I think this is a great idea and something I never considered before. Not that I need any support cos I'm well hard and that. ;)

But well done to you and I wish you luck!

... to whom you give your emotions.. there are a lot of assholes waiting for vulnerable people...

Follow the links from the website to the contacts page and see what you find... commercial services offered by a range of woolly "counsellors" and practitioners of magic/pseudoscience such as craniosacral- some of them even offer a sliding scale of payments

This is exploitative and encourages victimhood not emotional resilience

Since when was indyemedia here to provide small ads for fee charging faith healers?

i was glad to see that someone had put the info about activist trauma support up here. there are loads of people who have just had their first experiences of police violence in the past month or two, who could probably do with the info.

i went and looked at the site, and checked out the links. the vast majority of links listed are for other activist groups which deal with trauma support/ mental health etc. or for websites with good free resources.
there is one link to the "counselling directory" (a commercial site), and another to the BCMA, but that's it.
and there is - listed completely seperately from the links - a "support database" set up by ATS. which seems to mostly consist of activists with counselling/ healing skills who are offering their services. if i did decide to seek counselling for protest-related trauma, i think i would appreciate a counsellor who had some experience of being involved in activism/ supporting activists.

i think the people who set up ATS did so with good motives, and i don't think your criticism is justified.

"This is exploitative and encourages victimhood not emotional resilience"

Is this some activisty version of 'boys don't cry'? It is obvious that there are activists around who have witnessed and experienced some extremely traumatic events, and there is therefore a need for activists to provide a supportive structure for those who are unable to bounce back without help. Of course, in seeking help activists should exercise the same caution that they would when approaching the NHS or private counsellors, but at least they have a chance of getting help from someone who understands what they might have experienced.

SaraB

Personally I think it's useful that there is a directory of counsellors that are sympathetic to activists, and it's up to any individual seeking counselling to judge the "wooliness" for themselves - although I note you seem to call them all wooly, which is not true in my experience. As for offering a sliding scale of charges, great! People that cannot pay as much pay less. What's the problem with that?

"Since when was indyemedia here to provide small ads for fee charging faith healers?"
Never. ATS are responsible for what is on the ATS site, not Indymedia.

What's all this stiff upper lip crap??? Victorian patriarchal gender stereotypes!

Just the kinds of areas activism takes people is enough to depress the shit out of even Lionel Blair. From personal experience activism has brought me into contact with people who have been systematically raped, tortured, mortally wounded, who have witnessed mass killings, children having their throats cut; activists who have seen friends killed right in front of them.

The kind of police brutality in the UK that we regularly see is not to be sniffed at. The Met narrowly avoided adding Alfie Meadows to their list of unlawfully killed.

And given that the type of people who give enough of a shit to become activists have been through trauma of their own, I think it is common sense that counselling will often be very appropriate.

I would like to see however, the counselling to be free at the point of use... as a baseline of trust and to avoid the ambulance chasers looking for a new niche.

And hey, it's not a tall order, since most a activists don't invoice either.

Thanks for your comments everyone.

Maybe it's not clear how ATS works - also we're an evolving network and constantly have to work on developing our practives.

We are a network of activists, some of whom have skills and training around issues to do with emotional wellbeing. A lot of what we do is around skill sharing and providing information. We do not make any money for what we do, or charge any fees - sometimes we've had some funding e.g. from climate camp for resources for the wellbeing space, but none of us has ever made any money from being part of ATS.

We provide support for free. What we can offer is limited by our skills, the time we have and number of people who are involved, and the location of individual members of the network. This means that there are some limitations in what we provide in terms of ongoing support for people who need it. Although we do try to be as flexible as possible, we do sometimes try to signpost people to local support when that seems appropriate.

The database is intended to be a list of people who are sympathetic to activism, as one concern many people who are looking for support have is that counsellors will not understand the things they're involved with, which puts them off seeking help. We do not intend to promote these individuals to help them make money; most if not all of the practitioners listed are able to offer free or reduced rate services to people when needed. Many of them are people who are/have been involved in activism, and wish to help out.

We cannot vouch for all of the people listed on the database, and are happy to talk to anyone considering seeking support about how to go about finding a suitable supporter. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable with someone, and that they are open about their skills and qualifications - professional counsellors and therapists should be able to provide you with evidence of these.

We'd be grateful for any feedback or ideas about how we can make ATS better, including the database.