Tagged With "traumatized kids"
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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 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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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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VA TICNs eNote Special Edition Vol. 4 [grscan.com]
*Special Edition: Uplift* Below you will find some resources to help with the life changes as a result of COVID-19. Please feel free to pick and choose to share with your networks or simply forward along this email. Tuning Into the Beauty of the World from Home Explore.com has tons of live feeds, from the Sheep Barn at Farm Sanctuary and the Gathering Room at Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary to the Smith River in California's Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park . Take a virtual garden tour on...
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What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)?
Most people have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder that afflicts many men and women returning from a war zone. It is characterized by flashbacks, unstable moods, and survivor’s remorse. However, many have never heard of a condition that often develops in childhood and changes the course of the child’s life forever, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). For a good definition of CPTSD, we turned to Beauty After Bruises, an organization that offers outreach focused on adult...
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Are You Re-Traumatizing Yourself? 16 Things We Do That Can Set Us Back with Childhood PTSD
Part of the damage from abuse and neglect in childhood is what actually happened when we were kids. But a significant part of the problem today comes from what I call "Inside Traumas." These are self-defeating behaviors that are common to people who are frequently in a state of dysregulation. They start as an innocent attempt to feel calm and stable, but they can grow into significant traumas that cause real problems for us and others. If you'd like to learn about my online course, Healing...
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‘Burnout is real’: The importance of engaging in self-care practices when faced with secondary trauma [whyy.org]
Chera Kowalski remembers working at McPherson Square Library when overdoses became a more common occurrence in Kensington. It was 2015, and Philadelphia saw 696 overdose deaths that year — a 52% increase from just two years before — eighty percent of which involved opioids. There were more than twice as many overdose deaths than homicides. At the time, library staff didn’t have naloxone — an opioid overdose reversal medication — or the training to administer it. The best staff members could...
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Childhood PTSD and Avoidance: Learning to Be OK in Groups (Resilience Series)
It’s super common for those of us who grew up with abuse and neglect when we were small, to feel as adults that we are on the outside somehow. When we're in groups we feel as if we are only partly in it, and never really included . Or we start as a full participant but pull away over time. We un-include ourselves. But it feel like other people are keeping us out. The telltale sign that being on the outside could be a personal choice, even when it doesn’t feel like it, is that we’re almost...
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Kids From Trauma NEED Someone to Tell Them Their Normal Isn’t “Normal” [blogs.psychcentral.com]
Laura's note: As the first paragraph of the following blog post excerpt implies, a lot of adults need someone to tell them their "normal" isn't "normal" too. If it's all you've ever known and you're surrounded by friends and family who've had similarly unhealthy early experiences, how would you know otherwise? It took me a quarter of a century (literally) to realize that I experienced trauma throughout certain points in my childhood. It took me another year to realize that my behaviors were...
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3 Steps Toward Managing And Healing Anxiety
I've struggled with anxiety throughout my life. A difficult childhood and my highly sensitive personality meant I grew into an anxious kid—there was just too much pain and emotional overwhelm for my young brain to handle. My anxiety most often manifested as perfectionism and people pleasing, so from the outside everything seemed great. I excelled in school and I was a good kid who did as she was told. But there was a war inside me. I felt broken, unable to navigate these huge feelings of...
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Self-Care, Boring Self-Care, And Just Showing Up [laurakhoudari.com]
What Is Self-Care Anyway? I spend a lot of time talking about “self-care,” particularly when I am advising my clients, colleagues, and loved ones to practice it. I tell people to take care of themselves or give specific instruction, to “eat,” “sleep,” or “get outside.” The more I preach the gospel of “self-care,” the more I feel inclined to explore the term itself and its history. Sometimes, what we, or our clients are already doing by “showing up”, is in itself all the self-care that can be...
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Social Media May Foster Post-Traumatic Growth in Disasters [psychologytoday.com]
By Grant H. Brenner, Psychology Today, May 9, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic is a prolonged, global disaster of epic proportions, unlike anything most people have experienced in their lifetimes. Tolerating Ambiguity and Isolation Unlike many disasters, which have a predictable course (see Phases of Disaster, below), pandemics don't fit a clear mold, with no clear end date, high levels of uncertainty about whether there will be ongoing waves of reinfection, unclear paths toward normality, limited...
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Re: The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series – “Getting Past Your Past”
Teri, this book has been on my list for a while (along with a blue million other books ...). Thanks for the reminder to nudge it toward the top of the list. I'm an EMDR veteran too, and your descriptions of your experience with that therapy echo mine. I too can say I wouldn't be where I am today without it. I've undergone a few more sessions recently and it has not lost its power. It is also quite the trip. Every time I think, nothing is going to happen this session. And then ... boy, do...
