Trauma changes people.
And for someone who just wants life to return to “the way it was,” this can be difficult to accept.
But in some cases, people have not only been able to bounce back following trauma, they’ve also been able to experience growth.
In the video below, researcher and author Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD offers her insights into what contributes to post-traumatic growth.
Take a look – it’s just about 4 minutes.
For expert strategies to help clients thrive after trauma, have a look at this short course on how to foster post-traumatic growth featuring Stephen Porges, PhD; Marsha Linehan, PhD; Steven Hayes, PhD; Sue Johnson, EdD; Pat Ogden, PhD; and other top experts.
Now how will you use these ideas in your work? Please leave us your thoughts in the comment box right below.
As most of you know, I was severely burned at six months old and was left to die. The first two hospitals refused to take me in as there was no point in treating me and babies were not considered to be able to feel pain back in the early 60s. (This was in Singapore, where I was born.) Fortunately the third hospital took me in and grafted my skin for several months. They gave me no pain relief and for the first two weeks they simply observed me whilst they waited to see which areas would heal, which areas needed grafting. I had no pain relief, not even during during operations – only a drug that immobilised me.
Without doubt this impacted the way that my brain is wired. My early attachment was shot/shocked to bits and because it happened so young I didn’t even know that I was any different from anyone with secure attachment. I just grew up the way I was – thinking I was ‘normal’. I had my last skin graft when I was turning four years old and I remember clearly how terrified I felt, how desperately alone and how I longed for someone to be there for me.
Things only began to come to light when I was a teenager and became very perfectionist. It was a method of controlling the very uncontrollable environment I was in but I didn’t consciously know that. And also, physiologically, I wanted to look good and fit in. I was attractive but not skinny as I was hockey captain at school and have always been very muscular. Anyway I decided to lose those ‘extra’ few pounds and before I knew it I was caught up in desperately losing more weight and feeling fatter. (I have discovered that when my weight goes below my own normal, I feel fat. My own normal is at the top end of the weight charts for my height. It took me 40 years to realise this.)
Anyway, in the spirit of sharing, in the spirit of being an expert by experience, I shall reveal that outwardly I was succeeding, successful, getting into the best universities, having a ridiculously high IQ, able to cover up and appear ‘normal’ without even realising I was doing it.
I did find myself drawn to mother or father figures and I would hide my desire to be near them and receive affection from them. The need for love and caring inside was so huge that I feared I would be laughed at, ridiculed, shamed and mocked if anyone knew. It made me very unhappy but I threw myself into my academic studies and my various degrees and work and that mostly distracted me from my inner pain.
Whilst doing a PhD at Durham I began to increase my meditation practice and ended up going to India. Some of you know the story of what happened there. I was actually chasing a father figure, chasing the attachment that I had always longed for but didn’t even know I was desperately needing.
When I eventually got back from India it took me three months to find a private therapist who would take me on a ‘what I could pay’ basis as I was completely broke both emotionally and financially. I remember in my very first session she leaned forward and put her hand on mine as I tried to tell her that I had ‘gone through something very difficult’ in India. I froze. I looked at her hands on mine. It felt like her hand was defrosting me and if I began to melt the pain would be more than I could bear.
She also froze. She felt she had done the wrong thing. But because of that hand on mine, (the first touch of kindness I had had in a very very long time,) I returned for my second session with her. I worked with her for 18 months and I was 26 years old. I discovered that actually emotionally I was carrying a small crying baby, frightened, Terrified and in fear of more torture and more pain. At first I could not be touched at all. It only caused pain. After about six months I asked her for a hug. It took me three sessions to say it. When she hugged me, it felt like my heart broke and I cried for weeks and weeks. Fortunately, she was very kind to me and supported me through this. (She is still a friend to this day and recently I took her out for lunch.)
I only left therapy with her because I was offered a very good job and I wanted to “get on with my life“. But I was still nowhere near healed of my early traumas, never mind my adult traumas.
I searched out a therapist. He was male. He introduced me to how it felt to be a small child and to be loved and held and cherished by a father. He was perfectly safe and in fact he was there at my wedding as my father figure.
In getting married I had to move and although I kept in touch with him I was 400 miles away from him. I found a new male therapist who was recommended and I worked with him very well for two years. Again most of the issues were about the traumas and the broken early attachment and a lot of work was done in learning to trust and learning to feel safe with another human being who was a parent figure.
Unfortunately this therapy went terribly wrong and this man sexually abused me over the last six months of therapy using the information he knew about me to enable him to gratify what he later termed his ‘sex addiction’.
I refused to go to any more therapy and only broke this personal vow when I was severely and viciously bullied by a well-known compassion teacher 15 yrs later. His various co-teachers colluded with this and in the end it ended disastrously as I had to report attempted rape by another person in the organisation. This organisation refused to address this problem, swept it under the carpet and ostracised me for saying what I did. So I had to leave as it was not safe for me to work somewhere where bullying and sexual assault was not addressed but hushed Up. Both perpetrators got away with it but the sexual predator (who had already raped one woman) four years later seriously lost it and murdered the founder. (If they had only listened to me, they would’ve realised he was unstable. But they swept it under the carpet and ignored it. And the Bully put his own friends on the anti-bullying committee so he is still going strong, still bullying people and still teaching compassion in public and continuing to bully women. According to people who know him, I was the eighth woman he had done that to.
Anyway, about this time, Paul Gilbert invited me to come to Derby in March 2009, to take art in a three day event teaching CFT to professionals. On day two he asked us to look at shame and all of a sudden the thing that I was most deeply ashamed about, was suddenly right in my face. I coped that day but I look back and know that was when I knew I needed help again.
