fbpx

Posts Tagged ‘Susan Pease Banitt’


The Second Pandemic: PTSD

Posted on: by Susan

 

It has been a little over one year since COVID 19 made its world debut. In that time we have all seen reports of horrendous deaths from the disease, the toll it has taken on our healthcare professionals and the tremendous changes it has brought to every society in the world:

  • constant mask wearing
  • hypervigilance around health and contagion
  • decreased movement around our communities and world
  • elimination of cultural group activities from rock concerts to political events to pubs
  • the constant background fear of death or long term disability

In addition to these profoundly stressful changes in our lives, we have seen brutal killings on live TV by people who are supposed to protect us, as well as by mass murderers; social and political uprisings, the polarization of politics and the death of cooperation between political parties. These changes have left people all over the world uncertain about their future, about their safety, and about their financial survival. 

Many people understand that they are chronically traumatized. And many deny that these events affect them, even while acting out their fears and angers on their loved ones and those around them (itself a trauma symptom).

In the current Diagnostics and Statistical Manual on PTSD we have a list of criteria that apply to our collective experience of COVID and mass unrest. I have paraphrased some of these criteria; the ones that are verbatim from the DSM are in quotes.

1. “Exposure to actual or threatened death” by one of these four means: “directly experience the traumatic event(s)”, “witnessing in person, the traumatic event(s) as it occurred to to others, “learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or friend, and/or experiencing repeated or “extreme exposure to aversive details about the event(s)” as part of one’s work. 

Check. We would have to be very isolated indeed to not have experienced at least one of these criteria. As for the fourth criteria, that is officially listed as being “part of one’s work”, I disagree as a trauma therapist. Exposure is exposure. Just because the DSM says your exposure doesn’t count because you were not ‘on the job’ doesn’t mean that you were not traumatized. There is research showing that repeated viewings of traumas on TV or other media create a trauma response in viewers. I believe this criteria may be changed in future versions of the DSM.

2. Presence of one or more of these disturbing intrusive symptoms: uncontrollable recurrent memories and perseverations around the event(s); nightmares related to either the content of the event or the emotions around the event (loss, sickness, contagion, fear of the future etc.); flashbacks, or other dissociative reactions around the event(s), which for children can include repetitive play of the trauma or event; “intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure to internal [your own memories] or external [in the environment] that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

Translation: You cannot stop thinking about COVID, COVID related losses (school, travel, etc.) or other traumatic events related to COVID or social unrest. You cannot stop the feels that keep coming, and you feel depleted because of this. It is hard to focus on daily routines and feel ‘normal’ again. You may take extraordinary precautions that are not strictly necessary or none at all as a rebellion to these feelings.  You may have insomnia as the mind unconsciously avoids dream content related to COVID or social unrest and pops us out of sleep as we approach REM phase, where memories are processed.

3. Avoiding anything that reminds you of the traumatic event(s) in one or two of these ways: “Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about  or closely associated with the traumatic event(s) and/or “ [making] efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations,  activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)”. 

In other words, you don’t want to think about it and you don’t want to talk about it anymore. Even reading this blog may be a trigger. (Did you make it this far?) You may avoid shows about: illness, contagion, disasters etc. that you previously enjoyed. Or you may avoid discussing COVID with friends and family, or avoid talking about your feelings about it. Denial is another way our minds practice PTSD-related  avoidance. We may minimize COVID or say we are not at risk, or refuse to take precautionary measures. All of these are trauma responses, in other words,  our mind unconsciously and automatically protects us through avoidance.

Some of these behaviors make other people very angry and are themselves a stimulation of the trauma. You may be very reactive to people who minimize the risk of COVID to themselves and others. Both of these reactions are traumatic in nature. We do not, necessarily, choose our defense (which is a whole other blog topic). Some people intellectualize and want to learn everything about the event; others want to know nothing or deny reality. Both groups are avoiding their feelings, although intellectualization is preferable to denial. Avoiding feelings, in general, is a traumatic response, as well as a cultural one (some cultures value feelings more than others). 

4.  Negative alterations in cognitions and mood associated with the traumatic event(s), as evidenced by two (or  more) of the following: 

  • Loss of memory around the event(s) [one of the more extreme reactions]
  • “Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world”
  • “Persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic  event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others.”
  • “Persistent negative emotional state (e.g., fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame).”  
  • “ Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities.”  
  • “Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others.”  
  • “ Persistent inability to experience positive emotions (e.g., inability to experience  happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings).” 

What strikes me about this section is how real it is socially, except for the loss of memory bit. 

(Also how much the word “persistent” is used.)

 “Persistent exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others or the world” Check.

“…lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others”

Check.

“Persistant negative emotional state”

Check. It’s like a nightmare we cannot get out of, which then becomes a trigger for all of our other unresolved traumas from this (and other, if you believe in that) lifetimes.

“Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities”. 

Check. But in a weird way. COVID prevents us from participation and maintaining interest. Double check.

“Persistent inability to experience positive emotions”. 

Check and Checkmate. We all feel depressed. We are all grieving. It is hard enough to maintain hope in the persistence of COVID, never mind the persistence of our collective trauma around COVID. Ugh.

5. Unpleasant behavioral changes as a result of the event that include two or more of the following: Insomnia or other sleep disturbance, inappropriate emotional outbursts that are out of character, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, and/or difficulty focusing and/or concentrating. 

Well, yes. Most of these for most folks. One only has to venture online to see the reactivity happening. Nearly everyone I know either as a friend or patient has struggled with sleep this year. You can check in with yourself as to whether you are still washing your hands 10 times/day or wearing your mask when you really do not need to (hypervigilance), or if you jump when someone comes up behind you unexpectedly. 

Many people came into this period of time with PTSD, either diagnosed or not. They have been suffering tremendously because their systems were already sensitive to traumatic stress. The rest of humanity may now suffer some level of PTSD. I say “level” because although PTSD is by definition a very unpleasant condition, it can have levels of severity beyond baseline. If you are having dissociative symptoms such as depersonalization (“feeling as though one were in a dream; feeling a sense of unreality of self or body  or of time moving slowly”)  or derealization (the world around you feels “unreal, dreamlike, distant,  or distorted”) you may have a more severe situation that needs attention. Technically it is called PTSD with dissociative symptoms. 

Oh yes. And these symptoms need to have gone on for more than one month. 

Check.

Please, dear reader, remember: I would not write this blog if I did not feel you or your loved ones could be helped. There are many resources available to help you heal from PTSD. My book, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD From the Inside Out is available in libraries all over the world, and has a rating of 4.6/5 stars on Amazon where it is available on Kindle and Audible (in my own voice).

Be well and stay safe, Susan PB

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 E-Kindle Book 5th Edition (p. 308). Indephent. Kindle Edition. 



Five Unbearable Things I Want You to Know about Human Trafficking and Slavery

Posted on: by Susan

Twenty-four years ago, my sister, author Lisa Pease, alerted me to the information on mind control that she kept encountering in her research. She said, “You are the therapist in the family. I don’t have time to research this; maybe you do”. I was skeptical of the ability to totally control another human being until I encountered the disclosures of trauma-based mind control. It was shocking. Pioneered in the Nazi concentration camps and continued after Project Paperclip had brought Nazi scientists to America there had been a deep and effective dive into gaining total control over human beings starting in early childhood or even later by government agencies and other interested parties. Immediately I realized that I had encountered some of these victims professionally, both as colleagues and as patients. I have spent the time since researching and treating survivors of what is called “sex trafficking” “mind control” “organized abuse” “ritual abuse” “cults” “mkultra” and other monikers, all of which are related to each other. For over ten years I have been a member of the special interest group, RAMCOA (ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse) under the auspices of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. In that time, I have given many talks nationally and internationally as well as speaking on a number of podcasts about this issue.  Although I am currently on medical leave the last few years of my practice have been largely populated with RAMCOA survivors. It is heavy work that requires a high level of skill.

 

The ‘training’ to become a human slave often begins in infancy and nearly always includes torture and ritual abuse.

 The human personality and mental structures of self form very early in life, largely before 3 years of age. The brain is exceedingly “plastic” in children; consider, for example, the relative ease at which kids can learn multiple languages, information which sticks in the brain for a lifetime. To gain control and mastery over an entire personality requires creating multiple compartments (alters or ANPs) and then handing the switching over to handlers. This requires extreme and prolonged torture, as well as extravagant rewards. The earlier handlers can start this process the easier it is, and they do, even before birth. This is a very sophisticated process where a computer like system is created to categorize different personalities and subpersonalities for different skill sets, memories, and behavioral programs, including ones that maintain the amnesia of the ‘front’ or ‘shell’ personality which is supposed to be very normal appearing. For clinicians this means that these people have a muddled dissociative picture. They appear to be more OSDD (Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder) than DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). According to several of my clients, assets that appear as multiples are considered ‘programming failures’. Switching of personalities is something that is very subtle and supposed to happen ‘behind the scenes’ in response to subtle cues given by handlers in person, by media or by preprogramming. For the average therapist and citizen well programmed children and adults are nearly impossible to casually detect. I usually end up seeing somebody in whom programming has gone sideways through handler error causing severe psychological damage or because something happened which caused the victim to exert superhuman effort to extricate themselves.

