Therapy for the World: In-Person Conference Style Event, London, July 11th
Annabel McGoldrick, PhD
Numerous colleagues have said they agree that we need to open the therapy room door more, to explore how the outside world is shaping our clients’ inner world. It’s an insight that has parallels in systems theory: each part affects every other.
Many of our clients feel lost, disorientated and disturbed by multidimensional global crises, from climate change, hatred, racism, rise of the far right, anti-semitism to endless wars in the middle east. Hence therapy for the world. To me, we all share one wonderful planet, called earth. How can we work together as just one race in collaboration?
I became really passionate about this event when a colleague said: ‘Annabel this is so important, so many clients and colleagues feel so much pain about the world but you can’t criticise the state of Israel!’
This is why Palestine is still the issue. Palestine and the genocide are at the pointy end of all these concerns, a case study in dehumanisation and cruelty; in colonisation; in power and oppression; where Israeli lives are valued more than Palestinian lives. When I raise this in the EMDR trauma healing community I’m told I’m being political. But the personal is political. That’s why Therapists for Social Change was created: to explore the interface between therapeutic ideas and practices and social justice perspectives and actions. We are interested both in the ways that counselling and psychotherapy can be practised with social justice concerns in mind (for instance, tackling unconscious biases in the consulting room), and also in the ways that therapeutic principles and practices can be extended out to the wider social realm (for instance, developing social and emotional literacy in schools).
As therapists we do not want to collude with our clients’ delusional views, we want to awaken them to reality by talking about all these issues. If someone is being gaslit by a violent, coercively controlling partner we need to call that out. But if there’s global political silence around Israel playing victim but behaving like a genocidal perpetrator, clients can see starving children being shot, schools bombed in Iran, that pressurises some to keep quiet about their own domestic oppression. This global Israeli gaslighting strengthens the inner censors of our vulnerable clients, who ask: who will believe me? Especially if they’re from a minority group.
Join us on July 11th in central London so we can hang out with real people, real coffee, real laughter with fellow fully human, humans, where there’s a congruence and commensurability in the discussion.
We need a new narrative for these troubled times so we’ve called together therapists, thinkers, feminists, activists, academics, and peace makers to help us and our clients to make sense of where we are, and where we’re going.
Wonderful speakers so far have answered the call, with all the money going to Palestinian causes:
Ashira Darwish: Palestinian therapist, former journalist who produced and featured in the film Where Olive Trees Weep.
Avigail Abarbanel: Israeli therapist, activist, writer read her fully human essays (she doesn’t call herself Israeli any more having handed back her citizenship to the Israeli embassy).
Tarek Younis: Psychologist, Racial Justice Researcher, author Muslim, State and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia. New Report: The Violence of Liberal Racism: What Palestine Reveals About British Mental Health Care. https://healingjusticeldn.org/methodology/the-violence-of-liberal-racism-what-palestine-reveals-about-british-mental-health-care/
Judith Anderson: psychotherapist and former chair of Climate Psychology Alliance
Ivan Campbell: psychoanalyst, former conflict resolver for SaferWorld, activist and therapeutic support for refugees and asylum seekers.
Tamara Abood: psychotherapist, activist, former TV commissioning editor.
Alison O’Connor: writer, trainer, therapist and activist with 30 years’ experience in arts, health and community settings. Her book, Moral Injury on the Frontline: A guide to sustaining ourselves in challenging times will be published by Routledge in 2027.
Join us in person, July 11th to open the therapy doors and put the world on the couch. Morning for conference style talking. Afternoon for body work.
It’s taking place in London on July 11th in City Road, at the Wesley chapel: https://wesleyschapel.org.uk/visiting-us/
More information https://emdrinsight.com/therapy-for-the-world/
Tickets https://events.humanitix.com/therapy-for-the-world
Dr Annabel McGoldrick is a BACP Accredited therapist; EMDR Consultant and IFS Level 2 therapist. She’s a former journalist who helped to develop, teach and co-authored Peace Journalism (2005, Hawthorn Press). She also co-authors the Janna Rose Mysteries, the only detective fiction featuring an EMDR Psychotherapist with a sideline investigating murder. She’s written numerous articles about combining IFS with EMDR, including two chapters in IFS-informed EMDR: Creative Collaborative Approaches, edited by David Polidi (Routledge, 2026).
