Counsellor Lori McIsaac Bewsher (Image: submitted)
Clinical social worker and counsellor Lori McIsaac Bewsher is taking a new approach to healing trauma with the creation of the Rising Tides Healing Centre in Grand Bay-Westfield. McIsaac Bewsher is planning to open in September in the same building as Rising Tides Counselling at 192 River Valley Drive.
“This trauma healing centre is really going to be focused on giving people the right treatment individualistic treatment, and having therapeutic approaches that approach a wider network of treatment options,” she said. “We’re going to try to offer it all under one roof.”
She began exploring and researching trauma at her private practice as she realized clients’ need for long-term, deeper healing weren’t being met.
“It takes a lot of courage for a person to say, ‘I want to treat my trauma,’ McIsaac Bewsher said. “The idea of the collective is that we’re able to attract and collaborate with other partners who also share this vision of being trauma-focused.”
She explained that when it comes to long-term deeper healing, people often need other types of services to help them process and recover beyond cognitive treatment, from physical to nutritional to spiritual.
The centre’s multidisciplinary partners, include a nutritionist, yoga and Reiki instructors and a thermographer specialist. “There’s a lot of people who are interested in doing this kind of work,” she said. but I’m definitely looking for other partners,” she said.
The building will have seven rentable spaces with a large common area that McIsaac Bewsher says could be rented out for day groups, workshops or classes.
“What’s going to be cool about it is that opportunity to really work together in something that everybody who’s part of the team really truly strongly believes in,” she said. “I don’t just want people to come and rent space and pay their rent every month and come and go.”
Rising Tides Counselling and Healing Centre in Grand-Bay Westfield (Image: submitted)
The centre will be able to treat a spectrum of trauma, from workplace accidents to physical abuse, and will focus on a multi-disciplinary, individualistic trauma focused therapy option while being more responsive to people’s requests. It will also work on increasing awareness about trauma and its symptoms and how they can be resolved through different approaches.
McIsaac Bewsher has been expanding therapy sessions from one hour to two or three hour sessions and hopes to offer retreat style work.
“There’s a lot of emotional upheaval that has to happen in an hour so with a three hour session, people can do a lot more work, she said. “And it’s easier for people sometimes to take an afternoon out of their life and come and do their trauma work as opposed to having to do the traditional model of one hour a week,” she explained. She is also trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) and internal family systems therapy.
While preparing the centre amidst COVID-19, McIsaac Bewsher continues to do virtual and socially distanced in-person counselling sessions for clients at a 50/50 split.
“I know with COVID we have to do what we need to do to continue to function as a society and it’s wonderful that we have the technology that we can still carry on our work as usual,” she said. “But I never, ever want to lose the value and the importance of people’s opportunity to have relationships and come together as a community.”
McIsaac Bewsher hopes the centre can potentially become a model on how to treat trauma in New Brunswick. “I think our society, our community is ripe for another way of doing business and I think getting our voice in at the table with the importance of understanding trauma, being trauma informed, and how we can help heal people is going to be better for all of us in the long run,” she said.