 

Children can be sold into slavery before they are born, after they are born and sometimes a couple of generations earlier. They are used repeatedly for the rest of their lives unless they escape.

 The Jason Bourne conclusion, that people choose this, is a myth. People do not sign up for mind control or trafficking or being a super soldier. Most of the time they are born into it. I have had some clients whose families appear to have been given government favors in exchange for surrendering them to these programs. In other cases, pedophiles have been given immunity in exchange for children. Sometimes the families are literally paid money, as was written about in therapist and survivor Wendy Hoffman’s autobiography, The Enslaved Queen: A Memoir About Electricity and Mind Control (2019). I have had clients who were born into ‘illuminati’ and/or masonic families where this kind of conditioning is business as usual for the family members, who are then groomed for wealth and power. Although high achieving and well to do, the level of dysfunction in these families is off the charts.

 

Trafficked people may live apparently normal lives or lives of extreme dysfunction. You know some of them.

 Reliable numbers are hard to come by because 1) the networks of enslaved people and their handlers extend to the media, science and government who will not report them; 2) many trafficked people are not awake to their plight yet – they are too dissociative, and 3) the masterminds go to great lengths to hide their tracks, and they are very, very good at it. Many of my colleagues give a rough estimate based on decades at work that at least 1% of people in the USA are trafficked through extreme behavioral conditioning. I said this to one of my clients and they actually laughed, “1 percent?! Well, maybe if you are not talking about the sleepers (people who have been conditioned but not called up into use). Everybody in my public school class was taken out for conditioning”. This client was believable. They were not given to histrionics or exaggeration and had a very high IQ, as most of these people do.

I have a colleague who believes we are all screened for mind control usefulness at a young age; she has a longer time in this field than even I do. I do not know if that could possibly be true, although I am now willing to entertain many possibilities that I used to not entertain. I do know that if 1 in a 100 people have this history, you have encountered them. If it is 1 in 30, you have sat in classes with them, know them, and possibly have them as close friends. Even if, against all odds, they are aware of their history they are VERY unlikely to tell anybody except their therapist and/or their partner. Many people have come to me because they know their therapist cannot handle their history and/or will not believe them.

 

Trafficking and mind control (behavioral) networks are extensive and are based in white supremacy. They are in every state and include members inside of the cultural institutions that are supposed to protect citizens: police departments, hospitals, justice departments and governments.

I did not know this for a long time. I just kept following the trails of puzzle pieces. Those pieces were always in plain sight. Everyone in child abuse protection knows about those few judges that just will not give a pedophile a meaningful sentence. They know who they are, but not why they are doing this and who they are connected to. Everyone in the business knows that there are good cops, but also bad ones who are not willing to believe or follow up on child abuse cases involving ritual abuse. And then there is the former False Memory Syndrome Foundation which folded at the end of 2019.  This apparent CIA op (there were at least 3 known CIA operatives on the board) hurt a lot of therapists and clients. They were very successful in infiltrating the media to such an extent that it seems unlikely they were able to do that without help from networks. I have many colleagues still recovering from the “memory wars” that were waged on therapists and their clients in courtrooms all across this country (fortunately I was having babies at that time).

I have had clients from every part of this country. They have disclosed abuse and conditioning in: military bases, churches (Mormon and Catholic figure predominantly), schools, neighbor’s houses, dental offices, remote estates, and mental institutions. Colleagues have fleshed out some of these networks and connections. We know that the CIA and other alphabet agencies had a big hand in developing sophisticated mind control techniques in league with major medical institutions and prominent universities around the country and in Canada. (For more on the CIA’s involvement I recommend my sister’s book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 2018.)

Eventually my clients and colleagues begin talking about white supremacy and how viciously white supremacist the abusers were. They start to draw connections to the Masons, the Mormons, the Illuminati and local government systems. They can’t get records. They can’t find records. They are afraid to talk to family.

What really concerns me about the Freemasons is how pervasive yet quiet they are. My family and I have RV’d all over thousands of miles of the Western United States. I have yet to find the town that is too small for a prominent Masonic Hall. Think about it – an all male, mostly all white group of individuals that are everywhere and yet totally secret. (And just in case you know a Mason or are a Mason, only certain people from certain levels are let in on the most nefarious parts of the organization. The rest of the people just have a good bonding and educational experience.) From the point of view of systems theory, if a system is “as sick as its secrets” then the Freemasons are catastrophically ill.

There is plenty of evidence of widespread collusion, conspiracy and control. Research MKUltra. Look up Svali Speaks. Or just start to open your eyes to the patterns around you. Why can cops kill black people with so much impunity and stare in the camera while they do it? Look at Epstein. This is HARD to look at, harder than systemic racism (which it includes) and that is plenty hard. Hard because we cannot believe the wool has been pulled that far over our eyes and hard because the evidence is almost unreadable. Hard because people who believe in collusion are called ‘conspiracy theorists’ – in itself a term used by the CIA to discredit observers. Hard now, because people who see these patterns tend to be conservatives and Republicans so liberals dismiss them. In the 1970s the conspiracy observers were Democrats. Hard because you are going to see some people that you really like or love emerge as part of this nefarious system. Some of that knowledge comes from the primary source of my clients, but there are plenty of other resources for information including many autobiographies, books, podcasts and websites. Lastly, it is hard because it is overwhelming and once you really see the scope of it, you cannot unsee it, and it is easy to lose hope. DON’T LOSE HOPE! Lots of good is happening. But first, we have to deal with this mess.

 

All trafficked people have dissociative disorders that are exceedingly difficult to treat, and most therapists do not have the first clue about doing this work.

 I have trained and supervised clinicians for decades. Almost no therapist comes out of school with a good understanding of dissociation. Thanks to the False Memory Foundation many had their heads spun around by disinformation as did their supervisors. Many clinicians are still ignorant to the reality of organized abuse!  There are only a few of us who want to and can do this work long term. It is arduous and there is little reward for it other than seeing people get free and healthy (which is amazing!). I have had clients dumped in my lap by other clinicians in a very inappropriate way because the therapist panicked or didn’t care enough to terminate professionally. I have had people move to this state just to work with me. Because there are few good options out there. Not much more to say about this other than…I and my colleagues are working on bringing this consciousness to general therapy practice.

If you made it this far in reading, I am truly grateful that you are considering this information. Take care of yourself; a better day is coming.



From COVID to PTSD: What Can You Do About It?

Posted on: by Susan

Hi friends. I am starting to see signs of people moving from acute stress into symptoms of PTSD, due to COVID. I have linked to the DSM criteria here . PTSD includes panic attacks by symptom definition, but needs greater specificity around the cause as outlined in the first section. If you know anyone who has died due to COVID you may be at greater risk. If you have a history of PTSD you may become more easily activated. The main signs are 1) the intrusiveness of symptoms (nightmares, anxiety etc), 2) negative mood (dysphoria) and decreased cognitive functioning 3) avoidance through numbing, substances, isolation etc. Some people will experience severe dissociative symptoms including feelings of unreality, surreality or like they cannot find themselves. Some may experience profound difficulty with memory as the overtaxed hippocampus fails to convert short-term memory to long-term memory (a very common symptom!). Your body may start to ache, or you may become dizzy or nauseous which compounds the alarm since these are also signs of COVID.

I think we are in the beginning of a PTSD epidemic concurrent with COVID, made worse by the lack of a caring, effective and empathic response by our national leaders. You may be confused about what you are experiencing since PTSD is a very PHYSICAL condition, not just something “in your head”. “Good thoughts” cannot change it; that would be like getting a band-aid on an amputation. Anyone is susceptible. With enough traumas piling up nationally we all may have PTSD when this is over. You cannot get too much help or do too much self-care at this time. Your nervous system and neuroendocrine system are being greatly taxed. Find regular times to lower anxiety and have fun. Be vigilant about reducing stress, even the relatively minor stress of watching a violent or scary TV show or movie. Peel the stress onion by letting go of even little stressors and take action 2x/day to lower your anxiety baseline through relaxation, meditation, gardening, yoga, walking or whatever helps you get into “rest and digest” mode safely. Your adrenals will thank you! Honor your need to be safe and whole and take good care of yourselves, including getting safe anti-anxiety meds on board as needed. Love and Reiki to all of you. S



No Justice in Rape Culture

Posted on: by Susan

On June 2, a jury found Brock Turner guilty of multiple charges of sexual assault after having been interrupted and stopped mid-act by two Swedish students at Stanford University. The victim was unconscious at the time of the assault due to being intoxicated with alcohol. It was an open and shut case, and no one was surprised at the conviction. (Read the victim’s statement here.)

What was surprising was the sentence: 6 months of prison time out of a possible 10 years.

Today it was reported that the assailant’s father wrote the court saying that his son should not have to go to jail for “20 minutes of action”.

Wow. That sound you hear is a million women’s heads exploding. WTF?!

As a trauma therapist I am beyond appalled. I feel traumatized by this sentence, and I wasn’t even involved in the case.

