September 2020

As most cases of complex post-traumatic stress disorder involve adverse childhood experiences and the damage done by them, I felt it was important for us to look at how ACEs affect the developing brains of children. Einstein’s Brain Albert Einstein is considered by many to be one of the most intelligent men to ever grace humanity. But, what was different about Einstein’s brain? Was the density of brain cells and how well wired his brain appeared to be really much different from the rest of...

Unrelenting natural disasters like the current West Coast wildfires and smoke outs are terrifying. Those of you who don’t live here might not understand how terrifying it feels to not be able to breathe in your front yard. This morning, I got online to see if there’s some place I can escape to, someplace my family and I can breathe. The closest place I can find with a good AQI is Sedona. That’s terrifying. 10% of the population of Oregon has evacuated according to the New York Times this...

When Laurie Noble was growing up, in Fort Bragg, California, in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, her family’s home doubled as a government weather station. The house was equipped with rain and wind-speed gauges, thermometers, a barometer, and a recording barograph, and the family belonged to a network of part-time observers paid by the federal Weather Bureau, the forerunner of the National Weather Service, to fill in gaps between its professionally staffed stations. By the time Noble was a...

By Dr. Robert Sege, 9/16/20, positiveexperience.org/blog This past spring, we began blogging about ways to look at the world from a child’s eyes, in order to make sure they’re having the positive childhood experiences that they need to grow and be healthy, even in the face of disruption and adversity. In the six months or so that we have been experiencing the pandemic, the HOPE team has seen and heard many stories from around the country of families that are doing just that. Now, as the...

By Jamil Zaki, Harvard Business Review, September 14, 2020 The last several months have stacked painful experiences on top of each other: a global pandemic, economic collapse, and new reminders of perennial racial injustice and police violence. This July, rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. were more than triple those of early 2019. The simple question, “How are you?” has turned into an emotional minefield. Workplaces are saturated with trauma, too, and leaders are agonizing over how...

By Christina Severin, MedCityNews, September 13, 2020 If Covid-19 has a silver lining for healthcare, it is the light it shines on the value of primary care. On the front lines of pandemic testing and management, primary care serves the majority of patients, enabling emergency departments and hospitals to treat the acutely ill. But primary care – and the relationships that form its foundation – is equally important in treating the everyday epidemic of chronic conditions we face in the U.S.

Retired FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Freeze presses on the need for the police to work with behavioral health centers, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health and the community.

Transforming Trauma Episode 022: Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonizing Jewish Identity with Brad Kammer This special bonus episode of Transforming Trauma welcomes Brad Kammer, NARM Training Institute Senior Faculty and Training Director, to introduce listeners to a series of “High Holiday” episodes featuring two different Jewish leaders advocating for healing of cultural and intergenerational trauma for the Jewish people. Brad begins by framing the next two episodes that will focus on...

(The article below is based on an excerpt from my book, Crazy Was All I Ever Knew: The Impact of Maternal Mental Illness on Kids. I have used a pseudonym to protect the privacy of family members.) Once when I was in my early twenties, I confronted my mother. I matter-of-factly said, “You know, Mom, you beat me. You beat me a lot.” She replied, “I don’t remember that.” “Well, you did,” I pressed. “Maybe I slapped you once or twice.” So, that was her concession. A letter came 20 years later.

In this episode, Jeff and Matt discuss heart rate variability (HRV) and trauma. As we defined, HRV measures our ability to handle or recover from stress. What happens when we face an overwhelming amount of stress and become traumatized. We also explore how HRV can track the post traumatic growth process. https://optimalhrv.com/podcast/heart-rate-variability-trauma/

By Mark Wilson, The Appeal, September 14, 2020 Now in my 50s and considered an “elderly prisoner,” I have just completed my 33rd year of incarceration for a crime I committed as a teenager. My incarceration continues, in part, because of a malicious lie that was told about youth who commit crimes. Although the “superpredator” myth has now been discredited, even by the man who coined that disparaging epithet, its great potency allows it to continue controlling my life. The belief that some...

By Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, September 6, 2020 In September 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke to a convention of labor leaders and told them that before joining the Army, he took a job at a dairy plant where “I worked 84 hours a week on the night shift from 6 to 6, seven nights a week.” Recognizing how extreme that was, Eisenhower said, in a nod to labor, “In the years since, unions, cooperating with employers, have vastly improved the lot of working men and women.” It is often...