About Shahera el Katib

My name is Shahera el Katib and I am a GZ psychologist by profession and mother of two beautiful boys. My career once started with an MAVO recommendation because I am dyslexic and as a result was not good at grammar and spelling. 

After many detours, I managed to reach Utrecht University and began my career within psychology. After completing my master's, I entered the field of intercultural psychiatry as a basic psychologist. I saw many people with a wide variety of complaints, but what quickly began to strike me was the hard division between body and mind. Still, many clients reported physical tension complaints, but little was done about this. After seven years of working within cross-cultural mental health and starting my post-graduate training, I became a mother of my first child. The wonderful world of motherhood was a special and valuable addition to my life. 

In the meantime, I had made the transition to the regular mental health care and had been working for a large national organization for seven years. After more than 10 years of work experience within the mental health care, one point stood out prominently: the regular care, as required by the health insurance company, produces very limited results. Looking back on this, I came to the following conclusion: actually not so strange. Why? Let me explain by the following example: a client reports having panic attacks in the supermarket, as a result this client no longer goes to the supermarket. However, he begins to notice that the panic attacks now also start to occur at work and this is reason to seek help. to seek help. According to the regular guidelines, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) would be the first choice. This means instructing the client to go to the supermarket anyway and formulate helping thoughts and practice this until the anxiety is extinguished. As a rule, this proves to be very demanding of clients and the majority of clients fail to carry out these assignments often enough until the anxiety is extinguished. Rather, we see we see a brief decrease in symptoms and then the anxiety returns just as quickly. Recognizable?

When people experience fear, a very old part of our brain turns on that is responsible for our survival: the so-called fight & flight response. When this reaction is activated, it is necessary to determine super fast and on a subconscious level to determine what the danger is and how to respond to it. Our conscious thinking abilities are then suppressed for the sake of our survival. But what happens if this process goes on too long? Then panic symptoms develop. And then we as practitioners start asking someone, who is in a state of “fight or flight,” to start thinking more helpful thoughts. This when all your head and body are saying is: flee! or fight! or freeze! Not too surprising that this is asking too much of most people when our biology is asking the exact opposite of us. 

Once I started my training because I wanted to help people, very soon I was told to be happy with the “small steps.” Now the question on the table is “what is wrong with this client?” if CBT is not working. Points that don't add up for me as a person and as a counselor. So I continued to search, across our national borders and until I found an answer. On this journey I met William Bolle and together we have found answers found that we would like to share with you. Because the answer lies in the fact that we have to start bringing the head and therefore the body back into a state of safety. Only when we are in a state of safety can we can learn, develop, connect with others and be happy.

Read more in our offer On how we combine this with other therapies.