Tagged With "substance use"
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Re: Soul Murder
Judith, thanks for this -- I think the big "aha" moment when we realize that the past play a role in our present suffering is so full of emotion. People have described it to me as a lightbulb moment, the moment that the earth seemed to shift on its axis, the missing piece as to why they've felt for so long that they've been struggling against a seemingly impossible tide of chronic emotional and physical challenges. And then, after the anger, the hope of healing. I hope this page can help us...
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Re: Dear Donna, I am reading Childhood Disrupted...
Rona, your words mean so much to me. I, too, have an ACE Score of 4. And even now, when I am so "far" along on the path to healing, there are many many moments when it feels overwhelming to consider that I've navigated one traumatic illness after another for forty years, since I was a child. ACEs aren't the only reason for that, but they play such a large role, for me, in my inflammatory response. The more we share, and look for healing, and follow the science which helps us to understand...
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Re: 5 Scripts for Building Resilience in Children with Chronic Conditions
Donna, I shared that article. I like it a lot. It goes beyond the platitudes. I especially like the "repair quickly" and the reminder that it takes five to 1 (of positive to negative). It's good to remember these in relation to all relationships but especially with parenting. Also, thank you for the reminder to do Mindfulness-Based stuff. My daughter had her first time of getting into trouble this year (she's 12). I won't go into her details as this is about my parenting not about her but I...
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Re: Basic goodness
Hi Randy, Beautiful, I just made a tape for my therapist Aug. 6 entitled "I'm Not Bad." No coincidence; the psychiatric & neuroscience literature tells us that when we don't get holding and love as kids, especially as infants, while our very "self" is forming, then we early on don't think, but rather deeply feel , that we are bad. So indeed the problem is to move this from our thinking frontal cortex knowledge, to our feeling limbic brains -- that's the $256 billion question. Just on...
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Re: Basic goodness
You are so welcome, Randy... Love to speak with you more about meditation and how it heals us... You ask "what other people do to cultivate feelings of self-worth. What do you do to remember that you are intrinsically worthy?" Wow, feeling is the key word there... I can tell myself, remembering in words, til I'm blue in the face, that I'm worthy - but that's all head talk. That's why Brenee Brown's "solution" to just paint "I am worthy" on our chests doesn't work. Essentially what I have to...
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Re: Basic goodness
Kathy, I love this distinction between KNOW and FEEL vs. Know and not Feel (or believe) I am worthy. I have often been frustrated to lose the knowing FEELING of stuff I've already learned in my head. I can't always know/remember the feeling and that is hard. And also, community, for me, which I often resist is crucial. I think it's why I love free-writing. In that circle, everyone writes, has the option of sharing and all take turns READING, being heard and listening and hearing and it's...
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Re: Buying friendship
Hi, Randy: Thanks for being so courageous to post this, and so open about your experiences. I'm really glad that you've made such incredible progress....it is very painful to come to grips with past adversity and to clearly understand how it warped us in directions that we might not have gone had our circumstances been healthier. I strongly relate to your frustration, and, in my best moments, grasp that it's another way to beat myself up, which just echoes the way I was beaten up as a child.
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Re: Buying friendship
Thank you for your bravery and transparency Randy. I think as we establish community here, we are also establishing our boundaries, and that can be exciting and scary and tricky. I appreciate your willingness to share. In reflecting on the challenge you describe I was thinking that there seem to be two extremes created by the absence of love or connection; one is generosity (to a fault?) and the other is withholding-yes? I was thinking that at the core of those two extremes is pain...I am...
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Re: Buying friendship
Hi, Randy, This is very powerful. What strikes me is your depth of realization about your interior process as you re-live past feelings of worthlessness in the present. And that uber awareness in and of itself seems to be a major step in the healing process. But mindfulness can also be painful -- but I think it is a necessary step to healing. Kind of like ripping off a bandage, to clean it out, so a wound can heal. One of the fallout factors of ACEs is the way in which we can struggle in...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Donna and all, This is such important work. I'm a therapist, marriage and family counselor, and have followed the ACE research since it first came out. As someone with an ACE score of 4, I've seen first hand how these early wounds follow us throughout our lives. They've certainly contributed to my depression, heart issues, prostate problems, and my two marriages that ended in divorce. I'd always felt somewhat ashamed and confused that so many relationships fell apart, including my own, even...
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Re: Rachel Yehuda - How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations
This is great Chris! Thanks for joining us here, so looking forward to hearing your voice as a fellow traveler on the healing path.
