A one-day training exploring burnout, vicarious trauma, group dynamics, and sustainable forms of collective care.
The Edinburgh Palestine Community Wellbeing Group would like to invite you to Self-Care in Activist Spaces: Understanding Burnout and Vicarious Trauma.
The training is open to activists, community members, and anyone interested in collective care, including people who are not specifically involved in pro-Palestine activism--all are welcome! No previous experience is required; just curiosity, openness, and a willingness to learn with and from one another.
Where: Collective Space, 21 Albert Street, Edinburgh, EH7 5LH.
When: Saturday 17th October from 10am to 4pm
The training will be led by Katharine (Kat) Heritage, a trainee Clinical Psychologist with over 15 years experience working in mental health, and Zeinab (Zee) Wasfy, a HCPC-registered Art Psychotherapist and Participatory Arts Facilitator specialising in decolonial and liberatory practice.
About pricing:
The training is priced on a sliding scale from £30 to £75. We are aiming to raise as much money as possible to fund Zee's Global Talent visa application, so please give what you can. If you want to support without attending, are between sliding scale options, or just want to provide more support you can use the 'Donation' option to contribute instead or or in addition to buying a ticket.
Refreshments:
There will be food available to purchase from a Palestinian cook who will be raising money to support her family in Gaza. Additionally, Ripple Grove Cafe is located in Collective Space and will be open for coffee, pastries and other drinks throughout the day. Please note: The food is not covered in the price of the ticket.
Accessibility:
We will be using a training space in Collective Space that is in the basement down one flight of stairs. Sadly, the building has no lift. There are gender neutral toilets available. There are quiet spaces, including a garden, where people can take a moment if they need. If you have any questions, please email us at epcommunitywellbeing@proton.me
About the training:
People working for justice often carry grief, rage, urgency, responsibility, and hope alongside the work itself. Yet the care needed to sustain people and movements is often treated as an afterthought.
This training brings together psychological understandings of burnout and vicarious trauma with mentalising, embodied, creative, and art-therapy-informed practices. It is grounded in decolonising, anti-imperialist, and liberation psychology perspectives.
Rather than focusing only on how individuals can manage themselves better, we will explore the conditions that help people and groups remain connected, reflective, and able to continue their work.
Together, we will consider how care can be built through relationships, community, culture, land, pacing, shared responsibility, and survival.
We will explore:
- Individual and collective approaches to sustainable forms of self-care
- How to recognise the signs and impact of burnout and vicarious trauma
- How grief, rage, urgency, and emotional intensity affects our ability to think and reflect, and the impact this can have on group dynamics and interactions
- How personal, political, cultural, and collective experiences shape relationships and ways of working
- Embodied, creative, and relational practices to help regulate ourselves and for staying connected during difficult work
- How groups and organisations can build cultures of care
- How to move from individual coping towards shared and collective forms of support
This is not about becoming better at tolerating harmful conditions. It is about developing practices that support us while also asking what needs to change around us.
We also hope the day will give people space to meet one another, strengthen relationships, and broaden our networks of care. We believe we are stronger together.
Please note: This training will explore emotionally intense material. Participants will be free to take breaks as and when they need, in addition to the breaks provided.
About the group:
The Edinburgh Palestine Community Wellbeing Group is a community group started in April 2024 to process our emotions and build care into our communities in the fight for Palestinian liberation. We host meetings twice a month, training events on mental health topics such as self and community care in activism spaces, gardening sessions at our Gorgie Farm allotment, and community picnics in the summer. In a world that is trying to divide and isolate us, we are building a community of people who have the space and tools to care and support each other. Our group meetings and trainings are facilitated by a mental health professional and we explore topics such as isolation, burnout, grief, anger, vicarious trauma, radical love and more.