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Journey Through Trauma: A Trail Guide to the 5-Phase Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma - Hardcover

Schmelzer PhD, Gretchen L.

 
9780735216839: Journey Through Trauma: A Trail Guide to the 5-Phase Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0735216835 ISBN 13: 9780735216839
Verlag: Avery, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

For survivors of PTSD and repeated, relational trauma -- and the people who love them.

Gretchen Schmelzer watched too many people quit during treatment for trauma recovery. They found it too difficult or too frightening or just decided that for them it was too late. But as a therapist and trauma survivor herself, Dr. Schmelzer wants us to know that it is never too late to heal from trauma, whether it is the suffering caused within an abusive relationship or PTSD resulting from combat. Sometimes what feels like a big setback is actually an unexpected difficult step forward. So she wrote Journey Through Trauma specifically for survivors--to help them understand the terrain of the healing process and stay on the path.
There are three basic principles that every trauma survivor should know: Healing is possible. It requires courage. And it cannot be done alone. Traumas that happen more than once--child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, gang violence, even war--are all relational traumas. They happened inside a relationship and therefore must be healed inside a relationship, whether that relationship is with a therapist or within a group.
Journey Through Trauma gives us a map to help guide us through that healing process, see where the hard parts show up, and persevere in the process of getting well. We learn the five phases that every survivor must negotiate along the way and come to understand that since the cycle of healing is not linear, circling back around to a previous stage does not mean defeat - it actually means progress as well as facing new challenges.
Authoritative and accessible, Journey Through Trauma provides support for survivors and their loved ones through one of the most challenging but necessary processes of healing that anyone can face.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, trained as a Harvard Medical School Fellow. She is a trauma survivor who has worked for twenty-five years with the complex issues of trauma, integration, and behavior change across every level, from individuals to groups to large systems and countries. She has worked with individuals and groups in large clinics and clinics in housing projects, in residential treatment facilities, in psychiatric units and medical hospital units, and in private practice. She has more than a decade of experience working with traumatized children and adolescents in residential treatment and psychiatric units. She is the founder and editor of The Trail Guide, a web-mag featured on www.gretchenschmelzer.com dedicated to healing repeated trauma.

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Dear Reader,

There are so many things I want you to know. I want you to know that healing from trauma is possible. I want you to understand how being hurt, how living through trauma, how the difficult act of survival has affected you. I want you to know how all the things you did to survive and protect yourself have saved your life and how they may also now be robbing you of the life you could live. How they could be robbing you of your ability to do the work you want to do in the way you want to do it. How they could be robbing you of your important relationships with the people you love and who love you. And most especially robbing you of a relationship with yourself: of any kindness or compassion toward yourself. I want you to understand this because understanding how trauma has impacted you helps you know why the hard work of healing is worth it.
 
I want you to know that healing is possible regardless of how long it has taken you to get here. No matter when you come to healing, it is possible. I know that many of you think that it isn’t. I know you believe that it is too late. But actually, it’s never too late. However old or young you are, healing is possible. Our brains are malleable and they continue to grow throughout our lives. The brain’s ability to grow is what allowed for our survival, and that same plasticity allows for our healing. It will take work. It will take help. It will take practice and persistence. It may involve tears, sadness, anger, and frustration. But it is possible.
 
I want you to understand how trauma works—how it impacts brains and bodies. I want you to understand the genius of our brains and bodies for survival. For getting us through. I want you to understand the mechanisms of trauma because understanding them will help you understand yourself, and will help you know what to expect in the process of healing. I want you to understand how trauma works so that when you catch yourself doing certain things, your attitude isn’t mean or judgmental—but instead you think to yourself: Of course, this is what I do. And then you have the ability to say: What else can I do? Understanding how it all works gives you a solid platform from which to grow and leap and try new things.
 
