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Welcome
If you are currently in crisis
Please call: 911
The Crisis Centre British Columbia
1-800-784-2433
If you are currently in crisis
Please call: 911
The Crisis Centre British Columbia
1-800-784-2433
Did you know that calling a local distress centre or emergency services 911 is the best thing you could do if you
Or someone you know is living a crisis or needs some support?
Canadian Crisis Centre Contacts Are Listed Here
Visit CASP for more information.
Or someone you know is living a crisis or needs some support?
Canadian Crisis Centre Contacts Are Listed Here
Visit CASP for more information.
I'm Pleased You've Found This Site: You're Not Alone. Together We Can Find Our Way Back From Trauma.
Partnered in Health Care Education with the Charter for Compassion
Digital Ambassador for The Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative
Ktunaxa Nation Council
Metis Nation BC
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About The Blog
The Trauma Recovery Blog is a trauma-informed source of information to guide those in recovery from one who's been there. What I've scattered around the site represents the lived experience of a single one-time paramedic. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for recovery. Although I've taken in much self-directed education along the way and have certified as a trauma educator and do limited coaching. I've chronic PTSD and struggle still to maintain remission of it's symptoms. I'm not a clinician and although I do limited coaching volunteer, I am in no way hoping to sell myself as something I'm not. The information here is gifted by me freely. If the site helps one . . . the work is worthwhile. I am partnered in health-care with The Charter For Compassion & act as one of many digital ambassadors for The Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. I acknowledge residence within the home-lands and territory of the Ktunaxa Nation. I self-identify as a Metis Citizen in Canada. As curator of The Trauma Recovery Blog, I hope to promote a Bio-Psycho-Social Approach to Recovery & encourage treatments that support the whole person.
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The Hero's Journey Christopher Vogler
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell
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I view recovery from trauma as potentially a transformational process, with recovery leading ultimately to an experience of personal growth, including the potential to experience a full return to our own sense of living again our Personal Authenticity. Throughout my own recovery, I longed for a real experience of what's called today Post Traumatic Growth. All along, beginning in 1994 with my first introduction to the concept of viewing recovery and psychological growth as a Hero's Journey, I've kept a mythological narrative (a story of recovery) running inside to help me find my way through to the end. The story changed dramatically along the way. The Hero's Journey is wrought with unexpected challenges and much loss. As in any quest, the prize awaiting at the end of any recovery journey is a full experience of wellness, and a return to the life trauma forces us for a time to leave behind. Post Traumatic Growth in recovery is a very real potential outcome for all who embark on this journey. Though I've still a ways to go to complete my own journey to full wellness, for the first time along the path, I know I'm now confidently well on the way to being whole. Every recovery journey is uniquely personal. What works for one of us won't necessarily fit another. It's my sincere hope in sharing the discoveries I've made along the way, others will be encouraged to begin their personal quest to find wellness. For more information about The Hero's Journey please visit The Joseph Campbell Foundation. The Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Tale Of Post Traumatic Growth The Trauma Recovery Blog Official YouTube Channel |
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Trauma & PTSD: Mind-Body-Spirit Connection
What is Trauma? It's simply a word. A word that points out that we've actually suffered a traumatic-stress induced brain injury. An injury that if we aren't guided near-immediately towards managing the after-math, leads to mental health consequences including PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders:
In Canada, estimates derived from reported cases of Post Traumatic Stress suggest that almost 9% of the 40,000 troops deployed in our most recent conflicts are living now with mental health challenges due to Post Traumatic Stress Injury suffered in deployment. I found this statistic some time ago. Today the total estimates are much higher.
In the United States, estimates suggest that a military veteran will die by his/her own hand every 65 minutes. The V.A. in the states released these statistics in 2013. That's 22 fine, brave, ramparts meeting their demise every single day. Since returning from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nearly 500,000 Military Personnel have returned to the United States living with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury.
In both Canada and in the United States: We've now lost more of our Veterans to suicide than were lost during actual combat over-seas (Afghanistan and Iraq). The long, drawn-out, never-ending cycle of war, is doing emotional damage as well to our populations on the whole.
Studies suggest that in a human life-time most of us will experience at least a single traumatic event with potential to cause PTSD and other mental health issues.
Emergency First Responders are said to experience traumatic stress at rates of 20-35% above the rest of humanity. If you have lived through physical, emotional, sexual abuse or assault, these are all area's in the darkness of human life contributing to experiences of PTSD, Anxiety and Depression.
Tema Conter Memorial Trust in Ontario is tracking suicide in public safety workers in Canada. At last report, in 2017 we lost 14 First Responders to suicide. In 2018, I'm personally informed of 4 tragic losses for First Responder families in BC alone.
We're losing citizens from the general population too. For far too long, mental health care has frankly not been on governments in Canada's radar to the level the issues actually demand. Policy-makers love to profess that the issues that lead to suicide are 'complex'.
I disagree.
Suicide is depression's monster that those who suffer the condition must face inside. It's only when we learn that the monster lies that we have any ammunition at all with which to fight it. I survived my carried-out suicide attempt in 2015. It was the end-game of depression that took me there, as suicide is depressions final symptom that hopes, as all other of these conditions hopes to do: to take us out of life permanently.
I no longer believe a single lie my own depression hopes to tell.
I encourage all who visit here to stop believing that inner-monster as well. If ever it nags at you to die? Simply thank depression for the reminder of how brilliantly precious your life is each and every time the monster howls.
In the end, with depression, that's how I've learned to win.
One such loss is one too many frankly. I'm mindful of my personal efforts in BC over 13 years to raise the alarm on this issue. For too long, my own pleas and the pleas of many others, frankly and tragically, went unheard to the level that demonstrated our governments weren't taking the issue seriously.