Three months later the bullying from the compassion teacher truly broke me. His finale was to go for me in front of my colleagues , twice in 16 hrs. Each time was over 45 minutes long, he had foam coming from his mouth as he spat out his venom and attacked me, my parenting, my husbands job as a professor, my ‘total inability to teach’ , – basically finding any way in to destroying me. Although some of my colleagues have admitted being traumatised by simply observing this, when the bully told them all to join in saying what they didn’t like about me, (!) my student who was after my job and wanted me gone, joined in with glee. This bully was a father figure to me and I had encouraged him to set up a Masters course and encouraged him to think about creating it from 2007. I also let him take over some of my retreats and I led my students to him, One of whom, unbeknown to me, had her eye on my job and was determined to get me out of there.
Anyway, he succeeded in breaking me. His own teacher told me that the bully was extremely mentally unstable and dangerously jealous of me and my own meditation ability. The head of the entire organisation, who lives in India, insisted that I move away from this organisation and keep away. It meant that I lost my workplace, my work, My income, my spiritual family, most of my friends, And experienced huge grief and loss. Even to this day, the organisation Refuses to address the problem and also has never replied to any of my letters asking for an explanation or an apology.
So I went to my GP and started some counselling and to my great horror truly attached to the female counsellor. I loved her with a passion of a small child and could not bear being away from her. Every second away from her, (every minute, every day, every hour was agony). Can you imagine how ashamed I was to admit this? I did not know what was happening to me. Eight hears ago I did not know about attachment problems.
I was now 48 years old and I have brought up two children myself and had a career so how could this possibly be happening now??
It got to the point where I couldn’t stop crying, even when I was teaching . I was missing her so much that I was crying through the night. She read me stories, she cuddled me, she allowed me to take my teddy bear into sessions and she delighted in the mothering of me. Unfortunately when I hit rage, 18 months later, She sent me an email out of the blue terminating the therapy. You can imagine how I felt. I literally felt like I’ve been thrown over a cliff and I was falling.
My GP redirected me to secondary services and I was given a male psychologist. I explained that I did not want to see a man, that I did not feel safe with a man. I was told he was the only person available and it was either him or nothing. He was also not trained in trauma. I met with 22 private therapists trying to find somebody else who would work with me and not be terrified of me. I had no luck. Reluctantly I kept seeing the male psychologist. At about 18 months in, he began to get the hang of me and would hold me when I got really distressed. Again I attached to him. Even more strongly than the previous counsellor. This was so totally full on that I had to give up work and live off my savings. I encountered six years of pain and anguish and confusion. I tried to teach the psychologist about attachment theory in adult mental health. It was an uphill struggle. His supervisors and his team were totally against any kind of dependency in the client and would berate me for it.
Meanwhile I think, as I look back, I was about six months old to 2 years old emotionally. It was a terrible place to be. I really needed my daddy and I pined for him in such a way that minutes seemed like hours. I was shamed for this and found myself constantly trying to explain that I could not help it and it was my psyche and heart trying to heal itself. I asked him to be a kind of dad to me and with much discussion he eventually began to be like a very loving dad. He would give me presents and birthday cards, he would give me a note for each day when he went away on holiday, he would cuddle me and hold me when I got so distressed I didn’t know what to do, he would ring me between sessions to check how I was and I think he genuinely came to love and care about me.
I used child size dolls to work with my distraught child. At first he refused to allow me to bring them to sessions but eventually he let me. He had enormous power in that room and I had no one else to talk to. It was very very hard. I had lost my friends because they did not understand that the Sarah who gave and was compassionate and was the yoga teacher and the meditation teacher, was now unable to give anything and was frightened and in pain. I felt ashamed of that too. So I lost most of my friends. I was incredibly lonely. It was a very long and dark five years. What pulled me through was that I was being reparented and I attached well and then started to grow and eventually I got to being a stroppy teenager. My therapist didn’t like the stroppy teenager and began to complain. I then was ashamed of my rage and my anger. I tried to explain to him that this was an inevitable state for me to go through and I needed him to be the firm father who could hear what I have to say but also help me learn how to handle the rage and the anger. I begin to talk about the abuse that happened to me when I was eight years old and halfway through this session he ends it. I thought he was disgusted by me and what had happened to me. Two weeks later his line manager phoned me to tell me I will not be seeing him ever again as the therapy is terminated. No reason given. Six years of intense twice a week therapy to zero. Suddenly.
You can probably imagine how this abandonment and the betrayal affected me. To be honest, it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to survive it. The person I had learnt to trust, the person who had said they would never suddenly leave me, the person who said that I deeply matter to them, the person who knew how abrupt termination sent me into my deepest pain, just walked away without even letting me say goodbye.
At this point, it was all about survival. My GP prescribed me medication for the first time: 50 mg sertraline daily. It kicked in fairly quickly and took away a huge amount of distress. Thank God.
I also had to start using sleeping pills, up my self Compassion practices and increase my awareness that my pain was normal for any human being who had just been treated so badly. This helped me get through. I could not talk to anybody about what I was going through as no one I knew even understood therapy never mind abandonment by therapist. One ‘friend’ sent me a message at about this time informing me how pathetic I was, how ridiculously childish I was, and shaming me for needing affection and hugs.The health professionals around me disapproved of the attachment my therapist and I had forged between us (that had been so incredibly healing) and any contact with them meant that I was on the receiving end of more disapproval.
I had to find kindness inside myself to look after myself. Psychologists and therapists were no longer to be trusted. Most friends had deserted me long before and it felt like the only person left was myself. It felt like I pulled myself up by my boot straps. It took a year before I could sleep more than a few hours each night. I had to use my knowledge of compassion focused therapy and also of mindful self compassion, to get through each hour. I cannot believe that the man I had gone to, to disclose my attachment difficulties and my absolute terror of abandonment, had deliberately forged an incredibly intense parental relationship with me and then without warning, abandoned me utterly and dangerously.
I still, to this day, do not understand how any professional could do this to a vulnerable client.
