Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, Grief and Trauma Life Coach, Psychotherapist, and Mother Grieving. On 8/2/2006, our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine was killed along w/ 2 other teens via vehicular manslaughter. Here I share as we agonizingly process our grief and trauma. Email: MotherGrieving(at)gmail(dot)com. Coaching (Tommy or Angie): Call 865-548-4four3four / Counseling (Angie in TN) 865-604-9nine9two. I pray God will minister to you here.
Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, psychotherapist and Mother Grieving.
Tommy and I met in graduate school in Atlanta, then married in 1979 and started a Christian Counseling/Coaching practice in Knoxville, TN where we still live. We have 1 daughter Merry Katherine, forever-19 in Heaven, 2 sons, Nathan (age 34) (wife Ashley), and Rollin (age 37) (wife Stephanie), and two granddaughters, Ellie and Penny.
In this blog, we process our grief over our Merry Katherine who was killed along with two other teens in a brutal car crash while on the way to the beach on 8/2/2006 (two teens survived). Having lost our daughter suddenly and violently on the cusp of launching her into adulthood, we were thrown into Complicated and Traumatic Grief. We share here our agonizing process of wading through the multiple twists and turns of shattered assumptions, challenged faith, traumatized body-soul-and-spirts, and devastated hearts. May our grief touch some of your own pain as we walk through this difficult but sacred ground together.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Scientifically Documented!
1) Copy the http: address above the line below. . . .
2) Paste it into your web browser's address bar. . .
3) Hit Enter to find the article below.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080620195446.htm
___________________"Addicted To Grief? Chronic Grief Activates Pleasure Areas Of The Brain"
OR "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Has Now Been Scientifically Documented!
. . . . . We now have physiological evidence via Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that such "comfort" is indeed, a fact! In debilitating, complicated grief after the sudden death of a loved one, "comfort" was shown by significant nucleus accumbens activation in the brain's reward network!
'Cause I'm so used to living underneath the surface
If I could just see you
Everything would be alright
If I see you this darkness would turn to light
And I will walk on water
And you will catch me if I fall
And I will get lost into your eyes
I know everything will be alright
And I will walk on water
And you will catch me if I fall
And I will get lost into your eyes
I know everything will be alright
I know everything IS alright
Everything's alright ~ yeah
Everything's alright.
*****
(Jesus speaking) - "I will show (Paul) how much he must suffer for My name."
~Acts 9:16
(Paul later speaking to fellow-believers in a city called Philippi) -
For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.
~Philippians 1:29-30
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5XDx40_Gb8
Poem - My Heart is Broken - Angie Bennett Prince - 12/12/10
What the caterpillar sees as the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
~ Richard Bach ઇઉ
Friday's Faith
God Saves...In the Womb and In the Tomb
*****
A grieving mother, Sharon Throop related the following:
We lost our only daughter, Wendy, (14) years ago (11/12/96). I was just sent a prose, that sums up so much for so many who walk this road. You may have read it before, but if not, send it on to some of your friends and realize that it sums up the loss of our children.
Feel incomplete? Life in suspense? Can you accept the anxiety of not being in control, while trusting in the "slow work of God, our loving Vine-dresser"?
Can you "give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete"?
*****
God Saves...In the Womb and In the Tomb
God who saved me in the womb,
Saved my baby in the tomb!
"I will help you. Do not fear.
Call on Me, and I'll draw near."
Draw near when TRAUMA o'ertakes,
Shatters peace ~ my spirit quakes!
"Draw near, My baby girl...
Hide in Me like th' oyster's pearl."
Father God, I'm so afraid,
Thrown down by Satan, flat laid...
"Trust Me. Treasures in Darkness
Will meet you in Death's Starkness.
I who carved you in the womb,
Will not leave you in Death's Tomb.
Follow Me and I will lead,
Come to Me; upon Me feed.
Though you're helpless as a babe,
I'm your God, mighty to save!"
Jesus, hold Your little lamb,
I'm Your child, weak as I am...
*****
"I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the LORD,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.
For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen...
