Tagged With "Black and White Thinking"
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Donna Jackson Nakazawa on dislodging the trauma headspace & making micro-changes
Cissy's note: Two more posts from Donna Jackson Nakazawa's Facebook page posts which she has graciously allowed to be shared here on ACEs Connection . For more, read Donna Jackson Nakazawa's new book, The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine and follow her on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram
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Finding My Way Back
Have you ever felt you have painted yourself into a corner? Better stated perhaps, find yourself standing in the crosshairs of your own truth. Well, that’s me and here we are. In the last year, I have been going through a rebranding process, still the same heart, still the same mission, but a tweak to messaging and language so it was clear what the work was ultimately about. Simultaneously, I have been stewarding the completion of my book, my own story. Now, here I sit ready to pull the...
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Flashback Halting Guide: 10 Tips to Halt Flashbacks for Yourself or a Loved One
Flashback Halting Guide: 10 Tips to Halt Flashbacks for Yourself or a Loved One. Includes a link to a printable Flashback Halting Guide
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Free Mind Matters Online Series -- Build skills to overcome anxiety and increase resilience
In appreciation of and support for the tremendous work you are doing under challenging circumstances, Dibble will be hosting a free, 12-week Mind Matters online series with Dr. Carolyn Curtis and Dixie Zittlow. Unprecedented times, such as these, are stressful and call for everyone to think about ways to help others and themselves. Thus, we see this as an opportunity to offer free, professional development and help you and your staff practice self-care. Join us as we teach the Mind Matters...
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From Compassion Fatigue to Healing Centered Engagement: Turning Trauma Informed Values into Action
To pave the way for a truly strengths-based approach to full healing and recovery for both service users and burned out staff, we must educate them on (1) the central role of primal body responses to trauma (past and present), and (2) the early development of adaptive thoughts and behaviors in response to
traumatic experience.
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Fuzzy Slippers: How Do Self-Care as a Trauma Survivor
When I recommend the need for self-care to trauma survivors, they say it can feel like a chore. Some of them even roll their eyes and tell me, “You mean you want me to take care of myself? Ugh. Who has time for that?!” It’s tempting for any person to undervalue self-care. But for trauma survivors, resistance to self-care has much deeper roots. Healing takes a focused, gentle approach. Self-Care as a Practice of Welcoming Your Needs Many trauma survivors learned to do without self-care...
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Growth through Trauma-Informed Strategies: Coaching and Consultation with Rick Griffin
There is a Chinese proverb that states, “If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people." The benefits are evident, yet the real question becomes, “how do you grow people?” This Big Idea Session, CRI’s Trauma Coaching and Trauma Consultation Training, answers this question. Schools, organizations, and parents are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of working with...
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Hanging on to Hope
In a conversation this morning, like I know many are having, the question of staying hopeful amidst the pain and suffering so many are experiencing in this pandemic came up. It made me think of author Pauline Boss and her book Loss, Trauma and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss. When first introduced to this book many years ago, I was intrigued with the term "ambiguous loss" and found that several events in my life fit Boss' statement that those who suffer losses without...
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How do we make America happy again? We start by studying well-being [latimes.com]
By Carol Graham, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2019. To make America happy again, society has to figure out how to make our country whole. Understanding what divides Americans – and what gives them hope — could be critical to improving their well-being and the nation’s. By tracking patterns in well-being, and creating programs based on the results, we can take steps toward tackling the malaise that afflicts many of us, including the physically and mentally stressed, the jobless, the aging and...
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How do we make America happy again? We start by studying well-being [latimes.com]
By Carol Graham, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2019. To make America happy again, society has to figure out how to make our country whole. Understanding what divides Americans – and what gives them hope — could be critical to improving their well-being and the nation’s. By tracking patterns in well-being, and creating programs based on the results, we can take steps toward tackling the malaise that afflicts many of us, including the physically and mentally stressed, the jobless, the aging and...
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How Therapy Helps You Recover from Childhood Trauma and Abuse [talkspace.com]
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...