Words? That's one thing. Right action, quite the other.
Have things changed over 13 years? Yes, they have. But not near dramatically enough, unfortunately, to satisfy me.
Our First Nations People and others living in the cultural melting-pot in Canada experience high-levels of mental health issues related to psychological trauma. This high rate of suffering is due to histories of inter-generational trauma or due to experiences of war in home nations, perhaps due to witnessing the Inhumane Experience in our World of Genocide.
The reality of the abuses upon Indigenous souls in this country may now be more out in the open. As we move slowly forward to address the harms left behind by colonization in Canada, most tragically in the exposed histories of Canada's Residential Schools: I unfortunately still today hear from far too many that suggests we remain on this issue Unrepentant.
I've personally committed to be part of the process of First Nations/Settler Society Reconciliation. I fully support the implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I fully support that as a nation we together address the 94 calls to action shared with us by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada.
To better inform myself on Indigenous Reconciliation and healing Issues, I studied these courses and materials, available online:
Persons acting as Care-Givers, whether at home living with and caring for a chronically ill family member or elderly parent or working as Care-Givers in Profession, these dedicated folks in our midst experience extremely high-levels of Burn-out and Compassion Fatigue.
We are just now accepting the reality of these issues in the Care-Giver Community. Secondary Traumatic Stress and/or Chronic Stress is the culprit for many care-givers in our communities.
I argue alongside Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford and many others today:
Our understanding of the damage to health of stress impositions put upon the human organism are underestimated. The high-levels of stress we're living with in today's societies simply can no longer be ignored. Stress does, in fact, paint a picture of itself that determines it to be a killer.
This view is supported by Dr. Sapolsky's studies and it's rightly supported as well by Sir Michael Marmot and the Whitehall Studies.
Both together share bodies of their life's work that point out rather clearly that predictors of societal well-being and predictors of positive and negative health outcomes in the society on the whole, can be understood best with reflection upon the Social Determinants of Health.
I sincerely feel we'd be wise as a society to accept the findings of these researchers with open-minds; and should we not consider far more seriously that it is the impact of stress, mismanaged, that is at the root, along with citizen-traumatization of many of our social and physical ills in Canada?
After studying these issues, I'm personally convinced we should.
We live together in a very vibrant, but some-what potentially crazy-making society. We're competing together for brass rings that once we catch one, even the next ring won't be enough. Some argue that our true nature is actually altruistic ahead of the mating-rituals associated with need in primates to seek dominance over one-another.
Another virtual mentor, Bruce Lipton, puts it simply like this:
"(Want to know what ails you?)"
"It's the environment (you live in-socially and physically) stupid."
Bruce Lipton shares these words with a soul fixed-upon the well-being of all in humankind. The point is, while we focus on individual illnesses and symptoms of these sicknesses, we miss that our struggles with ill-health are the product of human-interaction with the social/physical environments we live in.
I've experienced this to be true. For me, there is no longer any inner-debate: If we leave out much of what we need to understand our illnesses, hoping that taking a pill can fix everything we experience as illness and disease, we're limiting ourselves, and our potential for recovery.
I've many such acquired virtual gurus in my life today. Including on addiction, Dr. Gabor Mate. Towards addictions, Dr. Mate says the same:
Please give this sense of their's some personal thought. If were honest with ourselves, chronic-stress and trauma permeates our society. There are many struggling with PTSD, Depression, and Substance/Alcohol use as adults having experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences that sets us up for later in life dysfunction. Others are struggling due to issues of violence and domestic violence. Some of us are victims of crime, accidents, medical-trauma, and natural disasters.
All such human experience can traumatize leading to illness.
There are studies today linking postpartum depression and the trauma of child-birth.
A new kid on the block for our society to consider is the issue of Sanctuary Trauma put upon us by those not rightly informed about traumatic stress, traumatic stress injury, and resulting conditions.
"Sanctuary Trauma and the 'Sacred' ... A concept developed by Dr. Steven Silver, sanctuary trauma“occurs when an individual who suffered a severe stressor next encounters what was expected to be a supportive and protective environment' and discovers only more trauma;." ~ Sanctuary Trauma and the 'Sacred' – Social Health
Sanctuary Trauma: Dr. Sandra Bloom M.D: Dr. Bloom shares her a brief introduction to the issue. I can share that all those I personally know or who I've coached towards finding for themselves clinical care express stories of a large number of sanctuary traumas inflicted upon them by family, systems-of-care, friends, community, and the society on the whole.
There is for us all much hope today. The reality of Trauma is opening up. The First Responder survivor-circle I'm today blessed to be part of share an expression from time-to-time:
"Heal Trauma? Heal The World."
I've come to a place in my recovery to share this journey mindful of the words left behind long ago from Socrates:
"All I know. . .is that I know nothing."
To appreciate as best we can all the issues we confront, the best defense is a good offense: Maintaining an open-mind ready to learn that which for a very long time has been buried away from conscious view: This will prop us up as we venture towards healing, which I understand completely, for many of us is a frightening unknown.
Much more is known about these issues today then when I started my own journey back in 1994. The emerging future holds much promise for those facing these challenges moving forward.
Neuroscience, for instance, is spawning in a way that over time will provide a game-changer for all of us, I suspect. In fact, the game's already changing as study of the human brain is now finally entering the discourse of science, with findings now being shared for us mainstream:
As frightening as it seems to face our dragons and to work with those who can support us as we walk through the recovery journey: Our lives matter-and quality of life restoration (or establishment) is the core goal of accepting the need to enter into a Trauma Recovery Process.
