Tagged With "Ballet After Dark"
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Dr. Felitti Teaching New ACE Information on National TV with Dr Brian Alman
Everybody benefits from the ACE Study and here is a very recent discussion on TV with Dr. Vincent J. Felitti and Dr. Brian Alman. Past, Present and Future generations are impacted by family members ACE scores and their lack of successful resolutions. Traumas can be healed after they are identified, understood and treated with a variety of proactive strategies. Listen to the fascinating lessons from Dr. Felitti and learn more about yourself, your family, stress, habits and addictions, as well...
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Dysregulation & CPTSD -- Triggered by Hurrying and Overwhelm?
Note: This article is a transcript of a video excerpted from my online course Dysregulation Bootcamp. Brain and emotional dysregulation are common in adults who experienced abuse and neglect in childhoodhood, and is linked to problems with mood, mental focus, health and relationships. Hurrying is a huge trigger for a lot of people with Childhood PTSD -- everything from trying to get out the door in the morning, to rushing through traffic, to just getting overwhelmed with everything you’re...
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Elaine Miller-Karas Helps Bring the Dalai Lama's Vision to Light
Elaine Miller-Karas, executive director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute, has been invited to attend the launch in New Delhi, India, of a special program initiated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Miller-Karas is one of the key developers of the Trauma Resiliency Model® (TRM) and the Community Resiliency Model® (CRM) – biological-based models designed to help people recover from toxic stress. Miller-Karas has shepherded the Trauma Resource Institute since its birth in 2006 into...
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Erasing My ACES
Why I hid ACES from my medical records in order to receive equal treatment.
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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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For California Firefighters, How 'Mindfulness' Can Ease the Deadly Stress of Their Jobs [sacbee.com]
By Cathie Anderson, The Sacramento Bee, November 12, 2019 About three and a half years ago, paramedic Susan Farren underwent major surgery for kidney cancer, and as she lay in the recovery room, one of her doctors told her that he had treated quite a few first responders with organ cancers. The comment stuck with her. “I went home and started researching it after getting out of the hospital,” Farren said, “and for the next year and a half, that’s what I did every single day. I researched...
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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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From One Survivor to Another, Helping Survivors of Human Trafficking Escape and Stay Safe [sandiegotribune.com]
By Lisa Deaderick, The San Diego Tribune, December 22, 2019 Marjorie Saylor remembers a woman who was looking for help leaving her trafficker. The woman was pregnant and waiting for a bed at a shelter to open up, but she had to wait on the street, alone and in the cold. Her trafficker found her and took her with him. “I never heard from her again. She only had a week left to go before her bed opened up, but the two weeks she toughed it out waiting on the street kept her in harm’s reach,”...
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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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Get Unstuck - Guided Journal & Online Circle
Sometimes a high ACEs score or history of trauma can have you feeling stuck. You see patterns playing out around you and 'to you' and you can't seem to get yourself out of it. I've been there. I've also gotten myself out of it and used all kinds of tools to do it. I am a certified coach who believes in providing people with tools of their own to move into a place of self-leadership. We all have the capacity to heal. It takes work, self-reflection, ownership of our own behaviors and...
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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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Happiness Is an Activity [psychologytoday.com]
By Nigel Barber Ph.D., Psychology Today, June 25, 2019. Staying still can be miserable. It can feel like a punishment not only because a person is deprived of contact with family and friends, but because they miss many favored activities. Why don't the rich and retired just sleep in the shade like lions? There are many basic biological reasons for being highly active. The most basic ones are to find enough food and to avoid becoming food for a predator. Predator Versus Prey: Humans Are Both...
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How Helping Others Benefits Your Mental Health
Addiction, anxiety, and depression can be all-consuming and enslaving. When I was spending every night, isolated in my room, indulging in opiates and vodka - my entire world hyper-focused and revolved around my pain. It was certainly not the life I was choosing - or so I thought. My messy head was tortuous, chaotic, and I felt absolutely powerless against it. All of my thoughts were amplified extensions of: “You are never going to be enough and you are unworthy of love and happiness.” I did...
