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Trauma Healing Master Facilitator Justus Rubarema from Bible Society of Uganda leads a "Taking your pain to the cross" exercise in northern Swaziland while holding the Healing the Wounds of Trauma manual. August 2014. Photo credit: Bible Society of Denmark. (via PHOTOGARFF - PORTFOLIO)

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Staff at a trauma healing session in Swaziland for adults and children in August 2014. The Bible Society of Swaziland hosted staff from three other United Bible Societies fellowships—Denmark, Uganda, and USA, to launch Bible-based trauma healing in their country, which has been devastated by HIV/AIDS. (via PHOTOGARFF - PORTFOLIO)

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1. Trauma permanently changes us. This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as “getting over it.” The five stages of grief model marks universal stages in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no “back to the old me.” You are different now, full stop. This is not a wholly negative thing. Healing from trauma can also mean finding new strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life — warts, wisdom, and all — with courage. 2. Presence is always better than distance. There is a curious illusion that in times of crisis people “need space.” I don’t know where this assumption originated, but in my experience it is almost always false. Trauma is a disfiguring, lonely time even when surrounded in love; to suffer through trauma alone is unbearable. Do not assume others are reaching out, showing up, or covering all the bases. It is a much lighter burden to say, “Thanks for your love, but please go away,” than to say, “I was hurting and no one cared for me.” If someone says they need space, respect that. Otherwise, err on the side of presence. 3. Healing is seasonal, not linear. It is true that healing happens with time. But in the recovery wilderness, emotional healing looks less like a line and more like a wobbly figure-8. It’s perfectly common to get stuck in one stage for months, only to jump to another end entirely … only to find yourself back in the same old mud again next year. Recovery lasts a long, long time. Expect seasons. 4. Surviving trauma takes “firefighters” and “builders.” Very few people are both. This is a tough one. In times of crisis, we want our family, partner, or dearest friends to be everything for us. But surviving trauma requires at least two types of people: the crisis team — those friends who can drop everything and jump into the fray by your side, and the reconstruction crew — those whose calm, steady care will help nudge you out the door into regaining your footing in the world. In my experience, it is extremely rare for any individual to be both a firefighter and a builder. This is one reason why trauma is a lonely experience. Even if you share suffering with others, no one else will be able to fully walk the road with you the whole way. A hard lesson of trauma is learning to forgive and love your partner, best friend, or family even when they fail at one of these roles. Conversely, one of the deepest joys is finding both kinds of companions beside you on the journey. 5. Grieving is social, and so is healing. For as private a pain as trauma is, for all the healing that time and self-work will bring, we are wired for contact. Just as relationships can hurt us most deeply, it is only through relationship that we can be most fully healed. It’s not easy to know what this looks like — can I trust casual acquaintances with my hurt? If my family is the source of trauma, can they also be the source of healing? How long until this friend walks away? Does communal prayer help or trivialize? Seeking out shelter in one another requires tremendous courage, but it is a matter of life or paralysis. One way to start is to practice giving shelter to others. 6. Do not offer platitudes or comparisons. Do not, do not, do not. “I’m so sorry you lost your son, we lost our dog last year … ” “At least it’s not as bad as … ” “You’ll be stronger when this is over.” “God works in all things for good!” When a loved one is suffering, we want to comfort them. We offer assurances like the ones above when we don’t know what else to say. But from the inside, these often sting as clueless, careless, or just plain false. Trauma is terrible. What we need in the aftermath is a friend who can swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us, and just let it be terrible for a while. 7. Allow those suffering to tell their own stories. Of course, someone who has suffered trauma may say, “This made me stronger,” or “I’m lucky it’s only (x) and not (z).” That is their prerogative. There is an enormous gulf between having someone else thrust his unsolicited or misapplied silver linings onto you, and discovering hope for one’s self. The story may ultimately sound very much like “God works in all things for good,” but there will be a galaxy of disfigurement and longing and disorientation in that confession. Give the person struggling through trauma the dignity of discovering and owning for himself where, and if, hope endures. 8. Love shows up in unexpected ways. This is a mystifying pattern after trauma, particularly for those in broad community: some near-strangers reach out, some close friends fumble to express care. It’s natural for us to weight expressions of love differently: a Hallmark card, while unsatisfying if received from a dear friend, can be deeply touching coming from an old acquaintance. Ultimately every gesture of love, regardless of the sender, becomes a step along the way to healing. If there are beatitudes for trauma, I’d say the first is, “Blessed are those who give love to anyone in times of hurt, regardless of how recently they’ve talked or awkwardly reconnected or visited cross-country or ignored each other on the metro.” It may not look like what you’d request or expect, but there will be days when surprise love will be the sweetest. 9. Whatever doesn’t kill you … In 2011, after a publically humiliating year, comedian Conan O’Brien gave students at Dartmouth College the following warning: "Nietzsche famously said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ … What he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.” Odd things show up after a serious loss and creep into every corner of life: insatiable anxiety in places that used to bring you joy, detachment or frustration towards your closest companions, a deep distrust of love or presence or vulnerability. There will be days when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over and over and over again. 10. … Doesn’t kill you. Living through trauma may teach you resilience. It may help sustain you and others in times of crisis down the road. It may prompt humility. It may make for deeper seasons of joy. It may even make you stronger. It also may not. In the end, the hope of life after trauma is simply that you have life after trauma. The days, in their weird and varied richness, go on. So will you.