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Cis you raise such important insights and questions here. I'm so glad to have the opportunity to share this space with you and ask these questions and have you share your wisdome. I'm very interested in parenting for resiliency and just wrote a piece for Fearless Parents about this -- which I'll post here tomorrow. It's just touches at the beginning of what we need to know. When we have a history of ACEs we so very much want our children to grow up safe and adversity free. We know that some...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Cissy, In terms of recovery, I've found huge benefits from a variety of practices. Tai chi as a movement practice has been transformative. Sitting meditation and breath work have created space to catch emotions in the moment and manage relationships more successfully. Journaling and reflection have helped me dig deeper into underlying fears behind trigger events. Most recently, I've explored the use of therapy balls to perform self massage. See http://www.therollmodel.com/ . Body work has a...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
I look forward to reading your article Donna! I know many parents who want this info. There's a group over at Trigger Points Anthology with a book coming out in November about parenting as a survivor. It was going to be about parenting as a sexual abuse survivor but they expanded it to be a survivor of childhood abuse. I'm interested in reading those essays. Not enough is written, in my opinion on that topic. There is how to parent when you weren't parented well. There is also the...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Chris, Thanks for this info/links/resources. I'm going to pull out the rolling balls I have and always forget about and add them to the end of my yoga (what helps me most). The tension in the body can be so high and hard it feels like I can't soften to a space where the feelings can move. Thank you for this reminder about the literal and actual body tension and not just feeling tense. I'm going to do some yoga now Cissy Originally Posted by Chris Diehl: Cissy, In terms of recovery, I've...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
I'll keep an eye out for that book -- what an important work. Yes, these questions are sooo complicated, and watching a parent manage the stress of their own parents dealing with their parents -- nothing has been written about that. I'm about to post the Fearless Parent piece, which just gets at the tip of the iceberg... Originally Posted by Christine Cissy White: I look forward to reading your article Donna! I know many parents who want this info. There's a group over at Trigger Points...
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Re: Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal
Really glad to have you here Judith! We are never too old to come back to who it is we hope to be, no matter the past. Hope this community helps us all to get further on the journey! Originally Posted by judith haire: All this talk of early mortality is premature for me I am late to this party. I have an ACE score of 8. I am almost 60. That said I thank my lucky stars I found this community.
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Immigrant teens, parents explore ACEs, resilience in 5-week course with family doc
Dr. Angela Bymaster, a family doctor in San Jose, Calif., was determined to find a way to teach ACEs science to her patients. Teens would come to the Washington Neighborhood Clinic clearly depressed by a range of problems at home that were contributing to risky sexual behavior and marijuana use, as well as preventable health problems like extreme obesity.
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Improve Birth and Perinatal Outcomes with a Trauma Sensitive Approach
The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.
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In "Childhood Disrupted", Donna Jackson Nakazawa explains how your biography becomes your biology...and that you really can heal
If you want to know why you’ve been married three – or more -- times. Or why you just can’t stop smoking. Or why the ability to control your drinking is slipping away from you. Or why you have so many physical problems that doctors...
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Intergenerational Trauma: What it Is, Why it Is, and What is Being Done to End It
Hope you can join me this Friday November 13th in Baltimore – I’ll be speaking about INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Is Being Done to End It, from 1:30 to 3:00 at the John E. Ravekes Theatre, College Community...
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Introducing myself, Morgan Vien & NEW Practicing Resilience Community
Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...
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Latest ACEs science research from PubMed, February 12, 2019
Hair cortisol in the perinatal period mediates associations between maternal adversity and disrupted maternal interaction in early infancy. Nyström-Hansen M, Andersen MS, Khoury JE, Davidsen K, Gumley A, Lyons-Ruth K, MacBeth A, Harder S. Dev Psychobiol . 2019 Feb 12. doi: 10.1002/dev.21833. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 30747450 elect item 3074 Child maltreatment is mediating long-term consequences of household dysfunction in a population representative sample. Clemens V, Berthold O, Witt A,...
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Nurturing Children During Times of Stress: A Guide to Help Children Bloom by Yolo CAPC and YCCA
The Yolo County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) and Yolo County Children’s Alliance (YCCA) are excited to share Nurturing Children During Times of Stress: A Guide to Help Children Bloom. This guide for parents and caregivers, which we are launching during Child Abuse Prevention Month, contains tips and resources that parents and caregivers can use to promote resilience in their children and themselves. Nurturing Children During Times of Stress explains the effects of intense stress or...
