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If you want to know what the essence of trauma is, I highly recommend watching The Wisdom of Trauma featuring Gabor Mate. He is a very gifted doctor who understands the subject both from a clinical and personal point of view. I review the movie/documentary in this week’s blog.
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If you watched the Olympics or the news about our most accomplished gymnast of all time and were left wondering why she withdrew from competition, this blog post is an attempt to get insight into how trauma, avoidance, and retraumatization can help explain things. It’s not so much to explain her behavior, but more to gain insight into your own.
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Do you feel guilty much of the time for doing and thinking things that others have told you are ‘bad?’ Have you been taught repeatedly that what you do and think can lead to eternal damnation and that you need to continually ‘make up’ for all the things you do? Has the name of God been invoked as a source of judgment against you? If your answer to most of these questions is ‘yes,’ then you need to read more below…
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Have you ever been victimized in your school or community because of race? Do you feel like you have been mistreated because of your cultural beliefs and values at school? Have others treated you differently because of your racial affiliation or gender? If you have, then reading the rest of this post could be very helpful for you.
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If you or someone you care about is a frontline worker and you give everything you have to your job, there’s a good chance you’ve suffered some form of trauma since Covid started. You may not realize it, but there are signs that you have been affected and being aware of those is one of the first steps towards getting over them.
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Many people have heard of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), but even fewer know about a related therapy that helps many people as well called Image Transformation Therapy, or ImTT. They have much in common, but some important differences as well. I compare them both below.
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Have you ever found yourself rattled after a jarring event, maybe even saying “I can’t believe” it just happened? Do you find yourself thinking about these events days or even weeks after they happened, but telling yourself it “wasn’t that bad?” If so, you could be at risk of minimizing a little ‘t’ trauma, but there’s ample reasons not to do so.
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If you have experienced a traumatic event and worry about how you will get over it, you are like millions of others in the same group. The tendency to relive horrific events and consequently avoid reminders of them is a hallmark of PTSD, but only an effective trauma therapy like Image Transformation Therapy (ImTT) can identify what makes them so complex and confounding.
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Ever find yourself remembering troubling events so vividly, you feel like you’re reliving them? Do you tend to also work strenuously to avoid being reminded of certain things that have happened to you so as not to be triggered by them. Feel numb emotionally much of the time as well? If this sounds like you, then you have some telltale signs of PTSD.
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If you have been paying attention to the protests about racial equality over the past few months, you probably know about the toll that racism has played in our national and world history. It has created with it a tremendous amount of trauma and the book How to be an Antiracist, by Ibram Kendi has helped identify a big chunk of the solution to this collective trauma. I review this book in the space that follows.
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If you are a living, breathing, human being right now you have seen how much rage there is out in the world right now. If you’ve heard the chants “I can’t breathe” and feel the gravity of them, you have a sense of the gist of our current societal struggle, both against a virus and against the injustices we are all grappling with right now. If you are a fan of the series ‘Little Fires Everywhere,’ you will also appreciate the rest of this piece.
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If you ever wondered about whether people in hate groups have trauma in their past, you need look no further for proof of this than by reading Christian Picciolini’s book Breaking Hate. It is a wide-ranging exploration of how those in domestic and international terror groups either have trauma going into these movements, or they have them while in these groups, or both. It also discusses how people get out of these groups, which is similar to recovery from addictions.
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Struggling with our current national and world situation and not sure how to deal with it? Had a fight with your relationship partner and don’t know how to cope with the pain of feeling wounded and misunderstood? If you’ve ever been tempted to self-medicate with substances or compulsive behaviors, you can try a new form of emotion-focused coping instead. Read on…
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Do you ever find yourself saying “I know I should feel grateful, but I don’t?” If so, read on because this blog post is for you.
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You’ve probably heard the saying “Just let go of it” about as many times as you can stomach. Does it make you upset when you hear people talk about this so flippantly? You’re not alone. There are many other people who have tried and tried to ‘let go’ of the past with varying degrees of futility. I’ll explain why it’s so hard and what you can do about it.
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Have you ever done something you later regretted? Maybe it was following somebody’s orders as a subordinate. It could’ve been in military service or just as an employee, but after doing it something came to light and you felt a lot of guilt and/or shame about it. If this has happened to you, then you’ve experienced moral injury. The good news is that it is very treatable.
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Have you ever said or thought “I feel like a zombie today”? If you have, then you’ve gotten an idea about what it is to live with trauma. Whether you suffer from trauma or PTSD or not, you might be interested to know there are some striking similarities between zombies and living with trauma. Read on to find out!
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Are you someone who doesn’t tend to experience emotions very much? If you do, does it tend to be muted and you don’t really get excited about very many things? Do you sometimes wish you could feel joy or happiness more than you do or have in the past? Maybe you aren’t sure what real joy feels like. If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you could be suffering from emotional numbness.
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