Tagged With "Choose Love Movement"
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The Books That Helped Me Transition from Trauma to Triumph: A Book Review Series – “Getting Past Your Past”
Naturally, I would at times experience panic attack symptoms, and would almost always cry. Sometimes slow tears cascading down my cheeks. Other times full-on ugly crying, requiring a pause in the action.
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The Emptiness You Feel is Trying to Tell You Something
I read a short story last week that was about emptiness and love. That funny thing that happens sometimes, happened, and three different people wrote to me within about 24 hours about… emptiness and love. They were feeling -- and I think a lot of us are feeling it -- a harsh, empty, loveless feeling that keeps swooping into their consciousness during this quarantined period, sounding the alarm that something HUGE is missing from our lives. One woman even said “I know you’ll think I’m crazy...
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The House of Mourning (www.themoth.org)
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,...
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The Importance of Connecting with Your Inner Child
When I first started therapy, every time I heard the words "inner child" I wanted to puke. First of all, the only memories I have from my childhood aren't really memories. They are home videos. I have no idea how I felt as a child, and I certainly didn't care to do so. I wanted to put all of that in the past. After all, could my so-called "inner child" really play that big of a role in my life today? Well, as it turns out, she does. Sometimes, my inner child takes over, and I become an...
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The Many Faces of Grief
“…Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding…. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self….” – From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran There are many kinds of loss that we can encounter in life. However, losses surrounding addiction can be particularly confusing; they tend...
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The Relentless School Nurse: Healing Our Ghosts Podcast Has Launched
Healing our Ghosts is a new podcast by Ana Joanes, filmmaker and creative spirit who brought us Wrestling Ghosts, a groundbreaking documentary about parenting with ACEs. This new podcast has a unique vision: The premiere episode of Healing Our Ghosts is with one of my all time favorite people, Cissy White. She is a brilliant writer, who speaks nationally about the impact of trauma and her healing journey. Cissy believes that trauma survivors must be leading this work and that it is not...
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The Secret to Self-Healing: It’s All About Vibration (wakeup-world.com)
Have you ever wondered about the “real reason” we get sick or why some of us are more susceptible to germs and even cancer cells? No doubt, if we could identify the primary cause of illness , we would have the secret to health and healing. Although modern medicine may proclaim to have all the answers, traditional doctors have no way to explain how thousands of terminal patients spontaneously heal against all odds. In fact, the Remission Project catalogued more than 35000 medically reported...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020
Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter April 2020 http://www.survivingspirit.com/ http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-04-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_April_2020.pdf Hi Folks, Obviously we are all experiencing some very trying times and...
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The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020
Hi Folks, The May edition of the Surviving Spirit Newsletter is posted at the website - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/index.php or PDF - http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2020-05-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_May_2020.pdf To sign up for an e-mail copy, please write to me @ mikeskinner@comcast.net or sign up @ Website via Contact Us, Thanks! Michael . “ Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller The Surviving Spirit Newsletter May 2020 – please...
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Thoughts to share
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” Lao Tzu “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” Martin Luther King, Jr. “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” Malcolm X “There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.” Malcolm X
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Thoughts to share
Wishing everyone peace and love during these difficult times. Take care, Michael. “Don't stress the could haves, if it should have, it would have.” - Unknown “How we perceive a situation and how we react to it is the basis of our stress. If you focus on the negative in any situation, you can expect high stress levels. However, if you try and see the good in the situation, your stress levels will greatly diminish.” – Catherine Pulsifer “Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but...
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To Heal CPTSD, Do You Need to Love Yourself?
One of the messages that’s been drilled into us by popular culture is that “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” This is something people tell you when you get your heart broken and you feel like you must be… no good! And for a lot of years, every time I heard this I felt like a different species than everyone else. Because there were times when I didn’t particularly love myself – and here and there when I was younger, times when I hated myself. But there was a never...
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To Heal From Trauma, You Have to Feel Your Feelings [psychologytoday.com]
At any age, in any life stage, you can change. Whether you’re 77 years old or 17, you can learn, grow, adopt new habits, and make new choices to create a life you truly love. It may not always feel that way, though. When childhood emotional wounds tether you to the past, it can feel like you’re being swept away by a fast-moving current; although there are branches on either side of the riverbank to grab onto, something is mentally blocking you from reaching out. That “something” is a tether...
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Transcending Childhood Trauma [thefix.com]
"All healing is release from the past. It is enough to heal the past and make the future free. It is enough to let the present be accepted as it is." Course of Miracles Most addicts have survived some form of childhood trauma. In recovery, they must make an effort to heal the wounds of the past. They must also accept the fact that this is an inside job. Nothing outside of themselves is going to heal them. Therapy and support groups are supportive environments, but addicts have to do all the...