The message is clear. Women’s trauma doesn’t count for much. White male privilege does. Because, and let’s be totally clear about his, if the assailant had been a black man, they would have thrown the book at him.

I cannot fathom the additional amount of trauma the victim must be feeling, especially since her attacker was found guilty. The message sent by the judge is traumatizing. Maybe more traumatizing than the original event. The message sent by the father is psychopathic (Read the father’s statement here.)

We have a lot of work to do folks. Educating people about trauma, about PTSD, about basic human decency and about equality of rights and protection under the law.

None of us are safe until justice is served. We need to acknowledge that many men, and many men in power, like the judge who sentenced this young man, either do not get it or do not care. They will continue to dominate and traumatize until we take away their privilege.

Here is my call to arms: WRITE. VOTE. DEMONSTRATE. DEMAND EQUALITY. DEMAND JUSTICE.

Our justice system is very primitive. We can do better. We must, on behalf of this and all the other victims who end up further victimized by rape culture’s version of justice. If you want to contact the judge you can get the information here.



Timelines and Trigger Mapping in Healing PTSD

Posted on: by Susan

In the “old” days of psychotherapy, when I began in the 80s, abreaction or emotional release of traumatic memories was considered a goal of therapy. This idea of therapy was also made popular in powerful movies such as Goodwill Hunting.

Abreaction will happen when it happens, and it will facilitate healing. But it is not enough.

We have to live with the day-to-day realities of our history as they manifest in the present moment. With that in mind, I wanted to share two of the most helpful activities in or out of therapy for people who suffer PTSD.

The first activity is to create a timeline of events. When our PTSD results in dissociation our sense of time can get distorted. In fact, many would say that PTSD itself distorts the part of the brain responsible for the sense of time passing.

In any case, most people I see have a very poor sense of the timeline of what happened to them. Also most people I see have had more than one type of trauma. Some peoples’ lives have been one traumatic event after another. Creating a visual timeline can help us understand and digest what we have actually been through.

 Chances are, when you begin, you will not put down every event. Our brains are associative, so if you are looking at, say, accidents, you will put down accidents. But, you may forget about abuse, or you may remember one type of abuse but not another. I consider the timeline a working document in therapy, whether on paper, or just as an understanding between my client and myself.

When you record an event, you have an opportunity to look at your age at the time. A good timeline should include: event, type of event, age and any other relevant details (such as physical injury).   The timeline provides a chance to re-associate the aspects of yourself connected to your own history and is a valuable tool for your therapist. (P.S. therapists can and do become dissociative too, so this tool can help ground both of you.)

The second important activity that will really start to empower you is trigger mapping. Everyone with PTSD has triggers! They may or may not be known to you. Knowing triggers can help you and your loved ones anticipate PTSD storms and head them off.

Here is how I describe trigger mapping in my book The Trauma Tool Kit:

I recommend writing down or drawing your triggers, getting them down on paper in some form or fashion. Some triggers you will know right away; some you will have to ferret out. Triggers fall into six categories: the five senses of taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing, plus feeling states. Let’s start with the senses, because they are the easiest. You can divide your paper into different sections reflecting each of these senses. It will help jog your memory to go through each sense modality individually. Let’s say you are working in the smell category. Ask yourself what smells really bother you. All of us have smells we do and don’t like. Generally we all like floral scents and dislike the smell of feces, but I am not talking about ordinary aversions here; I am talking about radical reactions. Nobody likes the smell of poop, but if that smell sends you into a panic or frozen numbness and dissociation, it’s a trigger. Or maybe the scent of lavender makes you want to rip someone’s head off. That’s a little unusual; write it down. Take your time working through each category. Do not attempt to do all of this work in one day! If you are in therapy, it can feel safe and reassuring to do it with your therapist. Or it may not depending again on your triggers, but find some way to do it anyway. p. 184-185

The great thing about timelines and trigger mapping is that they create a bridge of healing between the present and the past. They empower and they inform, and they are tangible.  You can also add to them and edit them as you go. It is a great joy to be able to remove a trigger off the list!

One last thing, when you do them, do them with care and beauty. Take your time. Use beautiful colors and paper. Or if you just do them in your own head give yourself the benefit of a peaceful space and time to contemplate your own history and healing.

Blessings on your journey, Sue PB



Knowledgeable Words in a Time of Chaos and Donald Trump

Posted on: by Susan

Today’s blog answers the question “Why I Blog”, 2016. As the New Year crashes into us I am reviewing my mission, my efficacy and I am finding my passion to help make a difference in the lives of those with PTSD is stronger than ever before.

In the media today, everyone thinks they are an expert. That goes double for politicians. 2016 is the run-up to arguably one of the most important elections in the history of this country due to so many large factors hanging in the balance: the economy, the climate of our planet, social unrest. It seems that everyone in media has their two cents to contribute, but, sadly, many opinions are completely uninformed by professionals.

Empathy, courtesy, caring are values that seem to get lost in election season. Why is this important to those of us that have suffered from PTSD?

PTSD is a disorder that grows and multiplies through lack of caring. When there is a disaster, we know that we need to respond as soon as possible. When, as in Hurricane Katrina, that caring does not happen or is replaced with abuses, people’s suffering is magnified tremendously.

My mission is to increase the amount of empathy and caring in the world (by however small a factor) through educating people around PTSD and traumatic stress. When we understand that drama is trauma; when we respond to suffering with nurturance instead of blame; when we demand that our leaders do the same, this world becomes a sweeter, more livable place to be.

My commitment in 2016 is to blog twice/month on various topics that are near and dear to the hearts of those who suffer PTSD or who live close to those that do. Dear readers, please let me know what topics burn for you. What is it that you need to know this year in order to finally heal, or to get the ball rolling in tackling your traumas?

In addition, I will be offering a record number of classes in healing trauma, including a weekend workshop format in April to accommodate people who live out of the Portland metro area. I will continue to grow my Reiki classes so that this powerful healing modality may spread. Look for my first ever Reiki retreat in September!

To you, dear reader, I encourage you to keep your faith in healing. You CAN heal fully from PTSD and live a joyful, fulfilling life. I believe in you.

Abundant Peace and Blessings, Sue



Reiki and PTSD

Posted on: by Susan

I have been told by many people over many years including intuitive clients that I should be using my hands in my healing work. Up until this past year I politely and firmly declined. Therapists consider touch to be taboo and risky. Most agencies make it clear that touch is not to happen between client and therapist – ever.

What happened to change my mind was Reiki. I started to do some research and found that many therapists (as well as nurses and doctors) across the United States use Reiki in their practice, including in the hallowed hospitals of the Harvard Medical system. Over 800 hospitals use Reiki, and it is an evidence-based practice for stress and chronic pain, two symptoms clearly related to PTSD.

As it turns out, one does not need to even touch a client in order to provide Reiki healing energy in a session. So last April I received my Reiki I and II attunements and started offering Reiki to my clients.

The results were astonishing:

– I’ve had several clients report a full night’s sleep after several months or years of sleep disruption, a common side effect of PTSD

– Clients are able to release emotions and cry on the treatment table in a way they usually do not in session. The beauty of Reiki is that they may not know why they are crying; they don’t have to have a reason or specific memory, but they always feel better afterwards and move forward in resolving previous traumas.

– Many report a feeling of a loving, warm and compassionate energy that they have not felt before or in a very long time.

– People report improved digestion and bowel function. On the table I hear people’s gut making bowel sounds, a sign of parasympathetic function being restored to the autonomic nervous system.

– Although I talk about grounding in sessions as do many trauma therapists I have found that Reiki helps clients inhabit their body more fully, and they can really notice the lack of grounding or energy in their lower body. This improves greatly over 2-3 sessions and instigates a firmer resolve to practice grounding exercises such as walking barefoot outside.

– Clients become deeply relaxed and often report the deepest states of peace in their body than they have felt in many months or weeks. Too often therapy is a very stressful experience; Reiki provides a corrective emotional experience for treatment!

– Sometimes people experience physical symptoms resolving. One patient who’d had a persistent red rash for many days reported the rash clearing up within hours of the session. Another experienced her feet becoming stronger and less prone to injury.

Often there is validation between what I as the Reiki practitioner am feeling and what the client is feeling in their body. I had one client that when I held my hands in the position around her face and temple I felt intense heat between the jaw and temple, almost as if my hands were held up next to a flame. My client felt this heat as well, and became very emotional. Later she connected that very spot to where she received electroshock therapy years before which, for her, was both validating and healing.

Although I had the intention that I would probably not touch my therapy clients, I found that people were more offended if I would not touch them. So now before sessions I get their permission and usually only touch around the head, neck and lower legs.

This past December I went back to become a Reiki Master, and have signed up for my next level of training in August. I hope very soon to be offering Reiki attunements, trainings and certifications for therapists. Stay tuned!

If you have received Reiki, I would love to hear about your experiences in the comments section!



Flashbacks, PTSD and You

Posted on: by Susan

Of all the PTSD symptoms, flashbacks are some of the worst. They interrupt our sleep and our waking hours without warning. They chew us up and spit us out leaving us spent, exhausted and retraumatized. Flashbacks can really hurt us as they activate our amygdala, the crisis response center in the brain, and throw our entire nervous system into high gear. In the worst cases, we can momentarily lose touch with reality and become totally engulfed in a full body replay of traumatic events. As we heal from PTSD, it becomes essential to get a grasp on flashbacks and slowly eliminate them.