16 months on, and I am beginning to work again. I long to be part of an encouraging and supportive workteam and I long to contribute in this field. It feels difficult and I do not have anyone in my field enabling me to contribute. If anything, I am often met with closed doors as I am not a psychologist and I am not an academic any more. I have three decades of experience of training at depth in four religious traditions and mindfulness, meditation, yoga, self compassion, and compassion. I have not written a book. I am only known by those who know me personally. I feel I have had to learn at the very coalface and the lessons I have learnt have given me tremendous insight and depth. My teaching has improved hugely and the fact that I am only still on this planet because I had to learn a deep self compassion and kindness and caring for the wounded distraught person that I am whilst also acknowledging the tremendous courage, strength, resilience, huge heartedness and humour that I have.
So, that is my story. I may not have a psychology PhD, I may not be
a Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I may not be a well-known author, but I do know what I know and it has taken me decades to come to this level of understanding of the human condition.
That is why I always say to people: please be kind, to yourself and to others for you do not know burdens we carry.
Thank you for reading this. I hope it may help you gain insight. It is not the full story. In fact it is probably about five percent but it is at least a rough overview.
I have also written it because I wish to be known here and understood. We all long to be known and understood and seen. I have come through so much, and I would like the wisdom I have gained from these experiences, to be useful to alleviating the suffering of others.
Thank you for reading this. Sarah.
Hi Sarah. First I want to say Im so sorry for what you have gone thru with those therapists. Shame on them and bravo to you for overcoming.
I was also taken advantage of by 2 therapists (slept with) . I did get him fired. Should have sued the whole place but was too fragile to go thru that at the time. I was also severely abused as a child and am in therapy now (not out of choice) but am more aware. I commend you for the strength you demonstrated for yourself & maybe you can turn all of these bad experiences around to your advantage (as you did) and see that in
spite of the poor horrible skills of your past therapists you rose up and found your inner compassion and became stronger and better than they ever will be. Congratulations!
I ask clients who have been through traumatic experiences how their experiences have helped them to grow in a positive way. Asking the question makes them realize that positive growth is possible after such bad experiences, which is helpful for them in not feeling as victims.
Each trauma is rooted in an event/situation : social, physical/violence, moral values, family social values, incidents/death, horrors, and so on .Each trauma is treated by us with different techniques.
For me , in order to heal myself over the years I used different techniques: role play, hypnosis ( create alternatives), created a special visualization by zooming In and Out of the incident (exp: in MD Anderson Hospital I cleaned with my hands my husband’s legs necrosis and the entire flash was down up to the bone in my hands ) , and finally what was helping me the most in the last year ” was to give up of repeating the “process of the trauma” and looking at the present/outcome consequences of the trauma in my life. This is also a culture issue. I feel confident and in control. No more long crying.
I am a “post-traumatic growth” human being. I wanted to get better, not bitter from a 1985 brutal assault that left me with physical bodily damage, PTSD, a broken marriage, trauma from a criminal trial experience and more. It was devastating and rocked my world for years in a prison of pain and fears and scar tissue grew to start cutting off my jugulars in my neck. This scar tissue growth almost took my life until medical help discovered the problem and fixed it in 2005-2009. This experience has shaped me into a rich grateful wholehearted person and launched me into a passion to give back to others who are like me when I was stuck in a pit. Growing and healing only come when the soul gets healed. My body injuries were nothing compared to the hurt of my heart and soul. My spiritual health and connections to my treasured loved ones are the vital life force to healing beyond the pain. I thank God for the pioneers who searched and studied Neuroscience, human behavior, and solid core theology.
When I was first diagnosed with PTSD in 1985 there was little help but now there is great medicine and real solid help to heal quicker. Thank you to all who are working in this field to help the wounded.
I know I am a traumatic grower….I have done it a couple times, even I never thought it is possible. My inner images and creativity is supporting me there. Following my heart and intuition. For some reason there is a force in me, that when I am out of a cycle again asks: ‘THAT IS IT? NO WAY!’ Making a difference for me and my kids, is a huge drive for me, even sometimes this drive seems be gone, it is coming back. Grateful. I am just right now on the up again. So fed up with the cycle when life throws too much at me, and maybe I just need to accept how it is and appreciate my system, it is making sure, I am aware of my limits. To take actions for self-care. Every cycle i learn more and can get faster out.
I thought this was interesting. Thank you for sharing this. I saw something recently that I feel ties in to this. It was about seeing a cup half full or half empty and optimism. The perspective was that we should try to see both. Appreciate the fullness in the glass and be grateful for that. But, also to recognize there is room for more and find ways to fill it. The idea was not to become stagnant, thinking our glass should just stay half full, while giving gratitude and recognition for what we do already have. Anyway….food for thought.
I can only talk about my personal experience… I found that working on healing my trauma has given me a clarity that I didn’t possess before. it is as if the trauma veiled everything that came afterwards with a layer of confusion, doubt and bewilderment, and this led me into difficult situations in itself. My trauma recovery gave me understanding and perspective, which in turn gave me conscious control over the course of my life changes: it doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes any more but it means I can learn from them because I can observe and analyse what is happening much better. This of course makes me happier. I remember feeling like I was thrown this way and that like a rag doll by life’s events previously. Now I feel more empowered to act according to what is happening, rather than just react. I also feel a much better mother, because I can hopefully pass on that wisdom to my children. This gives me hope that they will have an easier, happier life than I had. I feel I can also help friend and students who need support. That feels very important for me too.
Treaustralia.com.au and being born again as a Christian were the two main game changers for me. I’m still be traumatised by the repercussions of ex stalking > moving into my building > becoming Secretary of my body corporate as a renter using his sons proxy > being on body corporate building committee as an architect. But now I can recognise when. I’m in shock because of the physical trauma release. I wish my trauma therapist and doctor better understood this process.
Amen! I understand completely. I’m sorry you are struggling with this. I try to thank my body for protecting me and tell myself I am safe. Deep breath’s into my belly and my feel grow ” roots” into the floor. EFT tapping has helped, and deep compassion for myself. As my body and mind see me navigate one reaction at a time I build trust in myself that I can get through it. It’s been a slow and difficulty process and find myself frozen in fear with tingling arms and legs a lot. But, I tell myself it’s a practice not perfection. Good luck my darling, I hope you find what works for you!