I want you to understand that all that turmoil that can happen inside you makes sense. You aren’t crazy. This is just what happens when you survive trauma. That doesn’t mean that what you are feeling feels good, or how you are behaving is necessarily the best thing for you or is supporting your relationships. It means that what you are feeling and how you are acting makes sense in the context of surviving trauma.
 
I want you to understand that all trauma is not the same. It can look like it if you are trying to find information on the Internet. If you look up post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) you will find a list of symptoms and a set of recommendations. But it is not all the same. Just as physical trauma is not all the same. If you were run over by a car, there couldn’t possibly be a standard protocol for your healing. It would entirely depend on how the car hit you—did it break your arm or leg? Cause a head injury? Internal bleeding? And psychological trauma is no different. Trauma is the very definition of something being utterly shattered. And what gets shattered differs for each person.
 
And I especially want you to understand what I call repeated trauma. This is the trauma that happens more than once. There is a big difference between the trauma that happens one time, like a car accident, and the trauma that gets repeated. If you are in a car accident, a whole host of responses are expected from any onetime trauma. When a traumatic event happens once, humans are generally spurred into action by their biology—a huge release of adrenaline that makes you ready to fight, ready to act, and that sharpens your memory of the event so you can remember it clearly to protect yourself from it in the future.
 
But what if instead you were in a car accident every day for years? It sounds crazy—a car accident every day for years—but this is exactly what it is like when traumatic acts are continually repeated, as they are for people who live through war, or child abuse, or sexual abuse, or domestic violence, or gang violence. When trauma gets repeated we have a different set of reactions. Our human physiology is built for efficiency. Traumatic events require a lot of energy. Our brains and bodies tell us that we can’t afford that much energy and attention. So if trauma gets repeated, instead of gearing up, we go numb. When a smoke alarm goes off in your house once, you pay attention; if it goes off every day, then you cut the wires or pull the battery so you don’t have to hear it anymore. Going numb is the trauma equivalent of pulling the battery on the smoke alarm. Going numb serves the important purpose of allowing us to go on with our lives. It is what allows soldiers to keep fighting, and survivors in war zones to keep living. It is what allows abused children to keep going to school. It keeps you from taking in each new act of violence. It protects you from the extremes of emotion that could affect your memory, your health, and your safety. It is the emergency response system that your body automatically employs when trauma gets repeated—hunkering down so you can conserve energy.
 
So, repeated trauma isn’t just about what happened to you. It is also about how you survived it. It is about how you protected yourself from the years of it. In order to understand why it is so hard to heal from trauma, it is important to understand that repeated trauma is really three aspects of trauma that combine to make up what we call repeated trauma. The first aspect of repeated trauma is what did happen—the experiences
of terror and helplessness that you remember. The second aspect of repeated trauma is what aided survival—the protections you created to survive the trauma, the ways that you shut down or geared up or escaped. And the third aspect of repeated trauma is what didn’t happen—the growth and development you missed because you were surviving being hurt, the help you didn’t get, the conversations you didn’t learn to have, the skills of everyday life that you missed learning. Healing from trauma requires you to work with and repair all three.
 
I also want you to know that no one heals alone. You will need to find help in order to heal. This book is a way to understand the impact of trauma that you lived through, how you protected yourself, and what you missed in your growth. It is a way to understand the impact of what happened to you and how you may be still living as if the trauma could still get you, as if it were still happening. But this is not a self-help book. This is a how-to-understand-and-use-help book. It is a what-to-expect-from-trauma-treatment book. This book demands that you get help, but it also provides the information you need to feel empowered and secure in your helping relationship.
 
Understanding trauma is not enough to heal it. Healing from trauma requires leaning your weight on the support of a therapeutic relationship in order to let the traumatized parts of yourself heal. If you broke your leg and didn’t use crutches to take your weight off the broken leg, you couldn’t properly heal the break. It is the same with trauma. Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole...

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Verlag
Avery
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0735216835
ISBN 13 
9780735216839
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
GS1 Slovakia
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