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Trigger Alert (Graphic Content) Tanya Busch 1972 Dickens Elementary School
There’s always been confusion in my head about the abduction and murder of Tanya Busch. Tanya’s name has stayed with me always, and occasionally related events sneak into my dreams and mesh with other trauma experienced. Over the years I’ve hunted online for information about the tragedy, with little success. I’ve asked family members and they have only brushed it aside like so many of the things that happened over those years of my childhood.
Read MoreVicarious Traumatization and Self-Care (PTSD)
Vicarious Traumatization and Self-Care
Pearlman, L. & Saakvitne, K. (1995). Vicarious Traumatization: How trauma therapy affects the therapist. In Trauma and the Therapist, W.W. Norton: New York.
Geller, J., Madsen, L. & Ohrenstein, L. (2004). Secondary trauma: A team approach. Clinical Social Work Journal, 32, 415-430.
Tibbits, D. (2006). What organization leaders can do for therapists who are victims of vicarious trauma. Journal of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, 48-56.
If a free copy of a reading is available, I’ll do my best to post a link to it. For books, I’ll link to Amazon so that you can preview the book for free, and if you buy it, a tiny commission will help support this site. Academic articles will link to the main publisher’s site so you can read the abstract. If you have books or articles to recommend, please use the comment page with the full citation and if appropriate I will include it on the site. Some of these items are directly from course outlines from the best PTSD training programs available.
Tags: secondary trauma, organization leaders, vicarious trauma, trauma therapy <BR/> Read MorePrazosin – Dealing with Night-Terrors
I can’t really imagine anything that would be scarier than sleeping beside a 200 pound, 6 foot two C-PTSD survivor while he’s having night terrors.
For the better part of a decade I’ve known better than to sleep side by each with my partner. I can have terrors in my sleep that have me flail from one side of the bed to the other. I can awake from a dream completely disoriented and confused, ready for horrific things to happen.
Tags: adrenaline, PTSD, Prazosin, terrors <BR/> Read MorePTSD and Perceptual Challenges
One of the most difficult things to share with people who don’t have PTSD is just how terribly undermined my sense of confidence is regarding any state of being. For example, I can be walking down the street, and suddenly, without any reasonable explanation, I can be struck with panic or fear. This is more than just a flash back or trigger. Envision walking down the street looking through a camera lens, and that at any moment a lens can be put on to the camera without your volition. The sound of a car, a colour, a sound, a person walking by – it can be anything.
Tags: PTSD, Fllight, Fight, Fear, Flashbacks <BR/> Read MoreWhat Does PTSD Feel Like?
About two times a week I’m asked about my PTSD, what happened, or what my symptoms feel like. It was once a bit troubling, because if I didn’t reply, I felt like the perception was that I wasn’t interested in sharing, or worse that I was being elusive and secretive about my life experience. What people didn’t often realize was that retelling my story or preparing myself to share some piece of it triggered me terribly. Other times I could completely detach from my emotional state and just puke some elements of my story out without any sense of emotional connection to the story at all. The worst, and most offensive queries were from unskilled medical and practitioners. When I was first seeking out treatment, I was repeatedly asked to share “what happened” and the details of the traumatic events. If I didn’t reply with the type of details they requested I felt like I wasn’t sharing the depths of the symptoms I experienced, if it did fully reply I could watch these folks crush under the weight of the horrors that I shared. I was lucky to find myself under the care of one phenomenal psychiatrist who truly understood what I was going through. She helped me get treatment and continues to support me in my after care.
Tags: PTSD, Symptoms, Trauma <BR/> Read More
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