The PeerCommunity CoCare Program is the opportunity for anyone, anywhere to to overcome the impact of trauma, reclaim their lives, and manifest the triumph of the human spirit.
The only effective path forward in addressing the impact of trauma globally, in our opinion, is a paradigm shift from the authority of experts to the innate wisdom of individuals and communities.
The solution to the one billion resides with the one billion themselves. They are our most abundant resource and more often than not, it turns out, our most effective one.
Grassroots, community self-care peer programs, supported and facilitated by existing infrastructures, hold the key to broad and effective healing for individuals and thus their communities.
It is our opinion that there is far too little research on the efficacy of telling the trauma story although various narrative approaches have been shown to work. Research is needed to establish the efficacy of a non-pathologizing, non-medical, peer-to-peer model that does not diagnose or treat any medical condition but simply provides a safe space and a predictable structure in which the trauma story can be told.
We consider there to be a “scale of therapeutic chemistry” from least effective to most effective. Those who have experienced the same or similar trauma and have learned the necessary knowledge and skills are at the top of that scale. This is probably the reason for the observation by many practitioners that people often open up and benefit in group therapy with fellow sufferers more than they do in one-to-one sessions with a professional therapist. Unless the therapist has had the same experience, he or she cannot, in fact, entirely understand when listening to the trauma story. The chance to fully open up with each other in a one-to-one setting and process their unique and entirely subjective experience is deeply healing for both the narrator and the listener. As one of our participants put it, "We speak to each other in emotional shorthand."
“Trauma is not a virus to be medicated away, nor a tale to be forgotten, nor a deep sadness to be replaced with reckless optimism. What it can be is a catalyst for different stories – better stories – about who we are, what we value, and how we might live in the ‘after’. And these stories are not happiness-seeking – they are meaning-making, meaning-remaking.
Perhaps if we engage with our traumas less reluctantly and open up to the possibilities of narrative world-remaking, we might integrate some of our worst experiences into the ever-evolving stories about who we are. However uneasily, we just might coexist with, and even flourish in, their glare.”
Great strides have been made in the field of psychotraumatology in recent decades. Relying on the fundamentals that have emerged and the work that the program developer had done for years, she has developed the PeerCommunity CoCare Program. We now have the opportunity to offer communities around the world an effective, non-proprietary, generic approach to increasing individual and, thereby, community resilience – a program that communities can ultimately own and replicate where needed and wanted. In addition to being non-medical and thus avoiding the potential stigma of mental health that so often keeps traumatized people away, the program is also not affiliated with any religion.
“Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge.”
We consider our program to be a “Demonstration” program
In order for the PeerCommunity CoCare Program to be taught and used widely, it must demonstrate that it is therapeutically valid and cost effective and thus earn its place as a broad-reaching, contributing solution to the problem of the one billion+. We are doing that with consistent pre and post testing and program evaluations that are providing evidence that our program is working extremely well. We are happy to share our results with you.