Posts Tagged ‘PTSD’

The Positive Energy Bubble Meditation is one of many self-care techniques you can use to during therapy to shore up your positive emotional responses against inward or outward feelings of fear and negativity.

Expressive Art: Creating Your Lifeline

The expressive art exercise called LifeLine is a positive tool in the therapy room. Getting an overview of your life can be a first step step towards self understanding and self acceptance.

David came in to see me because he had experienced a panic attack at work. The intensity of the physical and emotional feelings scared him.

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Happy reading! Thank you to my loving readers for visiting my humble blog!

Veterans Yoga Project   Yoga for Emotional Healing PTSD

Photo courtesy of VYP, used with permission

Veterans Yoga Project (VYP) is a nonprofit organization that specializes in helping veterans gain access to the healing benefits of yoga with a program called Mindful Resilience. Thanks to the efforts of VYP, the Mindful Resilience yoga program is being used to help veterans and active-duty military personnel heal from the emotional, physical and psychological aspects of war trauma in mental health and addiction treatment programs in the United States and Canada. 

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Last week, we discussed the story of Betty’s traumatic birth here. This week,  we’ll discuss Betty’s healing plan from a traumatic birth. Betty ‘s husband helped her find a therapist who specialized in trauma and perinatal mood disorders by using Google and looking through Psychology Today profiles.  Betty was fortunate in that she had babysitting assistance from her mother and mother-in-law. Betty also was able to take extend time off from work, as she had been steadily employed at the same company for many years, her work was well respected and she had an understanding supervisor. Not all woman have these options. Betty knew this and she was grateful for the foundation that she had in place.

Betty approached her first visit with her therapist with trepidation. Betty was cautious. Like many trauma survivors, she didn’t want to endlessly talk about her trauma, because, somehow, talking about the incident felt like it might be re-traumatizing to her.  But she was feeling bad and she was curious about the new trauma treatments called Somatic Experiencing® (SE) and EMDR.  She had researched EMDR and found there was 30 years of research supporting its efficacy, so she was hopeful.

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Part One: Recovering from birth trauma

Betty was feeling very down, anxious and disconnected. She had given birth to her third child just twelve weeks ago! Her new baby was a joy. He was beautiful and perfect. And so much work as well!  Betty had never missed sleep so much in her life! He was her second baby, her first son. She thought she should feel very happy.  But she just felt empty. There was so much work to do, so much laundry and so much responsibility!  She was crying often and felt distant from her family: her baby,  her other child  and her husband.

She felt happiness sometimes, but often felt removed from her life, like she was standing outside her body.  Her husband researched some therapists she could try to see close to her home. At the urging of her husband and her mother, she called three and settled on someone who was trained in perinatal mood disorders and trauma therapies.

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Mental Health: Veterans Yoga Project Healing PTSD

I wanted to share with my readers a very positive effort full of positive energy taking place in the world.

In 2017 in Hoboken, New Jersey, I first came into contact with the Veterans Yoga Project (VYP) organization. Tam Terry and Helene Graff, residents of Hoboken, arranged a fundraiser.  Stevens Institute of Technology graciously offered the use of the university’s Walker gymnasium. Dr. Nariman Farvardin, the President of Stevens, gave the opening remarks. One hundred and twenty  people from the Hoboken community came together to practice mindfulness and  yoga in an effort to raise money and to support our veterans in getting back feelings of wholeness in everyday civilian life.

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Clara had an accident about two years ago.  She had slipped on the ice in her driveway,  fallen and as a result, gotten a concussion. She then struggled with post-concussion syndrome, enduring neck pain, headaches and awful vertigo spells. She took lots of time and effort in going to multiple doctors trying to get help, including a neurologist.

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One day, Dave was having a quiet day in his workshop. He was working on his model trains, his favorite hobby. He was looking at the tracks, the way the lines interweave all around the room. And he started to think about what he had seen a few months ago in his work as a police officer. He remembered what it was like to be the first responder to the scene of a suicide. The image of the suicide scene was riveting; it seemed burned into his brain and into his retina.  In his workshop, he became very distressed and started to sweat. His stomach hurt,  and felt nauseated.  Tunnel vision occurred and he felt all consumed by this one moment in time. He couldn’t get out of himself. Suddenly there was a flood of intense emotions, his heart started  to pound, his breathing was  shallow and erratic thoughts overwhelmed him.

He stood up, trying to shake the swirl of emotions and intense body feelings, that seemed all mixed together. It was like his stomach hurt but it was all tied into his emotions, too. There was no line between the physical pain and the emotional pain; his emotions and his body feelings were all tied together. He pulled into himself and felt like no one could possibly understand what was happening to him. Intense fear gripped him and he felt like he was leaving his body.

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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based therapy used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the Director of the Trauma Institute in Boston, is a strong proponent of EMDR for the treatment of trauma.

Learning and reconditioning of existing circuits occur when neuronal connections are built and rebuilt. What wires together, fires together. (Istock:Sahskinw)

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, over a lifetime of treating persons with trauma, has evolved the treatment of trauma to include what he calls “limbic system therapy” (van der Kolk, 2015). Limbic system therapy uses body-based therapies to focus on calming reactive hyper- and hypo -aroused emotional brain centers using body based therapies.

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