How Far Have You Come? A Review of Trauma and Recovery

Judith Herman wrote the definitive work on Trauma and Recovery in her book by that title, with the subtitle: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. You haven't heard from me in a month while I have been living with this book, preparing a presentation on the trauma of suicidal ideation.

It was a trip, that presentation, taking me through the dark corners of my life in the last fifteen years. With Herman as my guide, I also traveled through the progress I have made, considerable progress.

[It's still possible to register for The Healing Conference, now with two for one pricing. Recordings of the presentations will be available through 2021.]

The first half of the book begins the history of the concept, beginning with what was called shell shock in World War I through to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD in Viet Nam, along the way picking up other traumas, sexual violence and captivity.

Want a Sneak Peak to the Healing Trauma Conference?

The third annual Healing Trauma Conference: Come to the Table: Nourish your Body, Mind, and Spirit, Because No One Heals Alone takes place April 30-May 2, sponsored by Haelan House of Bend, OR -- Healing the Root Causes and Effects of Trauma.

My bit is Sunday morning's keynote address:

Suicidal Thoughts as Trauma:

Taking Charge of My Own Recovery.

Description: Trauma can be both the cause and the consequence of suicidal thoughts. Suicidal ideation is considered a symptom of a mental illness. The mental illness model (what's wrong with you? instead of what happened to you?) suggests that if the illness is treated, then the symptoms resolve. But often, while the thoughts themselves go away, the trauma can go unrecognized, untreated, and underground.

Will This Trauma Never End?

I found this video while trying to survive the cluster f*ck of misdiagnosis, antidepressants, mixed episodes, and a psychiatrist and therapist who didn't know what they didn't know, so it must be me and maybe I had borderline personality disorder - the go to diagnosis for patients that the professionals are tired of.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass. And in fact, it did. I survived to... today? I offer it to everybody who is trying to survive the current COVID cluster f*ck in the US.

Is It Time to Call a Therapist?

There is a difference between feeling depressed and having depression, which makes it hard to figure out what we need right now when - doesn't everybody feel like crap?

What you are feeling right now might be the entirely normal reaction to this currently abnormal world. Here is what's happening: everybody is experiencing trauma at the same time. Exhaustion, trouble concentrating, insomnia, hopelessness, these are common physical, emotional, and cognitive reactions to trauma. They are also symptoms of a depressive episode. And depression, the illness of depression can lead to serious complications, substance abuse, relationship problems, suicide. Not to mention that it simply sucks the joy out of living. Depression, the illness needs to be treated.

So do you need to see a doctor? It depends. A recent New York Times article can help you sort it out.

Trauma, COVID-19, and Cutting Yourself Some Slack

Are you failing to build your abs while social distancing?
Or learn that new language?
Or clean out that closet (you know which one)?

Are you utterly exhausted while getting nothing done and beating yourself up for it?

STOP. Just stop.
And read on.

The Brain on Tetris

What happened to that hour?  That other hour?  The one after that?  Where did they go?

My son's best friend from childhood, whom I haven't seen in ten years, sent me a message with this link to a BBC story, The Psychology of Tetris.  When he saw it, did he remember that I used to ask my son to hide the Gameboy?

Kayla Harrison Survives Her Way to Gold

She's calling me out of sabbatical.  Damn!  She's calling for a series.  I'll have more next week.

Note added on 01/02/13 -- Links to other posts in this series are below:

Is Recovery Possible? - Kayla Harrison Continued August 25, 2012 -- The judo champ's story introduces the concept of recovery.
Seventeen Keys to Recovery August 30, 2012 -- Guest blogger Margalea Warner describes her journey in recovery in schizophrenia.
Recovery - The Medical Model September 7, 2012 -- Introduces the doctor's agenda, covers the first half of the story.
Recovery - The Medical Model Continued September 14, 2012 -- It was a great idea.  If only it worked.
Recovery Redefined September 21, 2012 -- People with a mental illness have our own definition of recovery.
Recovery - From What? October 1, 2012 -- You have to know where you are going if you want to get there.
Stages of Recovery - AKA Hope October 5, 2012 -- We recover in stages, and need different tools for each stage.
Neuroscience of Meaningful Work October 10, 2012 -- Oh goodie!  Here come the dendrites!
Hope for a Cure? Or Not? October 18, 2012 -- We finish the series with questions left unanswered, like, What is a cure worth?

Purple Heart for PTSD

I am pleased to have scooped NAMI and Fox News on this one by two years.

Some people say we have dumbed down PTSD, and that we dishonor the suffering of soldiers when we give the diagnosis of PTSD to people who have the same symptoms and same brain dysfunction of PTSD, but whose traumas were of a lesser severity.  In other medical departments, a broken leg is a broken leg, whether the person fell three feet or thirty.

Back in May, 2010 I proposed that the way to honor soldiers whose PTSD is the result of war injury is the way we honor any soldier wounded in war -- the Purple Heart.

Better yet, let's honor their sacrifice by preventing their trauma in the first place.  No more!

Meanwhile, check out Guitars for Vets.

Project Implicit and the State of One's Soul

Remember, Dumbledore said to Harry, It is our choices that show what we truly are.

Project Implicit

So did you do the homework?  Did you try any of the Implicit Association Tests?  Do you still want to read my blog?

This is how they describe what they are doing:

Project Implicit represents a collaborative research effort between researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and University of Washington. While the particular purposes of each study vary considerably, most studies available at Project Implicit examine thoughts and feelings that exist either outside of conscious awareness or outside of conscious control. The primary goals of Project Implicit are to provide a safe, secure, and well-designed virtual environment to investigate psychological issues and, at the same time, provide visitors and participants with an experience that is both educational and engaging.

The variety of topics include attitudes toward age, race, disability, ethnicity, mental illness and others.  The tests are constructed to bypass thought, commitment, decision.  They dive deeper into what is known as the lizard brain, the part that evolved before reason, and that simply reacts, by setting one to tasks that have to be accomplished faster than the thinking part of the brain thinks.

Project Implicit is well aware that we may not like what we find in the lizard brain. I don't care for what I find in mine.  But it is important information, for two reasons.

Narrative and the DSM

My therapist once picked up the DSM and said, This could be called The Book of Behaviors That Make Therapists Nervous.

An apt description.  It is filled with descriptors: adjectives, behaviors, impulses, thoughts, feelings that are all human adjectives, behaviors, impulses, thoughts and feelings.  Almost none of them are strange in and of themselves.  Almost all of them are familiar to all of us.

It's just that at some point, when these descriptors add up, somebody starts to get nervous.

Diagnosis -- Recognizing Deviation From The Norm