Camille M. Quamina, Clinical Psychologist

01/05/2026

TTGPA, SIBL AND TRINRE INTRODUCE FIRST SPECIALISED PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE PROGRAMME FOR TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

The Trinidad and Tobago Group of Professional Associations Limited (TTGPA), in partnership with Specialist Insurance Brokers Ltd. (SIBL) and TRINRE Insurance Co. Ltd. (TRINRE), has introduced a first-of-its-kind Professional Indemnity Insurance Programme designed specifically for professionals in Trinidad and Tobago. The programme is exclusive to TTGPA’s membership of approximately 9,000 individual professionals and represents a decisive step forward in strengthening risk management across the professional community.
This initiative responds directly to the increasingly complex and evolving risk landscape faced by professionals, delivering a structured and locally relevant solution supported by the underwriting strength and expertise of TRINRE. It reflects TTGPA’s continued focus on identifying practical, high-impact solutions that address real risks facing its members.
Chief Executive Officer of SIBL, Mr. Blaine Hosang, underscored the importance of the programme in today’s environment. “Even the most experienced and diligent professionals face exposure to claims of error, negligence or omission. This programme has been carefully designed to provide comprehensive protection, including legal defense costs and financial coverage, enabling professionals to operate with greater confidence and security,” Hosang stated.
The solution provides protection against claims arising from professional services, safeguards both personal and business interests, and enhances professional credibility. Notably, it is the first programme of its kind developed specifically for the Trinidad and Tobago market, reflecting a focused and informed response to local risk realities.
President of the TTGPA, Mr. Justin Smith, highlighted the strategic importance of the initiative. “This programme represents a tangible and timely benefit to our members, many of whom operate in high-responsibility environments where risk exposure is inherent. TTGPA has deliberately advanced this solution to ensure our members have access to protection that is relevant, practical and aligned with the realities of professional practice. It strengthens the resilience of our professional community and reflects our commitment to moving beyond advocacy to delivering meaningful, value-driven outcomes,” Smith said.
The Professional Indemnity Insurance Programme forms part of a broader, long-term initiative to develop a comprehensive suite of solutions for TTGPA members. These solutions are intended to support not only the professional obligations of members but also their overall wellbeing and financial security, reinforcing TTGPA’s role as a central platform for professional support and advancement.

Hosang noted that the initiative reflects a shared commitment among all partners. “This engagement is grounded in delivering sustainable value to professionals. It goes beyond insurance products to establishing a framework of protection and support for individuals who contribute significantly to national development,” he said.
The Trinidad and Tobago Group of Professional Associations Limited (TTGPA), established in 1969, is an umbrella organisation based in Woodbrook, Port of Spain. It promotes high standards, ethics, and collaboration among professional bodies and operates the Professional Centre, supporting 21 member organisations across a wide range of disciplines, including accountants, architects, engineers, internal auditors, medical and allied professionals, and other key sectors.

In photo: L-R: Mr. Blaine Hosang, CEO, Specialist Insurance Brokers; Mr. George Smith, Risk and Underwriting Manager, TRINRE; Mr. Christian Charles, Specialist Service Advisor, Specialist Insurance Brokers; Mr. Justin Smith, President, TTGPA and Ms. Keshma Maharaj, TTGPA Secretary to Council at TTGPA’s Member Presidents meeting held in April 2026 at the HYATT Regency Hotel, POS.

28/04/2026

It can be confusing when people respond with defensiveness, rudeness, or hostility instead of taking accountability. Often, it’s less about the situation and more about protecting a self-image, especially when the emotions that accountability bring up feel uncomfortable or exposing, and even if their reaction creates harm or conflict for someone else.

Sometimes accountability has to be named when it hasn’t been taken. And when it’s pointed out, it can feel less like reflection and more like pressure. That’s where the shift happens; that is, where what could be insight turns into resistance.

