All posts tagged: trauma

Growing up, I felt stifled by my parents’ many rules. Now, I’m learning to find compassion for them

Growing up, I felt stifled by my parents’ many rules. Now, I’m learning to find compassion for them

Published by Sam

SURVIVAL INSTINCTS IN ADULTHOOD This tension followed me into adulthood, where the survival instincts I’d honed in childhood led me down a never-ending spiral of self-doubt and regret.  At work, I held back from speaking up in meetings or disagreeing with stakeholders, fearing I’d be labelled as difficult or my ideas dismissed as irrelevant or wrong. I’d watch as colleagues around me voiced thoughts similar to my own, earning the recognition or validation I secretly craved.  Even in casual conversations with friends, I often refrained from sharing my perspective, not even on trivial topics like whether Friends or The Big Bang Theory was better.  I always convinced myself that silence was easier than risking conflict – or worse, rejection. But silence comes at a cost.  Over time, the weight of everything I never said built up, and I felt increasingly resentful and misunderstood. I held my tongue, went along with everything said by everyone around me, fearful of rocking the boat. All it did was make me depressed, anxious and, in my lowest points, suicidal. …

Making Meaning After Trauma | Psychology Today

Making Meaning After Trauma | Psychology Today

Published by skeptic

Many abuse and trauma experts report that finding meaning from your experience is an essential part of the healing process, as it helps you understand how and where to heal. We talk about making meaning out of an abusive and traumatic situation, not to victim-blame or dismiss the experience, but to empower the survivor to heal despite their experience. Finding meaning does not take away from the actions or inactions of others who contributed to your trauma and it is okay to also have negative feelings about what happened to you. Fully healing from childhood trauma requires more than simply acknowledging and understanding the experience. This doesn’t mean we have to find a positive or beneficial meaning in the trauma, nor does it mean we need to believe it was good for us. Rather, it’s about coming to terms with how the trauma has shaped us, recognizing its impact, and understanding what we can do to move forward. Source: Image by Pexels from Pixabay By finding meaning, no matter how small, we take a more …

People Reveal What They Bought Themselves As Adults That They Were Denied As Kids

People Reveal What They Bought Themselves As Adults That They Were Denied As Kids

Published by skeptic

When we consider the struggles of childhood we usually think of big, difficult traumas, but it’s often the little things that we remember most.  On Reddit, people got into quite a conversation about this stuff, with users sharing how they’ve been able to make it up to their kid-selves as adults. 12 nostalgic people shared the things they’ve bought for themselves as adults that they were denied as kids: If you’re like a lot of people, you can still hear your mom saying, “No, we have ____ at home” or “Don’t ask me for anything!” every time you went into a store and just had to have that new toy or piece of candy. Every kid needs to be taught these lessons — and we’ve all witnessed what kids who’ve never been told “no” are like. But when that “no” also comes from a place of financial struggle, it can have a lasting impact. Studies have shown pretty conclusively that financial trauma is very real, and our childhood financial experiences shape us as adults. There …

Exploring Generational Trauma in Chelsea Bieker’s Madwoman

Exploring Generational Trauma in Chelsea Bieker’s Madwoman

Published by skeptic

There’s a moment early in Chelsea Bieker’s gripping new novel “Madwoman” when the protagonist Clove reflects: “The world is not made for mothers. Yet mothers made the world.” This paradox lies at the heart of Bieker’s unflinching exploration of generational trauma, domestic violence, and the lengths we’ll go to escape our pasts and protect our children. With propulsive intensity, Bieker plunges us into Clove’s carefully constructed life in Portland, Oregon—a life built on lies and reinvention, but also on an aching desire for safety and normalcy. When a letter arrives from Clove’s long-imprisoned mother Alma, it threatens to unravel everything she’s worked so hard to build. As Clove’s carefully maintained facade begins to crack, we’re taken on a harrowing journey through her traumatic childhood in Hawaii, her desperate escape, and her struggle to forge a new identity and break free from the cycle of violence that has defined her family for generations. A Masterful Portrait of Trauma and Its Aftermath Bieker, whose previous works include the critically acclaimed “Godshot” and story collection “Heartbroke,” proves herself …

Trauma Here, Trauma There, Trauma, Trauma Everywhere!

Trauma Here, Trauma There, Trauma, Trauma Everywhere!

Published by skeptic

The English word trauma originates from the ancient Greek word τραῦμα, referring to the appearance of physical wounds that show twisting, bruising, piercing distortions. It became embedded in the English language in the late seventeenth century, and during the late 1880s, its meaning was extended by Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) to refer to psychological wounds. In the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders, published in 1952, emotional trauma was completely absent. Andrew Scull (2023), who has studied trauma as a kind of “fashion,” has detailed the long process through which it became so important to American psychiatry. Chaim Shatan (1972) of New York University invented the term post-Vietnam syndrome to refer to delayed appearance of distressing emotional symptoms in soldiers who had fought there. Robert Lifton of Harvard insisted that the symptoms of psychological damage afflicting soldiers could emerge many years later after such an injury. Their advocacy produced the inclusion of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by the APA as a diagnostic category in 1980, …

