This workshop will reflect on the fundamental interpersonal experience of being comforted. It will also allow those of us who are professional or personal carers to reflect on the macro and micro skills required of those who offer comfort to others. We will reflect on how we give comfort when we haven’t been comforted ourselves, and how tuning into others can be impacted by our own life story. In the trauma field that often advocates for individualised and professional therapy this session will draw attention to the ordinary communal capacity to offer comfort. It will shift the conversation towards social responsiveness and communal responsibility to those who have been harmed. It will focus our hearts and minds on the wider issues of engaging with injustice where we live, learn, and work. Led by family physician (general practitioner) researcher Dr Johanna Lynch, this session is about a wide whole person vision for health  grounded in awareness of the physiological impact of not being alone. It will be a chance to reflect on both the attuned sensitivity of giving comfort, and the whole person physiological relief of receiving comfort that are part of whole person, whole family, and whole community health.
 
 At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
 1/ Describe the personal impact of being comforted.
 2/ Name the potential barriers to offering comfort to others.  
 3/ Reflect on the tensions inherent in communal responsibility towards those who have been harmed.