With more than 20 years of experience as a trauma expert, I carry with me countless stories of people in distress. Many therapy sessions, interventions, exercises and outcomes - good and less successful - are etched in my memory. About my field, I wrote a book, Getting Stronger Where It Hurts, which incorporates these stories.
I have worked in many different contexts, with various kinds of trauma: people chased by their past, survivors of child abuse, refugees and asylum seekers, victims of accidents and crimes, the victims of the terrorist attacks in Brussels.
Today, I provide trauma and victim assistance training: to my fellow aid workers, from midwives to psychologists, from emergency service workers to HR managers and boards of NGOs and corporations.
I graduated in moral science, attended the 4-year integrative psychotherapy course, trained as a family mediator, specialized in constellations and psychotraumatology. I am a guest lecturer at the post-graduate course in psychotraumatology at the VUB (Free University of Brussels); former member of the Board of Directors of the BIP (Belgian Institute for Psychotraumatology), recognized supervisor, member of the ESTSS (European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies) and I have an ECP accreditation (European Certificate Psychotherapy). Spring 2022 I became a member of the Advisory Board of TraumaNet.