Therapy for Complex PTSD (multiple traumatic events) is more shot-in-the-dark than science. Mental health professionals don’t have viable treatment protocols for PTSD (one traumatic event), and most are totally clueless about treating Complex PTSD. Sadly, too many still think, for example, that EMDR is effective. It isn’t.
When we truly cherish someone or something we take special care. We nurture. We’re gentle. Love flows freely and generously.
My hope for each of us today is that we cherish ourselves. We make our-selves a priority. We eat healthy. We get some good exercise. We get a good night’s rest. Essentially, we care for ourselves like we are precious children of God. We all are, you know. Yes, you are precious.
“Staycation” is one of the new words in the latest edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It means spending our vacation time at home. It’s very much like an artist’s date.
June 23 is Midsummer’s Eve ~ the night women gather together to empower each other. It is a night for fairies and spirits. It is a time for rejoicing and dancing around bonfires.
My concern is for my readers for whom Father’s Day is painful. Sadly, too many of us had fathers who were absent or abusive or molestors. How do we celebrate them? Should we?
Alice Miller was born in 1923. She received her PhD from the University of Basle and worked as a psychotherapist in Zurich, Switzerland for 20 years. Since 1980, she has been the intellectual warrior leader for abused children around the world.
Her initial motivation was to understand Adolph Hitler. She believes there is a direct link between child abuse/domestic violence and world peace. To this end, enlightened/helping witnesses are the key.
Instinctively, we react to threats to our safety with a fight or flight response. It ramps up our adrenaline and sends us into a temporary high.
It can, at times, help us to literally move mountains to remove ourselves and those we love from peril.
For those of us who have experienced abuse, it can also ruin our health (see 4/29/09 post). We can end up with health concerns like complex PTSD (C-PTSD), auto-immune disorders, and cardio-vascular problems.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the quintessenial role model for leveraging a person’s talents to learn how to survive, thrive, and find joy. When life handed her the lemons of a bitter divorce, she squeezed those lemons into the stratosphere of best-selling books. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia was on the best seller lists for over a year. She’s been on Oprah, and Julia Roberts will star in the movie. In true Pretty Woman tradition, she rescued herself before she met the charming Brazilian “prince” Felipe.
What is PTSD? Post-traumatic stress disorder was called “shell shocked” after World War I and “battle fatigue” after World War II. After the Vietnam War, it was further sanitized to “post traumatic stress disorder.” Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) is diagnosed after a person has experienced multiple life-threatening traumas.
Approximately 160 million people have PTSD.
A “protection circle” of friends and family can take us only so far. If we’re smart, we’ll know when it is time to bring in a “posse” of professional people who are trained to deal with bullies, abusive people, and gang members.
Anne Caroline Drake 