Came back from an abusive marriage after twenty-three years . I am enthused, I am grateful to God, my church, my friends. I am more involved for causes I believe in. My advice to those in distress: Get help, go to support groups, be good to yourself, love yourself, be kind to yourself and treat yourself God loves you! Do for others, you will be surprised how much you receive in return.
I appreciated Sonja Lyubomirsky comments regarding happiness and its value in seeking it out after a traumatic event. Living in the present and focusing on daily goals have been two essentials in helping some of my clients work through life after the traumatic incident. The time to reflect and identify truth from the traumatic event has also assisted the client to move forward.
Eager to learn more from other’s experiences in this area.
Thank you, Jane
This video really resonates because our perspective totally matters when it comes to recovery! For me, the stroke of insight that catalysed post-traumatic growth was truly internalising the idea that trauma isn’t who I am, it’s just something that happened. After that I was able to heal and grow because trauma was no longer my identity. I could let it go. The philosophy of Alan Watts, Eckhardt Tolle’s work, and Irving Yalom’s work helped me in various stages to get there. Alan Watts’ world view was the final piece of the puzzle actually. But to get these insights programmed into my subcortical systems, I also needed body-based therapy (tried a new one called CRM). Once all of the old emotional and motor patterns related to the trauma were cleared, my mind was free to truly understand and live the cognitive insights I had collected over years of seeking answers and relief.
I think it’s important to understand that the bad things in life don’t have to control you, and that it will pass one day, thus reflect and see what you have learned from the experience for tomorrow is a new day
How to foster “traumatic growth” was NOT addressed here. We all know that people respond to trauma in different ways. We also know that a variety of factors contribute to the “growth response”. What would be valuable is to learn what specifically “fosters” (your word) the ability to go beyond healing, i.e. expanded consciousness, new meaning, increased gratitude. Identifying the capacity necessary to foster growth out of negative events requires more than surface observation. Is it not possible that some people simply aren’t neurobiologically equipped to invoke this response?
Very accurate in my experience. Meaning is key, whether more spiritual growth, acknowledged, or not.
I help them explore their core values those they would not compromise on and which they would protect at all cost. I have found that many of my clients begin then to focus on what they want to be about and what they want their life to be about. The event causing a trauma becomes their crossroads: an opportunity to take stock, to get clear about what is most important to them. I invite them to go on a quest and attempt new things they have never tried before, or things they always wanted to do and never did start. Following a motor accident, a client could not do her old job any longer because of her new physical limitations. Over a few months, we looked at jobs /activities she could perform whilst sit. She discovered she enjoyed painting and other arts and crafts activities. By the end of therapy she told me that had it not been for the accident she would not have found out about her artistic talent. Her quiet life at home also helped to get in touch with her own self and had brought out parts of her she liked and was pleased with. Paradoxically her accident event had changed her life for the better, notwithstanding her new physical limitations she was a happier woman.
Thanks for sharing this information. I am experiencing something like what kathy describes. My own experience has been that I seem to have ‘woken up’ . I have CPTSD. The thing I have struggled with is not only my trauma, but the lack of growing up, because my family were mired in anger and dramas. The main impediment to healing was living a ‘story’ of life, rather than life itself. To heal I had to disengage from therapies and find my own way. I found that all the disciplines have a culture and a belief system, which seems to be invisible to the practitioner themselves. I am so grateful that healing and happiness do not depend on ‘getting help’. I am grateful to the researchers in Neuroscience that have shown us more about how our brains and bodies work. It has really helped me in my healing. Thanks to NICABM for sharing your information.
Actually I agree totally that you can become stronger after adversity.Trauma makes you work harder to survive, therefore it is called a strive to grow process.Yes you can get knocked down low,but striving to reach higher can take you in the end to a higher point.Then, you become more appreciative of life itself.
I do this for myself and with my clients. First, I honour the grieving process, the fear and the anxiety, the questions of, “How will I go on?”, How will I handle this?” I talk with friends. Then even before I feel better, I try to do something loving for someone else. This takes me out of myself, empowers me, and establishes me as a person who still has the power to contribute to the world, even in my inadequacy. Personally, I pray and open myself to God’s love and grace, to strength, and to a new vision of life. Gradually, ever so gradually, I begin to live in a new way, and discover that I have grown. Gradually, ever so gradually, I become aware of what I have learned, and that I am more than before, and I like who I have become.
I connect clients with community, breaking their isolation, and eventually they too like who they have become.
That’s very beautiful Catherine – very loving and gentle. Thank you 🙂
Serving others is key in knowing that we have a place to live from in this world. A place that deeply satisfies. I Agree with you Catherine… It is important to like who we have become through each growth experience.
Good protocol! I thank you for your mention of “gradually” as we do tend to want to rush through or shortcut process and get to Well, whatever that means for us. I am repeatedly told I am not “patient with the process,” though I am learning.
I have found, too, that my experience of prayer and God’s grace in my trauma recovery were nothing like what I had experienced in church settings that were often traumatizing in and of themselves. The wild and unpredictable mercy of grace defies the boxes we may try to force it into, reaching out to us through those mediums we can handle. At times, this may be as simple as the peaceful feeling of a cat purring on your lap or a dog’s head on your knee. Grace comes in many forms.
I’m very interested in memory reconsolidation and Coherence Therapy. Have you covered this in the past?
Thank you so much for your insights. As a ball bounces or not, depending on the surface, so are we resilient based to a great degree on what our “surface” is composed of. My mother and father, both Holocaust Survivors, had very different bounce back.
Tell PTG : “you (AND send intuitively your “PTS Resilience, Meaning, Story, and Happiness…..”heart felt love.”
