Tue. Nov 15 from 1:00-4:00PM ET
Healing the Legacy of Historical and Transgenerational Trauma:
Addressing the ambiguous losses of adult children of refugees and immigrants
Children of refugees and former child refugees experience unique challenges in adulthood that are often under-recognized and overlooked by mental health professionals.
... because we have had to work so hard to leave our pasts behind.
... because life in a new country is hard.
... because racism.
... because we become a buffer for life in a new country for our parents.
... because we may have little connection to the ancestors and ancestral homelands that propelled our parents to labor with love and loyalty ... often leaving us feeling neglected or overlooked.
... because we become burdened with being the bridge of hope and courage for our parents - a bridge between their hardships and suffering, and the love of their ancestors.
... because we love them and become guilt-burdened for the debt that we can never repay. And because the weight of all this may have been just too much for many of us.
Join Linda Thai as she weaves together stories and research to bring to light the intergenerational impact of forced migration.
Forty to fifty per cent of refugees are children. Children’s brains are very neuroplastic, and as a result, young refugees often quickly assimilate to their host nation, leading to challenges in adulthood that are often easily overlooked - or even pathologized - by many mental health professionals. This larger landscape of traumatic grief, traumatic loss, traumatic homesickness and the ambiguity of these unnameable, unmetabolized experiences has a transgenerational impact that needs to be named in order to be healed.
Grief becomes a way home when home itself is lost. ~ Meenadchi
Part 1
~ Differentiate between refugees and immigrants.
~ Identify the main stages of a refugee journey.
~ Explain intergenerational trauma to encompass the impact of forced migration, combined with acculturation and enculturation pressures, upon the next generation.
Part 2
~ Discuss expressions of ambiguous grief, traumatic grief and traumatic homesickness associated with generation 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 refugees.
~ Identify how the decontextualization of historical trauma can result in the pathologizing and stereotyping of cultures, families and individuals.
~ Engage in somatic techniques to expand nervous system capacity for grief and reclamation.
~ Identify the various expressions - emotionally, psychologically, and behaviorally - of unmetabolized grief, at the individual, family, cultural and societal levels.
Part 3
~ Deconstruct the confluence of trauma and grief, and recognize the signs and symptoms of traumatic grief.
~ Utilize Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief as a foundation from which to identify one’s own unmetabolized ambiguous losses.
~ Engage in expressive arts therapies (song, music, movement, art, story-telling and silence) as containers, expressions and metabolizers of grief.
$75.00 USD
Online Course
Included features:
In the spirit of addressing historic and systemic barriers to participation, there are several equity pricing scholarship spaces available for this training. Priority of access for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals, individuals living with disabilities, and individuals living with lower income.
Please contact: [email protected] with your request.
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