Trauma Recovery is about agreeing with reality, and it's about LEARNING how to peel back the layers of complexity like we might tackle peeling back an onion. There will be many tears. There is much hope. It's my personal hope that with right help you'll be able to do what we all need to do most:
Trauma leaves behind MUCH emotional and physical pain.
In order to get through it, we must find right support to hold space with us as we learn with our trauma-informed helper's support, how-to feel it all safely, on-way to healing it right.
It's my hope that for visitors here:
I've prepared the information I've found along the way well-enough that you'll have that place to start working with yourselves that wasn't in my past available to me.
What is Trauma? It's simply a word. A word that points out that we've actually suffered a traumatic-stress induced brain injury. An injury that if we aren't guided near-immediately towards managing the after-math, leads to mental health consequences including PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders:
- Study: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Neurobiological Impact of Psychological Trauma
- Study: Recovery From Psychological Trauma: Judith Herman, M.D
- Study: Mental Disorder Symptoms among Public Safety Personnel in Canada
- Study: Comorbidity of Psychiatric Disorders and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
In Canada, estimates derived from reported cases of Post Traumatic Stress suggest that almost 9% of the 40,000 troops deployed in our most recent conflicts are living now with mental health challenges due to Post Traumatic Stress Injury suffered in deployment. I found this statistic some time ago. Today the total estimates are much higher.
In the United States, estimates suggest that a military veteran will die by his/her own hand every 65 minutes. The V.A. in the states released these statistics in 2013. That's 22 fine, brave, ramparts meeting their demise every single day. Since returning from deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nearly 500,000 Military Personnel have returned to the United States living with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury.
In both Canada and in the United States: We've now lost more of our Veterans to suicide than were lost during actual combat over-seas (Afghanistan and Iraq). The long, drawn-out, never-ending cycle of war, is doing emotional damage as well to our populations on the whole.
Studies suggest that in a human life-time most of us will experience at least a single traumatic event with potential to cause PTSD and other mental health issues.
Emergency First Responders are said to experience traumatic stress at rates of 20-35% above the rest of humanity. If you have lived through physical, emotional, sexual abuse or assault, these are all area's in the darkness of human life contributing to experiences of PTSD, Anxiety and Depression.
Tema Conter Memorial Trust in Ontario is tracking suicide in public safety workers in Canada. At last report, in 2017 we lost 14 First Responders to suicide. In 2018, I'm personally informed of 4 tragic losses for First Responder families in BC alone.
We're losing citizens from the general population too. For far too long, mental health care has frankly not been on governments in Canada's radar to the level the issues actually demand. Policy-makers love to profess that the issues that lead to suicide are 'complex'.
I disagree.
Suicide is depression's monster that those who suffer the condition must face inside. It's only when we learn that the monster lies that we have any ammunition at all with which to fight it. I survived my carried-out suicide attempt in 2015. It was the end-game of depression that took me there, as suicide is depressions final symptom that hopes, as all other of these conditions hopes to do: to take us out of life permanently.
I no longer believe a single lie my own depression hopes to tell.
I encourage all who visit here to stop believing that inner-monster as well. If ever it nags at you to die? Simply thank depression for the reminder of how brilliantly precious your life is each and every time the monster howls.
In the end, with depression, that's how I've learned to win.
One such loss is one too many frankly. I'm mindful of my personal efforts in BC over 13 years to raise the alarm on this issue. For too long, my own pleas and the pleas of many others, frankly and tragically, went unheard to the level that demonstrated our governments weren't taking the issue seriously.
Words? That's one thing. Right action, quite the other.
Have things changed over 13 years? Yes, they have. But not near dramatically enough, unfortunately, to satisfy me.
Our First Nations People and others living in the cultural melting-pot in Canada experience high-levels of mental health issues related to psychological trauma. This high rate of suffering is due to histories of inter-generational trauma or due to experiences of war in home nations, perhaps due to witnessing the Inhumane Experience in our World of Genocide.
The reality of the abuses upon Indigenous souls in this country may now be more out in the open. As we move slowly forward to address the harms left behind by colonization in Canada, most tragically in the exposed histories of Canada's Residential Schools: I unfortunately still today hear from far too many that suggests we remain on this issue Unrepentant.
I've personally committed to be part of the process of First Nations/Settler Society Reconciliation. I fully support the implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I fully support that as a nation we together address the 94 calls to action shared with us by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada.
To better inform myself on Indigenous Reconciliation and healing Issues, I studied these courses and materials, available online:
- Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education-EdX
- Trauma & First Nations People: Manitoba Trauma Information & Education Centre
- Healing Trauma Through a First Nations Lens
- We Were Children
Persons acting as Care-Givers, whether at home living with and caring for a chronically ill family member or elderly parent or working as Care-Givers in Profession, these dedicated folks in our midst experience extremely high-levels of Burn-out and Compassion Fatigue.
We are just now accepting the reality of these issues in the Care-Giver Community. Secondary Traumatic Stress and/or Chronic Stress is the culprit for many care-givers in our communities.
I argue alongside Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford and many others today:
Our understanding of the damage to health of stress impositions put upon the human organism are underestimated. The high-levels of stress we're living with in today's societies simply can no longer be ignored. Stress does, in fact, paint a picture of itself that determines it to be a killer.
This view is supported by Dr. Sapolsky's studies and it's rightly supported as well by Sir Michael Marmot and the Whitehall Studies.
Both together share bodies of their life's work that point out rather clearly that predictors of societal well-being and predictors of positive and negative health outcomes in the society on the whole, can be understood best with reflection upon the Social Determinants of Health.
I sincerely feel we'd be wise as a society to accept the findings of these researchers with open-minds; and should we not consider far more seriously that it is the impact of stress, mismanaged, that is at the root, along with citizen-traumatization of many of our social and physical ills in Canada?
