Vita House in Roscommon town is offering an eight-week course entitled ‘Recovery from Trauma’, which takes place on Wednesday evenings commencing March 8th.
The course will be facilitated by Dr. Brian McClean, a Clinical Psychologist who works with Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, and is available both online and in-person at Vita House on Abbey Street in Roscommon town.
Dr. McClean says the series of classes will explore how to better cope with trauma.
“The emphasis is going to be on practical steps as to how we can get through trauma. People think of trauma as something that happened in the past but in fact it’s the way we respond to things in the present. It’s how we react to the body’s ‘alarm system’, how we respond to memories, and how we deal with that anxiety within ourselves,” he explains.
The course will examine how trauma affects the human body and what people can do to deal with this and live more mindfully in the present.
“It’s important to remember that there are two types of trauma,” Dr. McClean adds.
“There is the trauma that arrives from an accident like a car crash or sudden death, where the experience is simply unbearable or intolerable.
“But there’s another type of trauma where events are difficult in an ongoing way. For example, when caused by bullying or abuse. So it’s not just one event but a series of events which causes someone to put an alarm up around the heart”.
The Recovery from Trauma course at Vita House, which runs for four weeks prior to Easter and four weeks after, is suitable for everyone.
“Recovery from trauma is about, number one, getting into a safe space where we are able to be calm, and number two, actually approaching memories of the traumatic incident rather than avoiding them,” Dr. McClean says.
“We say ‘sit with the emotion’ those memories illicit and that involves practising an activity like mindfulness or meditation while bringing to mind the traumatic incident”.
The ‘Recovery from Trauma’ course starts at Vita House on Wednesday, March 8th and continues until March 29th before taking a two-week break for Easter. The course then resumes for a further four Wednesdays following the Easter break.
For more information on this or any of the services on offer at Vita House, Roscommon contact the office on Abbey Street by calling 090-6625898, emailing info@vitahouse.org, or clicking www.vitahouse.org.
