Offering hope to those working on the front line

Alongside my work with clients, I provide regular training for several professional bodies on PTSD, the effects of and symptoms associated with, and how to identify them in the workplace. This includes working as a Trauma Informed Speaker for the SOIT Metropolitan Police.

Over the course of my professional career, I have witnessed many servicemen and women, particularly front-line workers, suffering the debilitating effects of working in a high-risk environment supporting others. The effects are, quite simply, trauma. 

So many of our key workers face daily challenges, exposed to horrific accidents and acts of terror that many of us are lucky enough to escape in a lifetime. When I started writing my training programme, I did so because I could see there was little in place to protect these workers, nobody was talking about secondary trauma – about what it felt like to rescue someone from a traffic accident, to work alongside victims of abuse including rape, domestic violence and childhood abuse.

But these acts are horrific and the impact they have is severe. As a professional psychotherapist, I am taught to understand the importance of discussing, confidentially, how I have been impacted by my client’s story. I have a mandatory supervisor, all mental health professionals do, and this relationship allows us to understand, process and normalise our responses to painful material. But front line workers and those in high risk careers such as the police force have, in the past, been sadly lacking in support. 

My training teaches those affected not just how this can occur, but how to spot PTSD in co-workers, to recognise the physical and emotional symptoms in themselves and others and crucially, to know how to reach out and access help. 

I am proud to say that my training programme is used in hospital and police forces around the country and I hope to continue offering my support to workers in these sectors for many years to come. 

 If you are a front line worker suffering the effects of trauma, I am here to offer hope.