Humanitarian work is stressful.
Between security restrictions and bureaucratic wormholes, cross-cultural frustrations, and cramped living conditions – life as a humanitarian is tough. All too often, we pay the price with our mental health. We pay with depression and anxiety. We pay with exhaustion and overwhelm. We pay with our relationships, our health, and our futures. It doesn’t have to be that way.
We offer two kinds of 1-on-1 support for humanitarians, available in English and Turkish. Find out more about our personalized resilience plans and online therapy below.
We know humanitarian work is hard because we’ve been there too.
At the airport waiting for yet another 4 am flight. The guesthouse surrounded by barbed wire. Not knowing where you’re going to be working or living in six week’s time, let alone six months.
We’ve been there too.
We’re two psychologists with a passion for helping humanitarians thrive. Dr. Rebecca Dempster is a clinical psychologist and reformed stressaholic. Yesim Arikut-Treece is a counseling psychologist and the queen of calm. Together we have over 35 years of experience in counseling and therapy, helping people cope with adversity, recover from trauma, and build lives worth living. We’ve worked all over the world; in refugee camps, field offices, and clinics, with displaced people, community helpers, and humanitarian staff.
As humanitarians ourselves, we know how stressful and unhealthy this work can be. As psychologists with a wealth of knowledge about resilience and thriving, we also know that it doesn't have to be that way. We’ve taken everything we know about stress and resilience to create practical services specifically designed for humanitarians.
You don't have to sacrifice yourself for your job. Let us help you.
Personalized Resilience Plans
Our Personalized Resilience Plans help you increase your resilience to stress so you have less of that tense, pit-of-your-stomach, can’t sleep, jaw-clenched feeling and more peace, calm, and happiness.If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already come across a lot of information about stress management. In the past decade, research on resilience has exploded. We know a lot more about how people cope with stress and adversity.
Which is great.
But the sheer amount of information and advice out there can feel overwhelming. Article after article gives you a new tip or strategy to try – Meditate! Do yoga! Keep a gratitude journal! Think positively! But not too positively! Do more exercise!
Truthfully, that’s all good advice. But do you need to do all of them? Which ones work best? How do you get started? How do you keep going when the initial excitement has worn off?
That’s where our personalized plans come in. We work with you to identify the strategies that work best for you and plan a way to fit them into your life. We support you as you implement your plan, with encouragement to help you stay on track and making adjustments to your plan when you need it.
How does it work?
You schedule a Zoom session and we get started right away. You’ll receive a questionnaire to complete. That questionnaire lets us know a little about you – where you are in your resilience journey, what’s working for you, what’s not working for you, the stressors you’re facing, and what you want out of the session. We use that to prepare for your session so we can hit the ground running and maximize our time together.
In our session together, we’ll get into more detail, identifying the resilience skills and strategies that best meet your personal goals. We’ll talk about how you can increase your resilience step-by-step, fine-tuning what’s already working and problem-solving what’s not. At the end of the session, you’ll have a concrete, actionable, and personalized plan that will help you thrive wherever you are and whatever stressors you are facing.
As you put your plan into action, we’ll be there to cheer you on, boost your motivation, and troubleshoot as needed. We’ll have one more session, 30 days or so after you’ve begun, to celebrate your successes, solidify your gains, and update your plan to carry you forward.
What’s included?The cost? We charge $155 USD for a Personalized Resilience Plan. We offer a discount for interns, volunteers, and students.
The result? A happier, healthier, more resilient you.
Get in touch to schedule your session.
Online Therapy
Therapy is a great way to handle some of life's tougher challenges. It can help you recover from traumatic experiences, manage your emotions, get control over behaviours that bother you, understand yourself better, and work through problems.
But isn’t therapy for crazy people?
No.
While we don't use the word “crazy” to describe people with mental health problems, we know what you mean.
There’s a pretty common misconception that people who need therapy are seriously disturbed, mentally ill, or what society refers to as “crazy”. Therapy can certainly be helpful for anyone suffering from serious mental health problems, but it’s also helpful for people struggling with stress, low mood, and anxiety, experiencing problems at work or in relationships, or impacted by a traumatic event.
Getting therapy to support your mental health is no different than going to the doctor when you have a physical health problem. Most importantly – and we cannot stress this enough – having mental health problems is not a sign of weakness. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. It means you’re a human being who is facing challenges in your life. Which is not that surprising, because life can be challenging. And therapy can help with that.
How does therapy work?
On the surface, therapy looks a lot like other kinds of conversations. You talk, your therapist listens. Not so different than talking over your problems with a friend, right?
Therapy works because it is different from other relationships. Therapy is focused entirely on you and your goals. Your therapist is there to listen to you and to support you as you process difficult emotions and difficult experiences, address behaviours that you want to change, and gain insight into what makes you tick. And your therapist brings years of training and experience that help her help you. As therapists, we pay attention to things that other people might not notice, we see connections between problems you’re having and other experiences in your life, and we use these insights to help you better understand yourself and make the changes that you want to.
The first step in therapy is usually an assessment or intake process. We will work with you to understand what’s brought you to therapy, your strengths and resources, your stressors and challenges, and what’s helped you in the past. We might use tools and questionnaires to help us get a sense of how you’re functioning, what your mood is like, and any symptoms of distress you might be experiencing. This time is also a chance for you to get to know us and decide if we are a good fit for you as a therapist.
This process might take a couple of sessions but it is a really important time in getting to know each other and making sure we have a treatment plan that will help you reach your goals. Once we have all that in place, we can begin therapy. That could be a single session or it could be weekly sessions until you’ve met your goals. What happens in a session will depend a little on your therapy goals and the type of therapy we’ve decided on. In some specialized therapies, like EMDR, the sessions might be quite structured. In other therapies, you’ll have more space to talk about what’s happening in your life as we listen, offer observations, and support.
If you're wondering if therapy is a good fit for you, you can take a look at our intake form.
You don’t have to face life’s challenges on your own.
Email us to schedule your intake session.
*We charge $120 USD per therapy session.
Have a question about therapy or our Personalized Reslience Plans or not sure which one is right for you? Get in touch and we'll help you figure it out.
Looking for support for your whole team? Check out our staff support packages.