HELP FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT TRAUMA

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Dr. Patricia Hunter's Blog

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ”  Martin Luther King Jr.

There has been a lot of publicity in the media this week about sexual assault.Numerous celebrities  involved in the film industry have spoken publicly for the first time about the issue.  They cite shame, fear of being demonized, fear of losing their jobs, their reputation, their family and friends,  as well as   fear of being retraumatized  as the reason for their silence,  They want to forget about it, move on from it, ignore it so it does not disempower them further.  But this week something new happened.   There truly is safety in numbers and the numbers are continuing to grow.

Speaking publicly or with people we trust is a very good first step for many of us.  At the same…

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The Gift of Fear(Speaking of Trauma)

Dr. Patricia Hunter's Blog

In his book THE GIFT OF FEAR Gavin De Becker quotes the writer Joseph Campbell:

“Technology is not going to save us.  Our computers, our tools, our machines, are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being.” De Becker goes on to say:

“I’ve seen many times that after the shock of violence has begun to heal, victims will be carried in their minds back to that hallway  or parking lot, back to the sights, smells and sounds, back to the time when they still had choices, before they fell under someone’s malevolent control, before they refused the gift of fear.  Often they will say about some particular detail, “I realize this now, but I didn’t know it then.” Of course, if it is in their heads now, so was it then.  What they mean is that they only now accept the significance.  This has taught…

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DO YOU HAVE ‘Fear of Aging?’

Aging is traumatic.  I am not talking about physically.  Of course as we age our bodies and mind change, just as they do when we become  toddlers from infants,  children from toddlers, teenagers from children, and adults from adolescence.  Developmental stages are part of life. But in our culture as a whole, we are not prepared, psychologically, for aging.  “It’s hell to get old” is something I heard at times from my parents.  They were sort of kidding and sort of not,  But I got the message   Until we are at least 60, we see people older as old, not us,  and once we become older, for many of us it is a difficult reality  to integrate.   Prejudice among older people is stronger than prejudice among all other  minority groups.  The desire to avoid older people is very strong among the elderly.  I am not speaking for everybody, and you might disagree, but Becca Levy PhD, a professor at Yale, has conducted  many studies  showing this result.  She has a pet peeve about the phrase ‘senior moment’ because of her passion for stopping aging  prejudice.  With her research in mind, I am suggesting that because of this aging prejudice, aging can be traumatic for many of us.  Our views of being older can be drenched in outworn and hostile beliefs towards aging that we eventually turn on ourselves, with very bad results.  The way we see aging has a huge effect on us.  And so the trauma technique EMDR, which is useful for treating people for all sorts of trauma, can be useful for those of us with destructive stereotypes towards aging.  Despite our intellectual awareness that it is wrong to view aging as negative, we can still hold fear filled memories in our mind we have accumulated over our lifetime, that can depress us and sabotage our self esteem.    We can help our brain to become ‘unstuck’ by using EMDR-which transforms images, memories, beliefs we are not even conscious of but which are there nonetheless,   to tap into more balanced and adaptive ways to see ourselves and our older peers.  How many times  have I heard my older female friends say that they don’t want to date and have to take care of  ‘an old guy’ – and they feel no apology whatsoever  for their prejudice.  And yet, it IS prejudice and it is self defeating  to view our fellow human beings in this devaluing and contemptuous way.    So if you are suffering from your own form of prejudice because you have had the opportunity to actually GROW older, please consider  getting help for yourself from any qualified EMDR therapist.   If you find your days filled with painful thoughts like “I hate my wrinkles”,  “It’s too late for ___ or _____” ,   “God that so and so actor looks awful”  “My warranty has run out” you can change this!  I have a handsome, talented male friend who uses that last phrase all the time, and I see him apologizing often for the fact that he is over 70, despite the fact that he is fit and funny.    But his attitude  is, sadly, not  that unusual.  So please read the following article (here it it) and google Becca Levy PhD if you want to learn more about someone who champions respect for ourselves at any age.

HELP FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT TRAUMA

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. ”  Martin Luther King Jr.

 

 

There has been a lot of publicity in the media this week about sexual assault.Numerous celebrities  involved in the film industry have spoken publicly for the first time about the issue.  They cite shame, fear of being demonized, fear of losing their jobs, their reputation, their family and friends,  as well as   fear of being retraumatized  as the reason for their silence,  They want to forget about it, move on from it, ignore it so it does not disempower them further.  But this week something new happened.   There truly is safety in numbers and the numbers are continuing to grow.

Speaking publicly or with people we trust is a very good first step for many of us.  At the same time, speaking up can overwhelm us if we have not had a chance to work on our trauma in a visceral, imagistic way as well as a verbal   way with someone we trust.   Most trauma affects us in non verbal and profoundly intense ways that talk therapy can address through dream work depending on the training of our therapist.   And dream work is superb, but many of us have divided ourselves into different parts that hold different aspects of the trauma, so that we can compartmentalize it. Again, seeing a therapist trained to help us with our compartmentalized selves can truly help. And fragmenting ourselves originally (saying it didn’t happen to me- it happened to my little girl)  is a good short term strategy to protect us from falling completely apart.  But without help, that compartmentalization can continue indefinitely. We feel not quite alive, removed or detached from our past, bitter, in danger of feeling flooded, and at risk of using alcohol and drugs to try to connect with our actual emotions.

 

EMDR is an evidenced based, well researched technique for helping people with trauma. Sexual assault falls into that category and if you think you might want to explore what happened to you in a powerful new way,  you might want to consider EMDR-click on the following link that says ‘below is more information’ to read one survivors experience using EMDR to help her resolve her sexual assault.  . Below is more information.

Why do we dream? What is EMDR like?

“In waking life, our conscious thinking is, to a very large extent, limited by sequential, cause-and-effect, secondary process logic.  In our dream-life, we are able to engage in a far more profound type of thinking.  In dreaming, one is “able to imagine with a freedom..{one} does not have in waking”(Borges, 1980,p.34).  We are able, while dreaming, to view a situation from many points of view (and points in time) simultaneously. A single feature or situation in a dream may encompass a lifetime of experiences-both real and imagined-with one or with many people.  The dreamer has the opportunity to rework the situation – to try it this way and that way, to view it from this perspective and that perspective, separately and together.  The dreamer brings to bear upon his rendering of an emotional situation in a dream the most primitive and the most mature aspects of himself, and most importantly, these aspects of the self talk to one another in a mutually transformative way.”  (Ogden, 2009, p.9)

EMDR is a trauma technique many clinicians use in their work to help patients work through difficult situations.  Some trauma is ‘big T’-meaning catastrophic, and some trauma is ‘little T’ meaning upsetting, cumulative but not literally involving life and death.  EMDR involves evoking memories and images in a way that is like dreaming. That’s why it’s so profound.  If you like dreaming you will like EMDR.  And you will benefit from engaging in a type of thinking that involves your brain in a lively and fascinating dialogue.http://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/

To Victims of Violence Everywhere

Sometimes a picture and a poem capture the essence of an event  better than news reports and analysis of the gunman’s motives, his mental health history and so on. 

Death Be Not Proud – Poem by John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne

Form: Sonnet