Grateful to my “mentor” ,
Andy
I can relate so much to this after a bad fall 18 months ago. I’m 77 years old and feel I’ve been cheated out of a healthy old age
Sonya, can you give the details of the quoted research by Laura King, please>
thanks a lot
Ratnadevi
When severe trauma occurs there is a corresponding loss of meaning. Relationships, activities, comforts that once brought pleasure and joy are no longer meaningful. Old familiar thinking patterns no longer work. Clients are left with a sense of not knowing how to think, to bring about meaning.
I propose that it is essential to hold the despair, become familiar with it. Finding meaning in the despair moves us towards the opposite, hope. It is by acknowledging the feelings and the meaning making opportunities available here that extensive psychological and spiritual growth can emerge. Meaning making transformation leads to greater spiritual and psychological growth, beyond the pre-trauma level.
As therapists, our role is to find the meaningful threads in the clients narrative and collaboratively weave them together to form a tapestry rich in meaning.
Excellent! Thank you!!
Maybe.
I have run into this phenomenon a few times, however, I have a different take on it. This video seems to imply that it’s a matter of intention and belief, but what I’ve seen it just the result of healing early trauma. When a person has an early trauma, for instance at age 2, they are left in a state of distorted reality, which then colors all their experiences from then on. Then, perhaps at age 20 or 30, they have another traumatic event, which has extreme, unexplainable results, which leads them to seek help from a trauma therapist, like me. When we work through the recent trauma, it only partially relieves the symptoms, and then leads back to the early trauma, which they have no memory of, because we don’t normally have explicit or narrative memories before age 3. However, if we work through the trauma via the symptoms, we eventually resolve the trauma. When that happens, the person then finds themselves experiencing “reality” as sit is in the present, without the distortion of the early trauma. At first, this is very scary (everything seems TOO real), and they will often revert back to the old reality. but if we persist, they soon adapt to the reality of the present, which is much better and more beautiful and gives them more capabilities and choices than they have had since age 2. This is not just post traumatic growth, more like post traumatic transformation. A similar effect happens for most resolution of less significant traumas, and I think that’s the main cause of post traumatic growth.
I really appreciate this video
Thank you so much!
Thank you to those who have posted. Voices in a song of resilience… Each trauma in my lifehas taught me something more about the messy complicated experience of being human. I am inspired by the women who on this posts who have taken their resilience and reached out to write and hold others in a field of hope. I feel such hope for the world as we deal with one trauma at a time…
We/I no longer have the same innocence after trauma- whether it be an accident ( bad, hard things happen), rape (people take their pain and confusion and fractured selves and inflict it on others), bad parenting and pathology, (So much unconsciousness) and more. How do we assist – courage to own all the parts and walk through the pain. I loved Sonya’s story of the Holocaust survivors – sometimes we/i need to remind ourselves/ myself and have a PRaCTICE of opening our eyes to the joy of this planet, each other and being alive.
One trauma at a time – a net of care and resilience and hope in a world which is exposing the wounds and feels like its on fire. Ruth, thank you for this most magnificient work you do to bring this to us, our clients and a hurting world. .
If the survivor can set a future goal for themselves after a trauma, they’ll find a way to reach it. If the survivor gets a lot of support, it’ll be easier for them.im talking from first-hand experience.
I work with clients who have experienced trauma and I am a trauma survivor. I’ve chronicled my own journey in my new memoir, “An Imperfect Pilgrim: Trauma and Healing on This Side of the Rainbow”. What I have discovered–and use with my clients–is mind-body practices that help keep us present, breathing practices that help improve parasympathetic activity, and practicing self-care and self-compassion. All these practices have helped me not only return to a state of happiness, but have increased my own level of happiness and joy.
A friend shared this video with me and I thank you for giving me a catch-phrase for my growth! I am one of these individuals who have experienced post-traumatic growth. I have a C-PTSD diagnosis, after experiencing multiple traumas throughout my childhood and into my adulthood (sexual molestations, rape, bank robbery, murder, alcoholic parent, abusive parent, and more), resulting in severe panic attacks for over 25 years. I finally found EMDR therapy in 2013 and am still processing my traumatic events 4 years later. However, I am the happiest person I know. I live a life of joy and tranquility. Yes, I experience down days and irritable moments, as all humans do, but my overall state of being is one of peace. And I never thought that would be possible. I meditate, do yoga, take nature hikes, read everything I can on brain plasticity and habitual patterns, journal, am writing a book, speak publicly at events such as The National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, produce and co-host The Healing Place Podcast on iTunes with a therapist friend, run the Sammie’s Bags of Hope project dispersing bags filled with “trinkets of hope” to children our therapy dog, Sammie the Labradoodle, works with in a Registered Therapy Dog role (www.sammiethedoodle.com), wrote a children’s book “The Doodle with the Noodle”, own and operate my own business (InvizaShield) and am mom to 3 amazing kids with my partner.
Thank you for your work in helping those of us who strive to not only overcome our trauma history, but to thrive. My secret formula comes down to two factors . . . faith and positivity. By faith, I am not talking religion. I am talking about believing in something. Anything. But, believing that joy is possible. Believing in love, in angels, in trees, in light, in unicorns, or oneself. And positivity speaks for itself. I learned to treat myself in a gentle manner, with love and kindness. My foundation of faith and positivity helped me survive my hell on earth. And for that, I am eternally grateful.
Take care and peace to you,
Teri
Thank you so much for your words and energy of power and resiliency!
Thank you for sharing your story of hope and joy.
Thank you for sharing!
Amen, and good for you! Thank you for sharing. I have CPTSD, too, (and a similar survival list) and use EMDR, as well as other practices, including gratitude, self-compassion, mindfulness, various forms of meditation, spiritual connection, acupuncture, and herbalism. The best way we can honor ourselves for having made it through all that mess is by moving far beyond the level statistics say we were to have to a life of joy and peace. Blessings to you!
