Blog Archives

Friendly Friday

Posted on May 11, 2012 by sheryl

Expand the “WINDOW OF TIME” to heal.

In spite of the corporate “3-day-bereavement leave” it takes more than three days to recover from the loss of a loved one.  Other cultures expect the surviving partner to wear black for two to three years after a death.  They understand that grief isn’t simple.

In the last century, people went to “sanatoriums” for several months following what they called a nervous breakdown to sit in the sun, rest, read, and recover.

Trauma rarely heals on its own, and definitely doesn’t heal in a day or even three days.

Time and Space
Today, create the space in time you need for your recovery,
because
You can heal in your own time in your own way.  How about today?

Posted in Accidents, Friendly Friday, PTSD, Trauma | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trauma and Memory, Part I

Posted on December 7, 2011 by sheryl

The role of memory in trauma recovery is a complex process that often feels downright dangerous to a person on a healing path.  In this three part series, I will talk first about the different types of memories and why the trauma memory process is distinct from other processes. Secondly, I’ll talk about why people forget.  Thirdly, you’ll find a discussion of why try to remember at all.

While our understanding of how the brain works is still evolving, right now, we talk about short-term memory and long-term memory.  Short-term memory includes items that are remembered quickly, like a person’s name you just met, and then forgotten just as quickly. For me, it seems like nano-seconds between when someone introduces himself or herself and I forget what their name is.  Through a process of association and rehearsal this short-term memory can be moved to long-term; “Your name is Susie, my sister is Susie, you’re like my sister in that you have long hair Susie Susie Susie.”

Long-term memory is a continuous storage of information, including what we might call unconscious.  This type of memory is of two types.  First is the explicit (facts, concepts, ideas).  This is the type of memory that a student relies on to pass exams at the end of a term or of an entire study. It is also the type of memory that allows a trauma victim remember the traumatic event in a cohesive way, and helps you find your way home.

Implicit memory is the second type of long term memory and is the one of particular interest here.  Implicit memories are stored as pictures and feelings and not so much verbal.  Often traumatic memories are stored this way.  Many sights, sounds, smells, or other cues get associated with the trauma and become mysterious triggers to an internal fight, flight or freeze response.  Body centered approaches to trauma recovery, such as the work of Peter Levine or Babette Rothschild work to release memories “from the body”.  These approaches tap into this implicit memory process and allow the body and the mind to heal.  It is because of this storage of the memory in an area of the brain that imprints sights, sounds, smells, that PTSD is sometimes called a problem “of memory gone awry”.  This is why you might know how your triggers connected to the trauma and at other times those connections are harder to recognize.  This is why you may have trouble making sense of your PTS symptoms and their triggers.

You can find the right way for you to access these memories and stop their control of your life.  Trust yourself and your own unfolding.

Posted in Frozen in Fear, PTSD, Trauma | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Hurricane Stopped my Business; the accident stopped my LIFE!

Posted on November 30, 2011 by sheryl

Trying to sort out the WHY of your reaction to a trauma, it helps to understand how various causes of trauma might impact you differently.  While a hurricane causes enormous damage and makes the national news, getting thrown through the air by a moving vehicle while you’re crossing the street unravels your life in an entirely different way.

What we know is that the amount of preparation time you have prior to the event can often produce less of an impact.  Usually have several days to prepare, to gather resources, to decide how you will react.  We also know that while a trauma from natural causes creates enormous logistical challenges, the emotional impact can be less, especially if one doesn’t loose a home, belongings, pets, or loved ones.  The reaction from trauma from natural causes can be less.  However, if that expected hurricane caused you physical, emotional and spiritual pain, damaged your property, and you witnessed death and devastation, you have a natural acute stress reaction.

On the other hand a car accident hits you with no preparation and is human-caused and the amount of damage done directly to you is physical, emotional and in some ways spiritual, as in  “Why do bad things happen to good, God-loving people?”

There is a lot of self-judgments often around your incapacity to get on with your life.  While research can validate why some events effect one person more than another, the simple fact is that if you are experiencing any of the symptoms of post traumatic stress, then you are experiencing the symptoms of post traumatic stress and it really doesn’t matter if your neighbor isn’t, or doesn’t understand why you won’t come to book club this year.

What matters is that you find help, that you find someone who understands you and can support you as you find you way back to the joyful, fulfilling life you deserve.

To your recovery, however that unfolds for you.

Posted in Causes of PTSD, PTSD, T.R.A.U.M.A., Trauma | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Family Factor

Posted on November 29, 2011 by sheryl

How exactly does your family of origin affect the impact of Trauma?

What we know is that people from families that are unstable are more likely to suffer intensely when trauma of any kind happens to them.  By unstable, we’re talking about a household where a parent has a psychiatric disorder and the life of the child is unpredictable because the parent’s reactions are unpredictable.  This also refers to a childhood with many separations, economic problems or family violence are also part to the family factor.  All these circumstances decrease one’s ability to feel competent and resourceful in the face of trauma.

 

Similar to this background piece, is the absence of social support to help out.  Many people who come from unstable homes don’t have the skills to create a social support system, since the trust of parents is lacking.

