Mending Mind

Are you a therapist working with expats/internationals, or perhaps an expat yourself navigating the mental health journey? Put your feet up, uncork that bottle of wine you've been saving, and let me take you on a 20-minute exploration into "Expat-Informed Psychotherapy: A Deeper Dive into Cross-Cultural Mental Health Care". 🌍🍷

But if you're short on time, here's the gist: "An expat-informed approach to therapy is, at its heart, an exercise in cross-cultural translation, seeking to bridge the gaps and create a shared understanding that respects and values the expat's unique cultural and linguistic context, whilst also nurturing the psychic nature that binds us all".

There’s still a lot to research and figure out. So let's work together to share knowledge and best practices as it is not the purview of any one researcher or practitioner, but an endeavor we can only collectively understand. Cheers to that!

Expat-Informed Psychotherapy: A Deeper Dive into Cross-Cultural Mental Health Care 1. Introduction 2. Understanding the Expat Experience 3. The Expat's Migration History & Its Effects 4. Culture, Language, and Mental Health 5. Key Therapeutic Topics in Expat-Informed Psychotherapy 6. The Role of Attachment and Belonging 7. Family Dynamics and Relationships 8. Healthcare Navigation...

What is the link between moving, attachment and belonging?

Did you move when you were young? How many times and what did you notice?

Let's continue to research and foster resilience together!

Exploring the Connection between Attachment, Migration and Belonging What is the link between moving, attachment and belonging? Our research showed that movers report a less secure attachment style. Watch to learn what the eff...

UPDATE December 2022: THE GROUP IS CLOSED and was a success.

Excited to offer an affordable 10 week Group therapy in Rotterdam, in English as of October 12th! Check the flyer for more information or e-mail me.
Therapists: maybe something for one of your clients?
Sign up possible via QR or https://forms.gle/Zt8NrGUzwworsRcz5

Why do certain clients not want to talk in their native language in therapy?

Some reflections based on my work as multilingual psychotherapist:

www.mendingmind.com

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/QAJ3AZQEZMJU98PCWEMZ?target=10.1002/jcop.22918

We recently published our study What is the link between moving during one's youth, attachment style and sense of belonging?
After 2+ years (and quite some desk rejections) our article has been published! Together with Brian P. G. and Ruth Van der Hallen we compared the reports of 465 students. Interestingly, both domestic and international movers report a less secure attachment style, compared to non-movers. Sense of belonging did not appear to be different amongst the 4 groups.
The article is openly accessible below (and definitely worth a read ;-).
Also many thanks to Sanne Vollenberg, Chloé Möller & Jamie Maria Paz Laport for helping with the data collection!

Investigating the role of residential migration history on the relationship between attachment and sense of belonging: A SEM approach With the rate of both domestic and international migration steadily increasing, the psychological impact of residential migration remains largely unexplored. Attachment, the emotional bond we establi...

An upcoming HBO series on Third Culture Kids.
"Perhaps because this life is characteristically slippery, it’s struggled to become clearly defined in the culture, even in fictional stories, suited though they are to crafting imagined worlds. Ironically, while most TCKs cite the ability to relate to nearly everyone, their own narratives suffer a relatability problem, perhaps because their youthful experiences, relegated wholly to remembrance and recollection, are in many ways too singular and strange-seeming to others."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/t-magazine/luca-guadagnino-third-culture-kids.html

Finding a Place for Third-Culture Kids in the Culture In his new HBO series, the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino revisits a timeless yet timely question: What does it mean to be from everywhere and nowhere at once?

For all healthcare workers, there are free weekly webinars from inspiring experts, to help doctors, nurses, therapists, etc cope with emotionally overwhelming COVID-19 crisis.

If you know of other great resources like these, feel free to share or comment.

Stay well and let's get through this together.

Emotional Well-Being During the COVID-19 Crisis for Health Care Providers Webinar Series We know this is a difficult time for everyone, especially those of you who are serving patients. Please join us for an 8-week webinar series featuring mental health and emotional wellness experts showing how health care providers can reduce personal stress during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Better days will come. Lovely poem by creative therapist Gali Salpeter.

Better days will come.
You have experienced hard times before
and you made it through them, remember?

Just know, better days will come.
It is the way that you flow towards them which matters now.

Feel the air as you breathe in. You can't control it all, you know.
It is your own flow that carries meaning now.
So listen to what your waters need,
Strengthen your banks,
And keep your heart open to the rivers nearby.

Flow.
Flow, and you will find that
Better days are somehow here.
For you.
Now.

"Flow" by Gali Salpeter
Image: Card Nr. 6 from "The River" Set © Story and Therapy
Therapeutic Tools

Interesting podcast of 3 Jungian psychoanalysts on how to deal with these times of change.

This Jungian Life: Episode 106 - When Everything Changes: Is There Opportunity in Crisis? In the Chinese language, the two characters representing crisis are danger and opportunity. Can that possibly be true of these days of pandemic crisis, with physical, economic, and psychological destabilization? Voices of experience and wisdom speak to us about finding poten...

This.

Image description: a tweet from saying "We really need to stop trying to carry out every single meeting, task, and activity online. Some things just need to be let go. 'Flattening the curve' also involves "lowering the bar" and prioritizing wellbeing above productivity."

"What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly". In times of crises, suffering abounds. Where some may suffer psychological breakdowns, others eventually thrive and have mental breakthroughs (something Nassim Taleb defines as being anti-fragile).
This video shares some ideas on how to fortify the mind in times of crisis:

How to Fortify the Mind in Times of Crisis Become a Supporting Member (Join us with Paypal or Credit Card) Learn More here ► http://academyofideas.com/members/ **Gain access to our growing library of ...

Struggling with self-isolation? Here's a practical approach from an astronaut.

An Astronaut's Guide to Self Isolation Chris provides four useful steps to productive self-isolation