stress – Page 14 – TFT Trauma Relief

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.

Relieving the Smell of War

The Smell of War

By Suzanne M. Connolly, MFT, LCSW

The Gulf War was a short war and a war with few Allied casualties. And yet one young soldier, we’ll call him “Gary,” left a large part of himself back in the large flat desert to the North of Kuwait.

He wanted that part of himself back.

The war was officially over. The multitude of invading tanks and infantry had retreated and formed a long contiguous line stretching from the North of Kuwait and into Iraq. The tanks had been disabled, most burned by the Allied Forces beyond recognition. The bulldozers had plowed the Iraqi tanks into trenches, sometimes inadvertently burying live Iraqi soldiers, still entombed in their sandy graves, arms sticking up here and there from the sand.

Gary’s job was to bury the dead. Cleanup duty.

The sight of charred Iraqi bodies and eyes still staring out from burned corpses haunted him. But even more, it was the smell of charred flesh he remembered most. It was a smell that wouldn’t leave him.

It had been over a year and Gary was still paralyzed by the sights and especially the smells of war. He was not available to his wife. He was not available to his two small children. And work was not going well.

Gary numbed the sights and smells with the bottle when possible, providing his only relief but causing even more problems in his life. It was the only form of relief he could find, despite some attempts at therapy.

Gary thought that the idea of tapping while he focused on the sights and smells frozen in his memory was a little crazy, but he was willing to try anything. As we tapped, Gary reported that the visual memories began to fade and seemed far away and lost their charge.

The smells from the past that seemed to permeate his world in the present didn’t go away as easily. But they, too, eventually disappeared with more TFT. Soon Gary was present to his family and doing well at work, no longer haunted by the sights and smells left behind in the desert.

He was finally home.

Excerpted from Callahan Techniques’ latest book, The Tapping
Solution: Tapping the Body’s Energy Pathways

Update on TFT for Earthquake Survivors in Japan

By Ayame Morikawa, Ph.D., TFT-VT, TFT-RCT

The Japanese Association for TFT continuously supports the victims in the North of Japan.

We offer workshops in public and cooperate with medical institutes, public offices, and other parties.

The people in the area are very sensitive to the words of “trauma”, “PTSD”or even “Psychological” problems. It may come from our cultural spirit of Chivalry that we should not mar the pleasure or the serenity of another by expression of our sorrow or pain and that we should try to attain our mind level at the highest good.

We as professionals are very careful dealing with their emotions and pride to offer the best support for them.

Rwandan Orphans Project Recommendation

This letter was written by the director of the Rwandan Orphans Project in support of the upcoming TFT project in Uganda, a collaborative humanitarian mission between the USA-based TFT Foundation, the U.K. ATFT Foundation, and the Mats Uldal Humanitarian Foundation, Norway.

The project will follow the TFT Foundation’s large-scale model for trauma relief which includes giving humanitarian relief through TFT and training local leaders in TFT so that they can continue the work after the relief teams have left. The project will also include a 3rd TFT/PTSD study, as well as a TFT/malaria study led by Dr. Howard Robson.

If you would like to help us promote world peace and relief from suffering through the upcoming Uganda project, you may donate by clicking here. However much you can help is greatly appreciated.

TFT Between Children

Trauma When a School Prank Goes Awry

by Lionel Mandy, JD, MBA, MSW

In one of my many professional capacities, I act as a volunteer mediator. This work is both interesting and rewarding to me. The program for which I mediate involves first- and second-time juvenile offenders—ages 7 to 17. Mediation brings the victim and offender together in a non-court setting. The process gives the victim the opportunity to confront the offender with the financial, emotional, physical, and other effects that resulted from his or her offense.

The result of the process, when successful, is that the victim receives some form of restitution which the victim and offender agree to. The benefits are that the offender can reframe their priorities and choose a different life path. My work as the mediator is to guide the parties toward a mutual agreement—and to structure the process so that all parties are respected, honest, and focused on the issues at hand.

A few weeks back, I took part in such a mediation in South Los Angeles. The victim was Continue reading “TFT Between Children”