If you are feeling like you “should” be getting over it, but just can’t, maybe you started the fight without any tools necessary to do battle (with the cancer diagnosis, with the hurricane, with the attack).  For you, it was an unwinnable fight.  Not to worry, it’s never too late to develop those resources and to find your own way to feel competent an resourceful.

Recovery is an option.

Here’s to your journey, unfolding in just the right way for you.

Posted in PTSD, T.R.A.U.M.A., Trauma | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Defining T.R.A.U.M.A.

Posted on November 1, 2011 by sheryl

Knowing what trauma is and experiencing trauma are two entirely different situations.  Engaging in any form of media (TV news, Hollywood stories, radio news, even written fiction) allows some of us to create a distance between our own feelings and what is being discussed.  We can watch news and movies about earthquakes, murders, plane crashes, hurricanes, floods, assaults, robberies, rapes, Columbine shootings, WLD (Weapons of a little Destruction), terrorist attacks and statistics on heart attacks, breast cancer, strokes, fibromyalgia or Sudden Infant Death and still go on with breakfast, our commute, our meetings of the day, evenings with friends, and kissing the kids goodnight.

Once any one of those acts happens, you are either a direct victim (it happened to you) or you were a secondary victim (it happened to someone you love or you witnessed the event), you become a victim.  Those caregivers who serve this population also are vulnerable to the effects of T.R.A.U.M.A.  In my early days as a psychotherapist, my first patient who was recovering from severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, needed tell her story as she was in the process of recovering lost but life impacting memories.  For months I listened to stories much worse that I had ever heard or seen in any media.  I was falling into my own tar pit of dark, unsafe, suspicious and required my own psychotherapy sessions with my supervisor to move out of that secondary victim place.

What response one has to an event experienced or witnessed is at the core of the definition of traumatic stress.  In some situations, the reaction is increased adrenaline, a fight response, an accessing of one’s resources and strengths and one responds with a sense of victory.

However, just in the research on learned helplessness, if there is literally nothing one can do to avoid the effects of the event, then the body and mind learn that one is a helpless victim and the response is horror, shock, terror, or even a sense that the event wasn’t real.

Some people remember all the details like I did when I got my initial cancer diagnosis, or when I heard about President Kennedy being shot (yes, I do remember that, even though I was really, really young).

Some do not.  I have supported victims of extreme and recent sexual abuse who blocked out so much of the details that they were not able to give police enough of a description of the perpetrators to help in the investigation.  (In this case, careful, thoughtful hypnosis allowed a recall of significant faces and places without re-truamatizing the victim).

Although psychotherapists have a clinical definition of what constitutes traumatic stress, for our purposes, anything that causes a shift from good, promising, safe, and sunny and in an instant to awful, doomed, scary and dark and, worse yet, promises a recurrance of those feelings -  falls into a trauma.  It’s the reaction to the event that defines the significance of the event.

T: The
     R: Reaction
           A: After
                     U: Unbelievably
                                M: Mortifying (to kill, or destroy the vitality of life)
                                           A: Acts

Here’s to the return of those good, promising, safe, and sunny days to come.

Posted in Frozen in Fear, PTSD, T.R.A.U.M.A., Trauma | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The T.R.A.U.M.A. shift

Posted on October 31, 2011 by sheryl

There is a lot of awareness about  PTSD, thanks largely to the Veteran’s Administration when they recognized that our soldiers returning from active duty often can’t seem to move forward in their lives.

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) isn’t just about soldiers getting night sweats dreaming about the horrors they watched or experienced. It’s about enduring a very difficult event. I prefer to think of T.R.A.U.M.A. as an acronym:

T: The
     R: Reaction
           A: After
                     U: Unbelievably
                                M: Mortifying
                                           A: Acts

Here’s a couple definitions of mortify that are strong enough to be part of the acronym:

  1. To cause to experience shame, humiliation, or wounded pride; humiliate.
  2. It originally meant “to kill,” then “to destroy the vitality or vigor of”

No one can limit what creates enough stress for a reaction to be long lasting, beyond the adrenaline required to survive the event.  For me, the first time I heard my name and the word “cancer” in the same sentence was one of those.  Even though it’s been over ten years since the event, I still remember where I was sitting, what the doctor was wearing (tan shoes, no tie, photo of a boat on the wall, red apolstered chairs, just a hint of after shave).  I have never been back to that office or that doctor again.

For others, the event might be the death of a loved one, witnessing a car accident, hearing about OR experiencing a hurricane, hearing about 9/11, as well as the events most acknowledged – rape, mugging, loss of a limb, war.

In all these examples, the critical thread is that the response to the event destroys the vigor of life or life energy.  One moment life is good, promising, safe, and sunny and in an instant it is awful, doomed, scary and dark and, worse yet, promises a recurrance of those feelings.

The first step in moving through a T.R.A.U.M.A. is recognizing the impact, what to notice in your own life or in the life of those you love.  See tomorrow’s post for what might shift in that life force.

If you have your own experience of a shift from good/promising to scary/doomed, please do share whatever part of your experience that is right for you today.

Posted in Frozen in Fear, Just Stuck, PTSD, T.R.A.U.M.A., Trauma | Tagged , , | Leave a comment