Who do teachers turn to in times of political trauma? – Evidence & Policy Blog

Who do teachers turn to in times of political trauma? – Evidence & Policy Blog

Published by skeptic

Mariah Kornbluh, Amanda Davis, Alyssa Hadley Dunn and Kristina Brezicha This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Exploring the role of evidence-based educational resources and brokering in the wake of political trauma’. On 6th January 2021, thousands of people descended upon the US Capitol to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the US presidential election. Televised acts of physical violence were broadcast across the nation and many children were watching. Within hours of the attack, educators were ‘floundering’, trying to figure out if and how they would discuss what happened with their students the next day. Take for example, a Social Studies Subject Coordinator in Florida: Kids come into school looking for answers. What does that mean? I’m like, ‘alright, what do we got?’ Because teachers were going to come to me, and I feel it was important that as a district person, we provide support. My superintendent said, ‘we’re not mentioning it.’ I was like, ‘We gotta do something, we gotta do something. If we just put out a …

How I found happiness after trauma

How I found happiness after trauma

Published by skeptic

Charlie Webster, 41, has lived shoulder-to-shoulder with trauma her whole life.  She grew up in Sheffield in the nineties, raised by a teenage mother in an abusive household and was sexually abused by her athletics coach when she was 18. Despite a difficult start, Charlie went on to pursue a career in television: “I was very much motivated by the fact that I felt like I never had a voice,” she tells HELLO!  The effects of her traumatic childhood came to haunt her when she became critically ill in 2016 and ended up in a coma. In that state, she relived memories from her past that she’d previously suppressed: “Everything that had happened to me was sat inside me with so much pain,” she recalled.   Following work with a psychologist, Charlie came to terms with what had happened to her and created a documentary about her experience, Nowhere to Run: Abused by our coach, which led to a change in UK law.   WATCH: Nowhere to Run – Abused by our Coach trailer It …

When Forgiveness Can Be Detrimental to Trauma Recovery

When Forgiveness Can Be Detrimental to Trauma Recovery

Published by skeptic

Boonyachoat/ iStock Even though, in many ways, the narrative of forgiveness sides with the abuser rather than the victim, in Western culture, it is advertised as a prerequisite for trauma recovery. Many therapeutic techniques, mindfulness, guided meditation practices, spiritual, and religious teachings revolve around this idea. However, putting the responsibility of healing on the victim and requiring them to subscribe to feelings that they may not have can cause re-traumatization. The phenomenon of “forgive and forget” becomes increasingly complex in familial trauma. As our society puts the family on a pedestal, deeming it sacred, those who have been neglected or abused within their families feel marginalized, broken, and rejected. The glorification of the family unit adds to the torment of the victim. When the person is unable or unwilling to find compassion and forgiveness for those who have hurt them, they may succumb to shame. As a trauma therapist with two decades of experience, I have yet to see evidence that forgiveness actually leads to healing and there is scholarly evidence it does not (Mills …

In Africa, the trauma from climate disasters

In Africa, the trauma from climate disasters

Published by skeptic

A man removes materials from an area flooded after torrential rains in Nairobi’s Mathare district, April 25, 2024. LUIS TATO / AFP After the worst drought in four decades, torrential rains hit Kenya, plunging vast parts of the country into chaos. On Monday, April 29, the bursting of a natural dam in the foothills of Old Kijabe, some 100 km northwest of Nairobi, claimed 45 lives, bringing the national death toll to 120. Material damage was considerable: broken bridges, washed-out roads, destroyed houses… Some 200,000 people have been affected by the floods, according to provisional figures. Read more Subscribers only Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia hit by unprecedented floods In neighboring Tanzania, the situation is just as dramatic. Coastal areas and the economic capital, Dar es Salaam, are partly underwater. The government has counted 155 victims. Further north, Lake Tanganyika – the continent’s second-largest freshwater body – and its tributaries are overflowing. Nearly 100,000 people in Burundi have been displaced. Everywhere, the same scenes of desolation are seen, with stunned families who, in the space of …

Misophonia severity tied to higher stress and trauma, study shows

Misophonia severity tied to higher stress and trauma, study shows

Published by José

A study examining individuals suffering from misophonia revealed that those with more severe symptoms tend to report higher levels of general and traumatic stress. Furthermore, hyperarousal — a symptom associated with post-traumatic stress disorder — was linked to the severity of misophonia. The research was published in PLOS One. Misophonia is a sound intolerance disorder characterized by intense negative emotional and physiological responses to specific, quite ordinary sounds. The sounds that trigger such reactions are often commonplace noises such as chewing, breathing, or keyboard typing. People with misophonia may react to such sounds with irritation, disgust, or even rage, leading to significant distress and avoidance behaviors. They may take actions to avoid the sounds or become physically or verbally aggressive towards the person(s) causing the sound. The exact causes of misophonia are not well understood, but it is thought to involve auditory processing abnormalities combined with emotional regulation issues. Studies indicate that stress might be one of the causes of over-responsivity to sound, such as the one found in misophonia. A study on rats indicated …