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Trauma, Attachment, and Relationships
Interventions in the Attachment and Relationship Problems Trauma Can Cause Julie De Wilde Alfred Adler Graduate School Abstract Much research has been done on the negative effects of trauma on attachment, which then has negative effects on relationships. Research more recently has focused on the positive post traumatic growth that can happen when clients receive safe, healthy attachment to a therapist they can trust. Research also includes the benefits to the client when a therapist includes...
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Trauma-Informed Resources Available During COVID-19 Quarantine (www.attachmenttraumanetwork.org)
Cissy's Note: We're not alone and organizations like the Attachment Trauma Network are summarizing resources and offerings and remembering the entire school community - including parents. Below, there's an excerpt from a recent blog post with resources. Also, per Julie Beem, the Executive Director of the Trauma Attachment Network, (she's smart, kind, and wonderful), more resources will be coming this week and next. And they will be shared here as soon as they are available. While these...
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Vacancy: Self-Worth in the Mind of a Childhood Abuse Survivor
The feeling of having a healthy supply of self-worth is something I can only imagine might have been more readily available, natural and automatic if I was able to see that in myself as a child. As an adult survivor of childhood abuse, self-worth was not supplied in healthy doses while growing up.
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Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
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What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)?
Most people have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder that afflicts many men and women returning from a war zone. It is characterized by flashbacks, unstable moods, and survivor’s remorse. However, many have never heard of a condition that often develops in childhood and changes the course of the child’s life forever, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). For a good definition of CPTSD, we turned to Beauty After Bruises, an organization that offers outreach focused on adult...
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What’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness? [Mindful Leader]
By David Treleaven A few months ago, a colleague who taught meditation in corporate settings asked for my advice. A woman in one of his programs had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, and she was now experiencing symptoms of traumatic stress. When she’d meditate, images and sensations would flood her field of consciousness, leaving her more rattled than before. “Should I keep meditating?” she’d asked him. “I want to work with my stress, but practicing seems to be making things...
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When Hidden Grief Gets Triggered During COVID-19 Confinement
first published by The Meadows 4/15/20 Our sense of loss during the current COVID-19 crisis can trigger hidden emotions from when we experienced a sense of loss before. Whatever early losses you have had in your life — whether they be your own divorce, your parents, or both, or the abandonment of one parent, a childhood or parental illness or death, financial upheaval, constant moving around, or growing up with parental addiction or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — they are likely to...
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When Mindfulness Is a Trauma Trigger: April #MeToo
While mindfulness can be a powerful tool for self-care, it can also act as a trauma trigger. Here I describe how I've come to terms with that.
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Why Focus on Resilience? 2019 BPT Conference Big Idea Session with Teri Barila
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” -Desmond Tutu. This quote captures the essence of why resilience matters. To Community Resilience Initiative, Resilience is not about “lifting yourself up by your bootstraps” or “bouncing back” from serious harm or injury. To us, Resilience is about self-discovery and self-awareness based on what the ACE Study, neurobiology, and epigenetics tell us...
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Why Focus on Resilience? 2019 BPT Conference Big Idea Session with Teri Barila
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” -Desmond Tutu. This quote captures the essence of why resilience matters. To Community Resilience Initiative, Resilience is not about “lifting yourself up by your bootstraps” or “bouncing back” from serious harm or injury. To us, Resilience is about self-discovery and self-awareness based on what the ACE Study, neurobiology, and epigenetics tell us...
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3 Ways Healthy Relationships Help Heal Trauma
Healthy relationships matter, especially when it comes to healing from trauma. Asking for help can be difficult for everyone. It can be especially difficult for those who have survived trauma. Through therapy, it’s possible to realize that you do truly deserve deep relationships as you grow and evolve through life—in the good times and the hard times.
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4 Ways Childhood Trauma Haunts You As An Adult (& How To Move On) [yourtango.com]
The wounds from your childhood are still fresh. Understanding the effects of childhood trauma and abuse isn't easy, but it's worth exploring if you ever want to move on. You grew up and did the best you could to let go and move on. But, you’ve also had a lot of struggles, especially with mental health and relationships. You’ve suffered from anxiety. You don’t feel lovable. You haven’t been able to find love that works. You’re afraid of wanting too much. Maybe you have an eating disorder. You...
