Mental Health Awareness Month: Expert on Grief, Trauma and Burnout

Need an expert commentator on grief, trauma and burnout?

Meet Sherry Walling, MAT, PhD

MINNEAPOLIS, MN / ACCESSWIRE / May 2, 2022 / May is Mental Health Awareness Month and trauma psychologist Dr. Sherry Walling is available to provide insights on a variety of topics related to grief, trauma and burnout, as well as tips and unique coping strategies from both personal and professional experience.

When Dr. Walling lost her father to cancer and brother to suicide within six months of each other, she explored the neurological benefits of movement and other non-traditional healing techniques. Post-pandemic, at a time of collective mourning, Dr. Walling hopes to expand and deepen conversations around America’s mental health crisis. According to the CDC, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased by nearly 30% between 2000 and 2018. As a highly trained professional-and as a surviving family member of someone lost to suicide-Dr. Walling’s perspective is unique and powerfully personal.

As Dr. Walling recently wrote in Fortune magazine, “We’ve lost loved ones, our sense of safety and well-being, and trust in the structures that had scaffolded our lives. We’ve had to give up our freedom, habits, and plans.”

Dr. Walling is available throughout Mental Health Awareness Month as a commentator and op-ed contributor for radio, television, podcasts and digital media.

How our Culture Grieves

This is a time of collective mourning. It’s been estimated that nine people are grieving for each of the one million Americans who have died of COVID. This means that millions of our neighbors, friends, and colleagues are living in grief. Our grief is not limited to loss of life, but also to the loss of safety, connection, and predictability that have become so pervasive. Post-pandemic, America is facing complicated grief. Dr. Walling posits that we’re getting grief wrong. She says we’ve got to get over the attitude that we bury our loved ones on Tuesday and go back to work on Friday, and create grief spaces and memorials at work, and new approaches to how we grieve.

Relevant credentials: Dr. Walling helps entrepreneurs and high performers grieve and deal with loss. Her upcoming book, Touching Two Worlds: A guide for finding hope in the landscape of loss (Sounds True, July 2022) will help readers re-learn how to grieve.

Dr. Walling describes her grief journey and why she wrote Touching Two Worlds in this video.

The Burnout Crisis

After two years of remote work, prolonged stress and mental exhaustion, a 2021 American Psychological Association study found 79% of workers had experienced job-related stress in the past month. Microsoft recently surveyed 31,000 people across 31 countries and found that 55% of hybrid employees and 50% of all-remote employees reported feeling lonelier at work than before the pandemic. (But is this burnout?)

Building on Christina Maslach’s work at UC Berkeley, Dr. Walling understands burnout as a repetitive stress injury to the brain, in which people over-utilize specific neurological circuitry. Dr. Walling has spent the last 10 years helping entrepreneurs and leaders implement cutting edge strategies to help prevent burnout.

Relevant credentials: Dr. Walling’s podcast, ZenFounder, which has surpassed 300 episodes, has been called a “must listen” by Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines. In it, she helps entrepreneurs and leaders address burnout and other mental health concerns. Her best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping your Sh*t Together (with Rob Walling) focuses heavily on burnout prevention.

Coping with trauma and traumatic experiences

Evidence of the trauma caused by COVID keeps piling up. A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, family members of COVID-19 patients in intensive care develop symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD. This leads to a cascade of other mental health challenges.

Relevant credentials: Dr. Walling specializes in trauma, PTSD and the impact of adverse childhood experiences on later life. She’s been a clinical researcher at the National Center for PTSD in Boston, Boston University School of Medicine, and a clinical professor teaching trauma-related distress and treatment at UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry (Fresno campus). She has published research related to trauma exposure and PTSD in peer-reviewed academic publications such as: Journal of Traumatic Stress, Psychotherapy, Behavior Therapy, Child Welfare, and Journal of Family Violence.

The Psychedelics Solution

It wasn’t until the deaths of her father and brother that Dr. Walling became convinced that psychedelics are an essential option for those seeking healing in the areas of mental health and addiction.

More than one third of patients suffering from mental health issues do not respond to currently available treatments. Substances such as ketamine, LSD, MDMA and psilocybin produce non-ordinary states of consciousness and are being widely investigated as effective treatments alongside psychotherapy for mental health issues.

According to Dr. Walling: “There are many problems with our current treatment systems, and I believe that there is much that we could do better. Psychedelic supported therapies offer different kinds of integrated interventions that have the potential to be more effective in preventing suicide and alleviating anguish.”

Relevant credentials: Dr. Walling is trained by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to administer MDMA supported therapy for PTSD and trained to utilize ketamine-supported psychotherapy. She has been a host of the Mind Curious podcast and clinical advisor to Mind Cure.

Better mental health through play and movement

After Dr. Walling lost her dad and brother, she craved movement and play as a way to reconnect with her body and her aliveness. So, she joined the circus, becoming an amateur aerialist.

Movement engages different aspects of the brain, shifting away from critical thinking and focusing the mind on spatial reasoning, creative expression, and our unconscious ability to sense motion and location. Dr. Walling says that diversifying neural connections fosters resilience; movement promotes healing and is one of the best protections against cognitive decline.

“The satisfaction of learning something new also releases dopamine, the happy chemical, in the brain. These small boosts to our pleasure center are important,” she explains. “It will take me years to learn how to live through Christmas without my dad and brother. But I can learn a trapeze trick in a weekend.”

Relevant credentials: Dr. Walling is a certified yoga instructor and aerial coach.

On May 12 in Minneapolis, she is presenting an evening of “circus arts and storytelling” in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. This show, which features Twin Cities artists, is inspired by Dr. Walling’s upcoming memoir, Touching Two Worlds and honors all who struggle with mental illness (and those that love them).

Dr. Walling is available throughout Mental Health Awareness Month as a commentator, panelist, op-ed contributor for radio, television, podcasts or digital media. Located in Minneapolis, MN. She can be reached at sherrywalling@gmail.com or via phone or text at 626-353-5079

Twitter ​​@sherrywalling
Instagram @sherrywalling
www.linkedin.com/in/sherry-walling-phd/
www.zenfounder.com

SOURCE: ZenFounder

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