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How Improving Mood Can Help Heal
Your mood is tied to your mental and physical health and if you’ve been having some bad days recently you may want to make a few lifestyle changes to improve your overall mood and health. While it may seem difficult to make some of these changes in your life, doing them will have a huge, almost immediate effect on you. Improving your mood and overall mental health will have a huge impact on your mind and body and can make your situation better overall. Doing a few simple things like...
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How to Be More Resilient [nytimes.com]
As a psychiatrist, I’ve long wondered why some people get ill in the face of stress and adversity — either mentally or physically — while others rarely succumb. We know, for example, that not everyone gets PTSD after exposure to extreme trauma, while some people get disabling depression with minimal or no stress. Likewise, we know that chronic stress can contribute to physical conditions like heart disease and stroke in some people, while others emerge unscathed. What makes people resilient,...
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How To Breathe (Why Deep Breathing Will Change Your Life) [medium.com]
In the language of the Navajo Indians, the word “Nilch’l” translated into the English language simply means “wind, air or the sky”. Of course, no English translation will ever truly be able to express the depths of Navajo philosophy. For the Navajo, “Nilch’I” represents a god, the Supreme Creator, an infinite, boundless force that communicates between all elements of the natural world. It is the Holy Wind that brings movement, energy, sound and love to all things that have found life in this...
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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 Live a More Courageous Life (dailygood.org)
(Image: GlennAzar.com ) In my new book, The Courage Habit , I argue that when it comes to dealing with fear, we often go about it all wrong. Instead of seeing fear as bad and trying to get rid of it when it arises, we can choose to accept fear as part of the process of change and instead practice courage. This choice can help you to feel more emotionally resilient as you make life changes or go after big dreams. Though courage is often thought of as an inborn character trait, it’s actually a...
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How to Live a More Courageous Life [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
On any given day, many of us wrestle with our fears. We might be contemplating a career change, telling someone we love them, or wanting to speak up for what’s right when we see injustice. But a voice within us pipes up saying that there’s no point, or that we aren’t really capable of creating the life or world we desire. Whether you call it “fear” or some other name—anxiety, stress, discomfort, life challenges—the cycle often plays out in the same way. We have a desire for change, but our...
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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 We Decompress From Stress [www.npr.org]
Morgan's note: While listening to the people (featured in the video below) speaking, I noticed several chuckled after saying what they do to destress. If just speaking about stress reducing activities brought smiles and laughs, imagine the benefits of engaging in those activities! Please click here to see the article and video.
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How Your Happiness Can Spread to the People Around You [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
While some marathon runners raise money for their favorite causes, Shemaiah Weekes asked his friends and followers to pledge random acts of kindness. When he finally crossed the finish line after 26.2 miles, his community had committed to perform more than 100 kind acts. “I’m hoping this will spread a wave of kind acts which goes far beyond those who make direct pledges,” says Weekes. He came up with the idea after taking the GGSC’s free online course, The Science of Happiness , which...
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'I Can Be Free Again': How Music Brings Healing at Sing Sing [psmag.com]
"Never ran, never will!" is the gangster-bravado motto that people use to explain Brownsville, Brooklyn, with its blocks and blocks of low-income housing projects. Even the grungiest hipster artisans, who've pretty much invaded Brooklyn in recent years, still stay away from Brownsville. Growing up there in the crack era of the 1980s, Joseph Wilson was surrounded by crack dealers and addicts. His mother was an addict, so his grandmother wound up raising him—and teaching him to love music. She...
