abuse & violence – Page 11 – TFT Trauma Relief

Relieving the Trauma of Bullying

“I’ll Do Anything to Make It Stop”

“You are fat, stupid and ugly.” This is just one example of the taunting that some students endure from peers and classmates. These and other harmful statements are instances of bullying.

Bullying is a form of violence. It is negative, aggressive and unwanted behaviors intended to cause harm, hurt or humiliation to another student. It is anything that hurts another student, when things are repeatedly said or done to have power over that individual.

There are many types of bullying, including racial bullying, sexual bullying and cyber bullying. Bullying includes name calling, saying or writing derogatory comments, purposely excluding an individual from activities, spreading lies and rumors, ignoring, threatening, doing anything to make another person feel uncomfortable or scared, stealing or damaging belongings of others, kicking, hitting, slapping, and making someone do things they do not want to do.

Children handle being bullied in many different ways. Those who are bullied are subject to peer pressure. Sometimes they end up doing things they really do not want to do in order to “fit in”—hoping that the bullying will stop. Those who are bullied often feel pain, fear or hurt.

They lose self-confidence and feel lonely, scared and sad. They sometimes do not feel safe at school, at home or at play—and often have poor grades in school. They may suffer from depression, headaches, stomach aches and other health problems and they may also have thoughts of suicide. Some feel it necessary to fight or bring a gun or weapon to school to stop Continue reading “Relieving the Trauma of Bullying”

TFT Studies in Rwanda and Uganda

I’m very pleased to report that a study conducted by the TFT Foundation in 2008 has been published in this month’s issue of International Journal of Emergency Mental Health.

Connolly, S., & Sakai, C. (2012). Brief trauma intervention with Rwandan genocide survivors, using Thought Field Therapy. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 13 (3), 161-172.

I’m also pleased to announce that the TFT Foundation has recently been awarded a $5,000 grant from ACEP (Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology) to be used towards research that the Foundation will be conducting in Uganda this June: Using Thought Field Therapy to Treat Victims of Violence in Uganda. Many thanks to ACEP–and to Suzanne Connolly, MFT, LCSW, who submitted the proposal for the grant.

The TFT Foundation’s mission to Uganda is in response to a request from Father Peter Mubunga Basaliza of the Catholic Diocese of Kasese for a TFT trauma relief team to train 36 community leaders in Kasese in TFT trauma symptom reduction techniques.

The grant money will assist the TFT Foundation as it joins with the U.K. TFT Foundation and the Mats Udal Humanitarian Foundation in an effort to conduct the study in conjunction with the requested training.

The objectives of the TFT Foundation’s mission to Uganda this June are:

To continue developing and scientifically validating a model in which local community leaders can be trained to treat community members in the aftermath of large-scale disasters, especially in regions where trained professionals are scarce.
To relieve the distress of those suffering from trauma and promote Post Traumatic Growth (PTG).

Please push here if you would like to donate towards these efforts.

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

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.