and reclaim my internal structure. I live on my own too which is even harder. I somehow gain much healing through connection with my patients and seeing their gratitude shine out from their eyes.
We will overcome this and come out as more rounded human beings as a result
Thank you Bessel for your suggestions. It’s always so helpful to view things through a trauma lens. I have found physical activity, structure, and if possible creative endeavors are helping my clients right now.
This is useful. Thank you. I’ve posted it on our Facebook pages. I am very concerned about the effects of corona on our other clients such as migrants, former child soldiers in Congo, HIV positive children of sex workers in India, etc. No one seems to be doing anything about the psychological reactions of such people, especially in the current crisis.
We’d very much like to cooperate with anyone out there on these issues.
Yours in Peace,
Charles David Tauber, M.D.
CEO
Coalition for Work with Psychotrauma and Peace
Very helpful! I appreciate Dr. Bessel’s straightforwardness and concur with his conclusions. Grateful the entirety of his talk was shared without censoring.
Amazing how psychologists believe that the political is separate from the personal. The psyche is entrenched in the politics of the time, it directly informs how we see the world. If you see triggered by this, perhaps spend some time reflecting on why. What are you uncomfortable with, what is being challenged and why do you want to hold on to it with your dear life? Why can you not just let it pass as a different opinion?
Yes! I do not need or want to be a part of any other group that is promoting, directly or indirectly, divisiveness!! That environment in and of itself, has been traumatizing to many!!
Very helpful. It goes with what I’ve been doing and helping my clients to do. Thank you.
I agree
Very helpful. Thank you for being straight-forward and honest. That’s what allows us to trust.
Agree. Honesty has been in short supply in widely dispersed political proclamations from Washington DC. We all pay for this, if we pay taxes. In the context of the current crises, it seems gracious and warranty to accept a personal opinion in a professional communication from someone who has so exceptionally contributed to the knowledge base and training of mental health professionals.
I feel both tolerance and respect for the informed opinions expressed here.
Good wishes forward.
Thank you,
Elizabeth Bryant, Ph.D.
Absolutely. Many people are panicing/hoarding because they have a “parent/leader” figure that is unpredictable and untrustworthy, while outwardly supporting him.
The worst human emotions are powerless, hopeless and out of control.
Taking control in whatever areas you can in your life now, is best we can offer.
Well said. Congruence is important for trust. It will be reassuring and supportive for many to have their own thoughts and feelings validated at a time of such uncertainty. Thank you so much for sharing.
Great video. Vessels is always so spot on.
Thank you, reassuring to know that I’m on the right approach with my clients during these unpredictable time.
Love the insights and reminder of ways to care for ourselves and our clients
Very useful and simple. Let’s all participate.
Thanks to Bessel…of all the helpful videos I’ve watched over that last few weeks this is the most concise, meaningful, informative, practical and useful. ..and truthful!
Thank you so much for this Bessell … your passion, expertise, and direction are most valuable at this time. MFT, Inner Child Expert, and EFT Tapping Practitioner
A really helpful and positive reminder of how to look after ourselves as well as others.. Thank you
Thank you NICABM for including what you might not normally have done, and Dr. Van Der Kolk for saying what needs to be said. The info was timely and useful, and as always, practical. Keep up the good work. Stay strong and safe everyone!
NUTS:
Novelty
Unpredictability
Threat of the ego
Sense of loss of control
These four topics give us stress, according to an investigation in Canada some years ago.
Avoiding or approaching these topics?? How do we cope with things we cannot change? ACT can be used, knowing and accepting that we have control over our senses: focus attention on other things and love yourself with all your problems, limitations, strengths and completely accept yourself.
If you have a mindfulness app with a bell, you can set the bell to ring every hour or the minutes you need to have control over.
The sound of the bell is also a reminder of being connected with the ones who make the sound and the ones who made the app and so forth.
Also slow food cooking is now possible at least for us who don’t go to work.
Bessel Vanderkolk has was a lifesaver and way shower during my darkest days of war-related trauma. He set me on a path committed to coping with trauma and is here guiding us through our most challenging times. I am so grateful for him and for all of you Rut. Who would have imagined months ago when we were going through the online training that we’d all be here supporting each other through such dark times. Blessings to all of you and thank you
Why would you cut it out at the first place? Our life is not limited to our minds and bodies. Our life is influenced largely in the social,economic, environmental and political scene as well. All is so interwoven, so are we. And we are holistic beings. So, in my opinion, cherry picking ideas and opinions on the rule of what is “”appropriate” to publish, may be missing the whole point.
In the time of such distress and uncertainty on many levels on our existence we may seek more comfort, attachment, confirmations that we are and will be fine. And again, to feel safe, we need a coherent, emotionally stable and trustworthy people, especially those at powers. It may be traumatising to sense that president`s narrative has none of these qualities.
Thank you Dr van der Kolk, for speaking your truth. I hope that people will see this difficult time as an opportunity to “upgrade” our innate wisdom rather that suppress it.
Well spoken. Thank you. In particular thank you for linking the personal to the systemic trauma. Too often as therapists we seem hesitant to name the ecology of “out of control” and somehow expect our clients to adapt to an environment that demands dissociation.
Thanks for sharing and leaving his personal sentiments intact. There can be a sense of ease and safety in knowing we can hear divergent thoughts and it doesn’t have to equal danger, we don’t have to polarize and control. The reminders about structure and increasing sense of agency are very refreshing.
I’m so thankful for this short piece at this time. Really helpful.
I agree with his comments about how The Presidents ‘style and persona’ can be triggering for traumatised clients and can make people feel unsafe as their parents did. He’s the narcissistic parent, bullying, invalidating, undermining, creating a disorganised and chaotic attachment …all so crazy making….I’m glad you left it in!
I so agree with your comments Brian. I personally like Bessel’s straight talking ways and and greatly admire his knowledge and work. The need for structure and predictability is the message I am sharing with clients.
Thank you for this it is great grounding advice. I would have liked to have been able to send it out to help my friends and family. Glad you left in the bits.
Very helpful strategies and excellent ways to explain trauma to clients. Thank you.
Thank you- Networking Human Rights
Finding humour despite the crisis. A group of friends Zooming each other today laughed at their ridiculous stories of voluntary incarceration and shared funny Facebook images. All felt lighter and less stressed by the encounter.
Why on earth would you have cut out something that is so relevant to all our lives?
I particularly appreciate the examples given of actual things to do for clients who seriously lack internal structure. Cooking food, and connecting with a friend while they enjoy the meal through phone or video, about the food they have made. Structure and connection. Both struggles for those in trauma. Thank you!
So glad you made this point. Part of the traumatic experience of covid is dealing with being mistreated by leadership that is making decisions that don’t seem to value human life.
I loved this, and all the comments. So reassuringly down to Earth and practical. I live on my own and it’s exactly what I am attempting to do right now.Thank you.
Thanks for sharing
Love this! Thank you! I will be sure to share these ideas with my clients this week and beyond!
Taking control of what you can control, establishing predictability through routines, developing your own sense of agency, finding support and connection…all excellent ways to manage this recent and uncertain time.
Thank you.
agency + CONNECTION
But YES the agency is also important [as this is about]
Totally about the pushups – don’t forget squats 🙂
But it’s also true about the predictability provided by the social arrangements.
It helps to tell clients that some of the unpredictability in their lives is not their fault but arises from arrangements in the society. That HELPS clients. And there is a lot of evidence that the less CONTROL you have in your life – the less well you are emotionally and physically. We call that oppression.