Thursday's Therapy - How Is Your PostTraumatic Growth?

Thursday's Therapy

How Is Your PostTraumatic Growth?

Click here to take the Post Traumatic Growth Inventory

Managing traumatic stress: Tips for recovering from disasters and other traumatic events

Disasters are often unexpected, sudden and overwhelming. In some cases, there are no outwardly visible signs of physical injury, but there is nonetheless a serious emotional toll. It is common for people who have experienced traumatic situations to have very strong emotional reactions. Understanding normal responses to these abnormal events can aid you in coping effectively with your feelings, thoughts and behaviors, and help you along the path to recovery.

What happens to people after a disaster or other traumatic event?

Shock and denial are typical responses to traumatic events and disasters, especially shortly after the event. Both shock and denial are normal protective reactions.

Shock is a sudden and often intense disturbance of your emotional state that may leave you feeling stunned or dazed. Denial involves not acknowledging that something very stressful has happened, or not experiencing fully the intensity of the event. You may temporarily feel numb or disconnected from life.

As the initial shock subsides, reactions vary from one person to another. The following, however, are normal responses to a traumatic event:

• Feelings become intense and sometimes are unpredictable. You may become more irritable than usual, and your mood may change back and forth dramatically. You might be especially anxious or nervous, or even become depressed.
• Thoughts and behavior patterns are affected by the trauma. You might have repeated and vivid memories of the event. These flashbacks may occur for no apparent reason and may lead to physical reactions such as rapid heartbeat or sweating. You may find it difficult to concentrate or make decisions, or become more easily confused. Sleep and eating patterns also may be disrupted.
• Recurring emotional reactions are common. Anniversaries of the event, such as at one month or one year, can trigger upsetting memories of the traumatic experience. These "triggers" may be accompanied by fears that the stressful event will be repeated.
• Interpersonal relationships often become strained. Greater conflict, such as more frequent arguments with family members and coworkers, is common. On the other hand, you might become withdrawn and isolated and avoid your usual activities.
• Physical symptoms may accompany the extreme stress. For example, headaches, nausea and chest pain may result and may require medical attention. Pre-existing medical conditions may worsen due to the stress.

How do people respond differently over time?

It is important for you to realize that there is not one "standard" pattern of reaction to the extreme stress of traumatic experiences. Some people respond immediately, while others have delayed reactions — sometimes months or even years later. Some have adverse effects for a long period of time, while others recover rather quickly.

And reactions can change over time. Some who have suffered from trauma are energized initially by the event to help them with the challenge of coping, only to later become discouraged or depressed.

A number of factors tend to affect the length of time required for recovery, including:

• The degree of intensity and loss. Events that last longer and pose a greater threat, and where loss of life or substantial loss of property is involved, often take longer to resolve.
• A person's general ability to cope with emotionally challenging situations. Individuals who have handled other difficult, stressful circumstances well may find it easier to cope with the trauma.
• Other stressful events preceding the traumatic experience. Individuals faced with other emotionally challenging situations, such as serious health problems or family-related difficulties, may have more intense reactions to the new stressful event and need more time to recover.

How should I help myself and my family?

There are a number of steps you can take to help restore emotional well-being and a sense of control following a disaster or other traumatic experience, including the following:

• Give yourself time to adjust. Anticipate that this will be a difficult time in your life. Allow yourself to mourn the losses you have experienced. Try to be patient with changes in your emotional state.
• Ask for support from people who care about you and who will listen and empathize with your situation. But keep in mind that your typical support system may be weakened if those who are close to you also have experienced or witnessed the trauma.
• Communicate your experience. In whatever ways feel comfortable to you — such as by talking with family or close friends, or keeping a diary.
• Find out about local support groups that often are available. Such as for those who have suffered from natural disasters or other traumatic events. These can be especially helpful for people with limited personal support systems.
• Try to find groups led by appropriately trained and experienced professionals. Group discussion can help people realize that other individuals in the same circumstances often have similar reactions and emotions.
• Engage in healthy behaviors to enhance your ability to cope with excessive stress. Eat well-balanced meals and get plenty of rest. If you experience ongoing difficulties with sleep, you may be able to find some relief through relaxation techniques. Avoid alcohol and drugs.
• Establish or reestablish routines such as eating meals at regular times and following an exercise program. Take some time off from the demands of daily life by pursuing hobbies or other enjoyable activities.
• Avoid major life decisions such as switching careers or jobs if possible. These activities tend to be highly stressful.

