By Myrna Molinari, MSW, LCSW, CAP, ICADC
I want to offer hope to those of you who have experienced trauma and its negative, life changing effects. This is for those of you who have struggled for months or even a lifetime under the weight of that burden.
Trauma can impact anyone.
For those of you who feel its effects, know that I have the highest admiration for you. I believe you to be the strongest of us. You are able to bear up under the everyday stressors that everyone navigates to varying degrees. In addition to this, you have shouldered the enormous weight of trauma and its devastating effects. If you are reading this, you are still fighting your way through it and are worthy of our utmost respect. I thank you for your courage in carrying on when you may feel as if all hope is lost. The strongest, most resourceful and resilient men and women I have ever met, hardened combat warriors, have suffered the effects of trauma. They have not been able to “shake it off” or “get over it” or overcome it alone or without the right tools. Today, we have a therapeutic weapon that is incredibly powerful in combating Post Traumatic Stress: Accelerated Resolution Therapy. It is highly efficient and effective in alleviating and even eliminating physical and emotional symptoms. It moves you from a state of Post Traumatic Stress to Post Traumatic Growth. Before I get to Post Traumatic Growth, I would like to explain Post Traumatic Stress.
Post Traumatic Stress (Disorder) or PTSD occurs when your brain perceives a threat and turns on the alarm, triggering a life-saving response for flight, fight, or freeze. When it fails to turn the alarm back off after the threat is over, post traumatic symptoms develop.
You may have gone through a variety of traumatic events in your life where the alarm circuit for fear was triggered, allowing you to avoid harm or minimize the threat. When the threat was over, the alarm was silenced and you did not have lasting symptoms — even in cases where physical harm was incurred. The event was stored away appropriately in long-term memory.
However, sometimes, the brain experiences things that it cannot make sense of and normal coping becomes overwhelmed. It ends up keeping that memory in a short term “activated” state, with the alarm still triggered for danger. When that happens, you develop the negative effects of trauma. Every sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell that was part of the original traumatic scene becomes encoded (i.e., powerfully connected) in the imagery of that event. Any new environment that has any of those sensations in it will trigger sensations like fear and anxiety, but also things like anger, irritability, and guilt. It can also cause the thought/ feeling that you aren’t safe.
For example, say you are walking through the woods, chewing cinnamon gum and it’s a sunny day. You see a few clouds and you can feel a light breeze. You smell the earth and decaying leaves. You hear birds singing and animals chattering. That input (sights, sounds, taste, touch, smell) is being noted by your brain and processed as information. As you walk along, you see a stick in your path and your brain views that information and codes it as “no danger here.” Your brain then moves on to the next piece of information. The next piece of information is a poisonous snake coiled to strike. In response, your brain immediately codes that for “danger” and signals the alarm. It shuts down the executive functions of your brain, which include:
- memory storage and recall;
- planning and executing a plan;
- following step-by-step processes; and
- focus and concentration.
Your brain DOES this because you don’t have time to contemplate your options or examine the situation before making choices. You need to act NOW. You act from the primitive part of your brain, the amygdala, for immediate life-saving activities of fight, flight, or freeze. This is the normal way your brain reacts to danger.
Here’s the problem: you survived the threat but your brain failed to turn the alarm off. With the alarm in an activated state, it continues to signal that danger is present when anything that was coded into that traumatic imagery manifests. Like when you smell cinnamon, decaying leaves or earthy smells; hear birds or other animals; feel the heat of the sun on your skin or a breeze goes by; or see a cloud. Every new environment/scene where those sensations are present now become coded for danger.
Those experiencing PTSD constantly feel on edge, anxious, irritable, and uncomfortable in their own skin. Trauma dysregulates the brain and body so that an extreme and heightened emotional state is ever present.
Sleep is disrupted so you aren’t getting to the healing stage of REM (rapid eye movement), sleep that helps regulate and heal your brain/body. In REM, your brain is using eye movements to relax physical and emotional sensations. Your heart rate calms down, your anxieties dissipate and you are at ease. While the eye movements are calming all the physical and emotional sensations in your body, they are also engaging the executive functions of your brain. Not unlike defragging a computer, this process is cleaning up your brain and organizing it for improved memory, focus, and concentration.
