Posts Tagged ‘Michele Rosenthal’
Mental Health Monday: Announcing August’s CELEBRATING THE JOY OF SURVIVAL TELESEMINAR
Celebrating the Joy of Survival: Coping with Trauma Anniversaries
…will be the first event of its kind to allow survivors to come together in a live virtual format and trade ideas and suggestions for how to deal with difficult dates.
I have been asked, and am honored, to participate in a wonderful roundtable TELESEMINAR with MICHELE ROSENTHAL at HEAL MY PTSD, LLC. August 31st is her trauma anniversary and the day she will be launching her book Before the World Intruded: A Memoir About Trauma, Survival, Identity, and the Pursuit of Joy. She has asked me as well as the following other 3 speakers to participate in a panel discussion on trauma, recovery, and dealing with trauma anniversaries. I am truly honored to be a part of this event and with such esteemed and passionate co-panelists. As a trauma survivor, a therapist, and a believer in everyone’s capacity to not just survive life but thrive at living I think this groundbreaking event is a beautiful thing. To find joy out of sadness and brokenness, to be able to celebrate what once was a point of darkness, and to be able to speak one’s experience out loud to help others. I hope this event will be just the precipice, the beginning of a new way to conceptualize trauma anniversaries. Empowering. Strengthening. Reflective. Reverent. Beautiful.
The next few Mondays I will be discussing trauma and healing as a primer for this wonderful virtual roundtable event!
John W. Fisher, DC
Dr. Fisher served in the U.S. Army with the 4th Infantry Division, Vietnam, in 1968 at the age of 20. One year later, he returned home appalled, angry and unbeknownst to himself, stripped of his own identity. The sport of surfing and later discovering his professional desire in chiropractic kept his shattered perspectives on life “alive,” but he knew he was different. After a twenty-year marriage dissolved, he began his search for healing, using the same model that had been successful in his Wholistic chiropractic practice — heal by correcting the cause of the disorder without treating the symptoms.
Psychological counseling was important in this process and led him to become an author of two novels: “Angels in Vietnam” and “Not Welcome Home.” He has traveled back to Vietnam several times and now leads trips through Soldier’s Heart initiative, an organization founded by Dr. Ed Tick, author of “War and the Soul.” The latter writing was the icing on the cake for John’s healing venture of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Dr. Tick redefines the disorder to read post-terror soul distress, or estrangement of one’s soul or identity during trauma and leads his readers to understand why it happens and how to get it back. Dr. Fisher is now the Senior Veterans Liaison for Soldier’s Heart and travels nationally to speak of the methodologies necessary to heal PTSD. For more information about Drs. Fisher and Tick, please review the following websites: www.johnwesleyfisher.com,www.soldiersheart.net
CPL Eric Cox
US Marine Corps combat veteran CPL COX is not a hero. He’s an average American who joined the military during peacetime with the dream of honor and willingness to sacrifice in the service of his country. On February 6, 2003, he left loved ones behind, stepped into the darkness of the unknown and found himself in the midst of Operation: Iraqi Freedom.
This memoir, rewritten from the pages of his journal, delivers an informative, personal, thought-provoking and sometimes poignant look into his wartime experience. But, even more remarkable, is the insight it provides regarding the inner struggles CPL COX had to face as a member of the United States Military ¾ the physical, emotional and psychological challenges faced similarly, yet in their own individual ways by American servicemen and servicewomen all over the world.
Kellie Greene, SOAR Founder
Kellie Greene is a rape survivor and now activist and founder of Speaking Out About Rape (SOAR). Kellie has been National Spokesperson for the Pfizer/YWCA “Moving Past Trauma PTSD Community Outreach Program”. In 1999, she founded SOAR, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of victims of sexual assault. SOAR is committed to raising awareness about rape and its consequences, including PTSD. Kellie also coauthored Florida’s “Sexual Predator Prosecution Act of 2000?. The law mandates consecutive sentences, rather than simultaneous sentences, for any repeat sexual offenders. In addition, Kellie helped pass legislation that prohibits hospitals from charging rape victims for forensic teams. As a result of her efforts, Kellie earned the Survivor Activist Award from the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence.
To join us for this special event all you have to do is register to receive the call information. That’s it! Just click on the link below to go to the REGISTRATION PAGE!
VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION will be held at 8pm EST/5pm PST on August 31st.
REGISTRATION: Access registration through the link below
http://healmyptsd.com/awareness/celebrating-the-joy-of-survival-coping-with-trauma-anniversaries
If you’re on Twitter, we’ve set up a hashtag for the event: #TraumaAnniv. You can follow and tweet along with Michele and the rest of us @healmyptsd and@michelePTSD.
If you are on Facebook Michele has designed a Facebook page where survivors can post their own ideas about coping tips. Feel free to add your presence: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Heal-My-PTSD-The-Joy-of-Survival/142523485765647?ref=ts
New Horizons: Watching Life Unfold From the Driver’s Seat
“The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.”