So the pushback isn’t always about the accountability itself, but how it’s experienced. When it feels imposed rather than chosen, people are more likely to deflect or react instead of engage.

Therapy can be a space to understand these patterns, strengthen your boundaries, and decide how you want to respond to them. ✨

19/04/2026

This post strips away the idea that life is keeping score. There is a quiet assumption people carry that being good should somehow protect you. It doesn’t. Life isn’t set up to reward character with immunity. Things happen; random, unfair, undeserved, and they don’t check who you are first.

And this is the key part to healthy emotional processing, what happens to you shouldn’t depend on whether you think you earned it or not. If you wait to decide “did I deserve this?” before you let yourself feel it, respond to it, or move through it, you stay stuck longer. Once you let go of deserving, you stop getting stuck in that loop of trying to explain the pain before you deal with it.

Sometimes nothing about it makes sense. Sometimes it’s unfair. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your character at all. But it still needs to be processed, not justified. So try to shift the focus:
not why did this happen to me?
but what do I do with it now?

That’s where movement towards healing and healthy processing actually starts. ✨

15/04/2026

The pressure to measure yourself against others quietly pulls you out of your own life. It asks you to question your timing, your choices, and even your sense of self, in order to align with standards that were never designed with you in mind.

Often, those standards come through people who seem certain about who you should be, how you should act, and what your life should look like. But no one else is living within your internal world, your history, your needs, your process and so they cannot truly determine the shape or pace of your life. Over time, trying to meet these external expectations creates a kind of disconnection where you are present in your life, but not fully grounded in it.

A life begins to take shape when you step out of that comparison and begin to orient yourself inward instead. When you allow your pace to be your pace, your desires to be valid, and your path to unfold without constant evaluation. From there, taking up space is no longer something you have to justify or earn because it becomes a natural extension of being rooted in who you are. ✨

14/03/2026

Uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, sadness, hurt, shame, or jealousy often make us want to escape. Instead of sitting with the feeling, we tell ourselves stories about what it means. Thinking feels safer than feeling, but those stories are usually where the real struggle begins.

Anxiety turns into catastrophes. Sadness becomes hopelessness. Hurt becomes blame. The feeling itself would rise, peak, and fade if we just allowed it. The stories are what stick and keep us stuck.

Learning to pause before the story forms and noticing the feeling without adding a narrative is where true emotional freedom begins. Therapy is a safe place to practice this, to separate feelings from the stories we attach to them, and to respond in ways that actually help us move forward. ✨

12/03/2026

Having a really interesting conversation with the gracious Ms. Emily Anna Bachan host of Mind Matters for WESN on the psychological realities behind substance use and abuse. Our contribution to open dialogue and education to hopefully reduce stigma, encourage intervention strategies and promote healthier coping strategies.✨️

Join host Emily Anna Bachan as she takes a deep dive into the different aspects of mental health with guest Camille M. Quamina.📺WATCH:Greendot - 7Amplia - 1...

23/02/2026

The mind has a habit of time-travelling: it revisits painful memories to try to “solve” them retrospectively, and it rehearses catastrophic futures to feel prepared. Both habits are protective in intention. They’re the brain’s way of trying to keep you safe but when they become constant, they turn into rumination and anxiety; two of the biggest thieves of well-being.

The fear of a bad future is often just an unhealthy relationship with uncertainty mixed with a lack of perceived control. Your nervous system treats imagined threats as if they’re real, triggering stress responses for events that may never occur. Similarly, the memory of a bad past becomes heavy when it hardens into identity.

In both cases, the common thread is attachment to time outside the present moment. When your attention is mostly here in the present moment, the past softens and the future loses its sharp edges.

Happiness isn’t amnesia and it isn’t blind optimism. It’s a quieter state: less rumination, less catastrophic projection, and more capacity to live in the only place where change is actually possible, the here and now or present moment. ✨

11/02/2026

Your brain doesn’t experience the world as a blank slate; it predicts reality through the lens of past experience. Much of your brain operates automatically. It is constantly scanning for patterns, predicting outcomes, and preparing responses based on the things that you’ve lived through. This is all before you consciously “decide” anything. Your brain is trying to be efficient and protective. But it also means that old learning can shape present reactions without you realizing it.