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5 Ways to Heal the Traumatized Brain (Part 4) [blogs.psychcentral.com]
"Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us- in their depth, in their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.”- Sharon Salzberg What a week. You’d have to be living under a rock if you haven’t at all tuned in to the tumultuous news cycle in the US. Those that are survivors of trauma (specifically sexual assault and other forms of abuse) are incredibly triggered, and those that provide psychotherapy for trauma...
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5 Ways to Heal the Traumatized Brain (Part 4) [blogs.psychcentral.com/]
“Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us- in their depth, in their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.”- Sharon Salzberg What a week. You’d have to be living under a rock if you haven’t at all tuned in to the tumultuous news cycle in the US. Those that are survivors of trauma (specifically sexual assault and other forms of abuse) are incredibly triggered, and those that provide psychotherapy for trauma...
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9 Ways to Access Your Inner Strength During Traumatic Times (wakeup-world.com)
A traumatic experience is anything that severely threatens your emotional, psychological or physical well-being. Right now in the world, that would be the COVID-19 epidemic. Not only are many of us losing our jobs while being forced into isolation with scarce resources, but our very survival is being challenged. That’s a lot to deal with! Trauma is essentially what happens when we feel totally powerless, and are frozen internally into that state of being. But here’s the liberating truth:...
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A "Better Normal" Community Discussion - Trauma Sensitive Yoga for Embodiment and Agency
TCTSY (Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga) is the practice of bringing our bodies into the present moment to integrate and recover from the harmful effects of adverse life experiences. This evidence-based method focuses on the felt sense of the body, also known as interoception. Exercising interoception helps inform one’s choice-making and allows participants to restore their connection of mind with body and cultivate a sense of agency that is often compromised as a result of trauma. Dion...
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A New Year's Thoughts
Wishing you a Happy New Year of Peace, Joy, Love, Hope & Healing. Take care, Michael. "JOY" - a song of thanks to all of those in my life - performed at the NYAPRS Conference 9/13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4tWjowZVo “JOY”© Michael Skinner Music There’s joy in knowing what I have found There’s joy in knowing that I’m still around There’s joy in knowing that I still care Joy in knowing you’re still there Joy in knowing you’re still there I’m so glad you’re still around Thanks for...
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Accountability In Recovery
I finally got sober after about 6 years of being in and out on in 2015. The list of reasons why this time worked against all the others is very extensive, almost everything about me had to change. One of the most important ones was learning how to be accountable. From a young age, before I even touched drugs, my word meant very little. I was king of doing what I want when I want to and vice versa. If I said I would be somewhere or do something for someone it was more likely I was going to...
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Affirming Our Self-Love, Self-Acceptance, and Self-Worth
CRI hosted a training in Everett recently, focusing on the power of self-love and acceptance. As a branch of our Course Two material- CAREER, an acronym for Celebration, Affirmation, Regulation, Expectation, Education, and Education- we focused the day on Affirmation. Teri brought in arts and crafts, scrapbook paper, and our friends came to participate in making bookmarks. The day started with the song, "How Could Anyone" . How could anyone ever tell you You were anything less than beautiful...
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Ancestral Trauma Meets Yoga in a Hospital Setting
I heard a story this week that sent sensation to my heart. It was the story of a woman of color and her child. They were at a hospital, I'm unsure the specifics of where or why. One of the nurses, a white woman, had an interaction with the child and then complimented the child on their appearance, strength and intelligence. The mother proceeded to hide her child behind her back and said, "oh no my child is none of that." On the surface, as a white woman, I thought, "Ahh, that is kind of the...
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Announcing CRI's Newest Trainings- July and September!
CRI is excited to announce new trainings! We will have online trainings in July, and an in-person training in September. July Online Trainings CRI Course 1 LIVE WEBCAST: Trauma-Informed Training A dynamic 2 part six-hour LIVE WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into...
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"Breaking the Silence" Warriors of HOPE Series Concludes This Sunday with a 2-Hour LIVE Worldwide Webcast Event!
The “Breaking the Silence with Dr. Gregory Williams” radio program will be featuring a SPECIAL LIVE 2-HOUR WORLDWIDE WEBCAST this Sunday evening, May 10 th from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM Central Time. This event will be a special conclusion to their WARRIORS OF HOPE series featuring all the guest from the entire series together for one life-changing webcast. The guests are some of the most sought after authors, experts and speakers on the various topics of trauma, abuse, and resilience in the...
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Calming Your Anxious Mind Through Rhythmic Movement
5 Rhythmic Movement Practices That Can Calm Our Anxious Mind
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Cancer as a survivor
Many people use the phrase CPTSD to stand for PTSD from complex trauma. To me, C-PTSD means cancer and PTSD. I have cancer and I’m a trauma survivor. I’m a survivor with cancer but not yet a cancer survivor. Will I be a survivor squared?
