Does anyone know about or have experience of techniques for recovering from trauma?

[Beachcomber]

Hello. I would be really grateful if we could have a discussion about trauma recovery.

In particular I'm interested in types of therapy which do not require the person to share information about the origin of the trauma with the therapist.

I have heard of techniques which can help people who are too traumatized to be able to go through types of therapy which require talking about the traumatic event or events. I'm thinking in the case of PTSD where re-visiting the events which caused the PTSD re-traumatizes the person and is therefore not safe for them.

I wondered if anyone knows about such techniques or has experience of them? Even if you don't know about it, but would be interested in discussing the subject, please post - I know very little about this myself but would really like to explore it.

Thanks.

EMDR, which I think has to do with eye movements?
Started by Dr Francine Shapiro.
That's all I know.

Timely thread! My cpn has developed an enthusiasm for the 'human givens' approach (not human gibbons :( sadly, but something to do with magically rewinding your amygdala?) but I am not sure about proceeding with something for which there isn't widespread endorsement or very much evidence. Does this mean I am not alone? :)

I can't have cbt or (what is eye movement one called?) for the reasons you state - perhaps the non-traumatizing treatments for trauma don't exist (yet) but in the absence of that would be interested to find out more about the wider topic. Didn't feminist theory play an important part in the development of existing treatments or am I confusing a few different topics?

Thanks for the replies, am off to read about eye thing and human givens.

Oh emdr = eye movement one

must have cross posted. Was led to believe it would be every bit as upsetting as cbt or any other sort of therapy, maybe should ask again. When I say upsetting I suppose I end up more or less decompensating

not that there is any pleasing me, it is annoying when a single event assumes too much importance in the discussions with mental health professionals but at same time I wonder if various of my traumatising experiences wouldn't provide a better explanation (than bipolar) for why I am a bit rubbish. I'm surprised at how few women I know in the mental health system have even been asked about these things when history is taken.

I think a friend of mine has done the eye thing but i think it was with tapping rather than eye movements. I didn't make the connection until I read this

The Human Givens technique sounds very interesting.

I have a family member who has been an anti-depressants for years - she is unable to discuss certain painful events and refuses to go for therapy as she doesn't want to have to tell the therapist what is upsetting her. Thinking about that and what you just posted cuibono is reminding me of the thread we had on here about mental health. I think it was dittany who started it - it was about how so much of what is described as mental health problems in women, is in fact trauma, and is a perfectly normal and natural reaction to life events. I certainly think this is the case for my family member.

Was that the thread about borderline personality disorder and PTSD being broadly the same thing? I remember it because I think it was about the time my daughter was in or had recently been discharged from a hospital that offered DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy, for borderline) and even in quite brief chats with the other patients (all young women) there were lots of awful disclosures. Not a new or original thought but it felt so unjust to label them as personality disordered.

Not long after my daughter was discharged we went to the funeral of one of her friends from that hospital. It was bizarre, suicides are obviously difficult but they made it sound as if she tragically leapt from happy normal girl to dead on the brink of adulthood without any supervening events. It looked a bit like a slow murder with multiple killers to me.

Actually I think I might be mixing up 2 threads.

This one

And this one

How sad about your daughter's friend - your comment about multiple killers is very perceptive. I hope your DD is ok.

Thank you, Beachcomber.

This might have been said in a linked thread (I've only read a bit so far and wanted to chip in again), but doesn't the Freud/Electra complex thing sort of demonstrate very clearly that psy professions invent mental illnesses rather than address the fact of abuse in women's lives?
wasn't it the case that Freud's 'Electra' patient clearly had been sexually abused by her father, and that Freud initially recorded this, but then seeing how incendiary it would be to develop his theories based on that fact he revised it so that she had 'desired' some sort of sexual attachment to her father?

but of course not every person diagnosed with bpd or suffering similar types of distress has a history of, erm, premature sexual experience or whatever Freud called abuse

thanks for linking to the other threads, will have a read (or maybe tomorrow, might not be bedtime stuff)

Thanks for posting Plumpdog, please keep chipping in!

My considered opinion is that Freud = misogynistic bullshit.