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I Experienced Trauma — Here Are The Wellness Practices I Rely On To Cope [mindbodygreen.com]
Fully outside of political persuasions, the trial last week left countless women around the world triggered. I was one of them. After experiencing sexual abuse as a child, I shared my story for the first time as a young teenager and began what would become a long journey to healing. I tried everything from EMDR to trauma-informed dialectical behavioral therapy to mindfulness practices. I began a yoga and meditation practice in hopes of reconnecting with my body, inner child and self-worth.
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Junk Journaling for Resilience (During COVID-19)
This is an activity that came to me during a time of incredible turmoil and hardship for my family, and it quickly became my go-to practice to shift out of fight-or-flight, gain perspective on my situation, find peace in the chaos, and sort through my many colliding thoughts and feelings about the impossible time we were in. It was how I metabolized, sifted, and found my right way through a significant family crisis. It honestly saved me/us, in part because it is so fun, easy and feels good!
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Mind Matters: Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience Two-Day Intensive Training
with Author, Carolyn Rich Curtis, Ph.D. 8:30 AM–5:00 PM $399 for 2-day Intensive Training CEUs are available for an additional charge. Each trainee must have a copy of Mind Matters ($299 plus tax (CA and SD only) plus S/H) As a result of this training , you will learn to teach: Self-soothing skills to manage emotions Ways to analyze stressful thoughts How to deal with intrusive memories Ways to develop a protective lifestyle And you, as an instructor, will learn . . . How to provide a safe...
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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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Neuroplasticity and Mindfulness
To understand the treatments for complex post-traumatic stress disorder, it is helpful to understand the interaction between neuroplasticity and mindfulness.
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Next "A Better Normal" community discussion series: April 24, 2020: Using the Community Resiliency Model to self-regulate during the pandemic
Dave Granlund Friday, April 24, 2020 — Elaine Miller-Karas is founder of the Trauma Resources Institute and one of the key creators of the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). CRM is an ACES-science based model to help people become emotionally regulated during natural disasters and other dysregulating times. She will join ACEs Connection SE regional community facilitator Carey Sipp in an informal conversation with the ACEsConnection community. Elaine will discuss how to use the CRM for...
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Overcoming Past Trauma to Create a New Future [yogajournal.com]
Yoga teacher Tatiana Forero Puerta, author of Yoga for the Wounded Heart, shares what she’s learned about trauma, clearing emotional patterns, and finding a vision for the future. If at the age of 20 you would’ve asked me to imagine my life 15 years in the future, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. I couldn’t see my life in those terms. When I looked into my future then, I simply saw a field of blackness; my potential was not just obfuscated—it was inaccessible. This is what...
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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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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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Put down the self-help books. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour (theglobeandmail.com)
The science of resilience is clear: The social, political and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings or behaviors. When it comes to maintaining well-being and finding success, environments matter.
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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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Reconnecting to your Body after Peritraumatic Dissociation
In this article, we will talk about one of the most common symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder – dissociation. We will explore different methods and tools that help us to reconnect with our body in the long term. Since one of those tools is therapy, we will also talk about the limits of talk therapy, and address how working with our body directly can teach us new and healthier responses when we are overwhelmed. Definition and Explanation of Dissociation For every trauma...
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Resensitization: Coming Back to Life after Trauma [goodtherapy.org]
Trauma dysregulates the body. It moves energy levels away from baseline to extremes of hyperarousal (“too much,” panic, overwhelm) and sometimes hypoarousal (“low,” lethargy, emptiness), not only alternating but sometimes getting stuck in either extreme. When we experience overwhelm in the body, one natural response to this dysregulation (and accompanying confusion or relational struggles) is to just get away—perhaps through drinking, sex, anxiety medication, working out, or power-watching...
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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 Happiness Can Change Your Brain [yesmagazine.com]
After 2,000 years of practice, Buddhist monks know that one secret to happiness is to put your mind to it. What is happiness, and how can we achieve it? Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world—a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks. [For more on this story by Matthieu Ricard, go to...