When should I seek professional help?

Some people are able to cope effectively with the emotional and physical demands brought about by traumatic events by using their own support systems. It is not unusual, however, to find that serious problems persist and continue to interfere with daily living. For example, some may feel overwhelming nervousness or lingering sadness that adversely affects job performance and interpersonal relationships.

Individuals with prolonged reactions that disrupt their daily functioning should consult with a trained and experienced mental health professional. Psychologists and other appropriate mental health providers help educate people about normal responses to extreme stress. These professionals work with individuals affected by trauma to help them find constructive ways of dealing with the emotional impact.

With children, continual and aggressive emotional outbursts, serious problems at school, preoccupation with the traumatic event, continued and extreme withdrawal, and other signs of intense anxiety or emotional difficulties all point to the need for professional assistance. A qualified mental health professional can help such children and their parents understand and deal with thoughts, feelings and behaviors that result from trauma.

Click here to take the Post Traumatic Growth Inventory.

Updated August 2011

~American Psychological Association

~Graphic, thanks to Grieving Mother, ~Vicki Warrington Davis via ~Just Feelin' Good
PostTraumatic Growth Inventory: http://cust-cf.apa.org/ptgi/
Article: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/recovering-disasters.aspx

The full text of articles from APA Help Center may be reproduced and distributed for noncommercial purposes with credit given to the American Psychological Association. Any electronic reproductions must link to the original article on the APA Help Center. Any exceptions to this, including excerpting, paraphrasing or reproduction in a commercial work, must be presented in writing to the APA. Images from the APA Help Center may not be reproduced.

Thursday's Therapy - Grief-and-Trauma Treasure Hunt: Is There Healing to Be Found?

Thursday's Therapy

Grief-and-Trauma Treasure Hunt:

Is There Healing to Be Found?

OUR GRIEF/TRAUMA IN CHILD-LOSS IS AS MUCH PHYSIOLOGICAL AS EMOTIONAL!

Before, we always thought there was a separation between body and emotion. Even in our doctors' offices, there are physicians who treat the body and psychotherapists who treat the mind and emotions. But we are discovering more and more that body and emotions do not operate separately ~ in fact, they cannot operate separately, as if they were in a vacuum from one another! Instead, all parts of the body and the emotions feed off of the messages of distress each part of the system may send, and then work together to find and then produce the solution.

So what if one part of this intricately interwoven system is thrown off balance by, say, something like life's trauma?

Then one's whole system can be thrown off track, and can even become toxic to oneself. Psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists seek to examine the system to determine what best helps to put the system back together again on behalf of the "psyche" ~ the emotional well-being of the person. Neurologists seek to work on behalf of the brain. Cardiologists seek to work on behalf of the heart. And so on, and so on.

We are now realizing, there needs to be a much more integrated approach to the whole person as all systems are affected by trauma and therefore, the whole person needs to be considered.

The development of our traumatic symptoms over the years has convinced us that the effects of Child-Loss are as much about trauma as about grief!

"We carry our stress with us for a lifetime."

~opening line of his book, Does Stress Damage the Brain, by J. Douglas Bremner, M.D., assoc. professor of psychiatry and radiology at Emory University of Medicine, psychiatrist and neuroscientist

For these first five years of child-loss, we have experienced the effects of a damaged brain due to the trauma of losing our child! It is an invisible disability; others do not see it, but we feel it and know it's there, sending us into hypervigilance and/or hyperarousal and leaving us there whether danger is present or not.

We begin to fear that we cannot trust our own emotions to correctly hone out the REAL dangers present. And that is only one component of our trauma. Many of us cannot work our jobs or careers the ways we once did. We cannot be as "active" with our living children as we once were. Our lives are affected in so many ways, that, even though we walk and talk and breathe and look normal, we know we are not our whole selves that we once were.

Just going to a grief counselor won't cut it.

A grief counselor misses a large part of our child-loss issues. A regular grief counselor does not understand the massive degree of grief in child loss nor do they even know that TRAUMA is a huge factor, or that it even exists in child-loss!

Most counselors come from a "stages-of-grief theory," believing there are essentially several concrete, finite stages that they think come and go in linear fashion, and then one is "healed." Many counselors (and even doctors) do not realize that such a simplistic theory has been totally debunked.

TOO OFTEN, THERAPISTS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT CHILD-LOSS GRIEF LASTS AN ENTIRE LIFETIME NO MATTER HOW HEALTHY YOU ARE!