Typically, if you have a history of trauma you don’t get to the REM stage of sleep. Nightmares, waking up “battle ready,” or being afraid to go to sleep as you are not in control of yourself, create sleep disturbances (e.g., insomnia). Memories are intrusive and get triggered unexpectedly. In that sleep-deprived, emotionally-heightened, hypervigilant state, you are constantly scanning your surroundings for danger, even in the safety of your own home. In this condition, it is extremely difficult to think clearly or function in your day. You may find yourself going from one extreme to another, highly irritable/angry or excitable, to depressed and exhausted.
Things that once were a 0-2 out of 10 (i.e., mildly annoying and easily dismissed), are now a 7-10 out of 10. The response is explosive and disproportionate to the situation. In dealing with this intensity of emotion, some military personnel have described locking themselves away and crying, feeling tearful often, and uncomfortable with their vulnerability. In attempting to cope with or avoid emotions and problems that feel overwhelming, some will engage in substance abuse.
Behaviors can become increasingly reckless, aggressive, or self-destructive. In addition, there are common health issues associated with trauma. Pain, weight loss or weight gain, gastrointestinal problems, body aches, and fatigue are some of the more common health issues.
Rather than face rejection or lack of understanding when trying to explain something you are struggling to accept or understand (e.g., acts you committed while on active duty, that were perpetrated on you, or to which you were exposed), you tend to isolate and withdraw. You may find excuses to avoid family and friends or disappear in the middle of events. Sometimes, in order to protect yourself and your family, you incite conflict to keep them at a safe distance. The result is you find yourself alone.
Where you were once able to regulate your emotional response and be rational and reasonable, you are now irrational and unreasonable. Think of this as going from being Bruce Banner to the Incredible Hulk. Locking that rage down takes tremendous energy and resources that are already diverted to trying to manage all your PTSD symptoms. That’s what makes it such a struggle in trying to hold everything together and not take it out on your loved ones. Your family and friends are the ones who are primarily on the receiving end. However, the general public sometimes gets a taste as well in the form of road rage and verbal or physical confrontations. You likely already know it and the guilt, shame, and self-doubt only add to the burden.
For your family, living with you is like “walking on eggshells.” They never know what will trigger an emotional explosion. Sometimes, just the noise of your kids playing or arguing will set off a disproportionate response. Your significant other asking you to do something or questioning why a task still isn’t finished is enough to push you over the edge. Between the explosive episodes are the times when you isolate and withdraw from the family. It’s hard to share any part of yourself or your day. You just want to be left alone to try and cope. You don’t want to go out anymore and your world tends to become your house and the limited number of places you feel safe enough to visit. When you have school-aged children and your family has a lot going on, this is especially difficult. It is not uncommon that you may find you are disappointing yourself and your family as you either don’t go or end up leaving early. How can you explain to them that all your triggers and alarms are activated and torturing you? The experience is overwhelming. Left unchecked, the effects of trauma can devastate your family relations, disrupt healthy parenting, and disconnect you from your loved ones.
As the French chausser, Henri Jacques Tournier indicated in the story you just read, this can feel as if you are in Hell.
Luckily, just as The Shepherd came to rescue Henri, help is available.
Post Traumatic Growth is possible.
Post Traumatic Growth
Post Traumatic Growth occurs when you take action to arrest the impact of, and start to recover from, traumatic memory and its effects. Most of you have made numerous efforts to recover, tried different therapies and self-help methods, with varying degrees of success. There isn’t just one path to recovery. You have to find what works for you. That said, in my experience treating trauma, there are some therapies that are more effective and efficient than others.
I have worked in the field of trauma for over 25 years and have served with some of the very best professionals in the field. Addressing trauma effectively involves engaging in activities that equip you to regulate your emotional and physical state. It is important to focus on activities that empower you and help you identify and manage what is within your control.
One of the primary tools that does all of these things is Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). This specific form of trauma therapy can accomplish in one session what other trauma therapies might never accomplish: resolution of traumatic memory and symptoms. I have often heard it said: “I can never un-see that. It will be forever stuck in my head.” With ART, that is no longer true. You do not have to live with the images of loss and destruction in your head.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I believe this to be true. If you stop and think about a happy memory, an image pops into your head of that moment in time. You can feel the positive sensations that were coded into that memory. The same holds true for a traumatic/disturbing memory. The physical and emotional sensations are coded into the imagery. As a result, when re-experiencing the memory of a combat scene or violence or loss, you experience that moment in time again. It’s as if you are back in that moment again. The intensity can feel overwhelming.