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How to Have Difficult Conversations (dailygood.org)
Google has spent millions of dollars proving that trust is the bedrock of constructive communication. They wanted to know why their best teams succeeded, and after not being able to prove any of their assumptions and going back to observe those teams, they found that what they had in common was not personality or intelligence or confidence or prior success, but something they called ‘psychological safety.’ That’s the kind of safety that’s built on feeling able to be real and vulnerable in a...
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How to Heal Emotional Trauma (wakeup-world.com)
Understanding Emotional Wounds We tend to think of an emotional wound as the original traumatic experience – as the “thing” that happened to us, but the wound is actually the dis-empowering belief that we developed as a result of the traumatic experience. In the search for emotional security, our natural response to any traumatic event is to make sense of it. We “make sense”of things by creating beliefs. Beliefs that we develop in response to traumatic experiences are Traumatic Beliefs.
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How to Use the Breath to Strengthen Your Mind [mindful.org]
Mind and breath—a shift in one impacts the other. We can train our breath to influence our emotional state, and loosen the grip of stress and anxiety. How you’re breathing can tell you something about your current state of mind—maybe you’re feeling pretty good, thinking about happy hour cocktails with colleagues. Or maybe you’re feeling a bit stressed, trying to wrap everything up before the workday ends. Not to say that all stress is bad, says Emma Seppälä , Director of the Center for...
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How Trauma Therapy Cultivated My Recovery
I was 5 years old when I had my first encounter with trauma. Too young to comprehend the magnitude of the situation, my first grade class participated in a “Good Touch/Bad Touch” workshop,centered around educating and recognizing signs of sexual abuse. I found relief in finding a safe place to lay down the burden I had been carrying. I went straight to the school counselor and told her, in vivid description, the intimate details of my unwarranted molestation. I remember the grueling...
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“I Like to Move It, Move It!” – How Dance and Rhythm Can Reduce the Impact of ACEs (stresshealth.org)
As it is, more and more researchers studying the healing power of rhythmic movement on people who’ve experienced trauma from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as abuse, neglect, or parental mental illness or substance abuse issues. Among these researchers is Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and senior fellow at the Child Trauma Academy in Houston who advocates dance, drumming, walking and other rhythm-based movements to help kids with trauma. In a book about trauma and the power of...
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I’m Sick of Asking Children to Be Resilient [nytimes.com]
FLINT, Mich. — A baby born in Flint, Mich., where I am a pediatrician, is likely to live almost 20 fewer years than a child born elsewhere in the same county. She’s a baby like any other, with wide eyes, a growing brain and a vast, bottomless innocence — too innocent to understand the injustices that without her knowing or choosing have put her at risk. Some of the babies I care for have the bad luck to be born into neighborhoods where life expectancy is just over 64 years. Only a few miles...
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I Now Suspect the Vagus Nerve Is the Key to Well-being [thecut.com]
Laura's Note: I have no research citation to back this up, but I have a hunch that childhood trauma may do a number on the vagus nerve, at least in some of us. Isn't it reassuring to know that we can help stimulate our vagus nerves through simple, free or inexpensive methods such as deep breathing and yoga (both of which get a lot of good press in this community, and for good reason)? It's no panacea, but it's not nothing. Have you ever read something a million times only to one day, for no...
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If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health (npr.org)
"I think just over the last few years there's been more of a trend to focus on gratitude," says psychologist Laurie Santos , who teaches a course on the science of well-being and happiness at Yale. Gratitude is being endorsed by wellness blogs and magazines . You can buy different kinds of specific gratitude journals, or download apps that remind you to jot down your blessings. And noting your gratitude seems to pay off: There's a growing body of research on the benefits of gratitude.
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Kids From Trauma NEED Someone to Tell Them Their Normal Isn’t “Normal” [blogs.psychcentral.com]
Laura's note: As the first paragraph of the following blog post excerpt implies, a lot of adults need someone to tell them their "normal" isn't "normal" too. If it's all you've ever known and you're surrounded by friends and family who've had similarly unhealthy early experiences, how would you know otherwise? It took me a quarter of a century (literally) to realize that I experienced trauma throughout certain points in my childhood. It took me another year to realize that my behaviors were...