"The brain areas involved in emotion are also involved in memory formation."

~J. Douglas Bremner, M.D.

So child-loss grief and trauma is not just about our emotions. It is also very physiological, greatly affecting our brain! Brain areas including hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala become extremely affected by our trauma, and they must be managed to best mediate our symptoms of Traumatic Grief. Many of us will have some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and each of these three areas of the brain must be accessed to help us navigate our way through such distress.

These three brain areas mediate memory and the fear response. We are now going to have an impaired brain. We often begin to think we are "losing our minds" because things don't register like they once did; we or sometimes our family members fear seeing symptoms that seem an awful lot like Alzheimers. And it is no wonder, for in both disorders, the hippocampus has been damaged! Our severe grief-and-trauma throws us for a loop. At times, it will impair our memory and dis-regulate our fear response (the part of the brain that should turn off our fear if no real threat is pending, does NOT turn off our fear, so we are left feeling traumatized over and over, and wonder if life will ever be "sane" again. We wonder if we will ever be able to trust our brains to discern true danger as opposed to just signs of possible danger, for example.

The stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol race through our systems trying to protect us in such a hypervigilant state even when there is no real danger. And such racing through our bodies repeatedly can ravage our system, weaken our blood vessels, depress our immune system, and before we know it we have added problems like heart disease, or cancer, or both.

But, though we have massive amounts of adjustments to make to our "New Normal," possible treatments to undergo to stabilize our psyche, and preventive activities to do to soothe our post-traumatic stress disorder, it is important to know there is another positive side to things!

Most of our neurologists and psychiatrists were taught that: once the brain becomes damaged and neurons are killed, there is nothing we can do; the neurons die and scar over, making worse problems for us…

But now, we are learning about "Neuroplasticity"!

neuroplasticity - The brain's natural ability to form new connections in order to compensate for injury or changes in the environment. The ability of the brain to reorganize pathways between neurons as a result of new experiences.

Scientists are now discovering a whole new world since brain-imaging shows us the reality of the brain's world. We are learning by watching the brain at work that the brain has the potentiality for what is called "neuroplasticity," meaning there are things we can do to reverse our "brain-damage"! And that is the Treasure Hunt that scientists are on now to find out what all we can do to achieve this recovery of the damage our trauma has done to our brains. And that is the Treasure Hunt Tommy and I are undertaking too so that we can learn how to help ourselves and how to help you heal the parts of yourself that, indeed, can be healed! Stay tuned!

Picture: thanks to FotoSearch.com

Definition of neuroplasticity - http://www.hdsa.org/research/glossary/index.html?active_letter=N

Wednesday's Woe - Welcome to the Roller Coaster of Grief!

Wednesday's Woe

Welcome to the

Roller Coaster of Grief

My "dream" awakened me this morning. In my dream, I was back in college yet working full-time. It seemed work was squeezing out time needed for school, so I was asking my older sister how to navigate through both at the same time. I ended my questioning with, "I guess I wasn't anticipating that Daddy would die..."

(This isn't how my college experience played out in real life, thank goodness.)

I awakened from my very vivid dream and pondered the meaning of it since it seemed very significant. I was relieved to recall I did complete my undergraduate degree and got a master's as well.

So what was this dream all about?

I realized, in actuality, college represented my current career, and working represented my grief over my daughter whom I had not anticipated dying. For it seems I am so steeped in walking through my grief over her, that my work is pretty much getting squeezed out by my grief.

It is quite a dilemma, for our bills keep rolling in, for ~ grief, or no grief ~ my bills don't seem to care.

When I sat up from my intense dream, I was incredibly dizzy which is quite unusual for me. I pushed through the dizziness to begin the gargantuan task of cleaning out my bathroom (which has been barely touched for four years) until I had to stop and eat breakfast and try to regain my equilibrium. Tommy kindly patted my head and massaged my aching shoulders. My dizziness began to subside.

Then together, we meditated through a new trauma CD I recently had ordered --

"A Guided Meditation for Healing Trauma (PTSD)" by Belleruth Naparstek.

It was a very meaningful experience for me. Naparstek took us on a guided imagery meditation that was quite touching both spiritually and emotionally as it included (for me) seeing Merry Katherine participating in helping me (from Heaven) with my grief.