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Parent Handouts updated and available In Dari, English & Spanish
The updated parent handouts are now available in Spanish as well as English and Dari. Here's the blog post with links to all three versions of each flyer. All versions of the Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs parent handouts can be downloaded, distributed, and used freely. Both flyers were made with generous support from Family Hui, a Program of Lead for Tomorrow, who is responsible for making the Spanish and Dari translations available. These are updates of the...
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Parenting, Menopause & ACEs After-the-Chat Summary: Carey Sipp
Have you talked with friends, siblings or co-workers about Parenting with ACEs while going through the change? Do you have any fascinating facts to share about how your OBGYN prepared or supported you when thrown by midlife, hormonal shifts and emotional residue from traumatic stress? Me either. And it's a shame. A lot of people parent, go through menopause, and have survived a bunch of ACEs. Conversations and information shouldn't be so hard to find. But they are. T hat's the reason we...
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Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do And Don't Know About Pregnancy And Incarceration [NPR]
There are 111,616 incarcerated women in the United States, a 7-fold increase since 1980. Some of these women are pregnant, but amid reports of women giving birth in their cells or shackled to hospital beds , prison and public health officials have no hard data on how many incarcerated women are pregnant, or on the outcomes of those pregnancies. A study published in The American Journal of Public Health Thursday changes that. The study included 57 percent of the US prison population (New...
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Rachel Yehuda - How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations
This recent On Being podcast touches on the epigenetic mechanism for trauma to propagate from generation to generation. While many of us are familiar with the environmental impacts shaping our children, I imagine it is less well understood how those...
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Standing Strong – The knowledge, skills and peer support parents need to lead (www.risemagazine.org)
Cissy's note: I admire the work of this parent-led and parent-focused organization. I read everything they post. For those not familiar with what they do, this is a recent interview with three staffers and gives a really good look at what and how they work to support families and make systems change. Here's an excerpt. The full piece is here. To read more of this piece recently published in Rise Magazine, go here.
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The Decision that Changed My Life
Four years ago, I decided to start a conversation about the long term impact of childhood abuse. More specifically, about what happens when those abused children grow up and have children of their own. When I had become a parent, I went looking for books on this topic, and I didn’t find anything. But I knew I couldn’t be the only one who was dealing with this. And once I found one other person who was willing to write about this, I said, let’s collect these stories. The stories of these...
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The Girl on the Side (www.beatingtrauma.com)
Elisabeth Corey writes so honestly on her Beating Trauma blog . I'm a huge fan of her writing and advocacy work. This piece, in particular, is amazing. She writes about adult relationships and how they have been impacted deeply and consistently by ACEs in childhood. We know what we have lived. Unlearning and learning new and different things takes time and work. And it helps, that parents like Elisabeth share as they learn. We all benefit from that sharing. Many of us are learning how to...
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Trauma Mama: Little Girl Riding Shotgun in My Psyche
“I love you,” I say to my daughter. “Of course you do,” she says, I’m awesome.” She was twelve. The mother in me smiled. The girl I was shook her head inside and wondered h ow would it have been to feel both loved and lovable while a child? I do not know. I will never know. It does not matter how wonderful my present. It does not matter who I will become. I can’t change the past. The past is a country I never want my daughter to travel near or in. I am an exile, from my past, my child self.
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WEBINAR | Integrating a Trauma-Informed Approach into Substance Use Disorder Treatment
Join a webinar highlighting how two providers have incorporated trauma-informed care into their substance use disorder treatment practices, shaping the experiences of their patients and staff.
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2019 Aspen Forum on Children and Families (livestream) Feb. 26-27
As state and federal lawmakers prepare for the year ahead, there is tremendous momentum for bold ideas that move families toward opportunity. The second Aspen Forum on Children and Families , held this week on February 26-27, will bring together national leaders – policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and philanthropists – to surface big ideas for investing in the full potential of children and families, two generations at a time. While in-person registration for this convening is...
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ACEs Research Corner — November 2019
[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Jackson DB, Chilton M, Johnson KR, Vaughn MG. Adverse Childhood Experiences and Household Food Insecurity. Am J Prev Med. 2019 Nov;57(5):667-674. PMID: 31522923...
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Basic goodness
Hello all! I would really like to see this community develop in something lively and dynamic, where we can have great conversations. Hearing about other people's healing journeys would be very helpful. There are times when I feel stuck, mired...
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Childhood Should Not Be Disrupted
People often ask me why I wrote # ChildhoodDisrupted . As a science journalist specializing in the intersection of neurobiology, immunology and emotion, I’d spent 20 years writing about the immune system and the human brain. When I came across the CDC’s # ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study), it struck me like a lightning bolt. I realized that after 20 years of writing about how we become ill and how we heal, I had been missing a huge piece of what can cause disease. Chronic...