I agree that not all mental health issues are down to abuse at the hands of others, but I do think environmental factors play a massive (unrecognised) role. And what is our environment - it is patriarchy.

Women are in a constant state of cognitive dissonance - that fucks with your head. There are often threads on here about women wondering if they have PND when it sounds like the poor souls are simply exhausted and isolated.

I was miserable for the early years with my children - DD1 had health problems, DD2 was the baby that never slept (for 3 fucking years) and couldn't be put down, I was mostly alone with them all day, lived in a place where I didn't know anybody, family in another country, yadda, yadda, yadda. I wasn't depressed I was fucking miserable and with good reason.

Then of course you get all this guilt because you aren't Loving Being Mummy. Let's face it, being mummy sucks a lot of the time and it sucks because of patriarchy - therefore nobody wants to address it (or gives a shit about it).

I was pretty close to going to my doctor at one point because I wondered whether I was depressed. No doubt he would have told me I was and given me pills. It was only because of feminism that I didn't do that - I know I wasn't depressed/ill, I was reacting in a totally normal way to a pile of crap. My unhappiness was healthy IYSWIM.

And all I had to deal with was basic low level Being Mummy crap - I didn't have anyone abusing me or any other bad treatment to deal with.

I think the Electra thing came from Jung no? (Still Freud's fault though.)

Off to check.

My mum does Reiki, which I know is a bit woo, but does seem to work in the experiences she has had. She has worked with children as well as adults, and when I was pregnant the first time I felt my baby move was during a treatment and after that he was always very active during the treatments.

The theory is that any kind of trauma or negative experience can cause energy blocks, which manifest themselves as physical and/or mental health problems, there are various ways of treating it which will clear the blockage, but reiki in particular is a very gentle way of doing it.

U do self-hypnosis and music theeapy. Musuc therapy is particularly effective. At least for me because I'm the emotional sort.

Hth

*I do

Woo is good. And because this is the feminist section, let's analyse that word woo..

It is a discrediting word used to 'other' - pretty patriarchal huh?

My sister did Reiki - she did a long distance treatment on me as part of her training. She phoned me afterwards to discuss what I had felt and she asked me if I had my period or a tummy ache as she could 'feel' something in that area. I said no, was totally fine and normal. Only turned out I was pregnant but didn't know it yet (really early days before missed period).

I had never considered Reiki for mental health - thanks Bertie. Will ask my sister about it.

Thanks Paula

Okay, if you're open to woo, dowsing can be helpful as well. Again it takes away without you having to be conscious of the trauma itself. And something else I can't remember the name of right now.

It's absolutely crucial that you trust the practitioner not to go further than you can cope with - some alternative/holistic therapies will recreate the feeling which can of course be traumatic if you're not able to deal with that directly. I know my mum had some shamanic healing from a "friend" where she felt pushed into it, and it really shook her up, for months in fact, it was bringing up feelings directly. It really affected the friendship too and she would get shaky when thinking about the person, they've recently got back in touch though.

It can be done long distance, yes. I don't know whether it's more effective if you're physically there, or whether that's slightly a placebo effect as it feels like it should be? I know that if anything is brought up it is better/safer to be with the practitioner so that they can work through it with you rather than you having to cope with it alone. I've also been affected when my mum has had substantial stuff coming up, which is weird, I don't always connect it at the time but the times always seem to tally. We are quite close. But it can be problematic if I don't know why I'm suddenly emotional about something or having some feelings come to the surface which I perhaps haven't thought about for months or even years.

On the "woo" word, I know that mum is really into the alternative/complementary therapies and would love to see a time when they are integrated into conventional medicine. She tends to see the science/provable things as "masculine" and the intuitive, "woo" things as more feminine and she says she thinks that is why they will not integrate unless things change quite a lot.

I'd never heard of 'woo' until MN, when someone said it of cosmic ordering. Which works actually, although things like the backbone, integrity and £2million lottery win which I ordered ages ago are taking a long time to arrive :(

Don't really get reiki although I did the thing where you are supposed to be able to do it, first and bit of second level. I like yoga though, bit indirect but think it is more helpful than Tai Chi which they tried to make everyone do in hospital. Think I am back to the list of Positive Coping Things my cpn came up with orginally as ways to stave off misery.

