What you need to know about trauma, and trauma therapy. Every week I am contacted by people struggling with the aftermath of trauma. Most have tried many forms of therapy and seen multiple therapists. Many describe themselves as desperate and ready to do whatever it takes to get help. I have come to see that lack of good information about trauma is one of the biggest obstacles to dealing with it for most of these survivors. So here’s a quick compendium of info, presented in t

Mindfulness and Mindlessness After Trauma One of the most dismaying results of trauma is that it often takes away from survivors things that are precious to them that have no apparent connection to the original event.  I learned much more about this than I would wish for anyone in the long, hard desert that entered my life after my brother died suddenly in his thirties nearly two decades ago. Up until that time, dance had been an important part of my life.  No matter how diff

While it is a source of pain, it also may be a resource for healing. Trauma deeply challenges the confidence of most survivors in themselves and their ability to create a meaningful life.  So reclaiming personal resources is an important and difficult challenge in moving on from trauma. Everybody has resources In my last blog I wrote that the mere fact that a trauma survivor is alive is evidence of resourcefulness.  It is true of course that trauma causes pain and harm that c

Expand your perspective on resilience and post-traumatic growth. There is a lot being written these days on post-traumatic growth (PTG) and resilience. As a trauma therapist and scholar on responses, I follow these with Google alerts and at least once a week get a batch of new ones. Typically, they describe resilience as a “process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy…” and post-traumatic growth as “positive change experienced as a result of the struggle

Clients are often surprised when I tell them that we won’t be actively working to bring their trauma history to the surface in therapy.  It’s not that we wouldn’t ever want to do that - when the time is right, trauma processing* in a safe, supportive environment has a role to play in the journey of trauma integration. But research has found that telling the trauma story is ineffective in bringing relief from symptom of trauma and sometimes can be harmful (retraumatizing).  Ca