Category Archives for "Videos"

Keywords: Religious Trauma.

I met up with Brain Peck recently. Brian works with people who deal with religious trauma and/or trauma endured in a religious context.

Over the years, I have worked with various clients—mostly from the UK and Ireland—who were educated in strict Christian boarding schools and were affected by the abuse they had gone through.

Leaving One’s Community

I have also worked with several people who had left or were in the process of leaving their religious community.

That breaking away from their community often gave rise to issues around control, self-esteem and guilt, attachment-detachment, and identity.

Brain—who has gone through this deconversion process himself—is the perfect person to ask more in-depth questions.

Furthermore, he trained to become a trauma-informed professional and focuses on helping people who go through their own process of deconversion.

More About Brain Peck

You can find Brain through his website: https://www.roomtothrive.com

His facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RoomToThrive

Here’s the working definition for Religious Trauma:

Rachel Grant recently invited me to come onto her Podcast. Rachel is dedicated to helping survivors of sexual abuse get unstuck and live fulfilling lives.

Her website is: https://rachelgrantcoaching.com

And her facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RachelGrantCoaching/

Listen here to our conversation here if you prefer podcast

or here

http://rachelgrantcoaching.com/podcastgen/?name=2019-04-15_roland-bal.mp3

To listen to her other podcast recordings, go here:

Download the mp3 directly

Feel free to share your comments below.

I met up with Robert T. Muller, PhD, recently and we talked about his latest and previous book:

• Trauma and The Struggle to Open Up

• Trauma and The Avoidant Client

In this interview, I was particularly interested to learn more about why he wrote about the avoidant client and the difficulties the avoidant client faces while starting and progressing in trauma therapy.

Furthermore, Robert explains, with clear examples, about the different attachment styles and the challenges of each of these styles.

This interview finishes with Robert’s advice to trauma therapists who are dealing with an avoidant client attachment style and some keys points to keep in mind for the avoidant client.

Author Page and Website of Robert T. Muller

• Author page on Amazon 
• Robert's website

Bio of Robert T. Muller

It is the overcoming that will then take up all of your attention and space as this is the coping emotion which is easier to express and stay with.

How to Deal with Fight or Flight Anxiety

When you start to become aware of the deeper layers of anxiety and your fight or flight anxiety starts to become more contained, you can then start to work with expressing your boundaries. The way to go about this is to start with challenges that are manageable where you fight or flight mechanism doesn't fully kick in and take over.

It is by creating small "successes" that you can build up a sense of self-esteem again.

Do you suffer from fight or flight anxiety as a CPTSD symptom? Share your thoughts below.

Keywords: Guided Meditation for PTSD.

I want to go into why we excessively think. We all experience sometimes that we excessively think. When you're busy or have been busy for a while your thought processes become a bit more activated

This will be a bit more pronounced when you've gone through trauma or suffer from emotional stress.

It is as if the energy goes up into the head and it activates. I've referred to this before as dissociation, which can be mild or can be very pronounced, as with trauma or PTSD.

Without going into the why, or the how, or the when, or the what. Can I ask you to tune into the feeling of those thoughts to start a guided meditation for PTSD.

 + Read The Complete Meditation for PTSD Guide here.

This might sound a little bit weird but if you could close your eyes now or after this video. See if you can work with this. Close your eyes just for a moment and tune into the activation in the head area, of your thought processes.

Excessive Thinking and Guided Meditation for PTSD

Can you tune into the busyness, the feeling of the busyness itself. First of all, can you that your thoughts are racing or going in a particular direction when you close your eyes? Now just close your eyes and feel that busyness of your thought processes. It might feel as tension in the head. It might feel as heat in the head. Can you connect with that? Can you connect with those tensions?

This might sound really simple but what you're actually doing is, you're arresting the movement of thought, the processes of thought, by connecting to the physical sensations of it. And, that takes you out of duality.

Your thought processes—when they go on, on their own—always have comparison in them, or projection into the future: "it shouldn't be like this," "Why did this happen," "Why am I still like this," and so forth.

There's always some form of judgment or comparison or guilt or blame with self-reproach in that. The moment you shift into, or shift you focus, your attention, into the feeling, how it sits in your body, you're canceling out that conflictual movement of your thoughts.

For more: listen to the full video here.

Share your comments below and let me know how this technique is working for you.

Keywords: PTSD Hyperarousal.

Exploring with Dr. Art O'Malley the nervous system's responses of PTSD hyperarousal, dissociation, and the freeze response.

In this video, we're going into the nitty-gritty of what happens on a nervous system level when we go through trauma. Art explains succinctly how we go from a sympathetic NS freeze response to a fight-flight response and from there collapse into a parasympathetic NS freeze response.

Physical Symptoms of The Shut Down and PTSD Hyperarousal Responses

From the nervous system, symptoms will start to trickle down and start impacting the digestive system and immune system. Additionally, what keeps the wheel of trauma ongoing is that our thoughts start to interfere as blame, guilt, and self-reproach. These thought patterns, as judgment towards self or towards others, keeps the underlying emotion activated.

The Role of The Therapist in Dealing with Trauma and PTSD Hyperarousal

The role of the objective observer, as the therapist, helps to contain the PTSD hyperarousal and shut down symptoms. Furthermore, you will avoid going into where the pain lies. A counselor or therapist helps to point out your blind spots and gently-- through proving sufficient containment-- helps you to hold your initial overwhelming pain.

How are you dealing with PTSD Hyperarousal and the shutdown response? Leave your comment below.

Keywords: CPTSD Symptoms.

The responses with complex trauma aren’t just limited to fight, flight, or freezing but also involves the please or fawn response.

In this conversation with Dr. Art O'Malley, we explore the complexity of trauma and how suppressed anger can contribute to anxiety and depression later on in life. We started by talking about expressed anger that has been put in place to protect oneself from further abuse. That suppressed anger is covered up by a fawn or pleasing response; and adaption pattern, again, to survive in an abusive environment. Over time, when the please response starts to become second nature, you might start to forget about the held in anger.

Anger, Lack of Self-esteem, and CPTSD Symptoms

That suppressed anger, which is part of a CPTSD symptom, in adult life will start to surface as anxiety. When boundaries aren't established, it takes away clarity of who you are and what your needs are. That lack of boundaries, then, gives rise to anxiety and, further on, even possibly depression.

In addition, we discuss and explore ways of working through these CPTSD symptoms to integrate the fragments that are part of the dissociation response.

The Therapeutic Work for CPTSD Symptoms

Through carefully expressing boundaries and anger, within a safe therapeutic setting, a client can start to own the fragmented parts and work towards healing. It will take persistence, dedication, and patience, but it is possible to rebound after trauma.

Did you resonate with this video and the CPTSD Symptoms we addressed? Leave your comment below.