After studying these issues, I'm personally convinced we should.
We live together in a very vibrant, but some-what potentially crazy-making society. We're competing together for brass rings that once we catch one, even the next ring won't be enough. Some argue that our true nature is actually altruistic ahead of the mating-rituals associated with need in primates to seek dominance over one-another.
Another virtual mentor, Bruce Lipton, puts it simply like this:
"(Want to know what ails you?)"
"It's the environment (you live in-socially and physically) stupid."
Bruce Lipton shares these words with a soul fixed-upon the well-being of all in humankind. The point is, while we focus on individual illnesses and symptoms of these sicknesses, we miss that our struggles with ill-health are the product of human-interaction with the social/physical environments we live in.
I've experienced this to be true. For me, there is no longer any inner-debate: If we leave out much of what we need to understand our illnesses, hoping that taking a pill can fix everything we experience as illness and disease, we're limiting ourselves, and our potential for recovery.
I've many such acquired virtual gurus in my life today. Including on addiction, Dr. Gabor Mate. Towards addictions, Dr. Mate says the same:
- How To Build A Culture of Better Health: Dr. Gabor Mate
- Stress Portrait of a Killer: Dr. Robert Sapolsky & Sir Michael Marmot
- The Whitehall Studies
Please give this sense of their's some personal thought. If were honest with ourselves, chronic-stress and trauma permeates our society. There are many struggling with PTSD, Depression, and Substance/Alcohol use as adults having experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences that sets us up for later in life dysfunction. Others are struggling due to issues of violence and domestic violence. Some of us are victims of crime, accidents, medical-trauma, and natural disasters.
All such human experience can traumatize leading to illness.
There are studies today linking postpartum depression and the trauma of child-birth.
A new kid on the block for our society to consider is the issue of Sanctuary Trauma put upon us by those not rightly informed about traumatic stress, traumatic stress injury, and resulting conditions.
"Sanctuary Trauma and the 'Sacred' ... A concept developed by Dr. Steven Silver, sanctuary trauma“occurs when an individual who suffered a severe stressor next encounters what was expected to be a supportive and protective environment' and discovers only more trauma;." ~ Sanctuary Trauma and the 'Sacred' – Social Health
Sanctuary Trauma: Dr. Sandra Bloom M.D: Dr. Bloom shares her a brief introduction to the issue. I can share that all those I personally know or who I've coached towards finding for themselves clinical care express stories of a large number of sanctuary traumas inflicted upon them by family, systems-of-care, friends, community, and the society on the whole.
There is for us all much hope today. The reality of Trauma is opening up. The First Responder survivor-circle I'm today blessed to be part of share an expression from time-to-time:
"Heal Trauma? Heal The World."
I've come to a place in my recovery to share this journey mindful of the words left behind long ago from Socrates:
"All I know. . .is that I know nothing."
To appreciate as best we can all the issues we confront, the best defense is a good offense: Maintaining an open-mind ready to learn that which for a very long time has been buried away from conscious view: This will prop us up as we venture towards healing, which I understand completely, for many of us is a frightening unknown.
Much more is known about these issues today then when I started my own journey back in 1994. The emerging future holds much promise for those facing these challenges moving forward.
Neuroscience, for instance, is spawning in a way that over time will provide a game-changer for all of us, I suspect. In fact, the game's already changing as study of the human brain is now finally entering the discourse of science, with findings now being shared for us mainstream:
As frightening as it seems to face our dragons and to work with those who can support us as we walk through the recovery journey: Our lives matter-and quality of life restoration (or establishment) is the core goal of accepting the need to enter into a Trauma Recovery Process.
Trauma Recovery is about agreeing with reality, and it's about LEARNING how to peel back the layers of complexity like we might tackle peeling back an onion. There will be many tears. There is much hope. It's my personal hope that with right help you'll be able to do what we all need to do most:
Trauma leaves behind MUCH emotional and physical pain.
In order to get through it, we must find right support to hold space with us as we learn with our trauma-informed helper's support, how-to feel it all safely, on-way to healing it right.
It's my hope that for visitors here:
I've prepared the information I've found along the way well-enough that you'll have that place to start working with yourselves that wasn't in my past available to me.
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Here Are Links To Our Pages
Throughout the site, I've highlighted words in blue that link to other pages across the internet.
Stress & Traumatic Stress Injury: To understand traumatic stress injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a study of what stress is and what stress does is important as part of educating ourselves on way to recovery.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is PTSD?: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is classed as an anxiety disorder, listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - The DSM:V. Although considered by many as being restricted ta soldiers, all humans can develop the condition following any life-experience that involves exposure to death or the threat of death, serious physical injury, assault or sexual violence.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is Depression?: When clinically depressed, we feel helpless, hopeless, and there's a nagging, depressive sense of worthlessness that envelopes the one suffering clinical depression. Depression wraps us like a sheet might wrap a body that is dead. The feelings of worthlessness, and our inability to resolve the depression, puts a heavy weight upon our shoulders that no amount of positive talk to ourselves can lift.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is Addiction?: "Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences. Addiction may involve the use of substances-alcohol, inhalants, opioids, cocaine, nicotine, and others, or behaviors such as gambling; there is scientific evidence that the addictive substances and behaviors share a key neurobiological feature—they intensely activate brain pathways of reward and reinforcement, many of which involve the neurotransmitter dopamine." (Psychology Today Canada).
Trauma & Family: If there's a single piece of information that I'd like to put down for families to consider, it's that the reality of trauma and it's after-math that we live through together has a goal: To tear your family apart.
It's the nature of the symptoms of the beast to try to do that to us.
Word from one who's been there now twice: Don't let the bastard win!