Catherine Woodiwiss, “A New Normal: Ten Things I’ve Learned About Trauma”   (via thepeacefulterrorist)

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Someone is stuck if...

“Can’t” is the response to every suggestion In therapy, can’t is harder to overcome than just about anything else. I’m not talking about I can’t speak Mandarin, but can’t as far as coping skills and activities and future plans. I can’t do this, I can’t do that. It’s truly debilitating when you think about it. When someone it really means, “that would be difficult,” or “I choose not to”, the person using it is stuck.

from-3 Ways to Tell if Someone is Stuck

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My normal ways of calming myself before I panic aren't working. Can you give me some suggestions?

Start meditation and do mindfulness exercises (each word is a different link). Use these techniques & exercises regularly, then when you feel scared you will eventually start using them automatically.

Make a grounding box 

Pocket Sized grounding kit

PTSD Coach App

Fidget rings

Panic Attack Help

Rainy Mood

Relax Melodies App (I love this one) - you don’t have to use it for just sleeping (google play link)

mynoise.net

Weave silk

Self care for overstimulated nerves (but good for anxiety too)

Anxiety self help masterpost

3 practices to calm an anxious mind

How to calm anxiety

6 quick breathing exercises

Other fidget toys: frozen orange, tangle thingys, koosh balls, water snakes, blowing bubbles, cats cradle (can be made with string), magic loops, putty.

Square Breathing

Stop, Breathe & Think App

SAM app

10 rules for coping with panic

drink tea

do something physical - running, start jumps, sit ups, bike ride

use distraction techniques

call a friend

Make a list of your triggers (or symptoms that tell you you’re being triggered) in order of the amount of stress/negative feelings they induce. Next to each one write a few things you can do to combat this (example).

Try this exercise

Calming Websites

Tips on how to handle a panic attack

I hope that something on this list helps you, but if you need any more help/advice/resources don’t hesitate to ask xx

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Only Your presence when trials I bear, Lifting so gently my burden of care; Only Your presence to show me the way, Home to the garden of the infinite day.

Pilgrim – Only Your Presence | The Good Christian Music Blog

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Ancient wisdom—not least the wisdom recorded in many places in the Scriptures—suggested that this suffering itself can be redeemed by God, and that the soul itself is being kept and guarded and nourished by God even when the person may not realize it. If you ask people when they grew the most spiritually, the number one response consistently will be a time when they suffered. But often in the church we have not done a good job of recognizing or talking about this. The soul is both unbelievably fragile and incredibly resilient—when it’s connected to a power beyond itself.

How to Care for Your Soul: An Interview with John Ortberg | Bible Gateway Blog

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by Ryan Howes

Most people enter therapy wanting something. They seek relief from debilitating symptoms. They want help making a life-changing decision. They long to heal past hurts. Couples need tools for communication. Some want better self-control. Others search for the ability to reach their potential. The list goes on.

