Episode 27 – Dr. Charles Figley: Veterans and PTSD: Time for a New Paradigm? (Living Proof Podcast Series of the University at Buffalo)

Working through trauma can be scary, painful, and potentially re-traumatizing. Very often people who have experienced trauma have coped at least in part through some degree of dissociation. While this was necessary for your survival then, continued dissociation (especially forms that are not within your control) is not adaptive once the abuse has stopped. Now the task of therapy is to help you stay present long enough to learn other means of establishing safety in the present. How does someone with automatic survival skills of dissociation learn to do this? Grounding is one skill that can help.