I'm glad this thread is bringing up "woo". I think energy work is very good for trauma.

Not sure if this is answering the op but I find yoga good for stuff that is to do with the body. I am referring to trauma stuff but being intentionally vague. It has to be proper woo yoga though. No gym racing through shit - proper engaging the mind body and spirit stuff.

Yoga and energy work type things sound good as non-invasive.

As a mental health professional I do address trauma and traumatic events but regarding what was stated by an earlier poster about traumatic events not being addressed in assessment interviews, that is not necessarily the right tima and place for it.

Trust and safety need to be built slowly. An admission of trauma or a suspicion on the part of the assessor may well lead to a discussion of the broad natgure of what the client/patient is experiencing but the intial assessment process is not the time for in depth work.

It really does take time-years sometimes for some clients to feel able to do the 'work'. And it is long, hard, emotional work for both client and 'professional' because a good professional is empathetically engaged and uses her own personality to foster forward movement and growth in her client.

And in my experience, most women presenting for help in psych services have trauma embedded in their lives.

As for the comment that CBT is not appropriate for trauma work because it goes over past traumatic events in a re lived manner-that is precisely what it does not do. It does not focus on more psycho analytic approaches. It deals with maladaptive thoughts, feelings and behaviours and seeks to change these for those more conducive to harmonious lived experiences.

The CMHT model of a ten week course of CBT is not suitable for many mental health problems. It is best for phobias, negative self talk, self esteem, anger management that kind of thing. I detest the way we are expected to push CBT as some kind of cure all gold standard. It takes several sessions for a good psych nurse to establish a good trusting rapport with her clients before starting the CBT work.

Antonovski says it is not what happens to us that causes us to topple but rather how we can make sense of what happens to us.

I don't think it has anything to do with resilience.

And we do not sit around applying Freudian concepts to our clients experiences.Most mental health work deals with practicalities of life-assisting chronically ill people with activities of daily life, giving them practical 'tools' to cope with voice hearing, problems of thought disorder, helping minimise social isolation and stigma. We carry out interventions such as Thorne nursing with suitable clients.

We use Maslow's model to ensure that eating, sleeping are prioritised and kept healthy because lack of sleep is a huge precipitor of relapse. We work with families to support them in supporting their loved ones.

We do work with clients to identify early warning signs of relapse. We help educate on medication and provide health promotion advice ensuring equality of access to primary health care like smears and dental health. We monitor medication, administer depot injections and monitor and educate on side effects. We constantly liaise with psychiatrists on all of this.

We do mountains of CPA paperwork. We arrange and attend review meetings regularly for the client and all involved. We refer to inpatient care when necessary and accompany and work with the inpatient staff to expediate a smooth transition home. We do post discharge monitoring, crisis intervention and assertive outreach. If a community client is imprisoned, in hospital or sent to a secure unit on the other side of the Uk, we still have to attend CPA reviews for that client wherever he is. Our paperwork is a legal document and is kept by the trust for at least 7 years as a legal minimum and longer. If it is not documented then legally it is deemed to have not been done and we have to be able to explain the evidence base and clinical rationale for every action/decision.

So, little time is spent on theoretical debating- what I call 'Psychological Masturbation' because we are too busy doing the real job of trying to keep our clients functioning as well as they possibly can in society.

We are morally and legally accountable and responsible for everything we do. We have to maintain our evidence base and practise research/evidence based nursing. We are accountable to the client/patient, their family, our employers, the Trust, the NHS, the NMC and society as a whole. We cannot go off and re start our practice elsewhere if we make an error or are unprofessional like some other unregistered 'therapists' can and do.

Thanks for the input nursenic.

I don't think posters were saying that initial assessment is the place to discuss traumatic events. Rather that the damaging actions of others are not taken into account enough with regards to women's mental health issues.

I've just looked up Antonovski - I may be misunderstanding his point but it sounds like victim blaming to me.

I think the issue with CBT is that it can re-traumatize PTSD sufferers. Does the person have to tell the therapist what happened to them in order for CBT to take place? I don't know a lot about it.