Excerpt from Webinar held June 10, 2024:
A New Way of Healing Emotional Distress
For Hospice and Palliative Medicine Personnel
Sponsors:
St. Richard's Hospice, Worceshire, UK
and
Division of Palliative Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Co-Sponsors:
By the Bay Health
San Francisco, CA USA
Symptom Management Service
UCSF Helen Diller Family Cancer Center
The MERI Center for Education in
Palliative Care at UCSF/Mt Zion
Spiritual Competency Academy

Trauma-Informed Palliative Care Project
Monday June 10, 2024; 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
with optional additional discussion
of research and clinical examples
9am - 10am PDT
Our first hour will be an opportunity to directly experience (taste!) an adaptation of Manfield's Flash Technique, a neurobiological phenomenon which reduces or eliminates the impact of a previously traumatic and disturbing memory without having to consciously confront the disturbing memory itself.
No personal sharing of memories
will be required.
No previous experience with or knowledge of EMDR or other trauma-informed therapies will be required.
In the second (optional) hour, we will discuss emerging research and clinical data representing this New Paradigm for treating and healing traumatic and disturbing memories.
Anxiety. Fear. Guilt. Regret. Anguish. Moral Injury. Jealousy. Disgust. Humiliation. Panic. Medical Trauma
Life makes us all susceptible at times to these stressful and painful feeling states. But often they are experienced as memories of suffering and trauma.
This can be especially true for people facing serious and life-threatening medical conditions, as well as for palliative care and hospice staff who often
bear witness to deep suffering.
These memories can afflict us long after the initial wounding, despite our attempts to change them through distraction, mindfulness and meditation, spirituality, or psychotherapy.
This webinar will present a simplified version of Manfield's Flash Technique for reducing the disturbance of memories
that can be incorporated into the toolbox for a wide range of medical professionals, including hospice and palliative care personnel such as nurses, social workers and counselors, occupational and physical therapists, chaplains, end-of-life doulas, and bereavement counselors.
One hospice patient's comments after
feeling bad that she "was a difficult patient," and
then doing the Flash Technique with a counselor:
"I don't have to feel bad about this any longer...
My beliefs are valid, and if they don't understand that,
its not my fault!"
One person’s experience with the Flash Technique:
“I watched my beloved husband die painfully in the ICU. I have a very vivid visual memory and was concerned that I would not be able to carry the experience. I fortunately received a 30-minute flash therapy session a few days later to help process the memory. Surprisingly, one single session has helped tremendously. One can even feel it working immediately through the session as each time the memory is recalled it is less visceral. I highly recommend the flash therapy technique in addition to regular talk therapy for anyone who is processing a painful traumatic memory.”
Another's patient's experience with the Flash Technique:
"I don't know what you did but this was literally the first time I was totally anxiety free. And today was horrible until we talked. These last couple of weeks have been awful and sad so it's really really nice to breathe without my heart trying to jump out of my chest when I'm at home. I just wanted to thank you."
Another patient's experience:
D.Cox, J.L. Fellows & J.M.R. Goulding
Patient perspective on a novel psychological therapy approach (flash technique) for neurofibromatosis. Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, Volume 47, Issue 4, 1 April 2022, Pages 789-790, doi.org/10.1111/ced.15064
The current paradigm for conventionally recommended "Evidence-Based Psychotherapies" (EBP's) for trauma and PTSD assumes that conscious exposure to the memory, even if titrated in small doses, is necessary,
While effective in some cases, such exposure therapy can be distressing, which creates problems with treatment acceptance and has potential for re-traumatization.
Four neurobiological research labs over the past 10 years have demonstrated that "Exposure" can be effectively delivered Non-consciously-and thus without causing traumatized or phobic people to experience distress. These results also shed additional light on consciousness and resilience.
Manfield's Flash Technique is evidence-based and has been taught internationally since 2017 in 6-hour workshops by Phillip Manfield, PhD and Lewis Engel, PhD and has 17 peer-reviewed and 2 andomized controlled (RCT) studies to-date. In a 6-hour free training in April, 2024, 18,000 trauma-informed clinicians registered, with nearly 2,000 attending the live training.