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Childhood PTSD and Avoidance: Learning to Be OK in Groups (Resilience Series)
It’s super common for those of us who grew up with abuse and neglect when we were small, to feel as adults that we are on the outside somehow. When we're in groups we feel as if we are only partly in it, and never really included . Or we start as a full participant but pull away over time. We un-include ourselves. But it feel like other people are keeping us out. The telltale sign that being on the outside could be a personal choice, even when it doesn’t feel like it, is that we’re almost...
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Children & Families COVID19 Resilience Brief 5: Music For Healing
Click on the pdf link for the full child-friendly article.
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CPTSD and Procrastination: Healing the Feeling of Paralysis (Resilience Series)
Have you ever had the experience where you know you should do something -- like go to work on time, or get ready for an important meeting, or just brush your teeth before bed -- but you just couldn't do it? Everybody procrastinates sometimes, but for people who experienced abuse and neglect in childhood, procrastinating can morph into a kind of paralysis. I’ve had this happen; I’ve spent whole seasons in this place before. And it's so demoralizing when it’s happening to know that you’re here...
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CPTSD and Social Awkwardness: Another Source of Isolation
For those of us who grew up with abuse and neglect at home, it can be hard to know how to ACT in social situations. Here's an example.... Have you ever been to a hotel where there is a person who is there to carry your bags, and even though you didn’t ask, they carry your bags to the room and it’s totally awkward, and you think “I’m supposed to give them a tip, right? I’ve, like seen this on TV. But you don’t have cash, and they’re just standing there ," and you think, "What do I do? What do...
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CPTSD Confusion: How to Get Clarity in All Your Relationships (Resilience Series)
One of the the most common, painful adult manifestations of Childhood PTSD is difficulty perceiving reality accurately, especially around the meaning of interactions we have with other people. We have trouble sometimes predicting that a choice is risky, or that a person we meet is unreliable, or whether our own sense of discomfort is an appropriate response. This is the sixth article and video in my resilience series, focusing on eight obstacles to healing from childhood trauma, and the...
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CPTSD: How to Transform Fear, and Develop INNER STRENGTH
Now that the pandemic has us all in a crisis situation, we’re about to find out to find out who falls apart in a crisis, and who rises up to serve, lead and encourage others. The ones who shine are not always who we expected — have you noticed this? Here in California we’ve been sheltering in place for over two weeks now. Everywhere in the world, we’re trying to figure out how best to respond to the pandemic, how best to care for ourselves and the people we love. It’s a work in progress. For...
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CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast!
CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast! Date: February 26, 2019 Time: 8am - 3pm Pacific Time A dynamic six-hour WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into action. The training includes three groups of topics: the NEAR sciences , a cluster of emerging scientific...
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Defining Resilience Series: Step 6 - Find a Guiding Hand to Hold
I am in love with the idea of utilizing our own healing experiences to help those who are looking for guidance and a comforting hand to hold. I know when I was in despair, I was flailing in my efforts to find answers.
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Depression & Moving Past Your Past [hopetocope.com]
When your present life feels limited by things that happened in your childhood, it’s time to find the tools and techniques to help you thrive. For better or worse, things that happen to us in childhood can shape our reactions as adults—in ways we’re not always aware of. When Katie ended up unemployed last year, she got mired in beliefs she’d absorbed as a girl linking solvency to self-worth. “To be foolish with money, in my father’s eyes, was one of the greatest sins,” she says. “To not be...
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Developing Super Powers: Using Resilience Strategies to Cope with Negative Experiences. Introducing CRI's Newest Book!
“I believe that everyone, especially a child, deserves to know how their brains are shaped by environment, to then understand their capacity for building proactive protective factors. We all deserve to be super heroes as we do the best we can to consciously live life well. ” - Teri Barila The superheroes we learn about in comics, movies, and TV shows swoop in to save the world with their incredible powers, to shield people from harm. But in our world, no matter how much we wish to protect...
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Donna Jackson Nakazawa on bringing down the stress-threat response
Cissy's note: Donna Jackson Nakazawa has graciously allowed me to cross-post some of her current and future Facebook page posts here in the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care and Healing community on ACEs Connection . Hello Friends. As a SciComm journalist with 30 years of reporting and 6 books under my belt, which focus on how our stress response governs our immune health, I’ve been thinking about what I have learned, and how I might help you quiet your body and mind during this # pandemic...