Trauma can destroy families, no question. But, recovery together from traumatic experiences, PTSD, Depression, Addictions, and other illnesses both physical and psychological, has the power, if we allow it, to unite us and make us together as a family STRONGER for the experience.
It is so very trued; When one member of the family is suffering through trauma issues, the entire family suffers.
Once trauma lays it's roots deep-enough to grow the tree that is mental health struggle (PTSD, Depression, Substance/Alcohol Use Disorder), not only the one diagnosed with issues needs professional support:
Support needs to be accessed by all in the family.
This page hopes to help guide families in a way that persuades the need for trauma-and-violence informed family therapy and support: The earlier this happens for you all, the better.
Trauma Recovery Program: In affiliation with the Traumatology Institute & Dr. Anna Baranowsky, we're pleased to offer this Online Trauma Recovery Program. Though not intended to replace clinical treatment, this online program provides a starting place for those seeking help. The program is a perfect adjunct for those currently receiving trauma-informed clinical care.
Dr. Baranowsky graciously pays a commission to me for any sales of this program. The Online Trauma Treatment Program is very reasonably priced. The cost for a one-year subscription to the program is $119.00.
The commissions shared my way help me maintain this site as a volunteer.
Dr. Baranowsky offers a number of free resources at her site. Have Questions? Ask Dr. Anna.
Mindfulness: Included with this article introducing Mindfulness Concepts and information about Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, you will find a link to a free, eight-week online MBSR program. Learning these skills has been a game-changer for me in recovery.
Traumatology Training: Here you will find links for further educational opportunities offered by Dr. Anna Baranowsky and the Traumatology Institute.
Key to my recovery from trauma in re-wiring my damaged brain came from studying The TI Online Recovery Program, the Community and Workplace Traumatology Courses, and other online-open-courses accessed via Coursera, Edx, and other sources for online education.
The value of agreeing with oneself to forever remain a life-long-learner, is a gift to my own recovery process that I cherish today.
Other Educational Opportunities are listed on this page, including Trauma Education from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
Finding Joe: The Movie: Here you will find links and information about the film, Finding Joe. This documentary covers the concept of 'The Hero's Journey' originally discussed by scholar and mythologist, Joseph Campbell.
Bookstore: The store is filled with titles related to psychological trauma, treatment, recovery, and wellness. The book titled, Leading from the Emerging Future by C. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer offers a challenge to leadership in Canada to shift your leadership style away from 'Ego' (all about me) mentality, towards accepting the value of an 'Eco' leadership style, which at the core can help leaders shift towards a style that is 'All About WE'.
Mentors: I acknowledge these individuals as those who've earned my trust. Their gracious support across my journey has quite literally saved my own life. Their personal knowledge, compassion, understanding, and professional ethics are impeccable.
Am I cured personally from my own trauma issues? No. I achieve remissions. It's been simply a very long time being stuck with my own trauma issues, and given that it took nearly 20 years before I was able to find helpful treatment, I'm quite comfortable accepting that for me, I've reached a plateau.
My education and recovery has been one of trial-and-error by necessity. When I was first struggling in 1994, and when I was ultimately diagnosed in 2005, the world was far away from yet waking up to the reality of these issues. There was NO interventions in my life as a paramedic in BC, neither in the 90's nor in 2005.
Our compensation system and frankly the response of my employer, some family, and many past-peers, made it that much more difficult for me to find my way.
I mean no judgement here. In the past we simply all didn't have right information about trauma and mental health struggles to inform us and to work with.
The School-of-Hard-Knocks might well be a quality University. I'd argue, however, that the educators in that system are somewhat less-than-encouraging when one finds oneself unable to function as a once highly-functioning individual. The mentors I've met along the way have been my salvation.
They each taught me from their experience what Post Traumatic Growth looks like.
I can say, without reservation: Over now 24 years working to learn about trauma, PTSD, Depression, and Substance/Alcohol use disorder, I've grown emotionally and spiritually in a dramatic way, thanks to those who offered their compassionate hand, teaching me along the way all missing pieces to the puzzle that I'd become:
A puzzle with no real solution available to me to put the pieces back together in any way that held for long, or for that matter, made any real, quality sense.
Podcasts: Over 2015 and 2016 all guests in these podcasts worked with me to discuss trauma, PTSD, treatment models, and they all shared graciously their lived experience as trauma-survivors, peer-support-persons, trusted clinicians, and educators. I share these podcasts with the support of all who participated.
Blog: I'll continue to do my best to share some writing here from myself on a monthly basis. I'm working currently to create a writer's discipline with the help of my current writing mentor, Luanne Armstrong here in Creston BC.
Research: For the past five years, I've dedicated my time to education and research to better inform myself about the issues I struggle with. Having been a paramedic, my interest in medical research has motivated my efforts. I've been able to find online sources for published studies on the issues.
Where research is concerned, I often feel as though we're being studied to death-literally, considering the high-rates of suicide evident in the military and in public safety professions in Canada.
I've used myself as the guinea-pig, testing studies and treatments along the way through my recovery. There is no study or treatment shared here on the site that isn't supported by my lived experience as a filter for me to determine for myself the validity, subjectively, of any studies and treatments I've sought out to help myself with.
I've used my study and research time to inform myself in a way that allows me to comfortably share all the information I've sharing here on the Blog, and this study has informed me to support my volunteer efforts as an advocate and recovery coach.
I've featured here on the home-page a few such studies. On the Research page you'll find access to those online publishers I've grown to trust.
Trauma Treatment Frameworks: Traumatic Stress Injury Recovery from traumatic-stress injury is a non-linear process. We are each unique individuals. Treatments that help one of us won't necessarily help another. The deeper the level of traumatization, the longer the traumatization went untreated, and the common issue with trauma survivors of often carrying layers of mental health issues into therapy to contend with:
This makes our recovery process as necessarily unique as we are as individuals.
