Tagged With "Recovering from abuse"
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The Back Country Prescription Experiment [longreads.com]
By Mathina Calliope, Longreads, December 3, 2019 In 2014 my doctor took me off the antidepressant I had credited with making life okay for the previous 16 years; at 41 I was trying to have a baby with my boyfriend, Inti. I didn’t get pregnant, but this story isn’t about my failure to become a mother. Instead it’s about how a break from my meds led, ultimately and circuitously, to another kind of birth; to a different life for myself. My doctor’s orders seemed rash. Going off antidepressants...
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The Best Medicine for Confronting Trauma: Be Present [yesmagazine.org]
When our beloved dog had cancer, we did all we could to help him be comfortable toward the end of his life. Because Rottweilers are so strong, they require a lot of pain medication, so we essentially had to give him what seemed like horse tranquilizers. While we were all caring for him, my daughters were in charge of giving him his daily meds. One day the girls were gone, and as I grabbed his handful of meds I thought, “When’s the last time I took my stuff?” So, I gathered all my vitamins,...
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The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series - "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life"
Learning to find my gifts within my chaos has changed everything. Everything.
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The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series – “Getting Past Your Past”
Naturally, I would at times experience panic attack symptoms, and would almost always cry. Sometimes slow tears cascading down my cheeks. Other times full-on ugly crying, requiring a pause in the action.
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The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series - "The Power of Now"
The author takes us on a journey into a deep place within us, a place where the truth is known "within every cell of (our) body"; beyond the masks we wear, the criticisms we've cloaked ourselves in, our over-thinker personas, fueled by the old doubts we've absorbed into our beings.
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The Colors of Wellness [psychologytoday.com]
The idea of diversity in wellness is a topic that is near and dear to me, and in my view, does not garner nearly as much attention as it should. Although there have been some studies , it is difficult to have an objective discussion because of sparse data. The anecdotal accounts , however, are abundant. Wellness, as we understand it today, was introduced in 1959 by Halbert Dunn’s article “ High-Level Wellness for Man & Society .” Dunn’s writing, from over fifty years ago, began to...
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The Effects of Trauma from “Growing up Too Fast” [blogs.psychcentral.com]
One of the most common euphemisms and justifications for a certain type of childhood trauma is “growing up too fast.” It is a euphemism because it is used to minimize the pain that the person felt as a child when their needs weren’t being met by describing it in seemingly neutral or even positive language. It’s a justification because it is often used to argue that growing up faster and becoming “mature beyond your years” is indeed a good thing. We will explore and address all of this here.
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The Emptiness You Feel is Trying to Tell You Something
I read a short story last week that was about emptiness and love. That funny thing that happens sometimes, happened, and three different people wrote to me within about 24 hours about… emptiness and love. They were feeling -- and I think a lot of us are feeling it -- a harsh, empty, loveless feeling that keeps swooping into their consciousness during this quarantined period, sounding the alarm that something HUGE is missing from our lives. One woman even said “I know you’ll think I’m crazy...
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The Healing Breath (wakeup-world.com)
Did you know that we take about 17,000 breaths a day, for our body to be saturated with oxygen? Breathing also triggers many physiological mechanisms. In itself, breathing seems simple, we do not even have to think about doing it. This is keeping us alive, yet it can be hindering us from optimal health. The simple technique is that we draw the air through our nose and mouth, then the process of breathing is mostly a lung job. Together with the diaphragm and the ribs and the intercostal...
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The Healing Place Podcast: Barbara Rubel, MA, BCETS, D.A.A.E.T.S. - How to Help Suicide Loss Survivors & the Traumatic Impact of Suicide
Barbara Rubel is a suicide loss survivor and leading thanatologist. Thanatology is the scientific study of death. As a thanatologist, Barbara Rubel specializes in suicide loss survivor grief and educating professionals about traumatic loss. The third updated and revised edition of her book, But I Didn’t Say Goodbye: Helping families after a suicide, just launched on Amazon.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kathleen Friend: The Greatness Chair
Kathleen Friend MD is a Child Psychiatrist, children’s author, musician and heart rhythm meditation teacher currently living in Tucson, Arizona. Her mission is to expand the paradigm of Child Psychiatry to embrace a holistic view of mind, body and spirit.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Dr. Kathleen Friend: The Greatness Chair
Kathleen Friend MD is a Child Psychiatrist, children’s author, musician and heart rhythm meditation teacher currently living in Tucson, Arizona. Her mission is to expand the paradigm of Child Psychiatry to embrace a holistic view of mind, body and spirit.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD: Journey Through Trauma
Thank you, Dr. Gretchen Schmelzer, for enlightening us even more about the "journey through trauma". Listen in as Gretchen shares her insights on trauma GPS, her work in the field of trauma-recovery and healing on individual and societal levels, Nelson Mandela, her five phase cycle for healing repeated trauma, and more!