If their therapy has the right formula of therapeutic competence, perseverance, compatibility, and good fortune, those individuals will likely reach those goals. They’ll learn what they need to learn, internalize the therapist’s message or voice, and charge into the next challenges of their life.

But many people find that therapy also provides some unexpected benefits. When they leave, they realize they’ve gotten more than they bargained for—sort of a bonus for engaging in the experience. Here are four unexpected benefits of therapy I’ve seen in my own practice:

Depth: In polite society, we’re accustomed to having mundane conversations revolving around the weather, bullet points from work, some celebrity/sports highlights, and the story we just heard on NPR or Fox News. We skip along the surface because doing so is safe and universally accepted. Therapy pushes beyond the superficial to deeper introspective questions of personal experience, historical precedents, deep feelings, and drives—a variety of topics that would never end up on a Facebook status update. When people realize talking on this level is not just interesting, but also productive and healing, they want to recreate this depth in other relationships.

Empathy: It’s kind of ironic: The majority of people come to therapy wanting to understand their own problems and why other people impact them the way they do. But once they delve into their own issues, they discover insights that help them understand their lovers, their friends, their co-workers, and their bosses on a whole new level. A light bulb goes off and they may think, “Oh, that person’s worst experience was when he was abandoned by his dad. I understand why he reacted so strongly when I bailed on our plans.” People often learn to understand the people who inhabit their lives nearly as much as they understand themselves. Or maybe they become curious and ask a few more questions, which leads to this deeper understanding.

Contagion: I can’t count the number of individuals who came to therapy to learn more about themselves and before long, their friends were interested in finding their own therapist. It happens all the time. People feel empowered and excited about growing. Their mood, attitude, and/or behavior changes, and their friends are intrigued. Occasionally, individuals in an entire friend circle will seek their own help and everyone relates on a deeper, more functional level. Fixing your friends is not a reason to seek therapy, but it sure can be rewarding when this is the outcome.

Listening: When a person spends significant time with a professional listener, that person often develops the ability to listen. They sit for many hours with someone who keeps eye contact, pays attention, and indicates reflecting or recalling past information. People in therapy know how good it feels to be on the receiving end of that kind of attention and are more likely to replicate that for their loved ones. They’ve reaped the benefits of close focused attention, had it modeled for them, and can now show it to others.

At the risk of sounding too pro-therapist, the common thread here is that therapy helps people learn to adopt some basic therapeutic characteristics. They learn to talk on a deep level, to empathize with others, to discover the thrill of self-knowledge, and to listen well. This is to be expected, as we humans often take on the characteristics of the people we spend time with, from attitudes to behaviors to communication styles.

Like I said, these are the bonuses of therapy. The main objective is helping people relieve their symptoms and underlying issues. But if they can resolve their problem while becoming better listeners and empathizers with an ability to discuss deep issues in a way that positively impacts their inner circle, what’s the problem?

Sounds like a bonus to me.

Ryan Howes, PhD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, California, the founder of National Psychotherapy Day sponsored by GoodTherapy.org, and a writer for the Psychotherapy Networker Magazine.

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“The healing path must pass through the desert or else our healing will be the product of our own will and wisdom. It is in the silence of the desert that we hear our dependence on noise. It is in the poverty of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and baubles we cling to for security and pleasure. The desert shatters the soul’s arrogance and leaves body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert, we trust God or we die.”

Dr. Dan Allender The Healing Path (via andrewjbauman)

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I believe there is one fundamental dream that unites the dream of Jeremiah with the more famous dreams of Joseph before him and Daniel after him. And that is, the dream that God will yet bring his children out of exile, out of the place where their sin or the sin of others has placed them, and bring them to a true home, a home of friendship with God, with the knowledge of what it has taken to get there, and the deeper knowledge that, if it cost us something, it cost God so much more.

