Grieving the Loss of a Child

A participant in an overseas workshop sent an email request:  "A patient of mine, a woman in her 80's, lo"st her son at the beginning of the year. She already took antidepressant drugs, but at the moment she no longer does. However, she still feels deeply sad. What are your suggestions?" This is what I

By |2017-10-05T06:03:31-07:00October 5th, 2017|Comments Off on Grieving the Loss of a Child

Trauma is Curable: My letter to the NYTimes

When I read Mark Epstein's op-ed "The Trauma that Life Brings" in the 8/3/13 New York Times, I had to reply. Epstein, a psychiatrist said that trauma and grief are inevitable and that there's nothing to do about them but wait it out and suffer. I like that he was normalizing both, and I was horrified

By |2013-08-09T20:30:46-07:00August 9th, 2013|Comments Off on Trauma is Curable: My letter to the NYTimes

NBC’s Awake: Creative Grief Avoidance

It starts with a horrible car crash. Jason Isaacs flips his car in a California canyon. Either his wife (in one reality) or his son (in the other) dies in the crash. Every time he sleeps, reality switches. He has two therapists, one for each reality, who are set on proving that their particular realities

By |2012-03-02T22:51:33-08:00March 2nd, 2012|1 Comment

The Names of Love

The Names of Love is a hilarious, serious, heart-breaking, heart-warming French movie that I recommend to everyone. It deals with generational PTSD, Holocaust survivors, war survivors, culture, temperament, politics, art, political correctness, and sex as a positive political tool. (Did I say that it was French?) Here's a website: http://www.namesoflovemovie.com/ One plot line shows a survivor

By |2011-08-15T21:44:22-07:00August 15th, 2011|Comments Off on The Names of Love

UCLA 2009 Trauma Conference Day 1, van der Kolk & Shapiro

Day 1: Bessel van der Kolk is lovely. He's humble, he's funny, and he is the premiere researcher on the neurobiology and/or efficacy of trauma treatments in the world. And cute and brilliant, of course. Here are nearly random gems from 3 hours of notes: With trauma, there are no stories, only sensory experience: images,

By |2009-03-06T22:35:54-08:00March 6th, 2009|2 Comments

Brainspotting Class

David Grand brought his Brainspotting (BSP) class to Seattle this weekend. He was ably assisted by Lisa Schwarz, who teaches about using BSP with dissociative and other fragile clients. Lisa and I helped with the practica parts of the training. Brainspotting is a powerful, flexible, client-centered therapy that appears to go more deeply and more

By |2007-05-07T16:11:03-07:00May 7th, 2007|3 Comments

Grief

Here's excerpts of a letter I wrote to a neighbor whose adult child died in an accidental overdose. I've edited out most of the personal data, but left the general gist. "I’m deeply sorry for your loss. Losing a child is beyond tragedy. I’ve been with my mother through the loss of my brother (eleven

By |2006-12-02T15:14:22-08:00December 2nd, 2006|Comments Off on Grief
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