Tag: violence

Awareness During Anesthesia–and TFT’s Help

AWARENESS DURING ANESTHESIA: My Personal Mission to Help Others
by Jeanette Magdalene, PhD

Published in “ATFT Update”, Issue 15, summer 2010

I’ve worked with a problem known as Awareness During Anesthesia for the last 18 years. Many people don’t know that an estimated 100 people per day, or more, will wake up during their surgery and not be able to speak, move, open their eyes, or do anything to let the doctors know they are awake! This is a frightening experience that happened to me in 1990 during my own surgery.

I woke up before the surgery even began only to find myself buried within my body that no longer worked as I knew it. The surgery began. I felt every cut of the knife, smelled and felt my flesh burning, heard everything everyone was saying and even stepped outside of my body as my heart started to go into arrest. I then viewed everything the doctor was doing to get my heart under control. I even heard the doctor say there was nothing wrong with me! He said, “Misdiagnosis, so never needed the surgery to begin with.”

The real nightmare for me began Continue reading “Awareness During Anesthesia–and TFT’s Help”

TFT Relieves 10-Year-Old Boy’s Trauma from Dog Attack

By Dick Brown, PhD (from “The Thought Field”, Vol 2, Issue 2):

Jimmy, a 10-year-old foster child, came to his first therapy session with the hesitancy, reluctance, and resistance common to this population. In an attempt to engage him, he was invited to create some pictures but stubbornly refused. I then took the pencil and started doodling upside down and unconsciously sketched a person walking a dog.

He looked at the drawing and said, “I’m afraid of dogs.” Despite having this knowledge, I asked him to tell me about it. “When I was little,” he said, “a great big Doberman pinscher attacked me. He bit me on the inside of my leg. Continue reading “TFT Relieves 10-Year-Old Boy’s Trauma from Dog Attack”

YOU Can Help Relieve Suffering from Trauma in Rwanda

In August, 2009, Dr. Caroline Sakai and Suzanne Connolly led an ATFT Foundation Trauma Relief Team to teach community leaders in Rwanda to use TFT to help their fellow Rwandans.

This training took place at the IZERE Center for Peace and Reconciliation in Byumba, and 36 community leaders were trained over a period of two days. The newly trained Rwandan therapists then treated over 200 of their countrymen and women for symptoms of trauma, and continue to do so today with the support of the ATFT Foundation.

The Foundation is completely supported by donations and has established a sponsorship program to help support the Rwandan therapists. Sponsors will be able to get personal reports, handled through the ATFT Foundation, from their adopted therapist. The cost to sponsor one full-time therapist for one year is $2000; $300 for a part-time therapist for one year; or $150 for a part-time therapist for six months. This is a powerful opportunity to make a stand for world peace!

If you’d like to sponsor a therapist, or learn more about this program, contact sheila @ atft.org. To see a summary of self-reports (translated into English) by the Rwandan therapists three months following the ATFT Foundation training team’s departure, click here.

TFT–from Trauma of Rwanda Genocide to Forgiveness & Compassion

The following is an article published in “The Thought Field”, Vol 15, Issue 2, by Caroline Sakai, PhD, TFT-VT:

Suzanne Connolly and I have been awed by the magnitude of the horrors that most of the genocide survivors endured and survived, with their resiliency, courage and perseverance. The women and men who were trained with TFT at the algorithm level were very caring, and reached out with their compassion and their newly learned TFT skills to treat very severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It was immediately apparent that many who were the oldest child survivors in their villages that were decimated in the genocide of 1994, and who took on the responsibilities of looking after the younger survivors, never had the time or energy to grieve, to mourn, to even address or note their own feelings. They came in with dissociated states and blank stares, and said they never thought about, and did not want to think about, the genocide and had never talked about their own experiences. Continue reading “TFT–from Trauma of Rwanda Genocide to Forgiveness & Compassion”

TFT Relieves Rape Trauma of Boy with Downs Syndrome

The following is an article by Nora Baladerian, PhD, TFT-Dx, from “The Thought Field” newsletter Vol. 15, Issue 3:

One day, now several years ago, I received a referral to work with a
 young man who had recently been raped. He has Downs Syndrome with severe mental retardation, and extremely limited expressive language.

Since the rape, he had been severely depressed, and had acquired a condition of severe pain upon urination. His mother had taken him to the GP, to the urologist, and several tests had been done to ascertain the cause of the pain. They found no physical source for the pain.

His countenance was down, one could almost see the draw down of 
the depression and trauma he was 
feeling. Continue reading “TFT Relieves Rape Trauma of Boy with Downs Syndrome”

TFT Relieves Severe Traumas of Rape

The following is an article by Sharon Hales, TFT-Dx, rape crisis specialist, from “The ATFT Update”, Issue 11, Spring 2009:

TFT MUCH NEEDED IN RAPE CRISIS WORK

I’ve worked full time in a rape crisis centre for 14 years, counseling women who had been raped or sexually abused. It would typically take about 1- 2 years of weekly therapy sessions for survivors of rape to reach a satisfactory level of recovery, but not a complete cure, from their trauma. For survivors of child abuse, it could take anywhere between 2 and 4 years to stabilize.

In addition to our rape therapy, many of the survivors had previously accessed psychological support through the National Health System.

Repeating The Trauma Is Cruel

Although I accepted the longevity of this work, I equally felt it was very cruel. Throughout those 14 years, I studied as many different techniques as I could, and I strove to develop resources that would speed up this process for survivors.

When I received an invitation in 2002 to train in Thought Field Therapy, I was extremely skeptical and cautious. It sounded too good to be true. But, on the other hand, Continue reading “TFT Relieves Severe Traumas of Rape”