David Treleaven on COVID Trauma

"To move through trauma often means going back to what was too much. Often we need to be with someone who is with us saying ‘I'm here. You're safe. It's okay to feel it now.'"

In this episode of the Mindspace podcast, Dr. Joe speaks with David Treleaven. David is a trauma professional, mindfulness teacher, and educator. He is also the author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe Healing. After struggling through symptoms of secondary trauma on a meditation retreat, he developed the Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM) approach.TSM helps trauma survivors avoid the risks they face when practicing meditation. TSM has been taught to veterans, prisoners, healthcare professionals, first responders, and many others.

Through workshops and online courses, David teaches mindfulness providers the tools of TSM, so that they can meet the needs of people struggling with trauma. More information on his online training can be found here.

David has worked with organizations like Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (developed by Google) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School by bringing them the tools and techniques of TSM to their staff and programs. He is also a visiting scholar at Brown University.

He is the host of The Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Podcast. He has had guests on like Sharon Salzberg, Rick Hanson, and recently Dr. Joe Flanders!

In this interview Joe and David explore:

• Challenges with the definition of the word trauma
• Is there such a thing as COVID trauma?
• Why some people are more resilient in the face of difficult experiences
• Neurobiological models of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS)
• Diagnosing PTS
• Approaches to treating PTS
• The implications of collective trauma from COVID-19

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