This page introduces readers to the treatment framework models I'm most familiar with: The Triphasic Trauma Treatment Model and the Expressive Trauma Integration Model shared with me by my mentors Dr. Anna Baranowsky and Dr. Odelya Gertel Kraybill.
Treatment: As I touch on the subject of treatments, I stress again that we're each unique. Those treatments available today that are most successful understand in the core of the philosophy behind the treatments that we are each our own person in mind, body, and human spirit.
The best treatment practitioners available to us for support are with us to bear witness through our recovery process, and are gifted as specialized, trauma-informed and educated clinicians in the art attached to their work of holding space with their clients.
I've listed on this page those clinicians that I'm personally familiar with, who've earned my trust and who represent themselves clearly as being specialized to deliver trauma-and-violence informed care.
There are links on this page as well to search for trauma-informed helpers in BC.
For quick-links, I provide access to finding help in BC below:
For Medical Doctors (Physicians) Who Specialize in Trauma Issues: Rise BC Wellness Centre (Nelson BC) Is On The Right Path In My View:
Badge of Life Canada has links to therapists in Canada on their site as well:
Treatment Modalities: A variety of treatment modalities are available to assist us. This page discusses again the importance of considering the approach that our chosen helpers may use to treat us, and the page introduces readers to those treatment modalities that I've personally experienced. I've included here those modalities too that although I've not had pleasure to experience them, the validity of the treatments is rightly supported by those professionals who've pioneered the treatments.
I'm more than comfortable confirming the validity of these modalities subjectively as a person-with-lived-experience, volunteer coach, advocate, and community and workplace trauma educator.
The Trauma Recovery Blog YouTube Channel: Our space on YouTube offers visitors opportunity to learn from those I've trusted to teach myself about traumatic stress injury, PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders.
I follow many. Those key to my recovery continue to amaze me with the knowledge they hold. Their gracious willingness to share their work via YouTube is a blessing in my own recovery life.
Included on this channel are those podcasts I produced with the help of my mentors of 2015 and 2016.
I named the project, Transitions-Home from Trauma. My writing mentor tells me that the best stories are about an adventurer leaving home, facing trials, and returning home to reunite with that which the adventurer left behind.
In short, she confirms what I started to learn long ago. We are each one writing our own version of the Hero's Journey.
That story ultimately being the story of our life.
Throughout the site, I've highlighted words in blue that link to other pages across the internet.
Stress & Traumatic Stress Injury: To understand traumatic stress injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a study of what stress is and what stress does is important as part of educating ourselves on way to recovery.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is PTSD?: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is classed as an anxiety disorder, listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - The DSM:V. Although considered by many as being restricted ta soldiers, all humans can develop the condition following any life-experience that involves exposure to death or the threat of death, serious physical injury, assault or sexual violence.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is Depression?: When clinically depressed, we feel helpless, hopeless, and there's a nagging, depressive sense of worthlessness that envelopes the one suffering clinical depression. Depression wraps us like a sheet might wrap a body that is dead. The feelings of worthlessness, and our inability to resolve the depression, puts a heavy weight upon our shoulders that no amount of positive talk to ourselves can lift.
More . . . . . .
Traumatic Stress Injury-What Is Addiction?: "Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences. Addiction may involve the use of substances-alcohol, inhalants, opioids, cocaine, nicotine, and others, or behaviors such as gambling; there is scientific evidence that the addictive substances and behaviors share a key neurobiological feature—they intensely activate brain pathways of reward and reinforcement, many of which involve the neurotransmitter dopamine." (Psychology Today Canada).
Trauma & Family: If there's a single piece of information that I'd like to put down for families to consider, it's that the reality of trauma and it's after-math that we live through together has a goal: To tear your family apart.
It's the nature of the symptoms of the beast to try to do that to us.
Word from one who's been there now twice: Don't let the bastard win!
Trauma can destroy families, no question. But, recovery together from traumatic experiences, PTSD, Depression, Addictions, and other illnesses both physical and psychological, has the power, if we allow it, to unite us and make us together as a family STRONGER for the experience.
It is so very trued; When one member of the family is suffering through trauma issues, the entire family suffers.
Once trauma lays it's roots deep-enough to grow the tree that is mental health struggle (PTSD, Depression, Substance/Alcohol Use Disorder), not only the one diagnosed with issues needs professional support:
Support needs to be accessed by all in the family.
This page hopes to help guide families in a way that persuades the need for trauma-and-violence informed family therapy and support: The earlier this happens for you all, the better.
Trauma Recovery Program: In affiliation with the Traumatology Institute & Dr. Anna Baranowsky, we're pleased to offer this Online Trauma Recovery Program. Though not intended to replace clinical treatment, this online program provides a starting place for those seeking help. The program is a perfect adjunct for those currently receiving trauma-informed clinical care.
Dr. Baranowsky graciously pays a commission to me for any sales of this program. The Online Trauma Treatment Program is very reasonably priced. The cost for a one-year subscription to the program is $119.00.
The commissions shared my way help me maintain this site as a volunteer.
Dr. Baranowsky offers a number of free resources at her site. Have Questions? Ask Dr. Anna.
Mindfulness: Included with this article introducing Mindfulness Concepts and information about Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, you will find a link to a free, eight-week online MBSR program. Learning these skills has been a game-changer for me in recovery.
Traumatology Training: Here you will find links for further educational opportunities offered by Dr. Anna Baranowsky and the Traumatology Institute.
Key to my recovery from trauma in re-wiring my damaged brain came from studying The TI Online Recovery Program, the Community and Workplace Traumatology Courses, and other online-open-courses accessed via Coursera, Edx, and other sources for online education.