What are flashbacks?

Flashbacks are an involuntary and intrusive experience of a memory. Flashbacks can involve any combination of the senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic (or feeling state), taste and smell. I have found that many people with traumatic pasts enter flashbacks regularly without knowing they are having one. Movie type flashbacks are obvious; for example a soldier experiencing himself back on the battle field. But flashbacks can also be, for example, an overpowering feeling of helplessness and abandonment in the present that is not in proportion to a current event.

I have come to see flashbacks as part of the body/mind’s attempt to heal. Persistent flashbacks are like a telephone ringing, or someone knocking at your door. They are your unconscious mind demanding that traumatic events in your past be dealt with and healed. Like a persistent visitor, the knocking will only get louder and more in your face if you don’t answer the door.

How can I get rid of flashbacks?

There is only one way to really get rid of flashbacks for good, and that is to dive deep into your mind and heal your PTSD by dealing with the traumatic events that caused your injury. I realize that this is not the answer that many want to hear. It is a bit like saying the only way out of your burning house is to walk straight through the fire. In the meantime there are things you can do to lessen the severity of flashbacks and help those around you cope with them:

– Learn your triggers and inform those closest to you. The more you know what causes flashbacks, the more control you have over them. Keep a log or map them, either mentally or on paper.

– Develop a twice-daily practice of invoking the relaxation response and by that I mean something like yoga, tai chi, progressive relaxation or centering prayer. Not drugs, TV or other escapist types of activities. These techniques have been shown to improve recovery time from flashbacks and decrease their intensity and frequency.

– Strengthen your mind! Flashbacks are a time disorder. Your mind gets sucked back to the time and place of injury. Don’t let that happen! Learn to stay in the present moment through meditation and grounding exercises. That way, when a flashback hits you can stay present and not get swept away in the memory.

– Talk about it. Ever since Freud discovered the “talking cure” we have known there is something magical about telling others about our difficulties. The more we process verbally, the less grip these events and memories have over us. If your memories are too intense to share with loved ones find a good trauma therapist (see my blog on finding a good trauma therapist!).

– Do not blame your self. Shame and flashbacks go hand in hand, and are often a part of the trauma being re-experienced. Be gentle with yourself and realize that this is a process that will take time to resolve.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. PTSD can be healed. That means you will reach a point where flashbacks are no longer a part of your life, at least not in such a pernicious form. We may always have unpleasant memories but when trauma is resolved, they no longer have the power to hurt us.

Blessings on your journey of healing.



Don’t Let Anyone Tell You That PTSD is Permanent

Posted on: by Susan

matphotoviatka

I hear from a lot of clients and friends that they have been told by their therapists that they have to learn to live with PTSD.  “Walk beside it like a friend” is how one therapist put it.

 PTSD is not your friend.  You do not want its companionship for life.

 In the yogic model of the human being, there are multiple layers. We have a physical body, an energetic body made of prana or qi/ki, two layers of mind: one cognitive and one intuitive and a bliss body.  We cannot hope to heal PTSD unless we understand this important concept:

 All layers of our being are wounded by the injuries and abuse that result in PTSD.  PTSD is the manifestation of those wounds.

 In the Western model of medicine we treat only two of the five layers.  We treat the body and we treat the cognitive mind.  In other words we address less than half of the system that has been injured.  In many cases we don’t even treat both.

 Usually people with mental disorders are remanded to some variety of psychiatric care with little attention paid to the rest of the body.  Or the reverse. If the person expresses symptoms mostly through the body, it can take years for a physician to ask simple questions about a history of trauma. 

 Most therapists and counselors pay little to no attention to anything but the latest “evidence-based” treatment, even though “evidence-based” most often means showing an effect for only 3-6 months.  Mental health treatment has become highly politicized and regulated, and essentially a casualty of the free market capitalist system here in the USA. 

 But I digress.

 As a therapist and a survivor, I am here to tell you that  you can heal fully from PTSD. In order to do this you will have to assemble your own treatment team and techniques to heal each of the layers of your being that were injured by trauma. That is essentially the thesis of my book, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD From the Inside Out.

 Please don’t give up.  There is an end to suffering.  The “peace that passeth all understanding” is real.  It may take a while, years perhaps, but life these days is long. Keep going. You can heal fully from PTSD. 



Trauma and Psychic Ability

Posted on: by Susan

This past week I presented workshops at the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation in Copenhagen, Denmark. Twice during the conference highly regarded researchers and treaters of trauma, psychologist Andrew Moskowitz and the parapsychologist Etzel Cardena wondered about the connection of PTSD and psychic experiences. In The Trauma Tool Kit (Quest, 2012) I have also noted the preponderance of unusual experiences that those with trauma report. The questions that came up was why. Why do people with high levels of trauma tend to report experiences in nonordinary reality?
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

1) Extraordinary Empathy. A person subjected to much trauma, especially growing up can develop certain survival skills. One of the skills of surviving an abusive home is to be able to anticipate caregiver’s moods and “manipulate” one’s caregivers into doing their job i.e. not being abusive but helping the child to grow and thrive. The child in this case has to develop preternatural attunement to the caregiver. Out of necessity the child may begin to develop telepathic capacity, exquisite sensitivity to mirror neurons in the brain and a sensitivity to electromagnetic energies emanating from the person.

2) Natural Psychic Giftedness is Aligned with Intergenerational Trauma. Many of the most sensitive and psychic cultures in the world are indigenous. Conquering cultures have gone out of their way to disable the extraordinary abilities of those cultures. Examples include the witch trials of the Inquisition, the British cutting off the fingers of Marma practitioners in India, etc. These conquered cultures store a great deal of intergenerational trauma that may predispose them to perpetuating the trauma through intergenerational abuse. We have seen examples of this repetition in Irish, Native American and African American families. In other words, the indigenous cultures already had these gifts and also manifest traumas recapitulating the original traumas of domination and assimilation so that the relationship is not causal but related to colonization.

3) Chakra Disruption. Shamanic healer Barbara Brennan has written extensively about the human energy body, which she can see clearly. She has noted that certain kinds of abuse, such as sexual abuse, can “tear” open the chakras of the body. This artificial opening then allows the energy body to be more permeable than someone who has not had chakric damage, leading to many kinds of phenomena in nonordinary reality.

4) Dissociation is a Condition of Psychism. All manner of psychic practitioners and shamanic healers need to learn to “unground” their consciousness in order to access information from other realms than the physical. If one has had early training in this from necessity caused by trauma, then one is already well on the way to developing these abilities by definition. This may be the reason that so many shamanic initiations include controlled traumas to open up the mind and supersensory perceptions (teen circumcision, fear trials such as being buried in the earth for several days, scarification, hallucinatory drugs and experiences, etc.)

5) Survival Techniques Facilitate Psychic Ability. Increasingly, trauma survivors are turning to techniques such as meditation, work with spiritual teachers and shamans to heal from extreme traumas. In India it is well known that intense yoga and meditation practices lead to the unfolding of psychic and occult abilities. When trauma survivors pursue these practices for healing, they naturally unlock thoses abilities, too.

It is good to see some of these avenues of thought being pursued in realms of academia and psychology. These pursuits are still fairly controversial in certain states and countries, but overall the public is becoming more friendly to these ideas. My next book Connected: How Reclaiming Your Indigenous Ancestry Can Heal You, Your Community and the World will be exploring these ideas in more depth. It is my strong belief that additional connection and perception may be the qualities needed by modern humanity to change the paradigm on planet Earth, heal the world’s traumas and brighten the future for us all.





Five Questions You Should Ask Your New Trauma Therapist

Posted on: by Susan

Let’s face it, most of us don’t get ourselves into therapy until we are so broken and desperate we can barely get ourselves to the office. We are in a state of extreme need and vulnerability (usually), and the last thing on our minds is interviewing our own therapist. We want answers, and we want help, and we want it now!!!

I understand; I have been there. That is why I am giving you a list you can bring with you to your first two or three sessions so that you can really make an informed decision about how well you and your therapist are a fit. If the first session, you are in total crisis, don’t worry! You can ask these questions any time. But the sooner, the better. It is awful to get into a therapy and then realize you don’t like this therapist, don’t find them helpful, or, even worse, that they don’t like or ‘get’ you.

Remember that your therapist is YOUR hire. You are paying them to render a service, and you are in charge. If you like or don’t like what they are doing, talk to them about it! Just like with hairdressers or massage therapists, monogamy is not required. It’s therapy, not marriage.

OK, then. Here are some excellent questions to ask:

1) What professional organization(s) do you belong to? A mature and successful professional will always want to be part of a professional group larger than themselves. Professional groups provide leadership, advocacy and ongoing education to their members. Really invested professional trauma therapists should belong to at least one professional trauma organization such as the International Society for the Study of Stress and Dissociation (ISSTD); the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS); the American Professional Psychology Division 56 (Division of Trauma Psychology) or one of many others. Hopefully they also belong to their local professional chapter: for social workers NASW, for psychologists, APA, the AMA if they are a psychiatrist, and so on. If they rattle off a bunch of names and letters you do not understand that is probably a good sign. They all have websites. Feel free to check them out. Many of these organizations have their own lists of providers. If they are expert presenters for these organizations, even better!