For example:
* You feel anxious around authority figures but don’t consciously connect it to earlier experiences of criticism.
* You interpret a neutral text message as rejection without noticing the underlying expectation of abandonment.
In each case, your nervous system and predictive brain are drawing from stored experiences and responding quickly outside deliberate awareness.
This is why two people can face the same situation and experience it completely differently. The difference is history.

Healing is not about erasing the past, but about integrating it in an empowering way. When you process experiences properly and develop healthier tools, your responses become more conscious and less conditioned. The present moment then becomes something you participate in deliberately, rather than something you react to automatically. ✨

02/02/2026

Healing doesn’t begin with becoming better, more worthy, or more “enough.” For many people, the pursuit of goodness is a way to avoid facing unresolved pain. It can feel safer to believe there is something wrong with you than to sit with the truth that something painful happened to you.

Over time, past experiences are often processed not as memories, but as personal failure, as “not enoughness.” When this happens, present and future experiences of pain are interpreted through judgment rather than understanding. But suffering does not mean deficiency, and hurt does not require self-punishment.

Healing begins when truth is met without self-attack, and you can acknowledge what hurt, what was missing, or what was unsafe without turning it into a story about your worth. This is where compassion replaces correction, and understanding replaces shame. ✨

13/01/2026

The emotions you avoid don’t disappear; they find other ways to be felt. They often surface indirectly in the body, in our reactions, relationships, or the stories we tell ourselves.

Many people describe recurring negative thoughts, low mood, anxiety, or a sense of overwhelm that seems to arise without a clear trigger. When distress comes “out of nowhere,” it can be deeply confusing.

Often, these experiences are linked to unprocessed or unresolved situations from earlier in life. Emotions that weren’t fully felt or integrated don’t vanish; they reappear later as patterns of thought, feeling, or physical response.

Healing doesn’t come from forcing yourself to move on, but from gently allowing what was once avoided to be felt, named, and understood. When emotions are met with curiosity rather than resistance, they no longer need to find other ways to express themselves.

The therapeutic process is a useful tool in your healing process. ✨

25/11/2025

These “voices” or thoughts are often referred to as introjects, which are internalized messages absorbed from significant people in our lives. They take the form of familiar echoes:
A critical parent → “You never do enough.”
A dismissive teacher → “You’re not good at anything.”
A harsh partner → “You’re too much / not enough.”

We absorb these messages naturally as we grow, trying to make sense of the world and guide our behaviour. Over time, they become automatic thought patterns that feel like your own but they’re not. When these patterns are negative or outdated, they distort how we see ourselves.

These distortions show up as self-criticism, catastrophizing, mind-reading (“People must think I’m…”), and global judgments (“I’m a failure”). None of these reflect objective reality; they reflect conditioning.

Learning to distinguish your true inner voice from these borrowed ones is a key part of becoming a conscious, self-aware human being. Your actual voice emerges when you strip away the inherited noise and reconnect with your own values, intentions, perceptions, and truths. Therapy is a process that can help with this. ✨

06/11/2025

Life acts like a spotlight. It reveals parts of ourselves we may not have noticed before. Some of what’s illuminated feels comfortable, even affirming. Other parts can feel confronting or uncomfortable. Both hold value!

Our feelings, whether pleasant or painful, are messages, not verdicts. They don’t measure our goodness, worth, or strength. Nor do they predict failure, rejection, or catastrophe. Feelings are not prophecies. They are information; gentle indicators showing us where attention, compassion, or change might be needed.

Learning to interpret emotions as information rather than judgment allows us to meet ourselves with understanding, not fear. That’s where healing begins. ✨

The therapeutic process can be a useful tool in this type of interpretative lens.