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 Hello again, everyone.
We heard from a lot of you - on the blog, on Facebook, by email and phone - about your displeasure (if not downright outrage) at the way posttraumatic stress is being portrayed as incurable in recent AP and NYT articles, and on a couple of radio interviews, too.
It really is misinformation (well-intended but ignorant) - and you all inspired me to submit a rant on Huffington Post, which you can find here. Please check it out and add your 2 cents worth under the piece - it all adds up and has a real, cumulative impact, and that’s what we want. In fact, these pieces seem to spread out on other news feeds and blogs that are read by military and veterans organizations, and yes, even branches of the armed services. So please have at it, people! It makes a difference.
 Those who work in women’s health, as well as sophisticated health consumers, will be stoked to learn there’s a wonderful new doorstopper of a reference book out, Integrative Women's Health, edited by Victoria Maizes and Tierana Low Dog - two fabulous rock star doctor-dames who keep Andy Weil’s shop at the University of Arizona running like a top, with first rate, state-of-the-art clinical content and training.
The book is a collection of cutting edge, practical articles. There are excellent overviews framing philosophy and different systemic approaches (homeopathy, energy medicine, Chinese medicine, etc), as well as ways to address specific conditions (everything from endometriosis to fibroids; infertility to perinatal depression; breast cancer to chronic pelvic pain; urinary tract infections to headache and PMS; fibromyalgia to osteoporosis….I kid you not, they cover thefull range, in a true integration of allopathic and holistic methods. The information is wise, grounded, sophisticated and pulls from the latest research. It’s comprehensive but accessible - a sign of really good editing. So, yeah, this is a must for the library of anyone who’s serious about women’s health.
 We’ve also gotten two more new titles in the warehouse. Sylvia Boorstein’s CD, Road Sage: Mindfulness Techniques for Drivers could save you from some really bad behavior on the road. She talks about driving mindfully, meaning staying relaxed and being aware of “the magic in each moment”, even when stuck in traffic. She guides the listener-driver to work with the physical sensations and mind states that happen - like impatience, fury, helpless frustration… you know whereof I speak here. She’s got a really great voice and a comfortable, embodied, calming, compassionate, companionable presence - really good company in the virtual passenger’s seat. She tells some swell teaching stories on herself too. This could keep you from a collision or just an intractably  bad mood from your commute.
And we also now have Stephen LaBerge’s pioneer work, Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life - in the form of a 77 page softcover book, along with a CD in the back cover. This is real “how-to” content, and LeBerge, the big kahuna grand daddy of this method, knows what he’s talking about. There are both good, workable instructions and some fine trance inductions to prepare the mind for lucid dreaming - and, as many of you know, lucid dreaming has become the template for some of the more successful protocols that reduce or eliminate PTSD nightmares, as well as help people deal with the more garden variety fears and anxieties.
OK, that’s it for now. Take care and be well.
All best,
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The earlier in age the trauma occurred and the severity of the trauma determines the recovery process.
Retraumatization may trigger symptoms of the original trauma or subsequent trauma which may disable us.
Bessel van der Kolk has documented the processes in the brain of our recovery, and the difficult of our cognitive processes, particularly our verbal abilities which we struggle with.
What many of us endured as very young children were undescribable and left us speechless. This left us with delays in our verbal abilities which are observable by us under stress.
So, it's possible that those of us who were traumatized as very young children by unspeakable acts that we were unable to understand and can't find words to describe now our distress in current difficult situations, are considered disabled, as we have great difficulty expressing ourselves. Locked in by Post Traumatic Stress.