Mindful Life Psychology and Assessment Centre
Children in Johannesburg

Leatia Stemmet, and Lisa Dennison offer therapeutic services to.
where they can express themselves freely without judgment, Edrich Smook, where they will be.
are faced with or to make changes in your life. Our objective is to provide them with an environment.
need of a different perspective in order to overcome certain struggles that you.
work from the premise that you are the expert on your life, though might be in.
construct a new reality for those who feel that they have lost their way. We.
easy it is to get caught up in the expectations of life, and we aim to.
relationship between client and therapist. We understand how.
which they can explore their inner world, where emphasis is placed on the.
their full potential. An emotionally safe space is created within.
people from all walks of life, aiming to empower them to live their lives to.
treated with respect and dignity.

Often in these moments we want to support them, but the pain and anguish makes us feel so helpless that we have no real idea as to how to approach the situation. Understanding the emotional process in that moment of the trauma is key to assisting someone. The emotional pain is not isolated from the shock or sometimes horror of the event that just took place. It is a stage where this person is taking in all the emotional information that they can get hold of, in order to somehow create a different outcome than the one they are facing, obviously with little or no effect. Thus the sense of hopelessness in the situation is quite big, and considering the situation, this is quite understandable. What is important is that we do not attempt to fix things at this point in time. Dealing with the loss or trauma emotionally will only take place later. Thus we literally do support through acknowledgement. Acknowledgement in the moment of someone just going through a trauma means that certain things are not part of the conversation or consoling. Do not tell this person that it is going to be ok, that actually just elicits the sense that you have no real idea of what they are going through. Do not tell them that you know what this feels like, even if you have been in a similar situation, our feelings of sadness and distraughtness are so unique that you cannot understand what they are feeling, what is more, in that moment it is not about what you are feeling, it is about them! Do not tell them that sometime in the future they will feel better, in the moment of trauma they cannot connect with that yet, and it might seem insensitive to the magnitude of their experience. Do not keep checking how they are feeling, the fact that they might stop crying at some point is purely because they ran out of tears and energy. Also, anger, laughter, etc., as responses are normal under the shock of the situation, let them be these things if that is what comes out. Do not tell them to calm down, their lives have just been hit by a tornado, there is nothing calm about it. You might find the following actions or verbal processes quite helpful. Do not turn away or disengage or create the sense that you want to put distance between you and them because of the pain they are communicating. They need to see you are ok with how hurt they are. If they walk away from you or push away from you, follow them, they need to know you care enough to go after them, but, do not smother them, if you are unsure about this you can ask them if they need a bit of space. Then you are just letting them down, and life has just done that already. If they are open to it, physical touch can be useful, such as holding a hand while they are crying.In general, the sense of being acknowledged is the most helpful and most important in the moment. They need to believe that you can see life has just thrown them something that seem insurmountable, because if you can see this it means that they are ok for feeling what they are feeling. You might have been in a situation that is as severe, and from that you might know that as human beings we do have the strength to get through it, that things will be better again. But then you will also recall that in the moment, you just needed to be distraught!