More proof that Long Covid can be a neurological (not psychological!) condition. And this is why my MCS EMDR protocol, available for free at www.emdrsolutions.com/media , works to alleviate it. Psychological Distress Raises Risk of ‘Long COVID’ Jolynn Tumolo 09/29/2022 Preexisting psychological distress is linked with a heightened risk of developing COVID-19-related symptoms that last
Here is a link to speech by Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister of Australia, from 11/25/2018, apologizing for his society's lack of support for and belief of sexual and ritual and institutional abuse survivors. I would like to see every leader of every country make this speech. For the video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zp5IgxPhee4 For the transcript: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/i-believe-you-your-country-believes-you-pm-s-apology-to-child-sex-abuse-survivors
Dear Readers, Ego state work has been around since before Freud, and in latter years, has been the main stay of many practices. Interventions can range from "How old did you feel when you were yelling at your wife?" to "Let's identify those dissociative states that take over your body." I've been working with this
A friend of mine was home when her house was broken into last night. She got away, and the cops found the guy and arrested him. She posted the whole story on Facebook this morning. This afternoon, she posted this. I have her permission to repost. Please don't mention her name in the comments."Quite a
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
Here are two similar views of the Penn State child abuse debacle. One from the anonymous humble2humble blog (obviously by a man of faith who understands child abuse): http://humble2humble.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html. The second is by David Brooks, from yesterday's NYT's: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/opinion/brooks-lets-all-feel-superior.html Both speak to the commonality of denial and avoidance. Both are great writing. What do you think?
It took a law suit and it's about time! http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/2011/08/02/gIQAEm8cqI_story.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews&fb_source=home_multiline
Andrew Leeds' Sonoma Psychotherapy Training Institute posted a great article on its blog: Developmental Pathways to Dissociation. They quote Dutra, Bianchi, Siegel, and Lyons-Ruth saying that ". . . lack of positive maternal affective involvement, maternal flatness of affect, and overall disrupted maternal communication were the strongest predictors of dissociation in young adulthood." Read the
I was interviewed by Stan Emert on his cable TV show, "Public Exposure" a few weeks ago. Here is the YouTube link to the show: http://youtu.be/KsFoHFQxx4o Topics include trauma definitions, PTSD, EMDR, Ego State Therapy, and a minute of traumatic grief. Due to a neck injury, I've been unable to spend more than a few minutes
Dr. Kathleen Young, writes in her wonderful blog: Treating Trauma in Chicago, about when self-care is interpreted as abandonment. Read the article and the comments, then look at the rest of this great blog: http://drkathleenyoung.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/does-self-care-mean-others-dont/
The more stress and depression, the more inflammation. University of California, San Diego, medical school report from Newswise: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/569853/
Here is a 9 minute video of me talking about how trauma therapy works. Expect more pieces of this video in the future. My husband, the videographer and photographer, Doug Plummer made the video.
Here is the last paragraph of the Introduction to Trauma Treatments Handbook, Protocols Across the Spectrum. You're seeing it before the publishers do. Before I send it in, do you have anything to add about why we do this work? I'll publish what you write, unless it's spam. As trauma therapists, we are privileged
Kathy Steele, cocreator of the Structural Dissociation Theory, patiently defends the existence of Dissociative Identity Disorder to Ira Flatow and Numan Gharaibeh (a clueless psychiatrist) on NPR's Science Friday. Worth a listen: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200911133 I've run into this blindness before, mostly in analytically trained psychiatrists, despite all evidence.
As trauma therapists, we are privileged to watch our clients’ trauma fade from terrible, here-and-now experiences to mere memories; their dissociation shift to integrated presence, and their pain disappear. We are also privy to the gut-wrenching details of rape, accidents, war, and story after story of child abuse, domestic violence, and horrible neglect. The more
I'm 13 chapters into writing Trauma Treatments Handbook, Across the Spectrum. Here's the advice I'd give anyone doing the same thing: Get a second screen for your computer. Keep the reference page, internet search materials, etc. open on the second screen. It will save you days of searching for the right open file. Start the
I escaped the conference yesterday, and am typing in the dark this morning beside my snoring husband. I can’t see my notes, so let me tell you my impression of the conference: Trauma impacts the right hemisphere of the brain. Helpful trauma therapy targets the right brain. Left brain cognitions and interpretations don’t have much
Daniel Siegel: A System's View of Disintegration & Integration (He's still cute, he's still brilliant, he speaks in easy-to-remember aphorisms and he's still heartful. What's not to like?) "Integration is the linking of differentiated parts. The concept is useful for assessment, tx planning and therapy. . .Presence is absent in trauma survivors. Presence begins with
Stephen Porges, Demystifying the Mechanisms of Trauma: Maladaptive Consequences of Adapative Bio-Behavioral Reactions to Life Threat Stephen Porges knows how to connect. I could listen to him talk all day. I explain his Poly-vagal theory to every trauma client and every consultee. Today, after he answered a difficult question, in a most kind way, my
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,
Yesterday I held my new book in my hands. It's hard for me to make meaning of 14 months of work being encapsulated in a 1 1/2 pound book. As I paged through it, I recalled the process of writing; my appreciation of the content of other people's chapters; editing squabbles; waiting, waiting, waiting for
I'm reading piles of books in preparation for writing a trauma therapy survey book. My friend and colleague, Barbara Hinsz lent me Glenn Schiraldi's The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. (McGraw-Hill, 2000) It's a great self-help book, one of the best I've seen. Schiraldi's a good writer. I never wanted to fix his sentences. He's simple without being simplistic.