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Come Chat with Dr. Claudia M. Gold: An ACE-Informed Pediatrician
Date: July 11th Time: 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST Location: Parenting with ACEs Group , Online Flyer: Attached below. Please share. Dr. Claudia M. Gold has practiced general and behavioral pediatrics for 25 years and specializes in early childhood mental health. She is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston Infant-Parent Mental Health program, William James College, and the Austen Riggs Center where she is a Human Development consultant. Dr. Gold is author of the following...
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Donna Jackson Nakazawa's Tweet Thread Response to Jennifer Brea & the Angel and the Assassin
While @Donna Jackson Nakazawa is usually too busy writing books, training, and research to blog, she does share gems, nuggets, and information every once in a while on Twitter or Facebook which demand to be turned into blogs. With her permission to post, here's a recent, consolidated Tweet thread version of her writing. It's in response to another thread by Jennifer Brea (which can be found here) where she details about what we can expect from her upcoming book, The Angel and the...
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Family Resilience And Connection Promote Flourishing Among US Children, Even Amid Adversity (www.healthaffairs.org)
Abstract below and link to open access article written by Christina D. Bethell , Nangerel Gombojav , and Robert C. Whitaker and published in Health Affairs Link to open access article written by Christina D. Bethell , Nangerel Gombojav , and Robert C. Whitaker .
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Fathers & ACEs with Trauma Dad & Father's Uplift CEO: Tuesday, September 12th
What supports exist to "uplift" fathers who have survived abandonment, abuse or torture as children? Where can men go to discuss the joys, struggles and issues of being a father with ACEs? Where are the men who face hard, heavy and complicated realities to make life easier and lighter for all who come after? We found two of them and they will be the featured guests in the next Parenting with ACEs chat . Meet Charles Clayton Daniels, Jr. of Father's Uplift and "Trauma Dad" Byron Hamel. Both...
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Free Mind Matters Online Series -- Build skills to overcome anxiety and increase resilience
In appreciation of and support for the tremendous work you are doing under challenging circumstances, Dibble will be hosting a free, 12-week Mind Matters online series with Dr. Carolyn Curtis and Dixie Zittlow. Unprecedented times, such as these, are stressful and call for everyone to think about ways to help others and themselves. Thus, we see this as an opportunity to offer free, professional development and help you and your staff practice self-care. Join us as we teach the Mind Matters...
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Healing Is Possible
I devoted half of my book, Childhood Disrupted , to science-based interventions on how individuals can heal from the effects of ACEs. Here are some of the basics. H ere are some really important healing steps we can all take – which the science shows can help reverse the changes to our brains and DNA that might have occurred, growing up with ACES Writing to heal. Research shows individuals who write about emotional upheavals and stressful experiences for 20 minutes each day, over a period of...
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Re: Trauma Mama: Little Girl Riding Shotgun in My Psyche
Oh Christine, I just dropped my 19 year old off at work and I decided to park and read some emails. I happened upon your post and here I am in tears in the parking lot. I only learned about ACEs two years ago during my recovery from colon cancer. I too am raising a son and 2 daughters and myself right now. So many A-ha moments came up while reading "Childhood Distupted: How your Biography becomes your Biology and how you can heal." And so much sadness comes up...for little Linda as well as...
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Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager
Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager
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Healing the Hidden Wounds from Childhood: The Promise of Healing, Part III (by Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D., Lt. Col., USAR, Ret.)
So many people are struggling with unhealed, hidden wounds from toxic childhood stress. For some, the pain is obvious. Others might look outwardly strong, capable, and in control. However, unhealed inner wounds cause needless suffering and can lead to a dizzying array of psychological, medical, and functional problems. Fortunately, there is hope for healing—even decades after traumatic wounding from ACEs occurs—enabling us to be 100% there for ourselves, our families, and others we work and...
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Beginning the Healing Journey: Return to the Resilient Zone
Dysregulated stress is central to the ACEs/health outcomes link. The healing journey starts with regulating stress arousal that is stuck on too high or too low.
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Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice with Special Guest, Becky Haas, Pioneer in Developing Trauma-Informed Judicial Initiatives
Please join us for our new series entitled: Trauma-Informed Criminal Justice. This monthly virtual Zoom series will feature conversations facilitated by Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity, PhD/LCSW, PACEs Connection’s criminal justice consultant, with special guests to discuss the need for trauma-informed criminal justice system reform. Using a PACEs-science lens, this series will examine the relationship between trauma and the criminal justice system, what needs changing, and strategies being...