Help for refugees: trauma therapist develops special program

Created: 05/12/2022, 12:42 p.m

By: Susanne Weiss

Good cooperation: The mentors and participants also go on excursions, for example to the Beuerberg monastery.

© TRIGG

"Trigg" helps refugees to live with their trauma.

It is an intensive group that is likely to be unique in this form, but that is about to change.

Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – There is a program for refugees in the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen that should be unique in this form, but should not remain unique.

It's called Trigg, an acronym of "Trauma Education Intensive Group for Traumatized Refugees".

The funding that Trigg received from Caritas Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen from the organization Aktion Mensch recently expired.

That's why trauma therapist Ulrich Flossdorf and his team, which includes assistant Laurin Schulte, are expanding the program.

Floßdorf started in 2018 with a group for Afghans in Wolfratshausen.

Today it is open to refugees of all nationalities in the district and meets every week in the old pump house, which the association citizens for citizens makes available.

Every two weeks there is also a group for women and their children at the Saftladen youth center in Geretsried.

About half of the refugees need psychosocial help

What unites the people in the group: They are all traumatized.

"The traumatic experiences are very different," explains Schulte, who is currently studying political science.

For people from Afghanistan or Syria, it is mostly war-related experiences.

For others, topics include violence in the family and threats from gangs or because of homosexuality.

And bottom line: "Every escape is traumatic." Some find a healthy way to deal with the memories on their own.

"I know of one person who sang and didn't develop post-traumatic stress disorder as a result," reports Schulte.

According to statistics, however, half of the refugees would need psychosocial help.

But therapists in the Munich area are known to be more than busy.

Behind the Trigg program are trauma therapist Ulrich Floßdorf (right) and assistant Laurin Schulte.

© TRIGG

Flossdorf became aware of this problem through the Wolfratshausen helpers' group.

As a trauma therapist, he already had experience in group work with young people.

Why shouldn't that also help refugees?

"I tried out what works and what doesn't," reports Floßdorf.

Talking about the trauma in the group, for example, was not an option.

"I found that the reports trigger the other participants." Such discussions only take place in individual sessions.

Every traumatized refugee has something different to help from the emergency kit

In the group lesson, the participants, currently around 17 men and seven women, rate how they are doing on a scale from zero to ten.

With a little gymnastics, everyone gets their bodies active.

"Most of them are not allowed to work and spend most of their time playing with their mobile phones in the camps," explains Schulte.

The participants then get to know stabilization exercises.

"When a flashback comes, you're doing something that requires your full concentration," says the assistant.

There is a whole emergency case, everyone helps something different.

In the group lessons there are also guided meditations and the participants discuss topics such as integration, culture or homeland.

Trigg has had participants—most stay with the group for between six months and two years—who have had multiple suicide attempts.

"I thought it would be impossible to help them," says Schulte.

But some of them are now reporting successes, such as their driver's license or the completion of their training.

"That's cool," says the student.

But it doesn't always work that way.

"We also had to admit participants who were at risk of suicide," Floßdorf makes clear.

He is called by the police when a situation in a shelter escalates.

On the positive side: “We have good connections to the inspections in Geretsried and Wolfratshausen.

We have become an interface because the refugees trust us.”

Trigg might work in other places too

Trigg does not replace therapy, emphasizes Flossdorf.

"We do trauma pedagogy." His assistant explains it with an image: "If the trauma is a pool of water, we teach the participants to swim," says Schulte.

You do that in therapy too, but then it’s about diving under and pulling the plug, working through the trauma.

"We stabilize so that the participants can learn German and do an apprenticeship."

In addition to the experts, volunteers are always present in the group lessons to support and translate the refugees with their integration.

After a period of time, they can become mentors.

Floßdorf and his team have developed a training program that they want to make available to others in the long term.

To do this, they founded the non-profit GmbH HelperNet.

“We have something that works in practice.

Now we have to translate it into a theory,” explains Schulte.

Then Trigg could not only help refugees in the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, but throughout Germany or even around the world.

info

You can support Trigg with donations, homepage: www.trigg.de.

A crowdfunding campaign for the mentoring program is running until June 1, online at www.mitmachen-crowd.de/trigg.

By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular Wolfratshausen-Geretsried newsletter.