Episode 5: COVID-19 and trauma with Dr. Madeleine De Little

It was inevitable that a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic would impact our health and affect our emotional wellbeing. In this episode, Dr. Madeleine De Little, a trauma expert, shares about the impact of COVID-19 on our mental health. 

As Dr. De Little shares, trauma with a capital T is one big event, however, there are small traumas that happen to us on a daily basis—not realizing how they impact our wellbeing. With COVID-19, we’re afraid of getting sick and the way we interact with others has completely changed. 

In this episode, we learn about COVID-19’s impact on our overall health and wellbeing and how we gain a new sense of normalcy. 

Key takeaways

• What trauma is exactly
• Different forms of trauma
• Her take on the idea of being uncomfortable with the unknown
• Ways trauma can impact people
• Why it pays to listen to your body rather than your head
• Professional work she does with children
• How COVID-19 has impacted individuals, families, and communities How the pandemic has affected how people relate to one another
• The impact of COVID-19 on children
• How to regain some sense of balance and normalcy post-pandemic
• Her thoughts on what the new normal looks like

Dr. Madeleine de Little Bio 

Dr. Madeleine De Little is a therapist for children and adults who have experienced trauma. She is also an author of a book for therapists that she has entitled “Where Words Can’t Reach: Neuroscience and the Satir Model in the Sand Tray.” She has created a new way of working with children and adults which combines the neuroscience of safety and therapeutic attunement and attachment with the novel metaphors that emerge from implicit memory. 

She facilitates the transformations of the default defences through the use of the emergence of novel metaphors in the form of figurines in the sand tray. The results of this work are powerful and lasting because it is accessing non-verbal images of the right brain and body. She is the founder of Neuroscience and Satir in the Sand Tray Certificate Program which she teaches in Canada, China, Singapore, Thailand, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

Madeleine’s roles include being a mother, a partner to a wonderful man, an academic, an author, a trainer and a gardener. Madeleine’s purpose on this earth is to help as many children and adults who have been traumatized in some way, by training therapists to use the science behind imaginative and playful ways to heal. Welcome Dr. Madeleine De Little.