People often ask how to get past a trauma.
The natural human tendency is to try to ignore or forget both the trauma and its aftermath.
Unfortunately, trying to do that will generally create more difficulty.
The best way past it is to go through the healing process. Often that involves talking about and, perhaps, re-experiencing some of the pain.
True healing comes from rooting out the causes of the pain, not from covering it over.
It’s a bit like healing from third degree burns. The top layers of skin form fairly quickly, but they then need to be removed in order to allow the lower layers to heal. Healing must come from the inner layers so that infection does not cause serious complications.
This debriding (removal of the top layers of skin) is extremely painful. But without going through that pain, the body cannot truly heal.
Healing from emotional wounds often must follow a similar path. There are some therapeutic techniques, such as EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) and EFT (emotional freedom therapy) that can help one go through this process more quickly and with less pain.
I’m considering developing a series of teleseminars dealing with several different ways to heal from PTSD. These teleseminars would include experts on EMDR, EFT, psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral approaches.
Please let me know if this would interest you and which specific intervention techniques you would like me to include.
Hope Makes Healing Possible
Patricia Sherman, Ph.D., LCSW
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Dr. Sherman
I would like to attend
Melissa
Posted by Melissa on July 17, 2007 2:20 AM