Samuel Wells, Learning to Dream Again, p. 214 (via recycledsoul)

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(via Healing Club Ambassadors! | Trauma Healing Institute | American Bible Society)

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When hearing about abuse, we Catholics should be suspicious of anyone who promises a quick fix, because God meets us where we are and grace builds on nature. Through Scripture and prayer, I’ve learned that God heals people gradually, just as the long desert experience of the Israelites was part of their salvation. The Catholic faith teaches us that there’s an end in sight and that this end is good. When I used to experience symptoms of PTSD stemming from my abuse, like flashbacks, anxiety, loneliness and tears, I didn’t see any good in it. But now those symptoms don’t make me feel hopeless, even though they are evil in themselves. They may make me uncomfortable, but they are no longer toxic. They can't really hurt me; they can only purify me. I can say that now because my faith has brought me to understand that my suffering is not meaningless, but has incalculable value in Christ.

How God Heals Sexual Abuse: An Interview with Author Dawn Eden | America Magazine

Another good quote from this interview.

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Do survivors of childhood sexual abuse experience chastity differently from others? I would rephrase it to say that childhood sexual abuse survivors experience their bodies and their sexuality in a way different from others. At a time of life when they should have been treated with respect and protected, they were violated, and that experience of personal violation can cause people to mistrust their own bodies. The effects of the traumatic stress caused by the abuse can cause victims to feel a disconnect between mind and body. This can occur regardless of whether the abuse was committed by an adult or a peer. Sexual abuse causes different kinds of hormones to be released, both stress hormones and hormones released by sexual stimulation, for which children's bodies are unprepared. Studies are coming out now indicating that these hormonal reactions can have lasting toxic effects, leading to illness later in life. Moreover, just the violence of being violated by a trusted individual can harm a child's understanding of his or her identity. Can chastity be a healing experience for survivors of childhood sexual abuse? Yes, if it’s practiced the right way. Some survivors of childhood abuse practice abstinence rather than chastity. If one is simply avoiding sex, one is not being chaste. Chastity involves practicing love and loving others in a way that’s full-bodied and appropriate according to your relationship and state of life. So it’s very healing for people who have suffered abuse to learn to love in that full-bodied way. It’s not healthy if they’re just using chastity to avoid physical and emotional intimacy.

How God Heals Sexual Abuse: An Interview with Author Dawn Eden | America Magazine The rest of the article is worth reading.

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Every war has its after-war: depression, anxiety, nightmares, memory problems, personality changes, suicidal thoughts. If the studies prove correct, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created roughly five hundred thousand mentally wounded American veterans.

David Finkel: A Veteran’s Battle with P.T.S.D. : The New Yorker

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The Bible has a very powerful example of suicide prevention. Acts 16 tells about when Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi. When an earthquake opened the doors of the prison, the Philippian jailer drew his sword and was about to kill himself. He thought that the prisoners had all escaped, and he decided to kill himself rather than face execution. But Paul cried out, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!" He intervened in the jailer's life and stopped him from killing himself. He gave him a reason to live and led the jailer and his whole family to Christ. We can do the same. If you see people who are in despair, tell them, "Don't harm yourself! We are here for you!" The warning signs of suicide include prolonged depression and hopelessness, isolation or withdrawal, loss of interest in usual activities, giving away possessions, suicidal thoughts or fantasies, and suicide attempts. If you see these warning signs in a loved one, get help. Talk to them about it. Ask if they're doing okay, and specifically ask if they've thought about killing themselves.

When Suicide Strikes in the Body of Christ | Christianity Today This is a very helpful article. Read the whole thing. The Trauma Healing Institute now has a supplemental lesson on suicide available for our registered facilitators.

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“I’ll never be the same,” she said, “but I eventually realized I can choose to be bitter, angry and hateful or I can choose to forgive and to live my life despite what has happened.”

For Young Survivors, Odds of Emotional Recovery Are High - NYTimes.com

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The kingdom has come, and there is more to come.… A loving and omnipotent God is now ruling. Therefore, he has a holistic vision for human life that necessarily includes all the political, economic, and social realms—not just religious realms—along with the innumerable personal kingdoms that compose all human activity.

When and Where is the Kingdom of God? | Bible Gateway Blog (From: The Divine Conspiracy Continued)