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Laziness Does Not Exist [medium.com/@dr_eprice]
Laura's note: Though this blog post focuses on perceived laziness in students, I think what E. Price has to say here could apply to other characteristics that are common symptoms and outcomes of early trauma in children and of a history of trauma in adults. I think the upshot here is that whatever the behavior, there's always an explanation, and that explanation is probably not just, it's a character flaw or moral weakness. I’ve been a psychology professor since 2012. In the past six years,...
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20 Caregiver Resolutions for 2020
20 Caregiver Resolutions for 2020 Let someone make you a meal at least once a week and that someone can be anyone (including a fast-food chain restaurant Keep a daily Gratitude Journal and start each day with, “ I am grateful that the World has me” Don’t fold any fitted sheets for the entire year, just roll them into a ball Once a month go to a playground with a friend, a neighbor, sibling, spouse, co-worker and ask them to push you on the swing Stay in the shower or tub 5 minutes longer...
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2018 National ACEs Conference: Morning Movement Session
Friend and trauma-aware health and fitness coach Renee McLaughlin created this 20-minute light stretching and brain-body connecting workout for ACEs Conference 2018 attendees. We shared it this morning in a session hosted by ACEs Connection. Click to join Renee in a series of moves to get your day off to a relaxed but “woke” start, or to wake up anytime you’re feeling stressed or foggy. That Renee says, “you can’t build strength in tense muscles” makes me think of why these moves would be...
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2018 National ACEs Conference: Morning Movement Session
Friend and trauma-aware health and fitness coach Renee McLaughlin created this 20-minute light stretching and brain-body connecting workout for ACEs Conference 2018 attendees. We shared it this morning in a session hosted by ACEs Connection. Click to join Renee in a series of moves to get your day off to a relaxed but “woke” start, or to wake up anytime you’re feeling stressed or foggy. That Renee says, “you can’t build strength in tense muscles” makes me think of why these moves would be...
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3 Steps Toward Managing And Healing Anxiety
I've struggled with anxiety throughout my life. A difficult childhood and my highly sensitive personality meant I grew into an anxious kid—there was just too much pain and emotional overwhelm for my young brain to handle. My anxiety most often manifested as perfectionism and people pleasing, so from the outside everything seemed great. I excelled in school and I was a good kid who did as she was told. But there was a war inside me. I felt broken, unable to navigate these huge feelings of...
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Mind & Body Empowerment for Human Trafficking Victims (starr.org)
Building Resilience and Belonging through Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Starr believes, as its founder Floyd Starr did, that there is no such thing as a bad child. And, when you provide a safe environment, when you treat a child with dignity and respect, it changes a child’s heart. And that, in the end, is what changes a child’s life. It’s a powerful story that we have been helping children write for over 100 years at Starr Commonwealth. For all students on Starr’s campus, this approach is applied...
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My Story about Healing Moving from “What is wrong with me” to “What is happening – how can I take better care of myself?”
When I was a little girl, I had a lot of ear infections. Did anyone else experience that? Every summer in the middle of the fun of swimming in the pool, I would get an ear infection and one year I got one on my birthday. Obviously, I still remember it. It was a sad time. I always felt like I was missing out on things. And it became a pattern. I would go to the doctor and get lamb’s wool and drops put in my ear. It hurt a lot. I can still remember trying to get comfortable lying on the couch...
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Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains.
Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains. All trauma informed practitioners who are suffering with or who work with adults or children suffering with C-PTSD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Sleep Disorders are welcome to apply to be considered for this study. The deadline to request and submit your application is: March 20, 2020 As a trauma...
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Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains.
Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains. All trauma informed practitioners who are suffering with or who work with adults or children suffering with C-PTSD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Sleep Disorders are welcome to apply to be considered for this study. We currently have 41 applicants, and applicantions are approved on a first come first...
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Neuroscience Reveals 50-Year-Olds Can Have the Brains of 25-Year-Olds If They Do This 1 Thing [Inc.]
Neuroscientist Sara Lazar, of Mass General and Harvard Medical School, started studying meditation by accident. She sustained running injuries training for the Boston Marathon, and her physical therapist told her to stretch. So Lazar took up yoga . "The yoga teacher made all sorts of claims, that yoga would increase your compassion and open your heart," said Lazar. "And I'd think, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm here to stretch.' But I started noticing that I was calmer. I was better able to handle...
