On Sunday I attended the regular professional development interview with Online Events, free and open to anyone, therapist or otherwise, to learn about a specialist area of counseling. Last nights interview was with Felicity Biggart and Martin Weaver on the theory and teaching of Trauma Resilience.

It is possible to successfully work ones way through trauma with the use of some fairly straightforward techniques and with the support of a diffusion group, that is, a number of people chosen by the traumatized person who will listen with care to whatever the traumatized person needs to say. You can read more about this work here.

The interview took place on the same day that the atrocity in Heula came to light, one amongst many atrocities in Syria and indeed all over the world. What made this news particularly awful are images of a large room filled with shrouded bodies including 46 children. The bodies were not available for forensic examination because they had to be buried within 24 hours but reports are that most of these people weren’t killed by artillery but murdered at close quarters. Some of the children are reported to have had their throats cut.

We all know that some humans can be savage and monstrous but to hear a very current report of savagery can (perhaps should) shock us anew. This is a very healthy, proper response demonstrating that we’re not shut down, blasé or uncaring; we absorb the news and then life takes over again allowing us to function – if we were to empathise with all the barbarism in the world we’d become mentally ill. And still, for a great many people the story of Heula will remain with them and be part of a small traumatisation, which is healthy and normal. If we make no connection between Heula and our own children having their throats cut, their terror and agony, then we have lost the basis for our own humanity.

The Heula massacre was mentioned in the Trauma Resilience interview and Martin suggested that a way of dealing with this trauma-at-a-distance was to find a diffusion group, perhaps even from the people in the chat room, and in sharing ones upset and sadness with a group of people prepared to hear it, reduce it.

It strikes me that we have lost this very human response not just to shock and trauma but also to sharing joy and delight. News media have taken over the storytelling and we suck up detail at-one-remove. Telling stories, hearing and seeing other people respond empathically, reminds us that we are actually alive in the world, and matter. A large number of my clients don't have this kind of support system, not because they're isolated, elderly or mad but because it's part of normal life now. Coming to counselling is almost all about telling your story and having it really heard. Perhaps for the first time.