Ari Folman has made a beautiful and devastating movie about trauma, dissociation, and war. As a young Israeli soldier, he was in the 1982 Lebanon war. When a friend came to him with troubling memories of that war, Folman realized that he had no memories about being in Lebanon. A therapist friend told him to
The name of the workshop was "The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment". The main point was: therapists do too much trauma therapy too early and should do much more preparation before they do the "memory processing" and should often do no trauma processing at all. She talked alot about helping people
The New York Times published this article today. If you haven't starting gearing up to work with soldiers, get some training now. There are online trainings, in-person trainings, and books. You can even start by watching movies: In the Valley of the Elah is supposed to be a great one. Understand that, so far, EMDR
I'm doing research for my next book, Trauma Treatments, and just finished John Briere and Catherine Scott's Principles of Trauma Therapy: A guide to symptoms, evaluation and treatment. (Sage Press, 2006). It's a good book, full of common sense and practical advice about trauma survivors. Briere and Scott do a good job explaining the effects
I woke up way too early musing on our polarized election. In Washington State, where I live, there are two close races, for governor and for congress. The negative advertising is relentless and fierce. One gubenatorial candidate is backed by the builders' industry, which is pouring millions of dollars into villifying and lying about his
I recently took on several new clients and am on my 3rd session with several new people, I'm struck by how much temperment affects people's experience of trauma. Some people have iron constitutions. It's hard to scare these people. It takes a truly life-threatening trauma for them to experience PTSD symptoms. Others are traumatized by
CBS aired a new Sybil on Saturday, starring Jessica Lange as the therapist and Tammy Blanchard as Sybil. It was less fantastic and spooky than the original Joanne Woodward/Sally Field movie, and was a realistic depiction of a poly-fragmented DID person. The movie depicted realistic switching behavior, flashbacks, losing time, and amnesia between parts. It
I'll be giving a lecture about trauma, PTSD, Structural Dissociation, the Polyvagal theory and the use of EMDR to impact PTSD on Saturday morning, May 17 from 9:30 to 12. Frank Kokorowsk will copresent with a dynamite multi-modal trauma treatment that he's been using with homeless people. There are 2 CE's for everyone and it's
myshrink.com is a fantastic website/blog full of information about therapy, bodymind connection, anxiety, and depression. It has some of the most cogent explainations I've seen. It's a great resource for clients as well as therapists. It's written and overseen by Suzanne LaCombe, a therapist in Vancouver, BC. She writes clearly, has a sense of humor,
The next book in the reading group will be The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, by Louis Cozolino (W.W. Norton, 2003). It's easier to read than you might think, and written by a psychologist, not a medical person, who struggled through the medical/scientific texts in order to bring we clinicians the good news. According to Cozolino, we
I've been in practice since 1981. During that time, I've seen around 1000 clients and in the last decade consulted to other therapists about at least a thousand more. DSM diagnoses are one way to describe clients. Another way is by the length of time they stay in therapy. (Not counting analysands) Here is a
The Trauma Spectrum by Robert Scaer (2005, W.W. Norton). According to Scaer: A. Trauma is a continuum. B. What you have to endure during moments of helplessness and hopelessness creates a freeze response. It's the frozen, uncompleted actions that make for PTSD. C. These moments can start prenatally (fetuses feel). The medical process of birth
I'm on the board of the Humanitarian Assistance Program of EMDR. We are a non-profit organization whose goal is to "expand access to effective mental health treatment for traumatized and underserved communities through direct service and training of local caregivers, anywhere in the world." HAP's current projects include training therapists in Lebanon, the West Bank,India,
PBS's Frontline has a new show about the psychological effects of the Iraq War on soldiers, including the culture of "suck it up" in the service that prohibits many soldiers from getting treatment, go here to read about it or watch it online. The New York Times Magazine has a cover story about rape and