Our new Medical Director

We are starting 2015 with incredible gratitude as we make the wonderful announcement of our new Medical Director.

It is with the greatest respect and happiness that I introduce to you Dr Rex Haigh, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry and 20-year veteran NHS consultant psychiatrist. He started his medical career as a GP, then trained in psychiatry, and group analytic psychotherapy. He is an internationally known expert in the field of therapeutic communities.

His expertise completes our goal of having an in-house clinical team working in tandem with our external network of referring clinicians, psychiatrists and general practitioners to ensure high standards of quality trauma healing treatment for our common clients.  This month I write in my blog about the value of collaboration.

Dr Haigh was a member of the guideline development group for NICE CG78 on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), where he emphatically stated that a standard psychiatric approach of ‘medication and review’ was not suitable for people with these conditions, as they generally have a history of complex trauma and disordered emotional development; which reinforces the need for long-term and coherently delivered treatment.

Personality disorders and trauma

The strong overlap between BPD and trauma and his embracing of our similar therapeutic philosophy implemented at Khiron House made him an excellent match for our needs from both our clients and our clinicians. Here is how he describes the relationship between trauma and personality disorders:

“Although different clinical disciplines have different languages for describing and defining the intensely painful and disabling consequences of disrupted emotional development, with psychologists usually calling it ‘complex trauma’, and psychiatrists diagnosing it as ‘borderline personality disorder’, the underlying mental ‘injury’ is the same – and the treatment for it needs to be biopsychosocial to be effective. This means that the social and the psychological need to be taken into account as much as the biological (meaning brain structure and chemistry, and genetics).

Unless services realise this, and incorporate all the aspects into a coordinated treatment programme, people with these problems – whatever their label – will not be receiving the best treatment. Khiron House offers a state-of-the-art psychotherapy programme for trauma, which can now be fully integrated with the necessary medical care to keep people safe and best able to benefit from the intensive therapy”.

He writes more about these and similar matters in his blog: www.greenshrink.blogspot.com

Rex’s work as a Clinical Advisor to the Department of Health’s National Personality Disorder Programme involved commissioning 11 national pilot projects to demonstrate the importance and effectiveness of using therapeutic approaches which emphasise the quality of therapeutic relationships within a treatment unit.

Environmental care

Dr Haigh’s team also recently won the Outstanding Contribution to Sustainability Psychiatric Team of the Year Award in the RCPsych Awards 2014. This marks the highest level of achievement in psychiatry, recognizing and rewarding excellent practice in the field of mental health.   He made the following statement upon receiving this award: “Sustainability is about connecting people to each other and to nature, helping people to see that there is a life worth living, and a planet that is worth living on.”

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A relational approach

Today we announced the appointment of our Medical Director, Dr Rex Haigh. Meeting with Dr Haigh and his team felt like experiencing ‘goodness of fit.’ His background, knowledge and ability to collaborate was evident in his communication style within his team and between us, exemplifying value and respect for everyone. This is what I enjoy the most about collaborating with other clinicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and general practitioners. In fact I believe it is a critical link for the continuity of care for the well-being of our common clients.

At Khiron House, we know trauma healing treatment, we are trained in this, and it is our passion; and we also know that trauma healing is one component of the broader healing process. Our exchanged phone calls with client’s external clinicians and doctors allows healing to expand and generalize; be it a therapist who wants us to help a client work on a specific traumatic issue prior to returning to their care; or one of our clinicians contacting a psychiatrist to update him or her on their client’s progress; or to schedule an appointment for their client’s medication or symptom review; this collaboration contributes to the overall healing of a client.

Celebrating successes with clients in-common

In a past phone call with a client’s referring clinician, I shared a client’s breakthrough experienced in a Somatic Experiencing session. She shared her exhilaration for the breakthrough of her client’s ability to ‘un-couple’ three emotions that were fused together from the client’s unresolved traumatic past. She shared that this would lay the foundation for the client’s follow-on work with her around her relationship issues. I told her how much I enjoyed sharing these peak moments with her, as she too was someone who cared deeply for the client’s well-being.

Interrupting staff-splitting

Another experience I valued was interrupting the common cycle of staff-splitting for clients diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder by ensuring that all clinical, medical and psychological professionals were in agreement with the proposed treatment for a client. Presenting with a united front, and agreeing upon the timing, methodology and treatment plan for a client sets the container for healing to be maximized. Sometimes declining to admit a client to support their continued treatment with their current practitioner and treatment program sends a strong message of ‘continue as you are doing, as you are on a good, strong path’, allowing for the client to work through challenges that are perhaps being deflected.