2) Do you have any special certification or training in Trauma therapy?beautiful therapy Good answers:
Specialized supervision (regular meetings to review cases and learn from them) provided by an experienced trauma therapist or internships in trauma treatment centers. ISSTD and other organizations offer specialized courses and certifications. Also, the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress certify practitioners in a number of traumatic specialty areas including crisis response, child, etc. based on their accomplishments and years of work in the field.

Bad answers:
No. Or I understand trauma because I had a lot of it. Or I’m a good therapist and good therapists can treat anything (run away).

Trauma therapy is an advanced practice specialty area that always requires special training to be good at. You wouldn’t go to a general family doctor for a heart attack, so don’t think that any therapist can do this work. They can’t and may do you more harm than good.

3) Do you understand and treat dissociative disorders?
A surprising number of therapists have never been taught to work with dissociative disorders, don’t recognize them when they see them, and can waste years of patients’ time (not to mention money) by this lack of understanding. Dissociative disorders and traumas go hand in hand. There is even a dissociative subtype for PTSD in the latest diagnostic manual (DSM 5). If you know you have lots of trauma, or lack a significant portion of childhood memories (dissociative amnesia) you have a higher likelihood of a false and unhelpful diagnosis if your therapist does not specialize in trauma and dissociation. Common misdiagnoses are bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia.

4) Have you completed your own course of therapy?
This is an awkward but TOTALLY FAIR question, one, quite frankly, that I wish more people would ask. In the good old days, in the heyday of amazing long term therapy, it was considered on the verge of malpractice and utter ignorance not to complete one’s own therapy before embarking on treating other people. Now it is rather the norm. Very few therapists I supervise have had much of their own treatment.

There is a misconception out there that therapists are sicker than the general population and become therapists to cure themselves. After 40 years in the field, I do not subscribe to this idea. Almost everyone in society has been exposed to trauma and mental illness in their families. Very few of those people want to understand it and go on to help others – those special few are therapists.

But being a psychotherapist working with traumatized people is an incredibly challenging calling. It’s easy to make mistakes, mostly unconscious or ignorant ones. So it is important that the therapist has had enough of their own therapy to understand how their own mind defends itself and operates unconsciously so that they can work well with other minds. This is a long and arduous task requiring many hours of training and work over a period of years.

So don’t be put off by a therapist who had a lengthy therapy themselves. Chances are good that somebody in therapy for 10 years will be a much better therapist than someone who went to treatment for six months and called it ‘good’.

5) Do you believe that people can have repressed memories of trauma that they recall later in their life?

There has been a big debate in the media about this, but in the world of professional trauma therapy the debate has been over for a while. The answer is “yes, of course”. Jennifer Freyd, cognitive psychologist at the University of Oregon, and editor of the ISSTD journal, did a great deal of work in the area of what she calls “betrayal trauma”, the trauma inflicted by a caregiver. She has showed in numerous studies that the closer the relationship of the abuser to the abused, the more likely the victim will have traumatic amnesia for the event.

If memories start to surface in your therapy, you will want to make sure that you will be believed and helped. It is extremely poor therapy to answer ‘no’ to this question, because that indicates the presence of dogma and a closed mind. You may have some very challenging and unusual things to tell your therapist, and you need to trust that they can hear those things and continue to work with you in a safe and containing way.

If you don’t feel like you can ask these questions in person, there is always email! Or go to your therapist’s website and investigate them deeply. You will save yourself some emotional distress and money by being proactive in your search for a truly helpful trauma therapist. Good luck!

Susan answers all of these questions in the affirmative and would be happy to answer more here!



Why Dylan Farrow’s Disclosure Matters

Posted on: by Susan

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator…All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.” 

                                                                                                ~ Judith Herman

 From 1989-1993 I worked in Massachusetts for the Child-At-Risk Hotline at Judge Baker Children’s Center, in the Longwood Medical Area.  We covered the entire state after hours for reports of suspected child abuse and neglect when the departments of investigation were closed for the day and on weekends.  I was a supervisor, which meant that every single suspected case of abuse or neglect was “run by” me.  With the screener’s help I determined whether it was a case that was false, probably true or so emergently true that we had to take action that very shift.

 Children’s lives and well-being hung in the balance so we were very highly trained and conscientious in our work.  Over that period I estimate that I heard somewhere around 15,000 stories of child abuse.  I developed a very good BS detector.

 Like many I had heard vague allegations about Dylan Farrow when she was a child, but it was hard to know what to think and why the case had not been prosecuted.

This week’s publication of her letter to the New York Times has changed all that for me.  

Since it was published last week there has been a firestorm of responses and conversations popping up all over social media, some helpful and others not so much.

As a child abuse prevention professional and a treater of many adult victims of childhood trauma I would like to add my perspective.  I believe Dylan.  Her story is coherent, believable and internally consistent.

Let’s look at the list of secondary gains that each side gets from lying.  For Woody and Dylan there are reasons to lie and reasons to tell the truth.  There are also many reasons not to.

Dylan Lies:

 Pros:                                                                          Cons:

She gets attention in the press.                           She and her family is vilified in the media.

She gets people to feel sorry for her                   Her credibility is forever tarnished

                                                                                   in the eyes of friends, employers, etc.

She’s going for a book or movie deal?               Her accused is a Hollywood insider.

 

                                                                                  She could be sued for defamation.

 Maybe I lack imagination but I’m already out of reasons for her to lie about this.  Usually when people tell big lies there is a big positive payoff.  I don’t see it here. Do you?  The Cons are overwhelmingly negative and threaten to ruin her life.  Just to be a somebody in the press? There are easier ways.  OK, let’s look at the other side.

 Woody Lies:

 Pros                                                                           Cons

He keeps making movies                                     He gets a clean conscience (if he’s not

                                                                                    a sociopath)

He keeps all his money                                         He may need to pay a lot of money in a

                                                                                    lawsuit

 

People keep loving him and his work                 People will be revulsed by him and his work

 

He keeps his relationships                                     He loses friends and business contacts

The Romans used to ask an important question, Qui Bono?  Who benefits here?  Dylan suffers more by lying than she gains.  Woody suffers more by telling the truth by far.  Lying is in his best interest as it is in the case of most perpetrators.  Even if we look at just dollars and profit motive, Dylan stands to lose more than she gains by lying where the opposite is true with Woody.  It is incredibly hard to win lawsuits against perpetrators, especially when there was no original conviction.

But what about the argument her mother made her do it by “implanting” memories. Oh please!  Maybe (maybe!!! although I’ve never seen it in decades of practice) a seven year old could be persuaded.  But an adult knows better.  Mind control is possible, but it requires years of skilled training to do and the only experts in the world are black ops top secret level psy military people who do not publish manuals.  Occam’s razor suggests that this argument is full of giant holes.  Like smoke and fire, reports of abuse almost always coincide with actual abuse!

As for Woody, well we already know him as a man with exceedingly poor boundaries and someone who acts without considering the consequences for those around him by marrying his long-term partner, Mia’s teenaged daughter. Everyone who “testified” for him at the awards show (wasn’t that strange) talked about all the roles he had written for women, not anything about his character.  I had the sense that the women supposedly speaking on his behalf were really speaking on their own interests.  But having said that perps are exceedingly good at getting people to believe them. And the longer the friendship, the harder to see the perp inside the man.

If you look at the Herman quote above you will see why.  I have written in The Trauma Tool Kit how the mind wants to avoid material it sees as threatening to its own sense of security and comfort.  Contemplating that your best loved films were created by a monster creates a level of cognitive dissonance that most people cannot handle.

But, you see, we must.  Because this is one story among millions.  Every day there are victims who tell the truth and are shut out of their families because the perpetrator is believed.  Because the people they tell will not or cannot tolerate a change in perspective and a re-ordering of their own lives and view of reality.

Our culture is sick.  I agree with the neo-feminists who talk of the ‘rape culture’ in which we live.  All over the world from time out of mind women and children have been raped, dominated and treated like property. Men have relied on each other to maintain power, to satisfy their lusts and desires and do what they want. Just because they can.  For humanity to evolve, this has to end.  That means TELLING THE TRUTH, no matter how unpleasant or personally uncomfortable that makes us.  After all, it could be your daughter or son, neighbor, friend or cousin who is the next victim.

Only then will the real healing begin for individuals and society as whole.

As for me, I’m breaking up with Woody and all his films.  I wish Dylan a sense of wholeness, peace and healing for her future. She has suffered enough.

 

 

 





Managing the Madness: Mature Adults Wanted

Posted on: by Susan

Wow. What a week we have had.  Shutdowns, debt ceilings, the PSATs if you are a Junior in high school.  Tempers are flaring.  There is a lot of doomsday rhetoric.  A lot of DRAMA.