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Re: The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series – “Getting Past Your Past”
I totally relate to your "along with a blue million other books" How wonderful you found EMDR and it helped you along your healing journey. And, wow, yes, those session where I would go in thinking everything was calm in my world then . . . BAM . . . I'd walk out thinking, "Where the hell did THAT come from?" But, so glad those aha moments would surface and I could process them and release that negative energy. Cathartic in so many ways. Thanks again for posting the obit for Dr. Shapiro. I...
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Re: The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
We don't trust children to be able to handle, with gentle, loving guidance and support, the toughest that life dishes out--such as, in the story in this podcast, a young friend's tragic death--nor do we trust adults to be able to do the same. Much more suffering results from that lack of trust, that handling with kid gloves, so to speak, than of facing and acknowledging what has happened. I suspect most ACEs/trauma survivors feel a lot of relief at finally being able to name what has...
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Re: The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
Laura: I couldn't agree with this more: "Much more suffering results from that lack of trust, that handling with kid gloves, so to speak, than of facing and acknowledging what has happened. I suspect most ACEs/trauma survivors feel a lot of relief at finally being able to name what has happened to them and having the truth of its terrible impact validated by someone outside their own hearts and heads, their own self-doubting, questioning, and minimizing of their own experiences." Thank you...
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Re: What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)?
Matthew, thank you so much for this in-depth definition of C-PTSD. It's especially important to inform trauma survivors of its existence since in the DSM-5 it's lumped in with PTSD. It can be enlightening and can facilitate healing when one understands CPTSD's unique characteristics and challenges. I'm also glad you mentioned the C-PTSD Foundation and Beauty after Bruises, both of which I'm intrigued by. While understandably there's much emphasis on helping children overcome traumatic stress...
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Re: Childhood PTSD and Avoidance: Learning to Be OK in Groups (Resilience Series)
Bingo, again. It can take a lot out of a person to put themselves "out there", especially when, as you say, "we’re just working so hard to just deal." For introverts, the uphill battle is on an even steeper incline. But of course the irony here is that pushing ourselves to do what for so many reasons we resist is one of the very things that will help us become whole. Thank you, Anna, for sharing your blog posts and videos here.
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Re: Are You Re-Traumatizing Yourself? 16 Things We Do That Can Set Us Back with Childhood PTSD
While I agree that these behaviors can be re-traumatizing and are characteristic of dysregulation, in my mind they are all simply symptoms of unaddressed, untreated/undertreated trauma. They're the "cries for help" that tell the person experiencing them (and maybe the people around them) that there's something not quite right. But even after effective treatment of childhood trauma, they can still crop up because those old habits we developed to survive all those years ago die very hard.
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Re: ‘Burnout is real’: The importance of engaging in self-care practices when faced with secondary trauma [whyy.org]
This is such important information. It's one thing for social workers, mental health care providers, first responders and the like to require self-care to avoid secondary trauma, but when librarians are added to the list, you know things have gotten bad (and I have worked in public libraries, but a few years before conditions reached their current off-the-charts level). Thank you for sharing this with us, Caitlin.
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The Adult I Needed (Part 1 of 2) [thismustbenormal.wordpress.com]
There’s a wisdom-y nugget that gets bandied about these days that goes something like this: be the adult you needed as a kid. I don’t know who said it first. I could invoke my magical former librarian powers and confirm attribution and the exact quotation by consulting authoritative sources, but that sounds like work. Plus, I’ve a hunch it might confirm nothing more than that, just as to my knowledge no one has yet proved that Margaret Mead said that one thing about never doubting yadda...
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This wasn't the first time
Going out to buy groceries, going out for a walk, driving your kid back home from school. For most people these activities are normal, everyday things with little to no excitement, as they should be. Unfortunately, getting food, exercising, and supporting my son’s education have been a little more out of the ordinary for me. You see, I am a Mexican Indigenous man, brown skin, shaved head. My ethnicity and physical appearance are by no means unusual, especially in the part of the country...
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Post-Traumatic Growth: Hope Is a Strategy, Not a Feeling [Juvenile Justice Information Exchange]
When a young person experiences trauma, there is no single answer regarding how that experience may impact them in their later years. Two 12-year-olds experiencing the exact same kind of trauma, for example, may have two very different responses — one crumbles and the other rises. One processes it deeply and the other suppresses it. One becomes a powerful force for change in the community and the other struggles to make their place in the world. Furthermore, what may be considered traumatic...
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The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is very challenging. It affects every aspect of the lives of those who suffer under its symptoms. In this article, we are going to examine together with a brief synopsis of CPTSD and how this disorder creates difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate relationships.
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Re: The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Well done Shirley. Lots of great insight. Informative and helps us to know we are not alone and there is hope and healing. hmnn....I didn't find the article triggering in a bad way. Knowledge is power. Take care.