I am the LORD, and there is no other,
apart from Me there is no God.
I will strengthen you...
so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting
men may know there is none besides Me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
~Isaiah 45:3-6 NIV
*****
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
After last week's Thursday's Therapy about EFT or "Tapping," I received an email from a grieving mother from which I wanted to share some excerpts. She also asked me a very pertinent question as to the sources or roots of the EFT-type of therapy. I will share her question with you and will attempt to answer it.
Any feedback and/or concerns my readers may have, or any experiences any of you have had with the new trauma therapies, I would greatly appreciate your sharing!
Here is the information this Grieving Mother discovered from a "Certified Traumatologist and Field Traumatologist" named Margaret Vasquez from Ohio:
What Does Trauma Do?
Different people respond to trauma in different ways: anxiety, depression, mood swings, self-destructive behavior, flashbacks, numbness and phobias are a few examples. I did not understand that this was because of the neurological effect that trauma has on the brain. I thought that I was damaged goods, irreparably broken because something was wrong with me. I was ashamed of myself. I thought that I was ‘wimpy’ and was being overly emotional, self-consumed and indulging in self-pity. I thought that I was simply allowing the past to bother me too much and that I needed to just get over it. I felt guilty for my pain. I did not understand that trauma can have an effect on the brain that is physiological. This effect is not because of a weakness in the person any more than it is a weakness in a person that causes a bruise when one is hit with a hammer.
When something traumatic happens, the hemisphere of the brain that is responsible for logic is temporarily out of commission. This is the side that usually helps us make sense of events in an orderly, organized manner. This is the side that lets us know what is in the past, what is going on now, and what is in the future. It is also the side we rely on for solving problems. With this side of the brain temporarily out of the action, the more emotional hemisphere of the brain encodes the event. Unfortunately, it is that hemisphere that experiences all time as here and now. That can cause a lot of problems. It can cause us to feel as if a trauma that happened 5 or 50 years ago is going on at this very moment. That is why time does NOT heal all wounds.
The side of the brain that encodes the trauma is not able to store it in a logical, linear, cohesive way, but rather in bits and pieces. All of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and stimuli are stored without the story. These stimuli act like landmines in the brain. When the stimuli of a trauma are “stepped on”— even innocently — all of the emotions and responses that took place in the past traumatic event are triggered, exploding with force into the present moment.
The ramifications of these factors can have terrible effects on the life of the trauma survivor. They can reach into every area of an individual’s life because they can change how the person views objects, events, circumstances, him/herself, others, and the world at large. These results can be bewildering to the person and to those around him.
How is Trauma Traditionally Treated?
The traditional way to do therapy is to encourage the people to talk about their problems. This is often right, good and necessary. However, it is crucial to remember that the left side of the brain is affected by trauma. Knowing that it is the side responsible for helping us tell a story in words, using talk therapy to process a trauma is like asking a person with a broken leg to walk to the hospital in order to get the broken bone set......
~Traumatologist Margaret Vasquez
*****
And here is this Grieving Mother's question which I will attempt then to answer!
----------------------------------
"About the EFT/Tapping....it can be described by some in only physioligical ways, yet as I am prone to do I researched it a little further. I'm not sure of your thoughts/feelings on this as a Christian Therapist, but it's roots are in New Age/ acupuncture/meridians and chinese medicine and those are the "chi energy" areas of the body (not physically found)."
~A Grieving Mother Friend
*****
Thank you dear precious Grieving Mother for sharing your concerns. We as therapists/coaches are new to the Trauma field, as are many others in our counseling/coaching profession, so there is much we have to learn. It is a quickly-developing and timely field, and for that I am so thankful!
I definitely agree with the Vasquez discussion you attached for me describing the brain and what happens therein when the onslaught of trauma occurs, and how the treatment of the trauma therefore will need to take a different turn that the typical "talk therapy" done in my office. I think she did a very nice job of describing very clearly and simply a very complex orchestration of the traumatized brain!
And regarding my view of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique~"Tapping,") as a Christian Therapist...