 In The Trauma Tool Kit, I talk about how drama is not drama, it’s trauma.    People are traumatized in this country. We are collectively traumatized by an unstable economy, by escalating natural disasters, by regular but unpredictable mass shootings, by increasingly mean spirited exchanges on the internet and in the media, by our own unresolved issues of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional violence and neglect.

 Unfortunately, most people have not matured much past their early 20s in terms of their emotional self-management.  If we do not do our work, heal our own wounds, those wounds get projected out into the world and onto other people and groups. As long as we think someone else is causing our suffering, we can legitimately be involved in blame, shame and finger-pointing.  DRAMA.

 This self-work, the work of enlightening our own minds, healing ourselves and becoming mature human beings is HARD.  It is so much easier to be sarcastic, cynical and fearful, to hug our guns both metaphorical and literal.  Maturity means having empathy for others, even when their point of view is different than ours.  Maturity means restraint, tolerating difficult feelings without acting them out.  Maturity means mutual respect even if you loathe what the other person is saying to you.

 We need to grow a lot more maturity in this country or the rhetoric will continue to devolve. At some point that hateful rhetoric could spill into violence. Do we really want the bloodshed, mayhem and trauma that comes with acting out, with our continuing lack of maturity as human beings?

 How do we do this? How do we grow up? The answer is simple, but not easy.

 First we have to become disillusioned with fighting and realize that peace and justice come from within first, not from our side winning.

 Second, we have to go inside and acknowledge that hateful feelings lurk within our own minds. We need to tame the raging beast of our traumas through meditation, restraint, insight and all of the healing methods outlined in my book The Trauma Tool Kit.

 Third, we need to implement what we have learned and act in the world from that peaceful and centered place.  Even after all my years of therapy, meditation, yoga, and healing, I still have to do my daily work of remembering what I know. 

 I have to choose peace, each and every single day.

 Won’t you join me?  Please. We could use some more mature adults around here.



Lessons From Shannon

Posted on: by Susan

          This summer I lost my friend, teacher and mentor, Shannon Kelly.  Many who knew him called him Shannon the Shaman.  But Shannon was many things.  He identified as a “Bubba”, a regular guy who grew up in the South hunting, drinking and loving the outdoors.  As a single father to three children, he was deeply committed to parenting as best he could. For me, he was one of the best therapists and supervisors I had the pleasure to work with (he was the first therapist in Portland I met who knew what reaction formation was, and he was an accomplished Ericksonian therapist).  Prior to his “coming out” as shaman, he worked 25 years as a mental health professional.

          Our first session together was bodywork, held up in the tiny little room down the hall from his kids’ bedrooms (to make ends meet he always worked in his house those first years).  Bodywork from a therapist?  Actually, he had dropped the mantle of therapist long before, but not the knowledge, as his work expanded into broader and deeper realms. He had fully embraced the knowledge of himself as shaman after calling a Northwest Native American tribe. The woman who had answered the phone had not picked up a phone in ten years. She was the medicine woman and he asked to meet with her.  Fresh from the Southwest, guided to work in the Northwest and pursue shamanism by a vision of red-tailed hawks, Shannon asked her who the best teacher for him might be.  As the story goes, she laughed and laughed and then told him to look in the mirror.

          As I was lying on the table, feeling his large hands elongate into even larger hairy bear claws (yes, he validated chuckling, bear medicine was his main access) I had a very strange sensation.

          Shannon, I’m feeling weird.  I feel all this sadness leaving my body, but somehow it doesn’t feel connected to me.

          That’s because it’s not yours.

Lesson #1:  Many of the emotions we carry around with us aren’t even ours.

           Wow.  That first session was a mind blower. I had been told before that I tend to carry other people’s “stuff” around with me, but until I could actually feel it leaving I really didn’t understand the power and detriment of it.  At that point I had been in human services for over 20 years, not to mention my own family’s “stuff” so there was a lot to let go of.  I felt immediately lighter after that and subsequent sessions, and the feelings of release persisted.  Once we feel what is not ours and let go of it, it becomes easier to stay clear and to know and work with what is really our stuff and what isn’t.

            During that first bodywork session I started feeling light and fluttery like I would just float away off the table. This was a familiar feeling, but because Shannon’s energy was so powerful, it became even more pronounced.  I had started to feel a familiar dizziness when Shannon placed large river rocks under my hands and feet.  The feelings immediately subsided and I felt a really wonderful sense of being calmly present throughout the rest of my session.  I loved the sensation of solid rock underneath me and began to breathe more deeply as I relaxed.

Lesson #2:  Get and stay grounded

            My gymnastics teacher in middle school used to call me Pixie Fairy because I ran on my toes, and no matter what she said, she just couldn’t get me to muster a proper run to the vault.  Maybe it’s a result of some of my earlier trauma, maybe it’s my celtic fairy blood, maybe it’s all the air signs in my astrological chart, but for whatever reason being grounded was always tremendously challenging for me, when I even knew what that meant!  As I have said in my book, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD From the Inside Out, being ungrounded is necessary at times for visionaries, high creative and healers, but we cannot live there.  If we are not grounded we are not in touch with our bodies, our emotions and our earthly selves. As long as we are living on Earth, we need a grounded, functioning ego.  We need to fully inhabit our body and all of our senses.  When we don’t, anxiety fills up the void.

Shannon was very insistent on this point and wasn’t afraid to use tools like big honkin’ river rocks to get me there.

            I had been taught by earlier therapists and supervisors to talk about anything and everything that came into my head.  This technique came directly from Freud, who discovered the say anything approach of free association was a “royal road” to unconsciously repressed material in the psyche that caused neurosis and mood disorders. So, of course, I wanted to excitedly process all my experiences and thoughts.  Shannon listened patiently for a while, and then in a booming mountain man voice said, GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD.

Lesson #3:  Your thoughts aren’t as important as you think they are, and they may not even be your thoughts.

          Shannon explained. We cannot solve our feelings at the level of our thoughts, and our thoughts distract us and get in the way of getting grounded and releasing.  This can result in headaches, malaise, exhaustion and anxiety.  If this pattern persists, it can lead to profound depression.

            It turns out that he was exactly right from a neuroscience perspective.  The cortex, the thinking part of the brain that is all wrinkly and sits on top, has only a few pathways that work themselves down deeper into the emotional brain, the mammalian part called the limbic brain.  The limbic brain, on the other hand, has a bazillion ways to communicate its urgent messages to the cortex.  This arrangement helps the organism to survive in the environment. For example, if you see a rattlesnake moving towards you on the path do you debate what kind it is, or just jump out of the way with your heart beating hard? I rest my case. (There may be those genetic anomalies that would debate the snake, but they may not survive to have offspring.)

            This is why we cannot talk nor affirm ourselves out of our feelings.  You can try and try to think of reasons to be happy when you are sad, but does it really work? If it works at all, it only works for a brief period of time.  Until the fundamental conflict that is affecting the limbic brain is resolved or released, there will be no peace in our thoughts. The limbic brain is hardwired to the senses and body.  Even our sense of smell, our olfactory bulb, is actually part of the limbic brain!

            Unless thoughts and words are grounded in the reality of the body and awareness through all the senses, we are just spinning out meaningless stories that can distract us from the work at hand.  Actually, I realized later, I was trained to look for overthinking as a therapist.  In psychodynamic therapy this phenomenon is called “intellectualizing” and it is classified as an ego defense that affects those who like to experience the world through thoughts and the intellect.

            But the important thing I gradually came to understand was that, just as many of the feelings in my body weren’t actually mine, neither were the thoughts.

~ to be continued

 



24 Hours With PTSD

Posted on: by Susan

 I wrote this post so that those without PTSD can begin to understand and so that those with PTSD know that someone else has been there before.  I do not have PTSD any longer. WARNING: MAY BE TRIGGERING.

     I wake up groggy, with remnants of a bad night’s sleep still clinging to me. I don’t want to go back to sleep, but I’m not sure I can face the day either. I cannot remember my dreams, but I know they weren’t good. Last night I didn’t yell in a nightmare and disrupt my husband’s badly needed sleep. That, at least is good. I cannot remember the last time sleep felt refreshing. Now it feels like another form of deprivation, another instrument of suffering, another of the myriad losses of PTSD. I wonder if I will ever have a good night’s sleep again.

     My joints and gut ache as they do every day now as I push myself up to sit on the side of my bed. If I don’t move slowly I risk dizziness. Lately my body doesn’t seem to know where it is in space. I have bruises that I don’t remember getting from bumping into doorways, edges of tables and chairs. It’s like having the PMS clumsies all the time. The bruises don’t hurt though. On the contrary, I hardly feel them. It’s the pain inside that absorbs all my attention. I breathe, attempting, without success to ground myself before beginning my day.

     My kids are waiting for breakfast and a ride to school so I need to get a move on. Every day my prayer is the same. Please let me be a good mother. Help me protect them from what I am going through. Give me the strength to do what I need to and I will deal with my PTSD later. It doesn’t always help, and guilt over bad mommy moments is a constant companion these days.
Mornings are particularly bad with PTSD. It is as if someone has gone through my sensory system and turned up all the knobs to high. Light stabs my eyeballs making me squint with pain. Sounds are amplified as if I am in an echo chamber. Internal feelings and emotions can rev to highs and lows with no warning. I keep a very zen environment. The kids know not to talk too loud, bang their plates or scrape their forks. My husband is encouraged to leave the kitchen without cleaning it because the running water sounds like white noise in my head. We keep the lights low. I never know how bad it is going to be and they don’t either. Fortunately, my kids are not morning people either. They move slowly and quietly. I worry that I’ve become too controlling, but the stakes are too high to do anything different.