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If you want to heal childhood trauma, you have to heal your body.
356 pounds?! Are you kidding me, Michael? What the fuck are you doing to yourself? Every morning I would wake up and watch the number on the scale tick up as I slowly allowed obesity to run wild and consume my body. Fat . I was always the chubby kid. I shopped in the boy's husky section at Walmart as a preteen. Husky for the unware is the polite nomenclature for fat kids. I spent summers running around with my shirt on. I ate entire boxes of gummy bears for dinner. I never ordered just one...
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Pasco’s sheriff uses grades and abuse histories to label schoolchildren potential criminals.
This is deeply disturbing. How about helping these kids instead? I fit the criteria and certainly no criminal. Take care, Michael. Pasco’s sheriff uses grades and abuse histories to label schoolchildren potential criminals. The kids and their families don’t know. | Investigations - https://projects.tampabay.com/...argeted/school-data/
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Some Treatment Options for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)
During talk therapy, you will talk with your therapist about a variety of topics including those which trouble you the most. Your therapist will not give you advice, nor will they give you the answers to your problems. After all, they are not living in your mind nor are they living your life. Only you understand what you want out of life, and only you can find your answers.
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Re: The Difficult Road to Intimacy: Living with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
I am just starting to go through the topics covered in the last 2 years here, and just commenting on a few articles I have found interesting since I joined up here. If this is the wrong way to comment on older topics, please let me know and I can learn to do it a different way, perhaps by commenting on a comment if need be. Thank You MM
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2021
Hi Folks, The latest edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php Once again I've tried to create a mix of articles, videos, music, books, podcasts, resources, etc, that offer Hope, Healing & Help. As the saying goes, “ Take what you like and leave the rest. ” or here's the PDF - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2021-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2021.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please...
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The most important thing you can do with your kids? Play with them! says Dr. Bruce Perry
“The most important thing you can do with your children is play with them!” said Dr. Bruce Perry, noted child psychiatrist and author. He was answering the question, “How do we prepare our children to go back to school next fall?” Perry, a brain expert specializing in how children are impacted by trauma, gave a presentation on his neuro-sequential model of brain development to more than 800 people at an Austin Ed Fund event Monday evening. The co-author, with Oprah Winfrey, of the new book...
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The Powerful Connection Of Music With Michael Skinner - Cybertrap 60
The Powerful Connection Of Music With Michael Skinner - Cybertrap 60 Published on July 20, 2021 Here's the latest episode of "The Cybertraps Podcast," co-hosted by Frederick Lane and Jethro Jones. Michael Skinner is an award-winning advocate, educator, writer and critically acclaimed singer, songwriter, guitarist, addressing the issues of trauma, abuse and mental health concerns through public speaking, writing and his music. He has spoken at the National Press Club, was a keynote presenter...
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Got Resiliency?
Much research has been done on the topic of this series of posts in February 2021. Scientists want to understand how people who go through sometimes horrific events often overcome adversity and seem to thrive afterward. In this first part of the series, we’ll discuss what resiliency is and answer some common questions about this interesting topic. What is Resiliency? Everyone experiences traumatic events, yet some people seem to encounter more than their fair share of events that change...
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Traumatic Stress, and Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises
Traumatic stress causes many problems for survivors and others. We don’t feel well enough to accomplish our life goals or to function in day-to-day routines. There is a new solution to traumatic stress, and it is called Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE®). This article and those that follow in August will outline traumatic stress and how TRE can change lives. What is traumatic stress? Traumatic stress is a process by which individual’s resources are lost or threatened beyond individuals’...
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A Childhood Emotional Neglect Christmas: Humorous & Touching Holiday Stories From The Nurturance Void
Latchkey Urchins & Friends is a podcast by me* and my co-host Anne Sherry, a therapist. We explore different topics within The Nurturance Void, the space left when we experienced childhood emotional neglect. Childhood emotional neglect happens between parents and their kids, within families, across generations, in communities, in nations, and in policies and programs. We seek to heal through humor and holding space. Each week a guest shares their childhood emotional neglect stories,...
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Resilience & Growth after Trauma
There is something very powerful about being able to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, stress or pain. Resilience has been defined and used to describe a person who bounces back from intense difficult circumstances. More often than not, with resilience comes deep personal growth that prepares a person for what’s ahead. Resilience drives us to stand strong; it is a process of adapting & moving forward. Trauma can be debilitating. It is life altering. But there is another truth...