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The Healing Place Podcast - Jen Johnson: Everyday Mindful
I thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with Jen Johnson to discuss the gifts contained in mindfulness practice, her counseling services as well as her coaching work with clients all over the world, her photography and writing outlets, along with sharing pieces of her own healing journey with us.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Louise Godbold: Echo
Louise Godbold is the Executive Director of Echo. Before joining Echo in 2010, she worked for over 15 years in the nonprofit field, both in nonprofit management and as a consultant. Louise is the developer and lead trainer for Echo’s curricula on trauma and resilience. She is a trauma survivor and #MeToo silence breaker.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Missy Garcia: Sexuality, Leadership, Healing
Missy is passionate about empowering women with tools to come back into the true beauty of who they are, guide them to open their heart to completely loving all of themselves, and totally embracing their badass queen within. She coaches women to access their inner power, be healed from within and bring back the juiciness into their life, careers and relationships.
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The Healing Place Podcast - Shenandoah Chefalo: Garbage Bag Suitcase
What a delightful conversation Teri Wellbrock engaged in with the passionate and compassionate Shenandoah Chefalo, author of "Garbage Bag Suitcase: A Memoir" and faculty member of The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities. They dove into the depths of: the healing work of Crossnore and The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities; growing up in the foster care system; trauma-brain; 3 proven resilience-building factors; compassion approaches; and why they dislike tomatoes!
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The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
Sometimes I free-write and riff when I first wake up. I let go of grammar, punctuation and sometimes even logic. I follow the words and the pen and see what happens. It doesn't have to be neat, artistic, poetic or amazing. It feels wonderful and is like splashing around in a pool in the mind. Today I was thinking about grief and ACEs and storyteller because I'd been listening to Kate Braestrup tell a story on Moth. Beautiful audio is what this is. I recommend listening. It's about grief,...
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The human condition: we are all on a quest for safety
Here's a link to a summary of my notes on polyvagal theory from a training I attended with Dr Stephen Porges in Cork, Ireland in September 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340309690_The_human_condition_we_are_all_on_a_quest_for_safety?channel=doi&linkId=5e835d7a299bf130796d959c&showFulltext=true I also conducted a Law and Justice podcast with Dr Porges on "The Science of Safety", accessible here: ...
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The implicit bias of, “Mental Illness” and “mentally ill”, a lexicon of hurt.
How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.
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The Importance of Connecting with Your Inner Child
When I first started therapy, every time I heard the words "inner child" I wanted to puke. First of all, the only memories I have from my childhood aren't really memories. They are home videos. I have no idea how I felt as a child, and I certainly didn't care to do so. I wanted to put all of that in the past. After all, could my so-called "inner child" really play that big of a role in my life today? Well, as it turns out, she does. Sometimes, my inner child takes over, and I become an...
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The Many Faces of Grief
“…Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding…. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self….” – From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran There are many kinds of loss that we can encounter in life. However, losses surrounding addiction can be particularly confusing; they tend...
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The New Science of Empathy and Empaths (drjudithorloff.com)
Empathy is when we reach our hearts out to others and put ourselves in their shoes. However, being an empath goes even farther. Like many of my patients and myself, empaths are people who’re high on the empathic spectrum and actually feel what is happening in others in their own bodies. As a result, empaths can have incredible compassion for people–but they often get exhausted from feeling “too much” unless they develop strategies to safeguard their sensitivities and develop healthy...
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The playing field wasn’t level to begin with: On childhood trauma and the fruitless comparison game. [anniewrightpsychotherapy.com]
I’ve wanted to write about this idea for a long time. You see, in my work as a therapist and in my personal life, I watch something happen really, really often: People who come from traumatic childhood backgrounds comparing themselves to peers who didn’t and beating themselves up for not being further ahead in life or at the same level as their peers. This, obviously, is super painful for those who are comparing themselves to others and finding themselves lacking. But it also doesn’t and...