The value of agreeing with oneself to forever remain a life-long-learner, is a gift to my own recovery process that I cherish today.
Other Educational Opportunities are listed on this page, including Trauma Education from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
Finding Joe: The Movie: Here you will find links and information about the film, Finding Joe. This documentary covers the concept of 'The Hero's Journey' originally discussed by scholar and mythologist, Joseph Campbell.
Bookstore: The store is filled with titles related to psychological trauma, treatment, recovery, and wellness. The book titled, Leading from the Emerging Future by C. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer offers a challenge to leadership in Canada to shift your leadership style away from 'Ego' (all about me) mentality, towards accepting the value of an 'Eco' leadership style, which at the core can help leaders shift towards a style that is 'All About WE'.
Mentors: I acknowledge these individuals as those who've earned my trust. Their gracious support across my journey has quite literally saved my own life. Their personal knowledge, compassion, understanding, and professional ethics are impeccable.
Am I cured personally from my own trauma issues? No. I achieve remissions. It's been simply a very long time being stuck with my own trauma issues, and given that it took nearly 20 years before I was able to find helpful treatment, I'm quite comfortable accepting that for me, I've reached a plateau.
My education and recovery has been one of trial-and-error by necessity. When I was first struggling in 1994, and when I was ultimately diagnosed in 2005, the world was far away from yet waking up to the reality of these issues. There was NO interventions in my life as a paramedic in BC, neither in the 90's nor in 2005.
Our compensation system and frankly the response of my employer, some family, and many past-peers, made it that much more difficult for me to find my way.
I mean no judgement here. In the past we simply all didn't have right information about trauma and mental health struggles to inform us and to work with.
The School-of-Hard-Knocks might well be a quality University. I'd argue, however, that the educators in that system are somewhat less-than-encouraging when one finds oneself unable to function as a once highly-functioning individual. The mentors I've met along the way have been my salvation.
They each taught me from their experience what Post Traumatic Growth looks like.
I can say, without reservation: Over now 24 years working to learn about trauma, PTSD, Depression, and Substance/Alcohol use disorder, I've grown emotionally and spiritually in a dramatic way, thanks to those who offered their compassionate hand, teaching me along the way all missing pieces to the puzzle that I'd become:
A puzzle with no real solution available to me to put the pieces back together in any way that held for long, or for that matter, made any real, quality sense.
Podcasts: Over 2015 and 2016 all guests in these podcasts worked with me to discuss trauma, PTSD, treatment models, and they all shared graciously their lived experience as trauma-survivors, peer-support-persons, trusted clinicians, and educators. I share these podcasts with the support of all who participated.
Blog: I'll continue to do my best to share some writing here from myself on a monthly basis. I'm working currently to create a writer's discipline with the help of my current writing mentor, Luanne Armstrong here in Creston BC.
Research: For the past five years, I've dedicated my time to education and research to better inform myself about the issues I struggle with. Having been a paramedic, my interest in medical research has motivated my efforts. I've been able to find online sources for published studies on the issues.
Where research is concerned, I often feel as though we're being studied to death-literally, considering the high-rates of suicide evident in the military and in public safety professions in Canada.
I've used myself as the guinea-pig, testing studies and treatments along the way through my recovery. There is no study or treatment shared here on the site that isn't supported by my lived experience as a filter for me to determine for myself the validity, subjectively, of any studies and treatments I've sought out to help myself with.
I've used my study and research time to inform myself in a way that allows me to comfortably share all the information I've sharing here on the Blog, and this study has informed me to support my volunteer efforts as an advocate and recovery coach.
I've featured here on the home-page a few such studies. On the Research page you'll find access to those online publishers I've grown to trust.
Trauma Treatment Frameworks: Traumatic Stress Injury Recovery from traumatic-stress injury is a non-linear process. We are each unique individuals. Treatments that help one of us won't necessarily help another. The deeper the level of traumatization, the longer the traumatization went untreated, and the common issue with trauma survivors of often carrying layers of mental health issues into therapy to contend with:
This makes our recovery process as necessarily unique as we are as individuals.
This page introduces readers to the treatment framework models I'm most familiar with: The Triphasic Trauma Treatment Model and the Expressive Trauma Integration Model shared with me by my mentors Dr. Anna Baranowsky and Dr. Odelya Gertel Kraybill.
Treatment: As I touch on the subject of treatments, I stress again that we're each unique. Those treatments available today that are most successful understand in the core of the philosophy behind the treatments that we are each our own person in mind, body, and human spirit.
The best treatment practitioners available to us for support are with us to bear witness through our recovery process, and are gifted as specialized, trauma-informed and educated clinicians in the art attached to their work of holding space with their clients.
I've listed on this page those clinicians that I'm personally familiar with, who've earned my trust and who represent themselves clearly as being specialized to deliver trauma-and-violence informed care.
There are links on this page as well to search for trauma-informed helpers in BC.
For quick-links, I provide access to finding help in BC below:
- Find A Registered Clinical Counselor in British Columbia
- Find A Registered Psychologist in British Columbia
For Medical Doctors (Physicians) Who Specialize in Trauma Issues: Rise BC Wellness Centre (Nelson BC) Is On The Right Path In My View:
Badge of Life Canada has links to therapists in Canada on their site as well:
Treatment Modalities: A variety of treatment modalities are available to assist us. This page discusses again the importance of considering the approach that our chosen helpers may use to treat us, and the page introduces readers to those treatment modalities that I've personally experienced. I've included here those modalities too that although I've not had pleasure to experience them, the validity of the treatments is rightly supported by those professionals who've pioneered the treatments.
I'm more than comfortable confirming the validity of these modalities subjectively as a person-with-lived-experience, volunteer coach, advocate, and community and workplace trauma educator.