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New Book: Crazy Was All I Ever Knew By Alice M. Kenny (pseudonym)
To this day, I still think of my childhood home as "the crazy house." Like me, millions of adult Americans are living with the effects of the precarious childhoods they experienced as offspring of mentally ill parents. If you are one of them, you can no doubt relate to my book. As a child, you most likely lived in a crazy house of your own. As an adult, you’ve probably retained and may even relive memories of your tumultuous upbringing. Crazy Was All I Ever Knew combines memoir with...
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Our best bet against burnout is self-care, just not the kind you think [mashable.com]
By Rebecca Ruiz, Mashable, June 21, 2019. When burnout comes for you, it’s not subtle. It casts an inexplicable darkness on the most mundane things: driving in traffic, showing up to work on time, filing an expense report. It feels like a weight tied to your waist, stealing any spark of energy you will into existence. You might confuse it for depression — and it very well could be — but, by reflecting on how and when it arrived, you suspect the culprit is the unraveling of your work life. At...
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Parenting during a Pandemic: Donna Jackson Nakazawa Shares
Donna Jackson Nakazawa was a featured guest in an online conversation about coping with COVID held on Twitter recently. It was hosted by KPJR Films . Donna was asked about "effective 'go-to' survival techniques" for parents and her Twitter thread response is comforting, centering, and compassionate. Her words are consolidated and shared, with her permission, below: Donna Jackson Nakazawa is a science journalist and the author of six books, including “ The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny...
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Passing the Baton
Hello, Everyone, I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve decided to step away from my volunteer position as co-manager of the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. In the nearly two and a half years since I’ve held this post, I’ve learned so much and gotten to know (virtually) so many great folks who’ve contributed their wisdom, experience, compassion, and knowledge. I am in awe of you all, your willingness to share and give of yourselves, your strength and courage...
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Pip had high #ACEs
I just finished reading Great Expectations for the second time. I could relate to it much easier this reading as I used an ACEs lens to understand Pip's experiences and challenges. Dickens knew in 1860 the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences. It seems strange to see humanity hasn't really evolved emotionally and socially that much in 160 years. Hopefully the ACEs movement will help propel our consciousness raising.
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Positivities of Persistence Series: Persistence & Positivity Defined
While some scholars may attribute persistence to a need for control, I like to take the stance with those who look at persistence as a will to not give up. More and more research is emerging on resilience and its positive impact in off-setting ACEs (adverse childhood experiences), even learned resilience skills in adulthood.
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Preparing and Advocating for Medical Care as a Trauma Survivor
With all the health care changes and challenges in today’s society, going to the doctor or dentist is difficult enough for the average person. With a history of childhood or adolescent sexual trauma, a medical appointment can become re-traumatizing if not handled with care by the survivor and provider. Think about it, some other adult is making decisions on the survivor’s behalf, touching their body, has their hands in the survivor’s mouth rendering them unable to make their needs known or...
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Real Resilience is now a PODCAST
Women who support an incarcerated loved one finally has a place to share their stories on the Real Resilience P.W.L. Podcast.
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Reasons to be Positive and Optimistic
Positive thinking and optimism are words often thrown around when thinking about being happy and cheerful. But what do they really mean? Positive thinking means approaching life in a positive and productive way instead of focusing on the negatives. Meaning you’re hopeful for the best and don’t focus on the worst. Sounds good in theory, but how can you start to think positively? Here are seven reasons why positivity is so good for you, and some tips on how to remain positive everyday:...
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Resilience: A Conversation
Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz and I were having an exchange on social media about the word resilience. It went on and on. It lasted days. And days. It started on Twitter, moved to Facebook, and then crossed over to text messaging. There was no last word, no meet-in-the-middle moment or any kind of closure. Just confusion. Rebecca suggested we dive deeper, face to face, via a Zoom conversation to be shared on ACEs Connection. We wanted to know why some recoil at or reject the use (overuse) of the...