     I’ve tried to explain what it is like to live in this body now to my very calm, stoic Lutheran raised midwestern husband. If there is a superpower for nerves of steel, he has it. My husband deals with life and death in his cath lab on a daily basis. He works in the space of millimeters for hours on end to open blocked hearts when his patients’ only alternative is life threatening surgery or certain death. He has not experienced PTSD or any mental affliction. His mental health and stability is both an asset and a hazard in our relationship. Sometimes I just need him to lose it on my behalf, to show that he really, really gets it.

     I explain to him that on bad days I feel like I have ground glass running throughout my nervous system with sharp jaggedy edges. I explain how triggers make me want to jump out of my skin and how that jump is always accompanied by intense emotion, either a tornado of disintegrating rage, or fear or both. I explain how I know what some of my triggers are, but that every day, as I work through my healing in therapy, new ones are popping out and that we can both be caught off guard. I want him to understand that the constant flow of adrenaline makes me look alert and energized on the outside but that inside I feel exhausted. Wired and tired is how I put it. The foot is full throttle on the gas pedal, but the car is stuck in neutral. (I look for good manly analogies.) I explain that I need him to not react to my irritation and anger, to not take it personally, that it is only the PTSD rearing its ugly head. He nods his head with understanding, but the next time he does take it personally. And why wouldn’t he? Another source of guilt and rage for me. And a source of fragility for our marriage, a marriage that has always been strong. Is PTSD going to take this away from me too?

     Normally couples can make up with physical intimacy. But even the least little bit of this comfort is now denied me. When the PTSD first hit, even hugging through two layers of flannel pajamas made me nauseous and dizzy. That initial shock has settled into a distant sort of numbness. I hug out of habit, but I can’t really feel it. I can’t feel my connection to myself or to him. The only connection that is safe for me is the kids. Thank goodness I can still feel my love for them. I realize that it is possible that my husband has become a trigger. But I’m not sure. Is it him? Or is it the trigger? Is our marriage viable? I have no idea, and I have to live with that uncertainty for months, and so does he. I decide not to decide until I have progressed in my healing.

     After everyone leaves for the day, I face hours alone, just me and my PTSD. I am both relieved and terrified. Some days are better than others. Some days I have therapy with the shaman therapist. He is helpful and powerful, and there is no state he cannot bring me out of. I am very, very lucky to have him as a resource. Still, there are many hours to fill.

     With PTSD I am never really happy. I miss simple happiness. I miss joy. I take my dogs on a walk and watch them run with abandon, big wild dog joy grins on their faces. On a good day, my insides feel like a grey, shadowless Portland winter day, flat and featureless. On a bad day, a howling storm is raging that threatens to obliterate me. Unless I am in the bleakest place I will myself to do my job as mother and housemaker: cook something, clean something, pay something. Self-care and hygiene is no longer a natural act, but something that must be chosen and willed every day. When I am in the darkest states, I curl up for hours on the sofa waiting for my next therapy appointment.

     Fortunately, I did not just fall off the turnip truck. I have had a lot of training and life experience. I can meditate. I can do breathing exercises. I can walk (until I have a very bad skiing accident, but that is another story). I know by virtue of my age and therapy that this too shall pass, that there is no way I can stay in this state forever, that I am working actively on my healing. Sometimes this helps, and sometimes it really doesn’t.

     PTSD taunts me with loneliness. If I had cancer, or some other major medical illness, if I were a victim of a current crime or in a car accident or had something visibly wrong with me, people would know. People would sympathize, maybe bring over a casserole, send a card, check in with me or take me to lunch. But nobody knows. I cannot talk about my disability because to talk about it makes me feel much, much worse. Talking about it makes my head spin and my stomach want to retch. Even if I could stand to see the look on people’s face when I tried to talk about my condition, most of them, like my good husband, would not really understand. They might nod their heads politely and say that time heals all wounds, or that I should be grateful for what I have now. I might have to kill them for that. Or myself. So I remain silent and withdraw unnoticed. I go to school events, put on a brave face and then crawl into bed exhausted.

     If I am lucky I make it through the day without any major triggers. But it feels like walking daily through a mine field. At the end of the day I lose myself briefly in spending time with my happy amazing kids. I manage to stay focused on them and their needs until their bedtime. But then I am used up and collapse on the sofa exhausted. I have nothing left for my spouse. I try to look back over my day and find one thing to feel good about. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I just want to hurt myself. I watch these moods come and go with the experienced eye of a therapist and meditator. It doesn’t mean it’s easy though.

    I have no idea how people make it through without the level of support that I have, and then I realize that many of them don’t make it.

     Bedtime comes, and with it, intense dread. I used to love bedtime. I couldn’t wait to snuggle down into flannel sheets, cozy up to my hubbie and drift off feeling our warm connection. Now we sleep on the edges of the bed. I tell him I love him, but please don’t touch me. Trained doctor that he is, he falls asleep instantly. I am left with the final battle of the day.

     Sometimes I can fall asleep easily sometimes I can’t. But I never stay asleep. Every 90 minutes like clockwork, my mind and body pop out of sleep. It is exhausting. REM sleep is where our bodies process intense emotion and memories. I think about how waking people up before REM sleep is a torture that can result in psychosis. As I slip into the dream state the nightmares come. They are bad. Sometimes they are screaming and striking out in my sleep bad. But more often I wake up before I can even have them, a new conditioned response that is out of my control. I meditate. I do yoga to relax and start over. I read. Sometimes these things help and sometimes they do not.

     I don’t know if tomorrow will be any better, but I hope it will. And when I can’t hope I endure.



The Root of Violence: Solutions for a Beleaguered World

Posted on: by Susan

 

 

When I was in high school and the world’s population was at about 4 billion, I saw a video about an experiment in rat overcrowding. The researchers showed very clearly that up until a certain population the rats were civil, harmonious and happy. When they became overcrowded, the rats turned on each other and a cycle of violence began. I remembered wondering where that tipping point was for humanity.

Today the world’s population stands at about 7 billion, ready to top 8 billion in the next decade. I cannot help but wonder if the world is getting too crowded to maintain civil societies. At least in the old models.

Fortunately, we are not rats. We are human beings with a plethora of ingenious human tools at our disposal, the foremost being a thinking, self-reflective brain. We can not only reshape our environment, we can also reshape our bodies, personalities and even our own brains.

Clearly, it is time to evolve.

What would it take to stop the violence?

Currently it is popular to blame religion for violence. But I don’t buy it. Historically, nationalism was blamed for wars. But we didn’t abolish nations, nor could we. Anymore than we can abolish religion. The search for God and religion seems to be hardwired into the very fabric of humanity. And that’s potentially a good thing. Innumerable hospitals, orphanages, and other charitable endeavors have been supported by large religious bodies.

Look, I’m a therapist. I’ve spent a lifetime peering into the hidden mechanisms of human consciousness. I’ve worked with victims and perpetrators of violence, religious, atheist, you name it.

And the root of violence is pretty simple. The recipe is this: take a human ego, prone to intense biological impulses like sex and aggression, add a dose of rejection, violence, or trauma and withhold empathy, attachment and kindness. Don’t forget to add the testosterone, or all that violence will turn inwards. This is the basic formula; there are of course endless ways to “spice” things up. Anything that disinhibits a human helps: drugs, a charismatic leader, any kind of reward real or imagined, spiritual or material. You get the picture.

When the world becomes an overall less kinder place to be, when governments exist to punish and control rather than support, when adults are too busy trying to survive than to connect, when children are subjected to all manner of abuse growing up, when basic needs are withheld (food, shelter, education), then we can be sure the rise of violence is around the corner.
My little piece of contribution centers around psychological trauma. Like the tipping point for rat populations, I believe that there is a tipping point for the number of citizens with untreated abuse and trauma issues that starts to unravel societies and the fabric of civilization gets weak, gauzy and prone to tears.

That is why I wrote The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD From the Inside Out. But one book is not enough to stem the tide.

If we want to turn this around we need the biggest investment in our humanity the world has ever seen.

Our healthcare system is broke.
Out educational system is broke.
Our national aggression is disproportionately funded.
PTSD is a national (and global) epidemic.
Our TV and media is a wasteland of violence, sex and empty, puerile stories aimed at the basest nature of humans.
Adults can’t find meaningful work or time to connect.
Children can’t get their emotional needs met so they are turning to early sex, drugs, computers and violent videogames.

Like the global climate crisis we are in, we are in a crisis of our own humanity.

We need to ask ourselves: what does it mean to be human? Are we living lifestyles that are in alignment with our values and ideals, or have we given up?

The answers are simple. Accomplishing them requires insight, wisdom and the will of the people.

