As psychological trauma focused therapists working across all sectors, we are here to support you, but we cannot reach you all.
A few of us working in the UK’s National Health Service and volunteering with the Global Initiative for Stress and Trauma Treatment (GIST-T) have produced recordings of a few simple yet powerful exercises for psycho–emotional self-care to protect Frontline staff from developing Traumatic Stress, burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The Butterfly Hug and 4 Elements exercises were developed by our GIST-T (http://gist-t.org) colleagues, Dr Ignacio Jarero and Elan Shapiro. Both are internationally renowned for their evidence based work on scaling up psychological trauma treatments in response to large scale crisis.
These techniques were specifically designed to reduce the negative impact of acute stress from recent and ongoing events, by focusing on stabilization, symptom reduction and processing of distressing memories. They are not intended as therapy, for which we advise you to seek alternate help. Please see the section Further Help.