We Are Tired: Reflections on Humility, Shared Burden, and Walking Alongside Inuit Communities

Guest Blog Post by Lito (Joselito) Libres, MACP, CCC

 

Nunatsiavut (“Our Beautiful Land” in Inuttitut) is a self-governing Inuit region in northern Labrador, Canada. Inuit are one of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. Their communities have lived through profound historical disruptions, including forced relocations and forced residential schooling. These experiences continue to shape families and communities across generations, alongside enduring cultural strength and resilience (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2016).  

After more than 10 years of working in these communities, some of the most meaningful conversations with Inuit colleagues have happened over coffee in the staff kitchen. These informal moments are not breaks from the work—they are part of it. They teach lessons that no orientation, training, or textbook can offer. 

It was during one of these coffee breaks, in the days following two suicide deaths in two Inuit communities, that several Inuit colleagues looked at the author and quietly said, “You must be tired.” 

He paused before replying. “We are tired,” he said. 

That brief exchange stayed with him long after the conversation ended. Colleagues encouraged him to write it down. On reflection, it was about more than fatigue. It revealed the different ways grief is carried by those who come to help and those who continue living, working, and grieving within the community long after the immediate crisis has passed. 

These deaths were not isolated events to be managed clinically. Grief moved through families, friends, responders, and the wider community. This reflection grew from that conversation and what it taught about humility, shared burden, and the responsibility of walking alongside Inuit colleagues and communities—including how eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) psychotherapy is timed and applied with cultural responsiveness. 

Shared burden

Outside clinicians and local Inuit community health workers, community mental health workers, and social workers carry different kinds of exhaustion. When suicide deaths occur, especially among young people, the loss is painful to witness for any clinician. But an outside clinician’s relationship to the person who died is usually shaped by professional role rather than kinship, family history, or lifelong community connection. That difference matters. 

The year 2000 marked a devastating period in the region, with many suicide deaths, including among youth. Suicide deaths have continued to affect Inuit communities in the years since (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2016). Repeated exposure to traumatic loss can create a painful numbness—what should never feel normal begins to feel expected. Each new death adds to previous losses, funerals, crises, and memories. For local Inuit workers, responding can reactivate their own histories of loss. Their exhaustion comes not only from the present crisis but from its repetition across many years. 

For the author, this experience spans a decade. For many Inuit colleagues, it spans a lifetime—known through kinship, memory, and repeated grief, not only through professional exposure. 

Inuit colleagues often meet the grief before it has words. Frequently the first to respond, they support families and community members while being affected themselves and while the community is still in the rawness of shock. Their exhaustion is not only from workload; it comes from carrying professional responsibility while also being part of the grieving community. Their work is relational, cultural, personal, and communal, not only clinical or administrative. 

Many also live with ongoing hypervigilance—an alertness to the possibility that another incident could happen. Bracing for what might happen next, even while responding to what already has, is one of the hidden burdens of community-based crisis work. After years of repeated exposure, the nervous system may remain primed for crisis, and constant readiness can become exhaustion and burnout. 

Alongside this exhaustion, Inuit communities show real strength in how people come together during crisis. Families, friends, neighbors, and leaders gather around those directly affected, offering presence, food, and comfort. They move toward the grief, not away from it. Even when tired, people continue to care for one another. At the same time, close relationships and kinship ties mean that the pain of a loss can extend throughout the community and beyond it. 

Walking alongside grief with EMDR

The author’s clinical role often involves EMDR psychotherapy after a suicide death (Shapiro, 2018; Solomon, 2024). EMDR can be used with longstanding unresolved trauma as well as distress following recent traumatic events. Family members, friends, neighbors, and responders may remain distressed by what they saw or heard, nightmares, flashbacks, or a persistent sense of being on edge. Through bilateral stimulation (BLS), such as following the therapist’s fingers with the eyes, EMDR helps the person attend to and process the traumatic memory while remaining connected to the present. The aim is not to erase what happened, but to help people experience the memory as less disturbing and recognize that the traumatic event has ended. 

This work is intense, but it typically begins after the first wave of community response. Responding too early, before being invited, risks feeling intrusive to families in deep grief; an outside clinician’s presence can interrupt rather than support the natural grieving process. Timing matters. Often the most respectful role is not to be first, but to be available when invited and when the community is ready. 

When the author replied, “We are tired,” to his colleagues that day, the intent was to shift focus away from his own exhaustion and acknowledge the less visible, demanding work carried by his Inuit colleagues. 

For most of the past decade, the author lived and worked within these communities, sharing life with colleagues and community members rather than moving in and out. This year, shifting to a rotation-based model has introduced a different rhythm of distance and return. 

