grief – Page 11 – TFT Trauma Relief

Healing Birth Trauma with TFT

by Pia Cowley, RN, RM, TFT-Adv & Lianne Schwartz, RM, TFT-Adv

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

Current research in the US and Australia has found that around 1:3 women experience at least one symptom of trauma following birth, with around 1.5-6% developing full blown post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Con- sidering the numbers of women giving birth every day, the potential for trauma is vast.

Birth trauma, in this context, refers to symptoms of PTSD rather than physical trauma to woman or infant from the process of birth (though these may play their own part in the traumatic experience). Birth trauma is frequently misdiagnosed, and mistreated, as postnatal depression.

Birth trauma has countless ongoing negative effects: disruption to the parent-infant bond, reduced rates of breast- feeding (and the long term health implications of this), depression in partners, higher rates of divorce, higher rates of subsequent infertility in woman, and reduced emotional adjustment and cognitive/neurological development in children. One woman describes her journey after birth:

I knew something wasn’t right…everyone seemed to be ignoring the trauma of my birth. Inside my head I was screaming, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME?? AM I OK?? AM I OK???.” And outside my head, I was waiting for someone, anyone, to acknowledge what a horrific thing I’d just been through. Continue reading “Healing Birth Trauma with TFT”

Helping Soldiers Adjust to Civilian Life

Soldiers Return with Invisible Wounds

by Genie Joseph, MFA

Soldiers are prepared for combat operational stress. The Army has drilled them, trained them, polished them.

What happens when they come home and have to adjust to the “surreal” world of civilian life? Once you have lived next to life and death as your daily reality, and perhaps gotten so familiar with the stress of combat operations, returning to mundane life can make everything feel out of whack.

Retuning warriors often feel out of sync with family or civilian life, after what they’ve experienced. With prolonged exposure to high-stress, the brain may actually adapt to this lifestyle of danger — so that danger brain messages feel normal. The harder part of what they’ve experienced may be coming home!

I teach classes in media and communication at Chaminade University in Honolulu, which offers classes on all the military bases. I work with all branches of the military, as well as their spouses.

Many students walk into class in high states of stress. While I am not a therapist, and I don’t do any treatment or diagnosis, as a teacher I need to make sure that students are fully functioning and engaged, in order to make the classroom experience as positive as possible.

Sometimes students come to class after just hearing traumatic news, witnessing something terrible or even have just been a part of something very disturbing. Continue reading “Helping Soldiers Adjust to Civilian Life”

Relieving Senior’s Trauma from Financial Scam

Financial Scam Causes Shame for This Senior
by Mary Lou Dobbs

I call my mother every day. One particular day was different. My 85-year-old mother let slip a comment: “Pretty soon I will be able to take care of all the grandkids in my will.” I asked, “What do you mean, Mom?”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m not ready to talk about it right now.” An alarm went off, and I was like a firefighter heading to a blaze.

My parents are on a small fixed income. They, like most loving grandparents, have spent years bailing out grandchildren, choosing to sacrifice their own needs.

I knew how precious little they had. I reminded my mother that I had provided her with an 800 number so her calls to me are always free and asked her to tell me more when she felt ready.

Two days later the bombshell exploded: “Hi, this is Mom. Now I feel ready to tell you that I won six million dollars, but I have to send money to some third-world country by Monday in order to claim my prize.” Continue reading “Relieving Senior’s Trauma from Financial Scam”

TFT After Mom’s Death

“Thank you for providing me the TFT tools & protocols to overcome the trauma I recently experienced regarding my Moms sudden death and for preparing me for my Fathers heart surgery this coming Monday. TFT has made the fear, rage, guilt, & deep sense of loss I felt prior to using the TFT tools easier for be able to process and reach a feeling of total acceptance & healing.”

TFT Relief After Decades of Flashbacks

Like Acupuncture for the Mind

By Michelle (Miki) Butterworth

Having regressed to my life as a 4-year-old—crouched, screaming and fighting off imaginary blows—I was hospitalized for the second time in 10 years. The first time, I had been released after four days as the safety of the hospital had brought me out of abreaction (the reliving of events as if happening at the present moment), and my functions returned to normal.

This second time though, the flood gates opened and spilled over my years of insistent denial. The physical, sexual and psychological traumas of childhood poured forth.

Many devoted healthcare professionals worked with me over the next 20 years. Blessed breakthroughs did come in the way of integrating the past with the present and changes in the way I acted out that pathology.

However, after trying every new therapy for PTSD that came along—the night terrors, flashbacks and regressions continued.

After retiring to Sedona Arizona, and though living a wonderfully rewarding lifestyle, I still suffered from PTSD. Just seeing something familiarly violent on a television show might trigger days of dissociation, self mutilation (the act of inflicting pain on self by cutting) and regressions.

Having learned over the years that PTSD symptoms are never completely eliminated, I dealt with these episodes as they came by staying recluse for periods of time. After one recurrent triggering event left me suicidal, I again sought help from the mental health community.

I was introduced to a therapist who, after listening to my story, asked if I would be willing to try an unconventional therapy that involved tapping on points of the body while recalling the trauma. I politely told her, “NO!”

Spiritually devoted and as open a person as I am, I was not going to spend time and money on some ‘Sedona Woo-Woo’ technique.

I suggested we stick with regular therapy.

Two sessions later, she mentioned she would be out of town for the next month (doing her woo-woo in some other country). Continue reading “TFT Relief After Decades of Flashbacks”

TFT, Soldiers and PTSD

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOAZoOSdW40&feature=youtube_gdata_player&rel=0]

Dr. Robert Bray discusses using TFT to aid those who suffer from PTSD.