I’m so happy for you
I worked with a woman in her 40’s whose father was very ill; she could not accept that he would soon die (a matter of months), and kept thinking of “cures” that would not work. She was not married and had no children, and had returned to living with her parents; she was closer to her father than to her mother. We worked for quite a while on death being a part of life, on the good things she would remember about her father, and her other feelings about herself and her family; by the end, she could tell her father that she loved him but she could let him go where he needed to go. He had told her he wanted to die, and she listened. I affirmed that this was a a great gift she could give him. I think that by facing her traumatic reality, rather than staying in denial, she was able to grow, and to acknowledge both her own feelings and those of her father — and I think this change became a lasting part of her sense of self.
Well done brilliant work! My late Father was calling out to carers in his nursing home for months that “I am going to die today”. They wrongly told him “no you are not Dr X, you are fine”.. His real communication, which they failed to realise was “I WANT to die today”. It was only when I recognised this and told him we were ready to let him go” that he was able to die peacefully 10 days later. He had been concerned to save us the pain of losing him but the price he was paying for this was too high. Moral: listen carefully for what people are really saying, false reassurance is abusive.
I usually get a client to look at the positive things that have come out of the traumatic experience – help them to mourn their losses caused by the trauma and focus on what they still have, the qualities and skills that they can develop and the experience they have gained, and ways of protecting themselves against a recurrence of a similar trauma, when appropriate. I introduce them to ways of keeping in the present, keeping a journal and different breathing exercises which help to centre themselves when they feel out of control.
Ummmm, I’m a survivor of an alcoholic, violent pedophile father who was an equal-opportunity pedophile – equally likely to engage the neighbor kids in his deviancy as to do it to his own daughters alone. I’m not a medical professional, but came across your postings and “subscribed” in order to figure out how to work through my issues on my own. For perspective, I’m 60 y.o.; my father died last year when he was 95 y.o., and he never subsided from being, nor apologized for’ his sexual offenses toward his family and neighboring children.
While I’m interested in seeing what/how you train other psych practitioners in their work with people such as I, I’m not really in a position to pay for classes much less have the background to comprehend the nuances of the lectures. While I have a substantial medical understanding (by virtue of reading medical journals from the age of 12 to the prsent), my layman’s expertise in psych is minimal.
Do you have the ability to purchase books?
The body keeps the score by bessel van der kolk
The power of now
Tre exersices by David berceli
Keep following and subscribing to things like this and purchase a membership if you can. Far cheaper than therapy. because the more education you have the better obviously doing what you can to stay present ground your self and fill your life with things that make you happy also get any and every book you can on worthiness and or self love or any free information you can get on the internet. Just use your better judgement when you find free stuff on the internet books too
Also google or Youtube “EFT”
Loretta – thank you for sharing…I am so sorry about the childhood sexual abuse you experienced. In addition to therapy and EMDR, a 12 Step group called SIA – Survivors of Incest Anonymous has helped me a lot. You can find out more online and download literature for a very minimal cost. For me, I need healing to take place both Independently and in community. All best wishes to you!
Yes healing in a community, a safe non-judgemental support group to hear your voice is important. Mending the Soul support group helps many to heal and get beyond the wounds. Check out Mending the Soul.org site to find groups near you.
I work with combat veterans and women with MST related PTSD. I’m a survivor of domestic violence and early childhood parental Lias myself. My own journey of loss and trauma and coming back to go beyond my original self serves as my model. By that I mean I know it can be done so I present a very positive model. As a social worker and One who survived her own depression by being validated, that is sort of where I begin. There are some who seem to be in denial that the trauma has impacted them, there are others who embrace that effect. First off I find the process to be extremely subjective that is to say no two going to respond in the same way. I am an EMDR trained therapist, however I find that professional use of self is extremely valuable to me. So there is a presence that I bring that honors and validates them that I think is helpful beyond measure. Lately I have been embracing the presence or mindfulness model more and more. I do think the EMDR processing of the trauma is or can be in some cases quite Healing, but there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all.
I work with teens and find that many of them retain the mental flexibility to understand how to incorporate a new story for themselves regarding traumatic events. They often want to move on, since they are still developing rapidly, but don’t know how to do it. With help, they can learn to make meaning out of the trauma and ultimately increase their resiliency. The challenge is sufficient time and consistency, while other areas of their lives remain stable.
Thank you. I find that clients who are recovering from trauma display a degree of resilience especially when there is meaning in their life. Often this meaning is in reaching out to others who have experienced trauma either by spoken word, blogs or support groups.
We must also take into account the person’s life before the traumatic event. Someone who has experienced trauma as an adult will possibly recover and experience growth more readily than someone who has had early trauma, whose journey/recovery might be slower. Nevertheless I do believe based on my experience that growth is always a goal andpossible.
I have experienced this and seen it in some clients. Much more difficult when there are multiple traumas and they take place during formative periods of the personality.
Life is not an either or, it is an and. For Trauma survivors it is a process of resilience and growth. It is a journey. It is an and. As long as one shows up and stays on the journey, goes at ones own pace, they are resilient. Even if depression and anxiety occur.
As a practitioner of trauma and as a survivor myself, the recovery process is about wisdom, creative and spiritual choices not necessarily happiness. It is learning to build an emotional soul and body and receive all of life. Happiness is a feeling like all feelings. It comes and goes. It is being able to choose a lifestyle that supports self care, self love and self respect. Happiness is a simplistic conversation about resilience. I am sure those who are happier or wiser after trauma, but still have very challenging days when they are not so happy. Gratitude for life, joy for life can still be alive in ones body even if there is pain or even depression.