Seeking counsel

Sometimes our clinicians need an external opinion, thought, or insight from a doctor, psychologist, or clinician who has a long-standing relationship with our common client. It can be invaluable to learn about a piece of history which we sense we are missing, or a medical issue that we need more background on to better support the client, or to discuss complex symptoms which an external professional could provide insight. Knowing what we know, knowing what we don’t know, and being willing to seek counsel on the difference can sometimes be the turning point in making profound life changing shifts for a client on their healing journey. At Khiron House, I fully support seeking counsel as an act of ego-strength, not weakness. There are gifted professionals in the UK community, and to benefit from their knowledge helps everyone.

Shame reduction

In my coming from The Meadows, a world renown trauma and addiction treatment centre in the USA, it was continually brought to our clinical team’s attention the dramatic and damaging impact that shame has on an individual and their nervous system; and reinforced the value of implementing shame reduction methodologies for those struggling with disorders, addictions and trauma. By collaborating with a professional team of health care clinicians, validation is given to our common clients that ‘you are not in this alone, you are of value, you are a worthwhile human being, and you are someone who we are both willing and want to support in the best way we can so you can move on and live your life; versus lose yourself to it.’ I have learned that this  is perhaps one of the strongest messages we can give.

Connecting people

One part of our Medical Director, Dr. Haigh’s statement when he received his national award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainability Psychiatric Team of the Year was:  ”Sustainability is about connecting people to each other and to nature”; and my sense is that this may be the thread of gold woven throughout collaboration,  both in substance and in modelling this to clients.

I recently pondered that perhaps the expansion of healing happens not only as a result of the fluid collaboration with one another and nature, but as a result of the connection itself.

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Space and Enabling Expansion

Khiron House’s residential clinic

Allowing space for where we are at and what we are feeling is often what the human system needs most.

Space is like balm for the soul; enabling expansion. It is the opposite of overwhelm’s sense of “breath-less.”

In trauma healing work, just being heard and supported can create a sense of calm for our clients; with their nervous system’s response of a deeper full-breath or an exhaled breath of relief; a sense of “that’s it;” serving as the foundation for the sense of “I can.”

This “I can” is perhaps the natural state of our life-force flow.

The Art of Allowing Space

As clinicians experiencing space within, we “allow for” our clients to resonate with the same. It is not the gloriousness of our knowledge that heals, rather the art of allowing space for the sense of expansion within our clients.

It is the nervous system’s purest expression of acceptance, allowing for: “ah, that’s it” to birth.

To be able to offer this in an environment itself that is open, spacious and clear feels so appropriate and that is a large part of our enthusiasm about our move to the Oxfordshire countryside.

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Taking care of those who take care of others

Colleen DeRango

I have repeatedly seen the powerful healing that clinicians’ facilitate, and view it as the energy of the heart combined with the passion of the soul and intellect of the mind. We can teach intellect but ‘heart and soul’ is something special and somewhat undefinable, something to be experienced rather than explained.

With the demands made upon therapists working with clients in overwhelm as well as the introduction of more progressive and powerful methodologies, my goal is that this will not be at the expense of its staff who are typically soul-driven clinicians who do their greatest work because of their heart.

I have always loved the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi that begins with: “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace” and I imagine, by living and working this way, ‘Thy Peace flows’. If, as a clinician, one feels this sense of expansive flow or peace, it serves beautifully as a ‘tuning fork’, allowing for the patient to experience the same. Freedom within, freedom without. Connection within, connection without.

It takes time and money to honour the instruments but, when well-nourished, they give from a place of abundance. And, when an organization has clinicians giving and supporting from a place of abundance to their clients, one has greater healing. Righting the wrongs of childhood or adult trauma/overwhelm, generating corrective emotional experiences, supporting nervous system regulation are all components of working authentically from the inside out.

As a progressive organization we include in our program attention to the hearts and souls of our staff, our clinicians. When hearts and souls are nourished, wisdom emerges.

Let us make more efforts to honour this wisdom to facilitate healing. Expansive, clear, aligned healing. Thy Peace flowing freely.

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