Trauma is Now a Sexy Cause

The good news and the bad news.

It appears that the importance of recognizing and resolving trauma has hit a critical mass.  There are more events acknowledging it, more people tuning in to it, more ‘cures’ and ‘treatments’ that are cropping up to “deal” with it.

This tipping point has been decades in the making. Hard work and groundbreaking ideas were pushed forward and pursued by people with the ability to critically think and the courage to teach ideas that went against the status quo.  I actually changed my major decades ago from psych to Social work as I got weary of attempting to educate my professors who insisted that the only handling for the impact of trauma was to learn to cope and manage.   Social work is a client-centered practice and was more in alignment  with my views of helping.

So now there will be lots of choices available for healing from trauma.  First, one must decide how deeply one would like to heal. I accepted long ago that not everyone will want to fully clear out the impact of traumas.  For many, as soon as they no longer felt overwhelmed by PTSD, depression and anxiety, they were done with my services.  Others, like me, really want to be free of it all, and will pursue the work until they are in a new state of existence, expanded and happier than they have ever been in their lives.  So that decision is the first to make. 

Next, choosing an intervention - whatever methods you choose, do they use valid measurements before and after to determine progress and the effectiveness of their intervention?  Do they have any evaluated data?  I actually don’t agree with the ‘rigorous’ standard of the usual academic outcome study.  What is the value of data that has had controls in place that essentially eliminate anyone that would negatively impact the stats of the data? Data from community-based or practitioner-based practices are far more valuable in determining the true effectiveness of an intervention.  If there is no use of measurement and no data, you might want to find another intervention.

Understand the impact of trauma so that you can make an educated assessment as to whether, on face value, an intervention is valid.  Trust your own ability to think and the directions from your gut.  It is possible to not only recover from trauma, but to thrive as all the pain transmutes to something positive.

For more information about the impact of trauma and why Traditional Trauma Resolution will give you more bang for your buck, check back here for the link to the talk: What is Traditional Trauma Resolution?

Pura Vida,

Tree