Naparstek directed us only to observe any PTSD symptoms we may be feeling during the meditation time, but then just let them "wash out to sea." I was able to do so! And on top of this being a meaningful experience, I noticed my dizziness had totally subsided!

...But by this afternoon, I end up writing this poem where I am the one being washed out to sea! ...Welcome to the Roller Coaster of Grief!

Swept Out to Sea


Father, I cannot go this all alone...
My grief grows heavier day by day;
Sometimes its straps cut down to the bone,
Slicing into me amidst work or play...


Please come and lift my heavy load for me ~
Help me to bear it as it bears on me,
Weighting me down, pulling me out to sea,
Left to survive...though flailing I be...


You've left me here ~ now, how do I live,
My energies depleted, riv'n within ~
How do I work, to others comfort give,
Grappling with death dumped from Satan's Den?


Cut from life's moorings, I'm swept out to sea...

Lost in grief's tempest, my tears fill the sea.
Blinded by death's darkness, my way I can't see.

God who splits seas asunder,

Please rescue me,

Still grief's waves to a whisper,

Hush the waves of my sea,

I cannot navigate my child-loss grief,

Except by Thee!

Psalm 107:

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
    whom he has redeemed from trouble[a]
3 and gathered in from the lands,
    from the east and from the west,
    from the north and from the south.

4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
    finding no way to a city to dwell in;
5 hungry and thirsty,
    their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
7 He led them by a straight way
    till they reached a city to dwell in.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!
9 For he satisfies the longing soul,
    and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
    prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
    and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
    they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
    and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
    and cuts in two the bars of iron.

17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
    and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;
18 they loathed any kind of food,
    and they drew near to the gates of death.
19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
20 He sent out his word and healed them,
    and delivered them from their destruction.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!
22 And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving,
    and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!

23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
    doing business on the great waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
    his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
    which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
    their courage melted away in their evil plight;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men
    and were at their wits' end.[b]
28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
    and he delivered them from their distress.
29 He made the storm be still,
    and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad that the waters[c] were quiet,
    and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
    for his wondrous works to the children of man!
32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
    and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

33 He turns rivers into a desert,
    springs of water into thirsty ground,
34 a fruitful land into a salty waste,
    because of the evil of its inhabitants.
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
    a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry dwell,
    and they establish a city to live in;
37 they sow fields and plant vineyards
    and get a fruitful yield.
38 By his blessing they multiply greatly,
    and he does not let their livestock diminish.

39 When they are diminished and brought low
    through oppression, evil, and sorrow,
40 he pours contempt on princes
    and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
41 but he raises up the needy out of affliction
    and makes their families like flocks.
42 The upright see it and are glad,
    and all wickedness shuts its mouth.

⁴³ Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things;
    let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

Poem - Swept Out to Sea - Angie Bennett Prince - 11/9/10





May God bless,

Angie

Free pictures:

Roller Coaster Picture 1:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.pixabay.com%2Fphoto%2F2013%2F07%2F13%2F09%2F47%2Frollercoaster-156027_960_720.png&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpixabay.com%2Fen%2Fphotos%2Froller%2520coaster%2F&docid=Jae_4NbSXQAQlM&tbnid=Sb1RSUSlqxz2TM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhHKAgwCA..i&w=960&h=574&bih=716&biw=998&q=free%20pictures%20of%20roller%20coasters&ved=0ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhHKAgwCA&iact=mrc&uact=8

Roller Coaster Picture 2:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparting.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F02%2FRoller-coaster-rolleraster-clip-art-free-images.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcliparting.com%2Ffree-roller-coaster-clipart-34574%2F&docid=m4JHGPbXl_S8uM&tbnid=cGhgZ10yGNdU6M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhFKAYwBg..i&w=585&h=293&bih=716&biw=998&q=free%20pictures%20of%20roller%20coasters&ved=0ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhFKAYwBg&iact=mrc&uact=8

Roller Coaster Picture 3:

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.pexels.com%2Fphotos%2F106155%2Fgermany-duisburg-tiger-turtle-106155.jpeg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pexels.com%2Fsearch%2Froller%2520coaster%2F&docid=IPXHPtn8lT6qCM&tbnid=nkUNHX2sNwbY8M%3A&vet=10ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhEKAUwBQ..i&w=5184&h=3292&bih=716&biw=998&q=free%20pictures%20of%20roller%20coasters&ved=0ahUKEwifzq7f57rYAhWXw4MKHanXAqkQMwhEKAUwBQ&iact=mrc&uact=8