Maya Angelou
This week has brought a plethora of wonderful blessings and magical gifts my way! Let me list the three prominent highlights:
- New Partnership with Lisa Kelly & THE RED TENT : A Healing Arts Center for Women in Delray Beach, Florida.
- PASSED my Yoga Teacher Training Final Exam last night–85% thank you very much. And I thought NYU Graduate School was hard.
- Article on “COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES FOR TRAUMA” was posted at Michele’s HEAL MY PTSD “Professional Perspectives” section of her website today.
Every time I wonder how I am going to take the next step forward into the wild blue yonder of my life and then something beautiful and wonderful happens. I would say, without hesitation, this was the case in meeting with Lisa Kelly, owner of The Red Tent, trained Doula, massage therapist, and passionate advocate of the ability to heal oneself by accessing the body to get to the emotional content inside. In our discussion of our mutual passions for healing and wellness and vision for a community of holistic healthcare I realized I had stumbled upon–in one short email, a Facebook connection, and 48 hours–one of those kindred spirits that I thought were so rare. What I have realized is that the more you shout into the abyss your passion, the more kindred souls you find echoing back.
I have begun the embryonic phases of a partnership with Lisa and her wonderful center THE RED TENT whose name is meant to symbolize (as the book by the same name does) a community of women joining together for healing. I will begin practicing at her oasis of a location (complete with outdoor foot bath/ jacuzzi!) providing services such as: individual, couples & mother/baby therapy, individual, couples & group yoga for mental health/wellness, and a mosaic of creative workshops. My practice in this soothing environment will be given the freedom to apply the tools I find so healing including: breathing exercises, guided visualization, yoga techniques, mind/body and somatic attunement, creative arts, and imagination. I believe this new venture is going to be the beginning of a wonderful journey towards cultivating a healing community and bringing the intention of “embodying mental health” to life in full 3 dimensional form.
I titled this post “New Horizons: Watching Life Unfold From the Driver’s Seat” because that is how it feels as I begin this process of rebirth, as it were. The horizon shifts and the sun peaks out from the landscape without any help from us, we only direct the path of where we drive, towards it, away from it, or meandering slowly in it’s direction. There are times in my life were I definitely went in the opposite direction of light and other times where I took the winding hard way to get to the sun on the horizon. But today, in this moment, in this breath, it feels like I am full of intention and on a steady path towards the sun rising ahead.
The sun rises and sets in our life and we either go with it or steer away–I am ready to gaze into the sun and drive right into the warmth and brightness of its glow.
One exhausting and wonderful adventure, yoga school, is coming to a close. And so it seems an apt time for the newly donned subtitle of the “MY EMBODIMENT” blog: “…exploring mind, body, and spirit wellness.” That is where I think I am headed, on an exploration and continued journey into self, wellness, and continued healing paths of myself and others. I am leaving yoga school having learned much and knowing that I have much to learn–the best educational experiences provide more questions than answers, more quests into the unknown and momentum forward. I have stretched in every meaning of the word: mind, body, and spirit. I have met wonderful people and found some kindred spirits along the way. And I am grateful for every moment spent struggling towards balance and head stands along the way! I am proud to say I can finally balance on my head, even if momentarily, and I think this progress is literal and metaphoric as my life propels forward into the upside downs and unknowns.
Whatever tomorrow brings I want to stare into the sun and drive straight towards the horizon of my life! Sometimes life reminds you that you are on the right path. I imagine a road sign on my metaphoric highway towards the sun with a sign reading “Next Destination Just Ahead: Beware of Speed Bumps”. Reminding me that I have the potential to enact all the things I want to, I just need to make sure I keep myself in check in the process. In yoga and in life, our human flaws and egos are the enemy of all good works. I want to be on the side of Karmic Service & try to leave as much of my human flaws at the last rest stop before I reach my next destination. I hope yoga gave me some of those tools. I hope my passion for this work has given me the energy and stamina for the trek. And I hope my car’s tires have warranties–because there are always bumps along the way.
**ALSO my “Yoga for Trauma Survivors” at Yoga & Inner Peace in Lake Worth, FL continues tomorrow 1:00-2:30pm: visit www.yogapeace.com for more information!**
CHECK OUT…
The Red Tent: A Healing Arts Center for Women at www.redtentwellness.com
Heal My PTSD: Conquer the Past. Create the Future at www.healmyptsd.com
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Why Live Half Empty Lives? : Exploring Trauma, PTSD, & Healing
The old glass half empty versus glass half full is an overused phrase but most overused phrases become so because they are both succinct and apt–as is this particular tome of truth. So often we look at life, emotional distress, and healing from a glass half empty vantage point and in doing so we short change ourselves and our own capacity to find healing and wellness in our minds, hearts, and spirits.
I spoke in my 10 Words of Inspiration for 2010 post about the word “neuroplasticity” which is defined as the brain’s ability to CHANGE. What a fascinating and optimistic truism of neurobiology that we, as humans, have been privileged to discover. And what wonderful hope this truth can bring in life and healing if we choose to see it.
