New initiatives are being taken across Christchurch to counter the February 22 quake.

Some are well covered in the media, while others are quietly taking place beyond the cameras and microphones.

One recent initiative was a workshop on Trauma Counselling and Disaster Orientation led by a team from the Family Centre Psychosocial Unit (FCPU) based in Lower Hutt.

Lay and ordained pastoral workers, from Tikanga Maori and Tikanga Pakeha, engaged in these 3.5hr workshops to be better equipped to respond to people distressed by the quake and its consequences for their lives.

The FCPU team began with sharing experiences of counselling in Samoa following the earthquake and tsunami there on September 29, 2009. That experience undergirded the advice which followed.

Two important principles stood out from the teaching material.

First, that experience of trauma is not normal so some normal counselling strategies do not work. Going over the trauma or directly addressing the pain of the trauma is not therapeutic as it is likely to re-traumatise the person being counselled.

Better, secondly, is to encourage resilience. Trainees were taught to pick up on signs of people coping with trauma and encouraged to emphasise those signs through reflection back to the counsellee.

Feeling guilty for having survived trauma, for example, can be emphasised as a good thing. It means that we care deeply for those who did not survive. Taking steps to protect ourselves from further trauma is a way of showing our resilience.

Along the way other helpful advice was given which could be helpful to all experiencing the Christchurch quake.

Limit exposure to earthquake news, for instance. Stay active by going for walks. Aim to achieve less: lots of things can wait. Connect with others. Maintain familiar routines and normal activities as far as possible.

Just to keep the excellent FCPU team grounded in the reality of what we are experiencing, there was a nice jolt about the middle of the afternoon session.