What is C.A.R.E.?
Center for Attention Rehabilitation & Education
C.A.R.E. is a Marin County, California-based non-profit organization offering transformative education, consulting and coaching services to people who are seeking attention for their acute or chronic experiences of loss and trauma. Our clients tend to be those individuals who seek relief from feelings of loneliness, isolation, sadness, grief, and experience a sense of alienation and social disenfranchisement.
Our offering is based in the experience and observation that feelings don't kill people; rather it is avoiding feelings that can make living seem unbearable, for some. Many of us learned to hold in our feelings and thoughts, to keep secrets about our family dysfunction, to appear strong and capable on the outside when our inner experience was confusion or fear. We literally turned our attention away from our feelings, purposely avoiding them.
Learning to focus attention away from deep feelings and thoughts can actually compromise survival. For example, many veterans in our program, who needed to stay focused on being capable and strong during combat, find it difficult to sort out and communicate about feelings of pain and loss. Instead they harbor the shock and trauma of combat deep inside, unable to transition those experiences and feelings into life with their families and friends at home.
Our participants learn to bring attention to difficult and painful, often private experiences of shame or grief in a way that allows living to resume.
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At C.A.R.E. our participants discover, access and express feelings they believe no one can possibly understand; that even they cannot fully comprehend. Participants learn that they can see, experience and do unspeakable things and still find a way to live with the truth about themselves and their experience. They learn that they can bring their attention back to themselves. They learn they can survive letting go of the addicitions and suicidal thoughts that keep their attention focused away from the trauma and the pain.
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While we extend a special invitation to veterans and their families, we will work with anyone who meets our criteria and is willing to make the committment to participation in our program.
