The eight-week long program will consist of weekly sessions focusing on a particular stress-management skill, a mindfulness practice, and a group discussion. Rather than a support group, the program aims to provide participants with coping skills to manage the stress and anxiety stemming from their diagnoses.
Dr. Ruth Folchman, who lives in Aquinnah, is the clinical psychologist leading the program. Folchman’s professional background is based in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a meditation therapy used to alleviate stress and psychological suffering. Folchman said that her passion for teaching people coping mechanisms drove her to teach this course.
“I have this deep and abiding appreciation for what can happen when people come together and have an opportunity to learn new ways of orienting and new strategies and skills for how to be with what is challenging,” Folchman said.
Folchman emphasized that the stress patients often experience surrounding the possibility of triggering their tick-borne illness symptoms makes staying mindful in the present a challenge.
“Whether people have Lyme or alpha gal, there’s a level of uncertainty that goes along with that,” Folchman said. “That past and future focus becomes predominant, and people feel overwhelmed about that because you can’t change the past, and we can’t predict the future.”
Each session, which will begin on Oct.14, will focus on a particular coping mechanism, such as communication within social relationships and cognitive reappraisal, a regulation strategy that involves reflecting on a previous emotional response. Folchman said that the program intends to help participants rediscover their personal joys that are overshadowed by their condition.
“Let’s look at how to really develop our capacity to amplify what is pleasant and the sources of happiness that are occurring in life, [which] sometimes get lost because we’re stressed and our attention is absorbed by this anxiety about alpha gal or Lyme and the uncertainty that goes along with that,” she said.
Participants can enroll in either individual sessions or the entire program on the Martha’s Vineyard Medical website.