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Sesame Street Resources for Families Coping After Natural Disasters
In the aftermath of recent hurricanes and wildfires, the Sesame Street in Communities team wanted to reach out to provide information on our available resources to help families cope in the aftermath of natural disasters, and other traumatic experiences. Bilingual videos, articles, printables and more, are all available for free on our website at www.sesamestreetincommunities.org . Here are the links to a few topic pages that may be most useful to you as you work with families in the...
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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 Strategies I Use To Reregulate As Anxiety Symptoms Surface
So, how does Teri Wellbrock bring herself back into a state of calm once the anticipatory anxiety has been triggered? Here is Teri's personal go-to list. Please keep in mind she created this plan on a trial and error basis. She loaded her coping skills toolbox with exercises, fidgets, courses, books, therapy suggestions, and techniques discovered through personal research. Following is her top seven strategies, however, please note that she has a much larger bag-o-tricks to pull from if needed.
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Suffered Trauma? This Shaman Says You Should Make a Move [ozy.com]
When Ya’Acov Darling Khan was 22, he was struck by lightning. Dazed, but otherwise unharmed, he came to on the grass where he had been playing golf as a summer storm closed in. Later he would come to see this near-death experience as his summons to the sacred path of the shaman. After 30 years — and a grueling apprenticeship with indigenous healers in the Arctic and the Amazon, Darling Khan, along with his wife, Susannah, have built a global following for their School of Movement Medicine in...
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Why Your Brain Needs to Dream (dailygood.org)
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...
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World Premiere: Stress & Resilience: How Toxic Stress Affects Us, and What We Can Do About It [developingchild.harvard.edu]
By Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, November 13, 2019 When the stress in your life just doesn’t let up, and it feels like you have no support to get through the day—let alone do everything you need to do to be the best parent you can be—it can seem like there’s nothing that can make it better. But there are resources that can help, and this kind of stress—known as “toxic stress”—doesn’t have to define your life. In this video, learn more about what toxic stress is, how it...
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Year after devastating fire, Paradise football team qualifies for playoffs [LA TIMES]
By BILL PLASCHKE COLUMNIST NOV. 9, 2019 6:16 PM PARADISE, CA — A year after their town was leveled by the deadliest wildfire in California history , the unbeaten Paradise Bobcats football team is headed to the playoffs. In Division 3 pairings announced Saturday by the CIF Northern Section, fourth-seeded Paradise will host fifth-seeded Live Oak in a first-round game Friday at 7 p.m. at Om Wraith Field. Playing a makeshift schedule with no league affiliation because of uncertainty over their...
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Yoga Transformed Me After Childhood Abuse [yogajournal.com]
How yoga helped me heal from neglect and violence I grew up in poverty in a drug-addicted and violent family. Without necessities like proper food or shelter, and subjected to regular abuse, I ran away at the age of 13. Within two years, I was on the road with a 19-year-old man. Being so young, I was attracted to his antisocial, rebellious past rather than recognizing these behaviors as red flags. Eventually, we called my mother and she threatened him with jail time for statutory rape and...
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Yoga Transformed Me After Trauma and Sexual Assault [yogajournal.com]
Laura's note: This story of sheer determination of transformation of self and community in the face of personal trauma AND systemic racism is breathtaking. Be warned: it may blow you away, as it did me. As a child, Ebony Smith survived sexual assault but didn’t have the tools to cope with the trauma until years later, when she found yoga. Now, she’s bringing the practice to her community, and others in crisis. Exactly 247 people came to practice yoga with me today. Why is that such a big...
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Re: The Science of Kindness (2-minutes randomactsofkindness)
Very nice, thank you for sharing Dana. “Kindness can transform someone's dark moment with a blaze of light. You'll never know how much your caring matters. Make a difference for another today.” Amy Leigh Mercree
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Re: To Heal From Trauma, You Have to Feel Your Feelings [psychologytoday.com]
Getting a great share response to this article after sharing it on my podcast Facebook page. Thanks for sharing here!