Recovery from trauma is messy, clumsy, emotional and creative There are a myriad of modalities, techniques and processes that address trauma and recovery. It is an ongoing discover. Recovery from trauma is an individuation process of grief….Sandra Ray, a rebirthing teacher said, “When you begin to receive love everything but love comes up first.” That is what I believe is happening in the collective unconscious globally. We have been praying, healing and processing our trauma historical, personally and biblically since the beginning of time. We are in the process of humanizing our heart, minds and souls. Those who can be resilient are those who can have the blind faith to believe in love and healing. To keep going. To hold pain and joy. To give and receive. Right now our world is in a healing crisis. The dark night of the soul. Every survivor goes through a dark night. A questioning of their faith. It is the journey that has the power…. At the same time no one has the blue prints for the destiny of any human being. Those who cannot make it.. like my sister who committed suicide, has a destiny that I or no one can understand. Recovery and trauma is a mystery in G-d’s plan. How do we understand terrorism, racism, sexism, abuse and addiction to its core? Why do we hate? There is no real psychological answer. And there are many psychological answers. At the highest it is a mystical and universal story of becoming human. However, what I do know is being human is the most spiritual journey there is. It is an evolutionary and revolutionary process to become human. Human kind continues to indulge in genocide, fascism, and resides in power and control. As Ram Dass says, The most I can do is work on myself.” In Judaism, and I paraphrase, it is taught that when each individual learns to love and heal peace will prevail within and without. Until then we are in the Olam Tikkum the piecing together of the broken and wounded light. Each of us are at different levels of recovery. To talk about trauma, personally, globally and universally I believe we need to start piecing together and connecting the dots. Go deeper into the genetics, epigentics and cells of recovery. I might be on a soap box right now… and seemingly off topic.. but I don’t believe I am. It is such a complexity and contradiction why one person is happier after trauma than another.
Any childhood abuse or neglect is Soul Murder. The child is deprived of her/his identity and ability to experience joy in life. The great Psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold calls it this and claimed sufferers’ lives are ravaged. One cannot recover one’s soul alone. Many do not know of their traumas they are buried in their unconscious. They just know they are not happy and life is a challenge. Anyone abused, their life path has been altered forever regardless of any recovery although he acknowledges that if survived, the pain can be a source of strength. Leonard Shengold MD “Soul Murder, the Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation”. Yale University Press 1989. “Soul Murder is a work of great intellectual rigour and moral beauty” Janet Malcolm.
As someone who was raped by my father starting at age 4 (and sexually abused by an uncle too) until age 14, and physically abused, and raised by a fully narcissistic mother (who denies the abuse), and trafficked by my father, and more that is too intense and horrific to name, I feel just as you described. He murdered my soul. He destroyed for life my relationship with my only sibling, my little sister, who I love so much. I live a life of pain, with glimpses of enjoyment here and there when I do things that bring me pleasure, like go to my favorite team’s baseball games.
I live in fear of most things, and in a constant state of overwhelm. I can hardly work. I do EMDR with my current therapist (I’ve had some therapists along the way that I could sue and win for malpractice) and it’s definitely helping but it’s a slow process with so many memories to deal with, and times when I just need to talk.
I am trying to learn new coping skills through a DBT group. It seems to be helping.
I know I have grown a lot from 27 years ago when I first entered therapy to deal with this crap, despite backsliding a lot due to abusive therapists.
But this Post-Traumatic Growth you’re talking about? My life continues to be about putting one foot in front of the other, just surviving from one day to the next, feeling sad and empty and lonely most of the time. There’s just not much about life for me to embrace. I’m sorry.
For me, the physical brokenness was healed but the inner emotions and soul was still bleeding but then my healing became real when I met the Suffering Savior/ the Redeemer. Spiritual growth brought healing to my soul and my Dis EASE was healed in my body and I walk now in peace and pain-free in my body. My body pain when it starts to rise again I know I need to press in closer to my Redeemer, Christ Jesus. Self-awareness and self-care and learning to fully walk in the Spirit with our Maker have been key to my health.
Heart Assisted Therapy (John Diepold) works very good also in such cases.
18 years ago in the rural area in which I live there was a very impactful youth suicide. It was the first time the human service sector had mounted a response. Then other deaths occurred and there were questions about whether the response had played a part in the next deaths. My consultancy was asked to evaluate that response.
One recommendation – to provide a process for recovery from trauma – was handed back to us.
We developed a small group program we called Leading from Within – based on the idea that growth can come from trauma and with a desire to change the negative ripple impact from the deaths into a positive ripple.
The program has just been evaluated by the University of Melbourne with very positive outcomes. The evaluation has underlined that the opportunities given for growth have been substantial. The inspiration people gained from each other in the groups assisted, and all of those who were interviewed acknowledged, the positive developments in their lives.
The participants in our program become mentors embedded within their community and are able to support and inspire others with similar traumatic experiences.
It is a central tenet in my work with people who have experienced trauma, to see within the difficult and traumatic experiences, opportunities for considerable growth. It’s actually exciting to see people who are open to these possibilities and my experience is that most are.
At the time we developed the program there was not as much about the idea of Post Traumatic Growth. It’s exciting to me that there is a developing body of research about this now. There was not much known about the neuroscience of trauma then either. We have added a considerable component of Psycho-education to the program over the last 7 years. We’ve just received funding to update our website and this will be added.
I really appreciated the comments in this video and the references to other research. Thank you.
I have seen this ripple effect in ministry work with the abused. One single brave family member comes and receives help into healing and without any connection with other family members, then siblings start contacting the healed one and talk about abuse for the first time. There is something there about bringing light into darkened corners and touches a ? hope ? to start to arise in others.
Once you experience trauma it awakens you to your humanity. It reminds
us that trauma is not what happens to others . Trauma is
a possibility for us all. Trauma is a subjective personal experience which happens. It is not weakness but
the nervous system adaptive processing breaking down.
Trauma survivors can grow and use their experience to care more compassionately for others when they find meaning in their suffering.
Fiona
Trauma is not subjective. Sexual abuse or assault, threats to one’s life, child neglect even if very subtle and committed over time on a drip drip basis and experiences where there is no escape from the trauma being dealt out by others will murder the soul regardless of a person’s resilience.
Trauma destroys people’s humanity. The normal reaction is to then discharge the distress by committing the same trauma one has experienced against others. Hence the cycle of crimes against humanity is continued. One example on a large scale is the trauma of the Jewish Holicaust becoming Zionism which murders and tortures Palestinians. This is a factual comment not a racist one. Non Zionist Jews I have lived and worked with all my life and have found much to admire in their conduct and faith. Zionist I have met are extremely paranoid to a degree it is almost impossible to comprehend. Trauma survivors when treated if they survive psychically can then I agree be compassionate with others etc.