For local Inuit workers, the grief and responsibility remain close. They remain in the community day and night, without the same physical or emotional distance. The crisis is not only part of their work; it is also part of their community, relationships, and sometimes their own story. After outside professionals leave, they remain among the families, friends, and responders affected by the deaths, while carrying concerns about the next crisis and expectations that they remain available. 

Rotation has helped sustain the author’s work. Leaving the community, returning home, and recovering between rotations supports the capacity to return and provide deep trauma reprocessing using EMDR. Similar rotational models for other mental health professionals, including nurses, recognize that community-based crisis work requires periods of distance, rest, and recovery. 

Recovery is important for sustaining the attentiveness required for EMDR psychotherapy. In the author’s experience, EMDR has often produced meaningful relief in a single session or a few—even for memories carrying significant weight. This is not the case for every client, but where access to sustained mental health care is limited, that efficiency matters. Although EMDR therapy’s eight-phase approach provides structure, reprocessing can reveal complex layers of unresolved trauma intertwined with current symptoms and experiences. In communities affected by repeated and historical trauma, a broader understanding of the person’s history and context is essential. At the same time, returning to the specific target helps keep reprocessing contained and focused. When processing becomes stuck, culturally attuned interweaves can facilitate movement while remaining responsive to the client’s context and experience. Regular consultation with an experienced EMDR consultant also provides space to reflect on complexities emerging during reprocessing. 

Humility

Outsider status can offer emotional distance that supports clinical steadiness during crisis—but that same distance requires ethical humility. Local Inuit community health workers, mental health workers, and social workers may be carrying a heavier burden: responding professionally while also grieving personally, relationally, culturally and historically. The outside clinician’s role is not to take over the crisis or become its center, but to stand beside local workers, offer what is useful, remain available when invited, and stay aware of the different weight each person carries. 

Saying “We are tired” was not only about naming personal fatigue; it acknowledged a shared burden that is not carried equally. In trauma work shaped by repeated loss, humility may begin with this recognition: some are tired from the work; others are tired from the work, the grief, the history, and the responsibility of remaining. What can look like urgency or reactivity in a colleague’s crisis response is often only the visible part. Like an iceberg, the greater weight lies beneath: accumulated grief, repeated traumatic loss, intergenerational trauma, community responsibility, and fear that another crisis could happen (Nickerson, 2022). 

For non-Inuit professionals working in or curious about Inuit communities, 10 years in this work have taught the author that professional knowledge, skills, and training matter—but should never become barriers to learning from the people and communities being served. What has helped most is arriving with an open mind, listening more than speaking, observing before intervening, working collaboratively, and spending time with elders and knowledge keepers—learning not only from what they say but from how they relate to others. Understanding a community’s history and remaining sensitive to its layers of trauma and resilience shape how the work is done. Even small choices—where and how one sits with people—can communicate either distance or respect. Attuning to clients’ needs and understanding their history also informs how EMDR therapy is paced and applied within the therapeutic relationship. 

Some of the most important lessons in this work were never taught in graduate school. They emerged through relationships, listening, and allowing the community itself to become one of the greatest teachers—if we are willing to listen. 

 

Lito (Joselito) Libres, MACP, CCC, EMDRIA Certified Therapist, is a clinical therapist with the Department of Health and Social Development of the Nunatsiavut Government in Labrador, Canada. For the past decade, he has provided trauma therapy to individuals, families, and communities affected by historical trauma, grief, and suicide loss, integrating EMDR with cultural humility and relationship-centred practice. 

 

References 

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. (2016). National Inuit suicide prevention strategy. https://www.itk.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ITK-National-Inuit-Suicide-Prevention-Strategy-2016.pdf 

Nickerson, M. (Ed.). (2022). Cultural competence and healing culturally based trauma with EMDR therapy: Innovative strategies and protocols (2nd ed.). Springer Publishing. 

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). Guilford Press. 

Solomon, R. M. (2024). EMDR therapy treatment for grief and mourning: Transforming the connection to the deceased loved one. Oxford University Press. 

Solomon, R. M., & Rando, T. A. (2007). Utilization of EMDR in the treatment of grief and mourning. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 1(2): 109-117. https://doi.org/10.1891/1933-3196.1.2.109  

 

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Date
November 6, 2026

Contributor(s)
Joselito Libres

Topics
Self-Harm/Suicidality, Tragedies

Client Population
Racial/Cultural/Ethnic Groups

Practice & Methods
DEI/IDEA

Audience
EMDR Therapists, General/Public

Language
English

Content Type
Blog/Blog Post

Access Type
Open Access

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