Amber meets global trauma expert Dr Gabor Mate in Sofia, Bulgaria
"Many Lawyers represent clients who have a legal problem as a consequence of their childhood traumas. I travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria to meet internationally renowned trauma expert, retired physician, best-selling author and speaker Dr Gabor Mate. His vision is, “to bring compassion, respect, acceptance, insight, healing, freedom and connection to humanity through an international community of skilful Compassionate Inquiry practitioners”.
From over two decades practice in law and seeing hundreds of clients, I believe all lawyers need to acquire this skill to learn how to be more self-compassionate as well as increase awareness and empathy about their clients -
(you can sign up at admin@compassionateinquiry.com)
As a Holistic Lawyer who treats my clients as sentient human beings who have minds, emotions, feelings, body and spirit; exploring what happened to them in their childhood and growing up is part of what I consider to be my duty of care. I want to know what happened to them and what is going on in their lives now, in the present moment. Only then, from that place can we design and co-create a more peaceful, loving and kind life experience moving forward.
As Dr Gabor says, “trauma is not what happened to you - it is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you”. Also, Dr Gabor teaches that it is not necessary for bad things to have happened to be traumatized- being deprived of good things such as unconditional love, nurturing, or access to mutually responsive relationships, can also lead to trauma - feelings of not being enough, being unloveable, unworthy- can all arise in both circumstances.
Seeing my clients’ pain, empathising with them, communicating compassionately and holding a safe space of non-judgment, leads to more effective communication between us, more accurate instructions taken which assists me in the case management, drafting submissions, any advocacy work on their behalf and importantly, in reaching more peaceful resolutions to their legal problem or conflict away from (at times re-traumatizing) adversarial systems/ court rooms. These conversations also inform me the lawyer, as to what kind of external professional support my clients may benefit from to find healing such as psychotherapy, anger management, mindfulness, meditation, art as therapy, counselling and so on.
“Justice" to me is finding our truth, our true Self free from the pain and suffering of trauma, where we do no harm to ourselves, nor others. Paraphrasing Dr Gabor’s wise words: 'healing means becoming whole, re-connecting with all the parts of ourselves which became dis-connected as a result of what happened inside us, in response to what happened to us'. What better balance of justice than to re-cover our own wholeness in a holistic approach to law practice with our clients, throughout and post the legal process?
“Healing" also means we can respond to life in the present moment rather than reacting to our painful experiences of the past when old wounds are constantly triggered.
In my experience since called to the Bar as a Barrister-at-Law in 1998 (London), with 17 years’ practice in litigation -all lawyers and mediators ought to seriously consider becoming 'trauma-informed', for our own healing, for that of our clients and their families in the ripple effect and to achieve a more ‘perfect’, justice for all grounded in peace and healing… “
For more information and/ or coaching/ workshops, please contact amber@amberlaw.gi.