Theater is the most overlooked branch of creativity, especially when using it to work through our trauma. There are many good reasons it goes unnoticed, of course. For one thing, drama therapists are not available in every city. Another reason is that we don’t all have immediate access to a stage. Lastly, both social anxiety …
Theater Therapy: Unlock Your Inner Thespian Part 2 Read More »
Writing for the stage is how you get to merge memory and fantasy into mastery over a traumatic event. Once you write a script, you have the option to take it one step further and unlock your inner thespian. If you can visualize a stage, I can walk you through how to write a script …
Writing for the Stage via Scripted Trauma: Unlock Your Inner Thespian Part 1 Read More »
Grounding is a major tool for working out of dissociation (Master Toolbox 1), lowering stress, and managing our flashbacks (Trauma Glossary 2). It calms us by using our five senses to become aware of our present environment. What is it you see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Taste? When we’re working with art or music, (and musical …
Art and Musical EMDR: How to Use Them for Grounding Read More »
Chances are, you’ve heard of the confrontation letter you never send or venting out your frustrations to an empty chair. What do they have in common? They are both old school methods for “telling off” the person who hurt you when confronting them in person is pointless. They are a means of gaining both closure …
Confrontation Letter and Empty Chair: How to Mix it Up for Closure Read More »
The two most effective treatments for CPTSD are EMDR and Somatic Work. What do the two have in common? Both are part of the Bottom-Up Therapies which are new and innovative methods for treating trauma. They help us contradict or master how we felt in our original trauma as we are processing what happened to …
Somatic Work for Flashback Management: It’s Better Than EMDR Read More »
A visual guide through two weeks’ worth of articles. Using both Radical Acceptance and Poised Readiness. This is how we can escape the ripple effect of soul death and break free from the vicious cycle. An overview of vocabulary words from Poised Readiness: How to Defeat Procrastination in 5 Steps. Both Learned Helplessness and Shame …
Radical Acceptance and Poised Readiness for Growth: A Visual Aid Read More »
In my Frederick Douglass comic book, we were introduced to Poised Readiness and how it can resurrect us from soul death, itself. Poised Readiness acts as a bridge between Radical Acceptance and developing resiliency. It does so by reframing our thoughts against the vicious cycle of the “3” P’s, or procrastinating habits (covered in last …
Poised Readiness: How to Defeat Procrastination in 5 Steps Read More »
My last soul death at age 21 remained unresolved. Therefore, as trauma’s golden rule dictates: it gets us stuck. I was stuck in the vicious cycle of Procrastination, known as the “3 P’s” for the vast majority of my adult life. In my Frederick Douglass comic book, we explored ways of resolving our trauma to …
The Vicious Cycle of the “3” P’s: 3 Radical Acceptance Steps to Break Free Read More »
Fight-Freeze is one difficult shell to crack, but not impossible. Just ask that infamous character from Charles Dickens’s classic, A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge was a Fight-Freeze trauma type with an intense attachment disorder. Yet he processed his trauma and retrieved the best parts of himself in a single night. While overnight healing happens only …
Fight-Freeze and Attachment Disorder: A Heal-Along with Ebenezer Scrooge Read More »
Hello Trauma Warriors! How many of you suffered from soul death at least once in your childhood? I know I have. So did Frederick Douglass and yet he still became one of the most important men in American history. His story of how he defeated soul death remains the most empowering story I have ever …
Guided Wisdom with Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Novel Read More »