1) Convert from a permanent wartime economy to a peace economy. Stop trying to control the world and get back to taking care of American citizens.
2) Reinstate the important status of mothers in the world by funding them to stay home with their children as needed. Working mothers is a redundant, and obnoxious term. We need to recognize that all mothers are, by definition, working.
3) Stop projecting our own internal demons onto other groups: immigrants, “terrorists”, “dirty hippies”, whatever. And affirm the dignity of all human beings, the vast majority of whom merely seek to be happy.
4) Reign in the vast greed industries and interests in Washington.
5) Recognize that only people are people. Corporations are sociopathic entities.
6) Fund a single payer healthcare system and come into the 21st century.
7) Throw out the educational dictates of the last 20 years and create sound educational ideas that really engage students and teachers in learning in the new millennium.
8) Turn off your TV. Or at least have enforced rules about usage .
9) Heal your traumas. Help yourself.
10) Recognize that your children, friends and neighbors may be struggling quietly and desperately in need of help. Help them.
11) Spend more time with your kids. Quality is not enough. Quantity is also required for healthy kids. Don’t let computers and TV parent.
12) Create community events for connection. Host a potluck once/month. Get involved. Talk to your neighbors. Get over your fear of the ‘other’.
13) MEDITATE. Rats can’t meditate, we can. If we all just calmed down and healed our own brains, it would be enough.

OK, then. We do have choices. It’s either us or no one. We can cower in fear waiting for the next attack, the next screw gone loose, or we can start changing our communities here and now.

I vote for now. I’ll go meditate on it, and then I will act.



Defending Dr. Drew

Posted on: by Susan

My husband is an interventional cardiologist. Most of the people he sees are in manageable stages of cardiac disease. Some of his patients are quite sick and come in with advanced stages of illness. A few are dead and dying when they reach his cath lab. Miraculously, he can bring a few back to life, or ease their suffering greatly with stents and medications, saving them the trauma of open heart surgery.

Nobody is surprised when some of these people die. Sad. But not surprised. And certainly not outraged.

I’m a mental health professional, as is Dr. Drew Pinsky. In the media Dr. Drew has been blamed for the recent death of country singer Mindy McCready, who appeared on his show Rehab a few seasons ago. Like my husband, we both see people in various stages of illness. We’ve held people’s lives in our hands in our offices as surely as my husband has in his cath lab.

Dr. Drew, on his show Rehab, treats the sickest of the sick. He admits people to his hospital who have a terrible prognosis, many of whom have been told they are going to die if they don’t get treatment. They are in the end stages of addiction, a disease just as surely fatal as heart disease.

Yet, for some reason, when these patients die, the good doctor is blamed. Why? He is treating those who need intensive intervention and treatment in a psychiatric facility, just as my husband treats people in his hospital. These patients can get well with interventions for a period of time and then fail, just as cardiac patients can.

I can only chalk this reaction up to the ignorance and wishful thinking of the American people. Here is what I, as a lifelong mental health practitioner, would like the general public to know:

1) Addiction is a deadly disease, no less of a threat than cancer, heart disease, or a terrible accident.

2) It takes a highly skilled practitioner, one with hundreds if not thousands of hours of training, practice and supervision to help these people get better, and, yet, like other physicians, we still may lose our patients.

3) When we do lose our patients, we feel terrible. We work so much more intimately with our patients than, say, my husband does with his. We know their secrets, their character. We have laughed with them and possibly cried with them. It is impossible to be a good therapist without attaching to our clients and they to us.

4) Clinicians don’t just ever treat addictions. Addictions are always a symptom of a much bigger problem, and, frankly, that problem almost always involves boatloads of psychological trauma.

5) Working with traumatic stress is incredibly taxing for patient and practitioner. Frankly, not that many people want to do it. If you don’t believe me ask yourself when the last time is that you asked someone to tell you about their history of abuse and neglect and then listened all the way to the end of their story. Never? I rest my case.

6) Mental health clinicians are the pariahs of the medical community in the same way our patients are pariahs in the public’s eye. We treat “losers” so we must be losers is how so many of us are seen (if you wish you can substitute the word “crazy” for “loser”). Most of us are undervalued, underpaid and disempowered, but we soldier on because we believe in our work and enjoy helping people end their suffering.

7) My husband never lacks for the tools to do his work. His patients have the best equipment, the best care, and only leave the hospital when they are well enough to go home. Often they go home with assistance of some kind or another. This is rarely true in mental health work. Our patients do not have long enough stays to get better, have trouble accessing clinicians who know how to treat them, and are often discharged without enough support at home.

Even with the best support money can buy, some patients, like the country singer Mindy McCready, fail. Some people do well until they are put under undo stress and then they collapse. This was the case, as far as I can tell, with Ms. McCready. She’d already had several suicide attempts until the completed suicide of her boyfriend. She snapped.

How is this Dr. Drew’s fault? Now, I know there is some controversy about publicly airing shows on mental health treatment, and the questions are valid. Yet, as a professional whose work is always done in complete opacity, I’m happy that the general public gets to see some of what I and thousands of my colleagues give to our clients on a daily basis. I can’t participate in Take Your Daughter to Work Day, but we can sit down and watch an episode of Rehab.

I am sorry that Mindy lost her battle with depression and addiction. I am sad that Dr. Drew is getting blamed for losing a patient in the end stages of a terrible disease process. I hope we can all use this event to deepen our understanding of the terrible costs and demands of mental health and addictions instead of using it as a way to take a cheap shot at a profession that works in areas that no one else will touch.



Healing Together With An Infinite Mind

Posted on: by Susan

HT_logo_HPI just returned from my favorite conference of the year, the Healing Together Conference put on by Infinite Mind.  Infinite Mind is a group of people with DID, which is Dissociative Identity Disorder.  You might know it better as Multiple Personality Disorder.

Why is this my favorite conference?  Many reasons.  This group of people who suffer from DID and those who support and/or treat them are the most dedicated, open and knowledgeable group I have been involved with.  There is no lying, no minimization, no disinformation.  Pain is acknowledged but not dwelt on. Jaime Pollock, the main organizer, is known for her organizational skills, her comedic timing and her immense sensitivity to the suffering of others.  She is completely open about her own journey, but never triggering.  There is an art room and a quiet grounding room with lots of pillows and blankets with student psychology interns available to help as needed.

Remember the movie Sybil?  Well, the real Sybil, Shirley Mason painted her way through her treatment.  There was a beautiful and moving exhibit of some of her paintings during the conference.  Despite the recent book questioning her diagnosis, most people who knew her, and most specialists believe, she was, in fact, DID.  The pictures in this article are some of hers.  Some facts about them: she often painted telephone poles, sail boats (to sail away from her pain?) and yellow, she said, was the color of her mother’s screaming.

Another famous multiple, Truddi Chase, wrote the runaway best seller When Rabbit Howls.  Her daughter, Kari, gave a very moving account of what it was to be the daughter of a multiple growing up.  It was very clear that a distant, mean father was much more of a liability to a growing child than a mother with DID.  Another interesting presentation was a mother-daughter pair from England discussing the same topic.  Carol, who only “discovered” her DID later in life brought some remarkable videos of herself in other personality states (called ‘alters’ or ‘parts’).  Her daughter with much patience and humor described a mother who often could not remember what she had said five minutes ago, but she was fun to play with!  They shared a very dramatic and, at times,  journey of healing which continues today.

On a more serious note, the mental health system in England and other places is severely lacking and there is much international work to be done on educating practitioners not only about the reality of DID, but how to work effectively on integrating painful memories.

Here are a few important facts to know about people with DID:

 1)   DID begins at an early age, usually before 7 but is often not diagnosed until later in life.

2)   DID is always the result of severe and prolonged trauma.  There has to be immense force involved to shatter a mind.

3)   Most people with DID are law-abiding and peaceful people who suffer from extreme internal torment.

4)   Many people with DID grow up to be loving (if somewhat dysfunctional) parents.

5)   Children of parents with DID can thrive, especially with support from the community.

6)   People with DID hold jobs in all sectors of society.  They are preschool teachers, lawyers, police officers, writers, hospice workers, etc.

7)   You cannot tell if someone has DID by looking at them.

8)   With appropriate treatment people can integrate fully and heal from DID and their traumatic histories that were the cause of their problems.

9)   People with DID almost always have problems with losing time.  Often people think they are pathological liars because different alters give different information. Over time they learn how to compensate for these difficulties.

10)  DID is fairly prevalent.  It is estimated that  1 out of 100 people in the USA suffer from DID, and it is found in every country.

 I had the privilege of giving trauma informed yoga classes in the morning and presenting two workshops: one on Yogic Modalities For Healing From PTSD and one on The Effects of Abuse and Trauma on Developing Children. The audiences were engaged, and responsive.  

 If you are a therapist, a physician, someone suffering from DID or you know someone with DID I would highly recommend this yearly conference as a place to learn, to laugh and to commiserate with a group of compassionate and knowledgeable people. It is held in Orlando, Florida every year in late winter.  I feel very grateful to be involved with this amazing group.

 



© Lotus Heart Counseling, LLC • 7601 SW Brier Place Portland Oregon 97219 • (503) 869-0314 • 

To Top