Blog

With the link between ACEs and health outcomes now firmly established, many people are asking how to help those who have survived ACEs. Often people are seeking written resources. Having developed resilience curricula that were piloted at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and taught to various high-risk populations, I’d like to suggest some resources. As an outgrowth of these trainings, I developed three books that are skills-based and experiential, since information alone...

Flashback Halting Guide: 10 Tips to Halt Flashbacks for Yourself or a Loved One. Includes a link to a printable Flashback Halting Guide

In my last post, I highlighted a book Vincent Felitti mentioned at the CAMFT conference in Orange County. In the same talk, Dr. Felitti also recommended a form of therapeutic writing developed by James Pennebaker to help individuals uncover painful emotions and heal trauma. Pennebaker's book Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain details the why and how. The Pennebaker method has been referenced elsewhere on ACEs Connection; I thought...

Research shows that dreaming is not just a byproduct of sleep, but serves its own important functions in our well-being. It’s said that time heals all wounds, but my research suggests that time spent in dream sleep is what heals. REM-sleep dreaming appears to take the painful sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes experienced during the day, offering emotional resolution when you awake the next morning. REM sleep is the only time when our brain is completely devoid of the...

If you experienced trauma or abuse during childhood, you might wonder if you should seek therapy . But maybe you are too busy to commute to appointments. You don’t even have any time to feel everything, much less talk about it. Then there are the plethora of worries people sometimes have when they consider working with a therapist. You might think, “What if I end up feeling worse? What if the therapist thinks I don’t have any problems? Am I exaggerating my experiences?” Then you start...

Sometimes I free-write and riff when I first wake up. I let go of grammar, punctuation and sometimes even logic. I follow the words and the pen and see what happens. It doesn't have to be neat, artistic, poetic or amazing. It feels wonderful and is like splashing around in a pool in the mind. Today I was thinking about grief and ACEs and storyteller because I'd been listening to Kate Braestrup tell a story on Moth. Beautiful audio is what this is. I recommend listening. It's about grief,...

Liam Gallagher is performing this week in Toronto, and as I prepare to take in the concert, it’s all coming back: the epic battles, still ongoing, between the infamous Liam and his brother Noel of the hugely popular ‘90s rock band, Oasis. Oasis topped the charts globally with hits that included Champagne Supernova and Wonderwall. I was a fan and still am – the band’s music stands the test of time, and the seemingly endless feuds between Noel and Liam continue to capture our attention. But 20...

Could saying “thank you” help you to live longer? For many decades, behavioral cardiology studied only the impact of so-called “negative traits”—such as stress, depression , and anxiety—on people with cardiovascular disease. The field got its start in the late 1950s with the work of cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman , who found that “Type A” behavior—characterized by hostility, time urgency, and competitiveness—doubled the risk of coronary heart disease. Over the next five...

The mutual intimacy we share with our best friends is one of the greatest gifts of life, but it is not always given when we call someone a friend. Friendship need not even be mutual. How about organizations like Friends of Our Local Library? Friends of Elephants, and of other endangered species? Friendship allows for many degrees of closeness and takes many different forms. What it always implies is active support of those whom we befriend, engagement to help them reach their goals. With...

Keeping a distance shields us from the pain we've already experienced and future wounds. But it's only when we acknowledge pain and tend to it that we're able to open up—to others and ourselves. Compassion: it feels like a real response to the world we live in particularly to those who have been through a lot. You’ve got two choices: Either we armor up our hearts for fear of ever being hurt again, or we make a more courageous decision. We have those resources. The path to me seems like it’s...