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The Relationship between Science and Spirituality (upliftconnect.com)
To connect the conceptual changes in science with the broader change of worldview and values in society, I had to go beyond physics and look for a broader conceptual framework. In doing so, I realized that our major social issues – health, education, human rights, social justice, political power, protection of the environment, the management of business enterprises, the economy, and so on – all have to do with living systems; with individual human beings, social systems, and ecosystems. In...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Healing Our Ghosts Podcast Has Launched
Healing our Ghosts is a new podcast by Ana Joanes, filmmaker and creative spirit who brought us Wrestling Ghosts, a groundbreaking documentary about parenting with ACEs. This new podcast has a unique vision: The premiere episode of Healing Our Ghosts is with one of my all time favorite people, Cissy White. She is a brilliant writer, who speaks nationally about the impact of trauma and her healing journey. Cissy believes that trauma survivors must be leading this work and that it is not...
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The Self-Care Acronym You Need to Remember on Bad Mental Health Days [themighty.com]
Laura's note: While the author's example of rest includes watching television, in my opinion, true rest--the kind that is crucial to restoring us and that often is so hard to come by--does not involve screens of any kind. That is not to say that chilling in front of a screen can't be relaxing and fun--who doesn't need to zone out now and again?--but the deep rest we need to heal and fill our internal stores so we are equipped to handle stress on a bad mental health day or ANY day comes from...
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The Soulful Journey of Recovery is out TODAY!!!
A groundbreaking new book from the publisher of the New York Times bestseller Adult Children of Alcoholics …The book that started it all! "Tian Dayton picks up where Janet Woititz author of Adult Children of Alcoholics left off…..for those who have grown up in a family with addiction, mental illness, or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the heartache and pain doesn’t end when they grow up and leave home. The legacy can last a lifetime and spread to generations unseen. In The...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter January 2020
Hi Folks, The January edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-01-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_January_2020.pdf Contents List : 1] Just Being Outside Can Improve Your Psychological Health, and Maybe Your Physical Health Too by Zoë...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020
Hi Folks, The May edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php or PDF - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-05-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_May_2020.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael . “ Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020 – please...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter October 2019
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter October 2019
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via...
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The Top 10 Guided Meditations from 2019 (mindful.org)
At Mindful, we aim to connect you with the resources you need to develop and strengthen your meditation practice. We know that meditation isn’t always easy—that’s why we’ve created step-by-step instructions to guide you through each practice. Whether you’re new to meditation or have been practicing for years, our resources give you the space to slow down, connect, and refresh. This year, we provided meditations on how to tame the inner critic, tune into the body, sleep better, sit with...
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The Total Incompatibility of Mindfulness and Busyness [medium.com]
I’m keeping myself busy.” Lots of retired people say this kind of thing, probably to reassure themselves and others that they are not at loose ends and drifting into oblivion just because they aren’t going to work every day or receiving a paycheck. One day I heard these words coming up from some deep crevice in my own mind, and before I could stop them, they went right into the telephone. “Wait a minute,” I wanted to cry out. “What am I saying, and who the hell is saying this?” I am not...
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Therapy Dogs and Service Dogs: What Are They and Why Are They Important?
Therapy dogs are used in a wide variety of environments and circumstances but, broadly speaking, they are dogs whose presence is designed to help alleviate stress, promote feelings of well-being and sometimes help with a process of rehabilitation or healing in humans other than their owners.
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Therapy with Neurofeedback
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/04/689747637/if-youre-often-angry-or-irritable-you-may-be-depressed My response to the above article from NPR: Depression is the word people use when they feel bad. What people in this piece are struggling to understand is that depression is not one thing or in fact “a thing” at all. It’s certainly not a useful diagnosis. DSM diagnosis constricts our understanding rather than enhancing it. Here they are struggling to understand states of...
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Thich Nhat Hanh answers children’s questions. "Is Nothing Something?" (lionsroar.com)
Children have a special place in the Plum Village tradition of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. There are special practices, vows, and programs designed especially for children and teens, and Thich Nhat Hanh often fashions the first part of his dharma talks with them in mind. He regularly takes questions from children, and by and large adults can identify with what they ask. Children may be smaller and younger and they may have a funny way with words, but their questions reveal that they,...