In our Christian training, as we delved into the many aspects of psychology that were presented to us in graduate school, we were taught to be discerning and wise as to what we embraced. But we were also taught to not necessarily be afraid of new information just because it had a different ethnic or cultural understanding attached to it. Sometimes our differences in descriptions come about because of our different belief systems (sort of like how you describe an elephant depending on which angle you personally see).
We were reminded of a Huge Principle in discerning truth, and that is this:
All Truth...IS God's Truth!
So if the unsaved person whether Chinese or American stumbled upon Truth, they may indeed describe it in words quite foreign to me...such as "chi energy," "meridians," "energy fields," "acupuncture," and other "New Age" labels. But perhaps they have stumbled onto something that we in our Western, highly cerebral, left-brained culture have overlooked completely in our "sophisticated" thinking that LOGIC is the ultimate! But what they are describing generally is controlled-but-flowing movement and meditation! And after all, the physical movements in Yoga originated from the physical movement our Creator created and therefore made possible for us to do! And the meditation that Yoga offers may have different content to its meditation than I believe to be true, but Meditation in and of itself is KEY to our healing-work for our Trauma I believe, and in my mind Meditation originates straight from God Himself! It was taught to us over and over by our Lord Jesus how important prayer time with our Heavenly Father is (which many scientists are recognizing to be very soothing, calming, and even healing meditation to our very war-torn spirits, but which we know is even MORE than that!)
God's Word also emphasizes the importance of continually speaking the truth to ourselves in the face of Satan's lies (more meditative content), and meditating on that which is good, and pure, and holy. We have gotten away from that deeper spirituality of quiet and time-consuming meditation with our ever-preoccupying race toward the "upwardly mobile" success-oriented life in our Western culture.
So if the Chinese bring back memories for us of some of these core truths, what a gift to remind us of what is such a healing part of our Lord's life and teachings!
I am not surprised if "energy" is considered to be a large part of our make-up; I had never really thought of it in those terms, but it would not surprise me for the God of our created universe to be full of all sorts of mysteries including an Enormous Energy that I will not fully fathom this side of heaven!
So I hear the Eastern mystics, and I try to consider their explanations. Some of it may be closer to God's truth than my own understandings have been; some may be far-fetched to me for the rest of my life.
But I do try not to throw the baby out with the bath water!
God is an amazingly Creative God, and I look to Him for His guidance and His discernment.
And I do think there is a lot of truth in treating Trauma in a different way than we have been treating it in that sometimes "talk-therapy" can simply re-traumatize a person if their trauma is not respected as needing to be treated much more gently and from a different angle of our multi-faceted brains! It has been true for me... (When I could not journal the hard, cold facts about my child's death as it was too graphic and traumatizing, my Lord led me to write poetry, which in essence, captured the horrid truth as if taking a photo of a tiny part of that stark truth, but it would be interlaced with healing comfort and even God's Sweet Holy Spirit's coming alongside and into that poetry with His gentle and soothing love!)
I hope this addresses your concerns, at least to some degree, but I thank you very much for your questions, your thoughts and concerns. As you discover more and more, which I am sure you will, I welcome you to share more of your thoughts!
*****
Below is quite an interesting look at another Trauma Therapy Tool for our therapy toolbox. We have looked at this therapy in some detail in previous posts, so I won't try to repeat all of that here. But I think you will find the following video enlightening as to the physiological evidence (via brain scans) of the actual traumatization that happens to our brain, and at least one of the ways such trauma seems to be effectively treated:
EMDR, or "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing."
"EMDR is to date the most researched and well known of the new therapies and provides something of a procedural template for the other methods. In the ingenious way that innovation happens, you'll find many variations on this first theme.
"This short-term process, discovered serendipitously by psychologist Francine Shapiro and then carefully developed into a method, appears to remove or significantly reduce the emotional distress associated with a traumatic image. Additionally, it helps survivors integrate more positive ideas and thoughts around their trauma; and best of all, it is structured to accomplish this without unleashing a flood of disruptive symptoms."
~Bellaruth Naparstek,
Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal
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