I’m not sure exactly how old I was when an older girl from our neighborhood coaxed me into her bedroom closet and quietly pulled the door closed. As I talked about the event years later in trauma therapy, I remembered the wall drilling into my skull as I tried in vain to escape. When I […]
Continue Reading... 2 Comments.Four years ago, forty-eight year-old Wanda Sanchez was clinging to a life without hope. Every day was a struggle to stay alive. She’d planned her suicide and had every intent to carry out her plan. For decades she’d struggled with nightmares, flashbacks, addiction, self-abuse, compulsions, and other behaviors she simply couldn’t control. Rehab was a […]
Continue Reading... 3 Comments.One in four women will experience a sexual assault in their lifetime. One in ten will develop post-traumatic stress disorder. Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a way of describing the post-traumatic stress symptoms that occur after a sexual assault. However, everyone responds differently, and the stages may vary from person to person. ACUTE PHASE This […]
Continue Reading... 2 Comments.For most people, thoughts of Halloween and Trick-or-Treat come with positive associations. Candy, costumes, and happy children. But for parents who’ve lost children to death, Halloween is a trigger of things that once were or things that might have been. The holiday can be a nightmare of memories, shattered dreams, and lost hope. Can the […]
Continue Reading... No Comments.I “met” Wanda Sanchez when she booked me to talk about my book, The Silent Seduction of Self Talk on her San Francisco radio show. I guess I did a good job because afterwards she booked me to do a series of shows on my caregiving books. We never talked, but why would we? […]
Continue Reading... No Comments.The War Within: Finding Hope for Post-Traumatic Stress Thousands of courageous men and women risk their lives in combat. But few of us understand the private inner battle they bring home. For many, it is an ongoing personal struggle that continues long after the war is over. In The War Within: Finding Hope for Post-Traumatic […]
Continue Reading... No Comments.The following post was taken from our friends at DepressionBloggers. We thank them for offering insight into the issue of depression, which impacts so many sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. This morning reading the papers from across the world, I came to an article about how Jennifer Anniston, an American actress, talked about her experience […]
Continue Reading... No Comments.Right now our household needs a little Valium, or somebody’s gonna die. That “somebody” would be our fourteen-year-old mini-dachsund Beanie. For the past three days, Beanie has been cowering beneath my feet as our neighbors detonate their “practice” 4th of July fireworks. I’m not sure what they’re shooting off over there, but it’s loud enough […]
Continue Reading... No Comments.A new study in Scientific American reports that as many as one in three people who experience a stay in a hospital intensive care unit will experience post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University checked in with survivors of a life threatening lung injury for two years after they were discharged from the ICU. […]
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