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This Is Exactly How Laughter Can Help You Heal and Live a Healthier Life (thriveglobal.com)
Once the healing power of laughter was on the medical map, researchers began to systematically explore its stress-reducing, health-promoting, pain-relieving potential. Laughter has now been shown to decrease stress levels and improve mood in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, to decrease hostility in patients in mental hospitals, and to lower heart rate and blood pressure and enhance mood and performance in generally healthy IT professionals. In numerous experiments, people with every...
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TIC Take Five: Awe: A healing antidote
Awe: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder. An overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like. Here's another in a series of "Take Five for self care" posts we're putting on our Lancaster County (PA) ACEs & Resilience Connection page. Wanted to share them here for the broader ACES Connection community. Carl Sagan once said, "Every aspect of nature reveals a deep mystery and touches...
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TIC Take Five: Navigating through Grief: Supports for Ourselves and Others
Here's another in a little series we're posting over on the Lancaster County (PA) ACES & Resilience Connection site to promote a regular practice to "take five" (minutes) for self-care. Sharing with the wider ACES Connection community in case it's helpful. Peace. Be well, everyone. In an article last week in Harvard Business Review, titled “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief”, grief expert David Kessler names the multiple types of losses we’re experiencing in the midst of the...
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TIC Take Five: Navigating through Grief: Supports for Ourselves and Others
Here's another in a little series we're posting over on the Lancaster County (PA) ACES & Resilience Connection site to promote a regular practice to "take five" (minutes) for self-care. Sharing with the wider ACES Connection community in case it's helpful. Peace. Be well, everyone. In an article last week in Harvard Business Review, titled “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief”, grief expert David Kessler names the multiple types of losses we’re experiencing in the midst of the...
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To Heal CPTSD, Do You Need to Love Yourself?
One of the messages that’s been drilled into us by popular culture is that “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” This is something people tell you when you get your heart broken and you feel like you must be… no good! And for a lot of years, every time I heard this I felt like a different species than everyone else. Because there were times when I didn’t particularly love myself – and here and there when I was younger, times when I hated myself. But there was a never...
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To Heal From Trauma, You Have to Feel Your Feelings [psychologytoday.com]
At any age, in any life stage, you can change. Whether you’re 77 years old or 17, you can learn, grow, adopt new habits, and make new choices to create a life you truly love. It may not always feel that way, though. When childhood emotional wounds tether you to the past, it can feel like you’re being swept away by a fast-moving current; although there are branches on either side of the riverbank to grab onto, something is mentally blocking you from reaching out. That “something” is a tether...
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To Help Heal Trauma, Talk Less, and Write More
For a lot of people with Childhood PTSD, talking about traumatic memories can make symptoms worse -- worse than if we were to do nothing at all. Yet talking about the past is the default mode of therapy for virtually everyone who is depressed, anxious or troubled about the past. It's true that talking can be crucial to emotional healing. But there is a lot of research that supports WRITING as a more effective way to communicate past trauma and relieve symptoms of Childhood PTSD. In this...
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Toxic Childhood? 5 Spiritual Exercises to Heal the Soul [psychologytoday.com]
Laura's Note: Though most of author Peg Streep's work focuses on mother-daughter relationships, the ideas in the following article could work well for anyone. How to bolster and support recovery with simple steps. For the last two decades, I’ve turned my attention to the mother-daughter relationships in all of its iterations but with a specific focus on the damage done to a daughter when a mother is unloving, emotionally distant, self-involved, controlling. hypercritical, or dismissive. At a...
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Toxic Childhood? 5 Ways to Jump-Start Your Healing in 2019 [blogs.psychcentral.com]
I’m a great believer in fresh starts, especially if you’re a work-in-progress and healing from childhood wounds and you’re feeling stuck, as everyone does now and again. To that end, I look to the start of a new month as a blank page, the start of a new season which always has a different kind of energy, and, of course, the biggest start-your-engines of them all, the New Year. But I’m not talking traditional resolutions here (because they don’t work, for one thing); instead, let’s focus on...
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Transcending Childhood Trauma [thefix.com]
"All healing is release from the past. It is enough to heal the past and make the future free. It is enough to let the present be accepted as it is." Course of Miracles Most addicts have survived some form of childhood trauma. In recovery, they must make an effort to heal the wounds of the past. They must also accept the fact that this is an inside job. Nothing outside of themselves is going to heal them. Therapy and support groups are supportive environments, but addicts have to do all the...