‘With knowledge there can be less fear’

Paul Engel, a clinical social worker for just over four decades, will be facilitating a new eight-week long group therapy session called Healing from Emotional Anger and Relational Trauma. The sessions are hosted by the Queens Long Island Community Services, which is under the umbrella of the Flushing Jewsih Community Council and in partnership with FamilyKind.

The first part of the virtual Zoom session will start with an educational piece, then lead into anger management with the last half focusing on relational trauma and resources.

During the 75-minute sessions participation is voluntary and confidential, group members can choose to show themselves online through the camera or not. Engel has previously hosted separate groups for either anger management or relational trauma.

Through running the previous groups, he’s found that the connection of being in a group setting with shared or similar experiences can help others learn not only from inner revelations but from other members as well. “I think everybody had found it to be helpful to have those differing views,” he said of a past group.

“You’re learning from not just oneself or a therapist,” Engel said, “but also group members, and certainly, you make connections with people’s stories, and as it turns out, your experience may not necessarily be closer, because it was the same experience or with the same group, but there are other elements and people share ways in which that you know, in terms of the healing part, in terms of how to cope.

Engel’s social work background goes back to relational trauma in a group setting when he was deprogramming ex-cult members through exit counseling in the 1970’s. He said his first real destructive cult encounter was with the Unifitication Church dubbed the 'Moonies." Then in 1975 Engel encountered  “The Farm,” a cult upstate that was an offshoot of the Tennessee cult led by Steven Gaskin.

This experience led to him helping many more individuals escape out of coercive and controlled environments. Being a member of a toxic family or relationship can parallel cult experiences, Engel said.

What participants can get out of the group, Engel said, is a greater consciousness, new techniques to handle emotions, coping mechanisms, coping with thoughts, understanding individual triggers and overall wellness. “It has to be viewed as a beginning, not an end,” he said.

For those going specifically for anger management, Engel made it clear that anger is not inherently good or bad depending on how it’s used. Organizations that save lives like Mothers Against Drunk Driving or American’s Most Wanted wouldn’t exist unless they were mad and in pain.

The eight sessions will be held virtually on Wednesdays, starting from April 19 through June 7, at 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. Scholarships are available based on financial need: call (516) 547-4318 or (718) 461-6393 for more information. Register for the sessions at tinyurl.com/FamilyKindHealing.