When the horror of what the human condition really is becomes obvious (a brutally brainwashed majority that brutally harms one another) … coming into balance with that darkness that is in every one of us takes some time and we also become DANGEROUS to the status quo, so while we are learning to integrate and contain this knowledge we become additionally vulnerable and at risk for harm. …
I would call what I do emotive face painting therapy, in a daily selfie. It’s like a daily journal, but using colors on my own face. Sometimes I cannot find words or even music to express how I feel. When I am feeling an intense feeling that is troubling me or exciting me, I’ll sit in front of the mirror with my paints out and choose what color(s) I’m drawn to spontaneously. Sometimes a simple color comes, sometimes many, sometimes an entire character or persona. Sometimes I feel the entire world, sometimes I feel the entire universe, sometimes I feel a very selfish dark feeling. …
Indeed, I do not consider myself ill anymore. I consider myself HEALING which is a vibrant state of movement and change. My limitations do not mean that I am sick. Learning to make boundaries for my well-being has been one of the healthiest things I’ve learned to do. Deeply respecting the needs of this body/temple is one of the most wonderful achievements of WELLNESS. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
A good friend of mine who is also a healer himself, works for Steve Andreas, the man in the video, so I’m assured this is a very effective method, though I’m not familiar with it by personal experience.
Below is a small sample of the nearly 9 hours of video where Steve Andreas worked with an Iraq Vet to resolve complex PTSD symptoms using effective methods from NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming).
This video program is designed for therapists, coaches, and other agents of change who want to more effectively help people to overcome terrifying past experiences. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Originally posted on Mind Hacks:
A new paper in Perspectives in Psychological Science looked at all the possible combinations of symptoms that could achieve a DSM-5 diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder and found there are now 636,120 ways to have PTSD. This shows one of the many drawbacks of having a ‘check-list’ approach to classifying…
Thanks to technology, we live in a world that’s much more comfortable than ever before. But here’s the paradox: our tolerance for discomfort is at an all-time low. And as we wrestle with a sinking “discomfort threshold,” we increasingly find ourselves at the mercy of our primitive instincts and reactions that can perpetuate disease, dysfunction, and impair performance and decision making. … [click on title to read the rest]
As a social worker and clinician working with “the seriously mentally ill” for many years, I never came upon someone who didn’t have fairly severe traumas in their histories. Yes, I can say those who I encountered who were in that particular labeled segment had a solid 100% rate of trauma in their histories. Mental illness in large part is a reaction to trauma. It’s quite simple really. When we start listening to people’s stories of pain rather than numbing them out and effectively silencing them with neurotoxic drugs we will start healing them.
I’ve written at length about the iatrogenic PTSD a lot of the people I network with exhibit once withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. In my experience in the withdrawal boards online the drugs that we see causing these issues most often are antidepressants and benzodiazepines, but people withdrawing from antipsychotics are simply much less represented in… Continue Reading →
What if, in following basic mediation instructions one was causing more harm than good? This question arises from the dialog between Buddhism and contemporary trauma theory. In a deceptive twist of evolutionary fate, sustained attention on the body can lead to a dissociative, or freeze response.
So the second half of the title of this post refers to what I’m calling a post-traumatic response. I think that many so-called mental illnesses are the result of a post traumatic response. Because they do not all have the hallmark signs of PTSD, as currently clinically described, it’s worth making it clear that I absolutely think that what is labeled schizophrenia, bipolar, depression and other forms of anxiety, are often indeed also post traumatic responses. The reason I’m making a distinction is only because of the current clinical understanding of PTSD which is limited to ONE form of post traumatic response at this time which is characterized by extreme forms of anxiety.
Everything matters 