Duration: 1.5 hours

Worry, anger, demoralization, and languishing are some of the emotional responses to the pandemic that many are experiencing. This online seminar will review these responses and offer efficient strategies to deal with them. A primary focus will be on the witnessing model, developed by presenter Kaethe Weingarten, PhD, that describes four different witness positions that can affect behavioral health providers in their daily lives. Ways of moving into the only effective position will be suggested. Dr. Weingarten will describe concrete ideas for remaining in one's resilient zone – not stuck too high, not stuck too low. She will also share an approach for preventing the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D., directs the Witness to Witness (W2W) Program for the Migrants Clinician Network. The goal of W2W is to help the helpers, primarily serving health care workers, attorneys and journalists working with vulnerable populations. She worked at Harvard Medical School (1981-2017) where she was an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology and at the Family Institute of Cambridge (1982-2009). She founded and directed the Program in Families, Trauma and Resilience at the Family Institute of Cambridge.  Internationally, she has taught in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe and New Zealand, where she was a Fulbright Specialist.  Dr. Weingarten’s work focuses on the development and dissemination of a witnessing model.  One prong of the work is about the effects of witnessing violence and trauma in the context of domestic, inter-ethnic, racial, political, and other forms of conflict. The other prong of the witnessing work is in the context of healthcare, illness, and disability.  Her work on reasonable hope has been widely cited.