I was made privy on Sunday, via a facebook link, about a post from May 2009 by Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s “Paging Dr. Gupta” blog, medical correspondent for CNN. He was asked whether there is healing from PTSD and his opinion, I believe more personal than medical, dictated that there was no full healing from PTSD and that it was a constant, lifelong struggle just to manage. I felt provoked, by the certitude of his assertion to leave the following comment on this post that I think describes in full my vantage point on the matter (as old as the post was it was just too in my core to say something):
Hello,
It is always a difficult thing as a survivor of trauma and sufferer from PTSD to tell your story. Thank you Dr. Gupta for doing that–it takes much bravery and internal strength. I think, also, that it is hard when you are in the immediate throes of traumatic experience and the aftermath of PTSD to see outside of it–very understandably so. I remember sitting on the side of traumatic experience where I thought there could be no relief or release and unable to find anyone that would insinuate otherwise. It is, again, so understandable to be so deep inside the pain of trauma and not yet in on a path of reprieve and healing that it is hard to imagine real healing or reprieve is possible.
I am a trauma therapist who has worked extensively with combat veterans, survivors of sexual trauma, sufferers of domestic violence, war torture and a variety of other traumatic issues to include chronic illness, eating disorders, and addictions. I have also integrated an extensive amount of mindfulness practices, mind/body techniques, yoga methods, animal-bond therapies and creative arts to facilitate healing in my own recovery as a trauma survivor over the years and in present-day in the lives of my clients. I have found that a multitude of approaches can facilitate a great amount of healing even to the point of being curative in most respects.
Can things be triggering to a person with traumatic history? Yes. But that does not PTSD make. PTSD is misunderstood so often and in that there are a lot of professionals and survivors alike giving themselves or their clients these, as I call them, “terminal PTSD diagnosis”. Telling people with PTSD that they have it forever, there is no way out, is beyond demoralizing it is minimizing a human’s ability to heal or (as we have learned from the study of neuroplasticity in the brain) the brain’s capacity, neurologically, to CHANGE ITSELF.
We learn survival response in overload during traumatic experience and when it gets “stuck” PTSD ensues. PTSD is a cluster of sever symptoms that equal up to a disorder by definition. We are all effected by the things that happen in our lives and painful experience leaves a mark. We cannot erase the existence of traumatic experience from our memories but there is possibility to heal the traumatic response and that stuckness of the survival mechanism so that one is not diagnostically, by definition, a sufferer of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Are there moments we are reminded of painful experience? Yes. Are there moments that might trigger that memory? Yes. But we also have a way to pull ourselves out–body, mind, and spirit–of the PTSD of trauma and live a healthful life. I have done this and I work to help others do the same daily as a trauma therapist. I believe in neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and essentially heal itself back to repair. I believe in all of our abilities to find our own resilience and wellness. These things are not easy and there is a process but I will not tell my clients that their PTSD is terminal–this was not true for me and I don’t believe it has to be true for others.
All my best wishes, prayers, and hopes for healing to all those suffering from PTSD and to yourself Dr. Gupta–I believe in your potential to heal and find wellness!
Teresa Bennett Pasquale, LCSW
http://www.embodymentalhealth.com
I figured that my comment would go into the blogosphere oblivion and then today I received the following email from Emily Van Horn, a somatic and energy bodywork professional from Santa Monica, California:
SUBJECT: thank you!
FROM: Emily Van Horn
Hello Teresa,
I just wanted to say thank you so much for your comment to Dr. Gupta. As a trauma healing practitioner myself, I was appalled when reading that post that someone in such a position of “authority” would promote the mis conception that people can only manage their symptoms but can’t ever heal from PTSD. I see the opposite of that on a daily basis in my own healing practice.
I wrote a comment that was never posted so it’s a relief to see that your was. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your truth and help dispel the misinformation that is being promoted about the human capacity to heal from traumatic experiences.
many blessings,
Emily
I had been discussing earlier that day with my friend and co-professional Michele Rosenthal over at Heal My PTSD.com the impact a survivor and trauma professional’s voice can have when leant to the prospects and hopes for a healing journey. That is why I started all the work I have, am trying (slowly) to write the memoir of my trauma experience and healing journey and created my website to expand people’s vantage points of potential angles and paths to healing. Then there are the days I wonder if I am shouting into an abyss with only my own echo. I know we all have those days. Yesterday, on all fronts was not one of those days. From the wonderful comments I got from people on my Karma-Infuse Your Life post to the wonderful surprise of an email from Emily (LOOK FOR UPCOMING INTERVIEW WITH EMILY) I really felt as though my dreams, hopes, and personal journey of healing had some purpose and place as I shout into the void with my voice and my story.
My hope for everyone is HOPE. A hope for healing. A hope for peace. A hope for a CHANGE OF MIND–as neuroplasticity tells us is possible for all of us with the right amount of effort. See what we can do when we just try. I tell my clients that all the time and they surprise themselves with proving that truism for themselves. I hope for the hope of healing for Dr. Sanjay Gupta and all of the readers of his writing about trauma and all those who have not found the own healing properties and resources in their own minds, hearts, and spirits. IT is there. I believe in that.
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