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Showing posts from June, 2010

Trauma leaves its mark on immune system genes - health - 06 May 2010 - New Scientist

I have often thought that trauma changes the body's response to the environment.This research confirms my personal experience that PTSD can predispose one for cancer, particularly those of the lymph system, the body's center of immunity. My continuing hope is that future discoveries can lead sufferers to more rapid resolution of PTSD symptoms, and thereby saving their body from expressing DNA changes. Trauma leaves its mark on immune system genes - health - 06 May 2010 - New Scientist

My Latest GoodTherapy.org Article

 Be sure to let me know what ideas this raises for you.  L Can Gay Families Teach Us About Gender Identity?

Father's Day devotion from Pr. Peter Strommen

Peter is currently the Lead Pastor at my former congregation, Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran, Prior Lake, MN, has written such a beautiful and wise devotion about faith, family and gender, I just have to share. Thanks, Peter. Awesome. http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs044/1102142675015/archive/1103489936318.html

Helplessness = Trauma

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I have been thinking about my, and our, experience of helplessness in the face of the Gulf oil disaster. About what it feels like in our bodies to be continuously exposed to experiences in the world that we can't control but which have large, perhaps even life changing effects on our lives. In the last 50 years or so, psychology as a science has become increasingly wise about experiences that wound the soul. The kind of happenings that lock up a part of our brains, quite literally, from easy connection to the rest of our inner experience and cause us to emotionally get stuck in the memory. We call these experiences traumas. Trauma with a capital T. In the current mental health definition of post-traumatic stress syndrome, a person witnesses or experiences something life-threatening, shocking, and horrific, but with one key experiential ingredient : they feel powerless. Powerlessness is what seems to turn a terrible experience into a Trauma; the inability to respond. Being ab