As horrific as these relived memories can be, it is possible to address all the physical and emotional sensations experienced in the traumatic scene. You can desensitize all the sights, sounds, taste, touch, and smells that are attached to that memory. In addition, it is possible to “rescript” the scene and change the imagery so as to feel better.
Let’s break this down so it is easier to understand.
The narrative of what happened to you does not change. You will always have the facts of what happened in the event. However, you do not have to carry the pain of it with you. Imagine yourself as a movie director. You have the ability to do a director’s cut to your “R” rated movie and leave behind the scenes that haunt you. Like a movie editor, you can take the “R” rated images (violent or disturbing) in the scene and delete them. You can then insert “G” rated feel good images/scenes. From that point on, when you think of your scene, at a minimum it is reduced in its intensity and in most cases, it doesn’t bother or disturb you anymore. As a result, you get lasting relief. The new “movie/memory” is appropriately stored in the past where it belongs and is not active in the now, keeping you from living fully.
One of the many benefits of ART is that you do not have to tell your story to the ART therapist. I have done many sessions where the Veteran did not tell me what traumatic memory they were processing. They did not share any details other than the sensations they were experiencing while processing the memory. Yet, they still reached a 0/10 for relief of symptoms at the end. They felt good or even really happy. I am blessed to see that happen over and over for our military personnel. When was the last time you addressed traumatic memory and left a session feeling good? When was the last time you didn’t have to deal with being triggered/anxious afterwards and have to deal with it on your own? I can think of no greater gift we can give our service men and women than the gift of freedom from traumatic symptoms. We have the ability to provide that relief using Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART).
Noting what has been effective for healing, I worked with my partners/co-founders, Jenna Miller, LMHC, and Carla Berry Staats, LCDC, MCAP, to develop a free therapeutic retreat program for Active Duty personnel and Veterans with Combat Trauma (CT) and/or Military Sexual Trauma (MST). As a result, Warrior Mission: At Ease Retreat and Aftercare Program was created. Warrior Mission: At Ease integrates a variety of alternative therapies and methods needed for healing from trauma. Transportation/cost of flights is included in the retreat so that financial barriers are eliminated. Everyone who applies and qualifies can participate.
Our trauma therapy team is highly specialized in the field of trauma and works extensively with Active Duty personnel and Veterans. The team consists of licensed professionals and offers Accelerated Resolution Therapy, provided by myself (Myrna Molinari, LCSW, CAP); Diego Hernandez, PsyD; Lori Williams, LCSW; and Chris Long, LCSW. In addition, equine therapy is provided by Jenna Miller, LMHC and Carla Berry Staats, LCDC, MCAP, (both ART trained therapists). Finally, Neurofeedback is provided by Yolanda Harper, LCSW (ART trained therapist); Craniosacral Therapy, is provided by Tammy Brockman; and iRest Yoga, is provided by Kashi Heynis (ART trained therapist). More important to us than our credentials are the partnering relationships we form with you to recover and restore your lives.
Our team’s peer mentors, Jake Taylor, US Army; Betsy Torres, USMC; Andrew Inman, US Army; and Russell Smith, US Army, are all graduates of our program and volunteer their time to give back to help their fellow warriors on the path to recovery. In addition, we have partnered with the Homefront Foundation, Matt and Mark Fetterman, who provide training in Storytelling, a powerful tool that helps our Active Duty personnel and Veterans reconnect to self, family, friends, and their communities. LaVonne Bower, founder of Paws and Warriors connects any Veteran interested with a rescue/therapy dog that can be trained further as a service dog through additional resources.
The retreats offer individual and group sessions and time for reflection, relaxation and making connections with other Veterans while surrounded by nature. Warrior Mission: At Ease is a program of Quantum Leap Farm, Inc., Odessa, Florida, and fully-funded through private donors and our community partners. This allows us to do this amazing work with our military families.
We want you to know that Warrior Mission: At Ease is but one of many programs and services available to assist you in overcoming trauma and reclaiming your life. Whether you seek healing through us or another organization, the important thing is for you to continue to push forward and use the resources and relationships available that can support you along the way. We wish you peace and happiness and the freedom to live in the now.
