Reflection: 13th of June

My supervisor is awesome.
The rest of the staff at the hospital is awesome.
I love the work I am doing.

But PHONES are not awesome and I feel like just abandoning it and going back to being phone-less. It was less stressful that way. Seriously. People keep telling me different things (like people who are paid to provide service support) and I keep spending money and nothing is working. I have been pretty calm these last few weeks considering I just moved halfway across the world, but it is THIS that is making me frustrated.

Anyway, about my day:
I am getting to help create a new therapy group for victims of childhood trauma. This one is going to be a women's group (over 18) that combines psychoeducation and more traditional group therapy. In the past they have run 18 week sessions using a compressed form of this 32 week model that is supposed to reflect evidence based research. I think the book is called The Trauma Therapy Group: A Guide for Practitioners. This is second-hand information, but I've been told that evidenced based research is severely lacking from the trauma field, as it is difficult to get funding for treatments that are NOT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, basically, which is shown to not be working in the long run for trauma survivors. The theory that the facilitators are planning on working from is CBASP, which I mentioned before is considered a "cognitive analytic" theory. Really interesting, been doing some more reading about it. Anyway, I am basically compiling these information packets tomorrow to be distributed to group members, just things for them to read and start normalizing their reactions to their experiences. Apparently last time they ran a group with a similar model, they jumped right into working, bringing up the themes of neglect, isolation and fear almost immediately.

SO my job is going to be to read through the book aforementioned, whatever book it actually is, and look at that 32 week model. Then I'll look at the previous 18 week model that was used by the NHS. Then I will go through the collection of handouts used in psychoeducation groups (like lectures) about childhood trauma, and try to integrate all of it into something cohesive, informative, and able to promote healing. The three facilitators already have a general guidelines of what they want to discuss and how they want to structure it, but I am to synthesize the information more, it seems. I think I'll have a better idea once I do the reading!

After work tomorrow, from which I will be leaving about an hour early, I'm catching the bus to Edinburgh to spend the night at a hostel. In the morning, I'll be going to a number of sites in the Borders and then hopping into England to spend the afternoon at Alnwick Castle. So I will not be posting tomorrow, but hopefully Saturday night or Sunday I'll be able to share some good stories!