USING THE SALUTOGENIC PERSPECTIVE
IN HELPING THE HELPERS IN WAR SITUATION

PRESENTER: JUDITH TESZÁRY

Sociodrama and power
DATE AND TIME: 29th of June, Saturday  10:00-12:30
CONFERENCE TOPIC: Sociodrama and social healing – recovery from collective crises and collective trauma
TYPE: Workshop
ROOM:
NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 30
TAGS: Social Healing, June29 Morning
ABSTRACT:

Salutogenesis – means the origin of health, and pathogenesis is the origin of disease.

How can we help the helpers living under the same circumstances as their clients?
How can they keep their strength and confidence in the role of a therapist during the war, when bombing and missiles are falling around their homes or when they are overwhelmed and stressed by not feeling able to help their clients?
How can the professional helpers care for themselves and not get secondary traumatisation through being too empathetic with their client’s traumatic experiences? What kind of survival strategies do they use? How did the ancestors survive the war they have been through?
How can we come out of the state of hypo and hyper arousal? When the nervous system is overloaded and cannot tolerate the pressure anymore, the system shuts down, and we get paralysed, helpless and numbed. These reactions are the body’s defence mechanisms and are life-saving for the moment, but in the long run, if we stay in these states, these can endanger our lives.
This workshop is a psycho-sociodramatic exploration of how to regain balance, integrate rational and emotional functioning, and tolerate stressful situations (broaden the window of tolerance) by focusing on the resources, thus developing resilience.
Bring your cases or yourself as a case of traumatisation, and let’s learn from each other.

Learning objectives:

  • Learn to identify how the body reacts to hypo and hyperarousal
  • Learn what the window of tolerance is
  • Learn the importance of a support system
ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Judith Teszáry is a psychologist, psychodrama and sociodrama trainer supervisor, and international lecturer. She has been trained by Zerka Moreno at the Moreno Institute, Beacon, New York. She is a founding member of FEPTO (Federation of European Psychodrama Training Organisations) and was president for six years (2002-2008). She received a life achievement award. She is a member of the Task Force for Peace and Conflict Transformation group using the method of Sociodrama in conflict areas, helping the helpers to elaborate traumatic experiences, for example, after the Maidan revolution in Kyiv. Running two Ukrainian support/therapy groups. She has worked with psychosomatic patients, using psychosociodrama in a research and treatment project at the Karolinska Institute, Stress Research Department in Stockholm. She worked as a psychologist in foster care at Stockholm City Social Department. She trained social workers using sociodramatic methods. She is the chair of the Swedish Association of Psychodramatists.

She is involved in a project as a socio-psychodrama director concerning Romani women’s experiences in Hungarian health care. She has used sociodrama to train Union leaders in the Swedish Industry Union and healthcare personnel in conflict management courses for ten years. She has been the professional supervisor and international coordinator of P.E.R.F.O.R.M.E.R.S, an Erasmus + project in Sociodrama. She had been a trainer and supervisor in the first sociodrama pilot training in Hungary within the Hungarian Psychodrama Association (MPE)

She led the first sociodrama pilot training in Kairo, Egypt. She started a complete training program in Sociodrama in September 2023 at the Rakhawy Institute for Training and Research in Kairo.