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Language for some: Mental Health or/and Wellness, apps or/and online concerns
Hi. As a follow up to the post I did 8.2.22, https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/mental-health-apps-and-online-concerns , I have put together the language below. And, for those it might help, here is an example of how I am utilizing it, “Help lines and other information” https://www.connectall.online/_files/ugd/fda416_4edb0247191645bdb670c9a14a8eaf48.pdf ; which regardless of the language you might find it beneficial. Also, if anyone else has language, I'd obviously appreciate knowing when...
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Moving Forward After Adverse Childhood Experiences: How to Move from Suffering to Flourishing
Once the suffering resulting from adverse childhood experiences is managed, we can turn toward creating a more satisfying life.
Pursuing the honorable life leads to self-respect and inner peace. Compassion for mistakes, understanding their reasons, and applying integrity skills starts us on the path to flourishing.
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Secondary Traumatic Stress - a Hidden Epidemic Join Us Sept. 30th
The "Great Resignation," "Quiet Quitting," and rising social awareness of historical racism have all brought attention to a common but frequently overlooked hazard of caregiving professions: Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). In the execution of duties, professions that support our society with compassion and empathy can face traumatic stress from exposure to the experiences of the people that they are there to support. This stress can have deleterious physical and emotional consequences...
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Moving Forward After Adverse Childhood Experiences, Part 2: Harness the Liberating Power of Forgiveness
The well-timed choice to forgive deep injuries from childhood, though difficult, can greatly improve psychological wellbeing and free us to move ahead. Four keys to forgiveness lay the foundation for cultivating healing forgiveness skills.
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Lightening the Load We Carry from Childhood: 10 Ways to Forgive the Unkindest Cuts
While the process of forgiving painful offenses from childhood can be very difficult, efforts to forgive bring great rewards. The process begins with acknowledging the pain, applying self-compassion, and taking even small and faltering steps to get the forgiveness ball rolling.
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Re: Lightening the Load We Carry from Childhood: 10 Ways to Forgive the Unkindest Cuts
Dear Dr. Schiraldi, "Take the offender to neutral . . . I won’t waste my time thinking about you or remembering.” This has been the single most helpful definition of forgiveness for me. In my belief system, a contrite and repentant offender is a necessary part of the forgiveness process - things my offender never was. The best I can do under those circumstances is to bear him no ill will and leave it at that. "Don’t personalize . The offense is more about the pain and imperfect past of the...
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Adverse Childhood Experiences and Care for the Soul
Strengthening the wounded soul can improve psychological and physical wellbeing and help to complete the recovery process. Although ACEs, understandably, can numb feelings, including spiritual feelings, once healing has progressed, spiritual feelings can often be successfully cultivated.
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How to Increase Your Sense of Control and Boost Your Resilience
When I look back, I am amazed at how differently I dealt with adversity during the first few decades of my life. Growing up in a stressful home primed me to experience life with caution. Whether it was being afraid of physical harm, loneliness, or failure, I’ve lived my life with an exaggerated fight-flight response to everything. Adversity seemed around every corner, and no one was ever there to save me. I developed maladaptive mechanisms to minimize, avoid, or go around the things I was...
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Finding Joy After Adverse Childhood Experiences
Adverse childhood experiences understandably can numb feelings, including feelings of joy, happiness, and pleasure.
Making time to be joyful rewires the wounded brain. Once healing has progressed, the capacity for joy can usually be expanded through the repeated application of proven joy strategies.
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Why We Should Look Up at the Sky (The Science of Happiness podcast) [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
By The Science of Happiness podcast, Greater Good Magazine, January 19, 2023 When did you last take a moment to really look up at the sky? Shifting your gaze upward can help us be more creative, it improves our capacity to focus - and it’s a gateway to awe. Episode summary: Natalie didn’t spend much time finding shapes in the clouds as a small kid. And when she got older, looking up was even worse for her. Natalie spent time in jail, where she spent most of her days indoors under harsh...
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Bouncing Forward After Adverse Childhood Experiences
Once the healing of hidden wounds from adverse childhood experiences has sufficiently progressed, attention can turn to developing a richly satisfying future. Your innate inner strengths, experiences, and acquired skills will help rewire your brain for a brighter future.
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A Promising Treatment for Hidden Wounds from ACEs
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is an emerging trauma therapy for the hidden wounds resulting from Adverse Childhood Experiences. Research to date shows ART for traumatized adults is quick, effective, safe, and well-tolerated. Consistent with new understanding of the brain and body-centered treatment approaches, ART primarily targets trauma images and associated physical and emotional sensations, creatively and efficiently using eye movements and strategies from other trauma treatments.
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Drug Addiction and ACEs: A Journey Through the Gates of Hell to Redemption
Attachment disruptions and other hidden wounds from ACEs can render one more vulnerable to drug addiction. Genuine, mature love from others, and for oneself, can change the course of one's life. A recent book highlights the path from childhood trauma to addiction to recovery.