Welcome to Middlepeace Website:
This website is an individual work by Poran Poregbal, MA., RSW., RCC, founded and originated early 2007.
Working towards inner peace requires hard work involving facing the internal fears, weaknesses, and emotional turbulence. In 2007, this writer started with this website to open up a discussion around our mental health and the cultural factors impacting it. Still today in 2018, the purpose of this website is being viewed as relevant, needed, and project for more development.
Knowing more about the issues of trauma amongst our community members, it is vital to work harder to open up space for discussion and learning. While the original idea of exploring our Iranian Farsi speaking mind is a constant backbone to the articles in this website, still this writer would like to acknowledge the importance of mental well-being in our human communities. Finding an inner peace means healthier communications, healthier relationships, and therefore healthier communities.
About Me:
I am a woman, mother, wife, and at the same time a therapist, a social worker, an activist, a dreamer, an artist, and a co-worker. Along with that, I come from a multi-disciplinary background allowing me to draw strength from many different perspective and experiences.
The word “Middlepeace” relates to a dream many of us have. The Middle East is in need of peace now more than ever, along with all of us who dream about peace for that region and for everyone around the world.
When Dr. Martin Luther King made his historic “I have a dream” speech about equality and justice, he passed on the notion of having such dreams to millions of people, to all of us. I know that many of us have the same desire. I believe in the possibility of working for peace, for creating a peaceful dialogue, and for encouraging peace.
”Middlepeace” came to my mind because I wanted to relate this possibility for peace to the part of the world we come from as Iranians. The lack of peace in the Middle East affects all of us: our families and our friends in Iran and abroad. It also affects our dreams of having harmony, happiness, and congruency in our home country again, having that entire region free from conflicts, and seeing peace establishing more and more in our world.
We gain a lot by having peace among us, between us, with us, around us, for us, and by us.
We all win by working toward peace, by letting go of egos for the sake of peace, by educating our children about this vast need, and by helping our future generations to live better lives than we are living!
We cannot afford more conflicts, more harm, and more hate. We must create peace in our hearts first in order to generate it amongst our communities, and pass it down to our children.
Let’s envision that: a world with peace!
Why Middlepeace?
Many people may wonder why it is important to read or write about “the Iranian way of thinking.” I would say, it is important to learn about groups and communities through the lens of their perception of culture, traditions, customs, and lifestyle. Now that I have the chance, I would like to examine my perception of how our Iranian way of thinking, processing, and feeling, would be enough for a happier and healthier life.
I consider the importance of education and support for building safer communities. I believe in our Iranian culture we need to understand Psychology with new eyes and also learn to apply it in our everyday life.
I guess there is no co-incidence for being where we are in life, each one of us has a map to follow, the footsteps of our previous generations and role models.
My writing is about examining the cultural, traditional, and environmental basis for mental health and dysfunction in our Iranian culture. At the same time, it is a constant work to explore the intersection of mental health with stronger family bonds, independent individuals, and peaceful communities. My work is about creating new avenues toward the promotion of parenting skills, healthy couple relationships, and wholeness of the individual.
My counselling experiences and my specialized interests afford me the ability to work with clients who suffer from migration-related issues, depression, anxiety, sexual abuse, childhood abuse, domestic violence, and trauma.
My background is in Social Work and studies in the fields of Anthropology, Ethnology, Rehabilitation, and Victim Services. I completed my undergraduate Degree in Social Science in 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden.
For about ten years, I have had the opportunities to work with victims of crime and trauma.
I come from a multicultural and multi-disciplinary world with life experiences that go back to having lived in four countries, on three continents, so far. I speak three languages and I am an artist, activist, and writer. I concentrate to contextualize on many hidden areas of our Iranian life because I believe our next generations need to know.
Certainly, writing is part of my upbringing and I would like to add to the common knowledge around us.
Poran Poregbal, MA, RSW., RCC.
M.A. in Clinical Counselling
Registered Social Worker
Registered Clinical Counsellor
For appointments call: 778-883-0591
Selfcare
Self-care in our work as counsellors / therapists / mental health workers / and social workers are vital for the sake of continuity and consistency in the provision of services.
Vicarious traumas and countertransference are constantly approaching us very subtly. Being in this field of mental health and social work for 25 years, I thought I was having proper self-care. In February 2018, one day I woke up to realize that I was overwhelmed and yet disconnected from who I thought I was. Though I always had proper self-care, still apparently, I had not taken care of my own mental health serious enough. Since I was trying to do both community services, public workshops, non-profit work, and private practice on top of everything else in my life, things were getting too stressful and my anxiety was hitting me badly.
That day, I woke up to consider that I had to take myself seriously and enough was enough. That day I woke up with a decision to resign from many positions that were only causing me free labour, headache, dissatisfaction, and free service. I realized that I was a person pleasuring in my non-profit work and had tried to keep everyone in my community happy to the cost of neglecting my own time and space.
That day my life changed. I managed to say no to several non-paying works that I was involved in and managed to stop the pattern I was stuck in.
Now looking back, that day is a day I want to celebrate every year for the rest of my life.
Poran Poregbal, MA., RSW., RCC.
Registered Clinical Counsellor and Registered Social Worker
Outpatient Psychiatry (VGH) and BC Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Trauma-Informed Therapist
For appointments call: 778-883-0591