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RESILIENCE: The Secret of CPTSD Recovery (First in a Series)
When we talk about a history childhood trauma, we talk a lot about the problems — the damage, the limitation on our lives, the sadness. But in reality, a lot of us are thriving despite abuse and neglect in the past. The word for this is resilient. Overcoming the effects of Childhood PTSD is not easy, and it’s not a road I’d choose for anyone. But if that’s the hand life dealt you, it is still possible for you to blossom into a life of depth and love and purpose. Resilience is often mentioned...
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Resources 4 Resilience (www.r4r.support) & Commentary
We have the best community. And it feels like a community even more right now when things are scary, threatening, and uncertain. Yesterday, Jondi Whitis shared an amazing resource yesterday, by way of a comment, that's great for parents, survivors, providers, and families (all of us). I am making it a blog post in case others missed it or are overwhelmed, as I have been, by sifting through the information coming at us. The home page lets you easily find practices for calming. Here's one...
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Rethinking 'Resilience' and Grit: www.economichardship.org
This article was written by Alissa Quart and co-published by the Economic hardship Project and the Boston Globe . To read the rest of this essay by Alissa Quart, go here.
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Running on Empty: How to Manage Your Energy Levels After Trauma [goodtherapy.org]
Laura's Note: This article was published in 2012, but the topic and the information therein stands the test of time. All too often, compromised energy levels are a lingering impact of traumatic experiences, particularly ongoing or frequent traumatic events in childhood. Compromised energy means that you simply do not have enough energy to tackle certain tasks. In addition, traumatic experiences often prevent people from learning how to manage their energy levels. This encompasses everything...
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Science Says Silence Is Much More Important To Our Brains Than We Think (lifehack.org)
A 2013 study on mice published in the journal Brain, Structure and Function used differed types of noise and silence and monitored the effect the sound and silence had on the brains of the mice. [1] The silence was intended to be the control in the study but what they found was surprising. The scientists discovered that when the mice were exposed to two hours of silence per day they developed new cells in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a region of the brain associated with memory,...
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Self-Compassion Is Your Perfect Present Guidance, Even In The Most Troubled And Turbulent Of Times.
There is one sure form of guidance you can follow every moment of the day, even in today's most turbulent of times, to ensure that you follow the path in life that is truly right for you, truly good for you. The simple way of describing this form of guidance is: making self-loving or self-compassionate choices for yourself in the present moment . Be guided by your heart-sense regarding your every thought and action . When things don’t turn out the way you want them to, instead of blaming and...
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Self Compassion: The Secret to Keeping the Promises You Make to Yourself [psychcentral.com]
By Bella DePaulo, PsychCentral, February 5, 2020 It is not just at the beginning of a new year that people promise themselves to do better. I rarely make New Year’s resolutions. But there are always times during the year when I think about something I just said or did, or didn’t do, and say to myself, “Self, you have got to do better.” But how? My natural inclination is to berate myself. I’ll give you a trivial example. Sometimes I carelessly do something that costs me money. At the...
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Set Conditions to Feel More Calm, Clear, and Open This Year - with LARLAR [jillianpransky.com]
I remember it like yesterday. It was January 1993, I was walking up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan when a small gold sign advertising a yoga studio caught my eye. I turned on a whim, went in, and some two hours later, found myself sobbing on my yoga mat. I knew I was tight from years of working out, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that under the tightness I’d lived with from pushing myself around — muscling through everything I encountered without taking a rest — was also a deep,...
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Settling In While Feeling Unsettled
How quickly the outside world has influenced our inner world and changed our thoughts, patterns, and triggers. Life is definitely coming in waves. We feel a sense of safety if we can be in a healthy home, fear and worry if we have to venture out for food, calm returns after we practice something that soothes and regulates us, and anxiety builds when we hear news and the impact the virus has on the whole world. We are beginning to expect and accept many unpredictable and unknown...
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Seven Benefits of Working with a Therapy Animal from a Handler's Perspective
Sometimes I feel selfish for walking away from our therapy dog sessions with my heart overflowing with joy, a smile radiating from my face AND heart. I love watching this dog turn a child’s tears into giggles. Sammie has a thing for kids. Her tail wags every time she sees one. Whether we are walking the halls at a school or the trails at a nature preserve. She wants to meet them all and offer a snuggle. As a result, her tail thumps in canine happiness, and I just can’t help but grin.