Disagree. When I experienced trauma all the years I did as a child I remember thinking having awareness that I want to be the complete opposite of that with my own family even during the horror I’m like I never ever want my kids to experience this
I would also agree with K. I believe that my recognition from a young age that I wanted to be nothing like my parents was seminal in putting me on a healing path. It nudged me towards a life of healing others rather than hurting them. Some of my friends who are trauma survivors also recognized early on that the abusive treatment was not normal and actively chose to be unlike their abusers. The awareness that something is dreadfully wrong comes to survivors at different ages, but that differentiation is crucial in determining not to pass on the abuse like evil robots.
Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish People have a right to their own self-determination in their historic homeland. It has absolutely nothing to do with Palestinians one way or the other. 99.9% of the Jews who live in Israel consider themselves Zionists, with the exception of some very ultra-Orthodox sects of Jews.
Re Holocaust survivors, you cannot make a blanket statement about 1000’s of them who live in Israel. Some are sympathetic with the Palestinians, some are not, just like the rest of the Israeli population. It may have something to do with their trauma, or it might not be related at all, as the situation with the Palestinians is very complex and goes back at least 100 years.
Erica Merrit: the unconscious has no sense of time which is why you felt st in
the past. We have to make friends with our unconscious and understand how it sabotaged our lives
by allowing all the traumas of our lives to live with us in
the present. All of the cells in the body physically carry out traumas until we get help for them. This is why psychotherapy is becoming much more body work oriented – the Central Nervous System cannot distinguish between the physical and the emotional. Descartes was wrong. The mind body paradigm has moved on.
I agree with comment below that the vides presentation told us nothing at all.
I can only speak from personal experience. I grew up with a lot of violence and was an adult of almost 40 before I started to see the violence as violence and started to feel how it had negatively affected me… Some mental health professionals started to tell me to look at trauma and one told me I needed to get trauma treatment.
Soon after that I was living in Nepal for the major earthquake that happened here two years ago and the extremely difficult year that followed here. Because there was a major disaster here.. all these trauma modalities came here with the aid work etc. I started to learn about trauma and how it affects that brain, symptoms etc. I started to recognise a lot of the signs. I learned that so many behaviour patterns of mine that I didn’t like and wanted to change were actually normal for someone who had my childhood. You could say that I was normal for my life experience. That was actually quite liberating. I stopped focusing on the patterns and focused more on being kind to myself.
I have been learning a lot about trauma for the last two years in other ways. I sense that I became stuck in the traumatic experiences of my childhood, my body was reacting as if time stood still, as if I am still in the situation of my childhood, but I have watched Nepal, the land, the people, the country slowly recover, slowly rebuild and it is life in progress, life in motion. I have witnessed major trauma AND recovery. There is movement. There is a continued motion, not a stopping, not a stuckness.
I have also recently taken in two kittens and I watch them get beaten up by a local stray cat from time to time. I can feel traumatised and don’t want them to ever go back out. But they bounce back and want to go out the next day. They are weary but they keep going out there.. and as the get older it seems to happen less and less.
Thank you.
A passage from Jac O’Keeffe”trauma… go see someone and get it out, find a way to heal that old
garbage … Everything that is in your system that is
protecting you because of your story, is only a trick of the ego to keep
the sense of I alive(the story alive)… Trauma will bring you out of
pure consciousness. It is never necessary to leave pure consciousness to protect
yourself. There is only this exquisite pure consciousness, the rest is
bullshit that you are running. Trauma becomes a back up plan for the mind to
survive. WHAT WAS IT THAT PULLED US OUT SO QUICKLY? Take note of it and work on it. THE THINGS THAT
PULL US OUT, they are movie MAKING MATERIAL FOR YOU to refer to that
we do not even have to think about BECAUSE TRAUMA IS SOMETHING THAT WILL COME
IN FROM A PRIMITIVE PART OF YOUR MIND QUICKLY…shovel the conditioning
out.”
I believe all adversity we meet in life offers us an opportunity for growth—or the opposite, if one is so inclined.
I also believe it comes out of making meaning of the experience and seeing choice.
I think there is a profound correlation between meaning, happiness and Trauma resolution. We had a client that had a terrible accident and had hurt her back so badly that she could barely sit for more than a couple of minutes. When we did are diagnostic we found out that she was stuck in a story of betrayal that, if you believe in other lifetimes originated 2000 years ago. We discovered that she was a general who had agreed to fight another General as opposed to having their two armies fight. She felt nonchalant and arrogant about this as the general. Because of this, she lost the fight was pushed over and was stabbed in the back. Her dying thought was that she had betrayed her people.
The story of her trauma in this lifetime was that she was supposed to be watching a group of children. She was sort of nonchalant about her responsibilities and looked up and saw that one of the Children looked like he was in danger of drowning. She raced in after him, got knocked over by a wave, and hit her back on a rock. She had been basically incapacitated ever since. When she found the story of her betrayal and resolved it she felt a new sense of lightness and meaning and her story explains so much that had happened in her life. Also, she sat down because she was tired after our session and started talking with the people were at the demonstration. After over an hour, she realized all of her back pain had gone away. I kept in touch with this woman and she had had no back pain up to a month later.
I have also found that (past) life regression has helped many with emotional and physical pain
Like the work of Brian Weiss & Dolores Canon. It is important to have the mind, body, soul connection.
Many have lived thru trauma and horror. I’m glad there are so many modalities and methods to help the individual. I enjoy learning new ways to help
my experience is that trauma can create a link to a similar past life experience, particularly one that resulted in death in the past life. It is possible (but not necessary) to heal the past life trauma, just as is done with the currently life. but since we have (apparently) millions of past lives, this process can repeat and continue for a long time, However, if you just resolve the current life trauma, that will break the link to the past, and there’s no need to do anything else.