The Trauma Recovery Blog YouTube Channel: Our space on YouTube offers visitors opportunity to learn from those I've trusted to teach myself about traumatic stress injury, PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders.
I follow many. Those key to my recovery continue to amaze me with the knowledge they hold. Their gracious willingness to share their work via YouTube is a blessing in my own recovery life.
Included on this channel are those podcasts I produced with the help of my mentors of 2015 and 2016.
I named the project, Transitions-Home from Trauma. My writing mentor tells me that the best stories are about an adventurer leaving home, facing trials, and returning home to reunite with that which the adventurer left behind.
In short, she confirms what I started to learn long ago. We are each one writing our own version of the Hero's Journey.
That story ultimately being the story of our life.
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Links to Other Studies Available Online
The beauty of access to the Internet today is that it's become a highly-valued tool in supporting my personal recovery.
I encourage all who visit here to become an expert with the conditions of trauma you may be living through. The sources included here are available for those interested in understanding traumatic stress through the gracious research of those dedicated professionals studying and treating trauma.
I've seen incredible growth in the volume of information available over the past 3-5 years.
Most of what you must agree to learn about on way to helping yourself can be found online. Google is actually today, for me, one of my most valued friends. The digital library that I'd hoped the Internet would one-day be is finally here. If I've learned nothing else, I've learned the value in agreeing to study my conditions in depth. As well I've learned the value in agreeing with myself to be a life-long, curious learner. Trauma issues are much less frightening once we learn the clinical realities of the conditions we're tasked to face.
Please do check out the Blog. I'm finally taking a shot at working through some writing. All comments help me to improve the craft and are therefore welcome.
We're occasionally graced with contributions from other survivors as guest bloggers. If you'd like to contribute to the blog, submissions are always welcome. Please contact me by email, gregorydarren@hotmail.com, for submission requests.
There is a support page available on Facebook. Please, join us.
Please visit our partner, The Charter for Compassion and consider today making a fresh commitment to live by 'The Golden Rule'. Thank you to Karen Armstrong for promoting the charter's reminder:
'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you'. Trauma knows no boundaries. 'There but for the grace. . .could easily go us all.'
No child should be abused as a weapon of war: Please consider supporting the work of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative.
Thanks for visiting. Be well.
Darren Michael Gregory, Curator
- Study: Meta-Analysis of 89 Structural MRI Studies in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Comparison With Major Depressive Disorder
- Studies: Adverse Childhood Experiences
- Studies: Historical Trauma & Indigenous Health
- Studies: Depression
- Studies: Trauma and Addiction
- Studies: Secondary Traumatic Stress (Compassion Fatigue)
- Studies Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Study: Blending Aboriginal and Western healing methods to treat intergenerational trauma with substance use disorder in Aboriginal peoples who live in Northeastern Ontario, Canada
- More On The Research Page
The beauty of access to the Internet today is that it's become a highly-valued tool in supporting my personal recovery.
I encourage all who visit here to become an expert with the conditions of trauma you may be living through. The sources included here are available for those interested in understanding traumatic stress through the gracious research of those dedicated professionals studying and treating trauma.
I've seen incredible growth in the volume of information available over the past 3-5 years.
Most of what you must agree to learn about on way to helping yourself can be found online. Google is actually today, for me, one of my most valued friends. The digital library that I'd hoped the Internet would one-day be is finally here. If I've learned nothing else, I've learned the value in agreeing to study my conditions in depth. As well I've learned the value in agreeing with myself to be a life-long, curious learner. Trauma issues are much less frightening once we learn the clinical realities of the conditions we're tasked to face.
Please do check out the Blog. I'm finally taking a shot at working through some writing. All comments help me to improve the craft and are therefore welcome.
We're occasionally graced with contributions from other survivors as guest bloggers. If you'd like to contribute to the blog, submissions are always welcome. Please contact me by email, gregorydarren@hotmail.com, for submission requests.
There is a support page available on Facebook. Please, join us.
Please visit our partner, The Charter for Compassion and consider today making a fresh commitment to live by 'The Golden Rule'. Thank you to Karen Armstrong for promoting the charter's reminder:
'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you'. Trauma knows no boundaries. 'There but for the grace. . .could easily go us all.'
No child should be abused as a weapon of war: Please consider supporting the work of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative.
Thanks for visiting. Be well.
Darren Michael Gregory, Curator
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If Today Was Your Last Day?
What If. . .
Today Could Be Your First?
What If. . .
Today Could Be Your First?
Songwriters: Chad KroegerIf Today Was Your Last Day lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
If you reside in British Columbia and are seeking specialized, trauma-informed help
Follow this link to the BC Association of Clinical Counselors: How To Choose A Counselor.
Follow this link to the BC Association of Clinical Counselors: How To Choose A Counselor.
,
"If you'e going through hell: Keep going." ~ Sir Winston Churchill
No-one visiting here should suffer alone in silence.
Special Thanks to my friends and family who remained by my side.
Please, explore the site. If you can help support the work, please consider an honorarium donation via PayPal.
"If you'e going through hell: Keep going." ~ Sir Winston Churchill
No-one visiting here should suffer alone in silence.
Special Thanks to my friends and family who remained by my side.
Please, explore the site. If you can help support the work, please consider an honorarium donation via PayPal.
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss
North American Fire Fighter Veteran Network
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Camp My Way Donate
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Badge of Life Canada Donate
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Disclaimer: These materials and resources are presented for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for informed medical advice or training. Do not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem without consulting a qualified health or mental health care provider. If you have concerns, contact your health care provider, mental health professional, or your community health centre.
Darren Gregory © 2018. All Rights Reserved
