Volkman Life Skills

Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-1-61599-979-8
Verlag: Loving Healing Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten

Reihe: Explorations in Metapsychology

Metapsychology, as developed by Frank A.Gerbode, MD, is a subject rich in philosophy and practical application. Much of Applied Metapsychology makes use of one-on-one session work to achieve the individual's personal goals - from relieving past pain to living more fully to expanding consciousness.
Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology, highlights key factors from the subject and illuminates the ways that these factors can be used on a daily basis for improved quality of life, as an individual, in relationships, and in the wider world. Learn handy and usually quite fast techniques to assist another person after a shock, injury or other distress Learn simple methods for expanding your awareness on a daily basis Gain a deeper understanding of relationship and how to strengthen and nurture any relationship Learn the components of successful communication, what causes commu nication to break down, and how to repair breakdowns Gain vital keys to understanding those behaviors of other people that have previously been inexplicable to you Gain the ability to more accurately predict certain patterns of human behavior, and to be more effective in dealing with the negative ones Learn an effective tool for making important life decisions Explore human potential
Praise for Life Skills
'A concise, eminently-readable, empathic, joy-filled, hands-on text. Life Skills is a must for therapists and their clients.'
-- Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited'
'A serious, impressive, and thoughtful work with one objective in mind: teaching how to reach one's full potential.'
-- James W. Clifton, M.S., Ph.D., LCSW
'If you take the trouble to do the exercises the way the author suggests, they will change your life.'
-- Robert Rich, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.A.P.S., A.A.S.H
From the EXPLORATIONS IN METAPSYCHOLOGY SERIES

Autoren/Hrsg.

Volkman, Marian K.

Leseproben

2

Traumatic Stress as a Factor in Life

• The Effects of Traumatic Stress
• What Can be Done about these Effects?
• Triggering of Traumatic Incidents
• What is Resolution of Trauma?
• Attempted Solutions
• To Face It or Not to Face It?
• Real Resolution of Traumatic Stress
• Emotional First Aid: Three Simple Remedies

The Effects of Traumatic Stress

In the ground-breaking book On Aggression, Lorenz (1974) talked about his pet goose who followed him everywhere, as much as possible. The goose's devotion allowed Lorenz the opportunity to observe its behavior closely. The goose suffered a shock one day and on subsequent days Lorenz observed the goose to make a wide circle around the area where the traumatic experience had occurred, even though there was nothing there now to cause alarm. Over time, with no further shocks occurring in that location, the width of the circle the goose made to avoid that spot diminished, but the avoidance never completely went away.

On the biological level, it makes sense that organisms store up memories of danger or fear in order to avoid pain, injury or death in the future. It may be lowering to compare oneself to a goose, but human beings store traumatic memories with as much tenacity as geese do, with a resultant avoidance of certain places, people or situations. When we avoid a location or situation with no inherent danger in it, we limit our awareness, perception and options. In fact, we do so more than the goose, because our dangers include symbolic and social ones, not only physical events and places.

When an animal is injured the first thing it will do, if it possibly can, is scramble to its feet. Despite the fact that doing so will probably cause further pain, the instinct to get up drives the animal. The alternative, taking no action to get up, invites predators to come in to kill and eat the defenseless one. Emotionally, we do the same thing. Often a person who has just suffered an injury or a devastating shock or loss will answer, “Fine” when asked, “How are you doing?” Just labeling this as denial misses the deeper truth. The organism, animal or human, is trying not only to look fine in order to avoid attack, but trying to be fine.

There are two sides to that coin. We are taught as we grow up to pull ourselves together and refrain from wallowing in our hurts, but there is a strong biological imperative as well, to both act as if we are in control and to be in control of ourselves and (as far as is possible) our environment. The negative side to this is that we “stuff” things, storing up hurt, resistance, emotion and confusion in hard lumps that we then carry around with us. On the positive side, there is such a thing as resilience. We do have the ability to rise above our hurts and carry on. We will find ways to cope with whatever happens to us. Even if some of those coping mechanisms end up causing further problems, we're better off to acknowledge them as efforts to cope rather than condemn them as senseless activities.

In an ideal world, each person who suffered a trauma would hold it together as best as possible, coping with whatever had come up. Later, there would be a safe time and space to “unstuff” everything that happened including all the thoughts, intentions and feelings, as well as what actually happened. Usually in a traumatic event, too much happens too fast for us to be able to track with it. This very inability to receive and process all of the data coming in has a lowering effect upon awareness. Additionally, we have a tendency to depress our own consciousness when we anticipate that something unpleasant is about to happen, in an effort to avoid experiencing it.

The trouble is that attempting to put traumatic experience out of mind doesn't get rid of it. Storing painful memories takes some effort. Trying to keep a lid on them takes more effort. Conflicting with the intention and desire to keep these memories squashed down out of sight, we also have the desire to return to an ideal state of alertness, balance and comfort, which requires resolution.

No matter how good we are at repressing painful memories, they continue to resurface: in dreams, in irrational thoughts and behaviors, in outbursts of emotion and in physical illness. They continue to demand attention and resolution.

Much has been made of a study1 (Shalev & Yehuda, 1999) that showed that 53% of people in the study with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), recovered without outside help within three months. While this is a good testimonial for human resilience, it misses the point that not all people who have experienced a traumatic event develop PTSD. Whether a person qualifies for a diagnosis of PTSD or not, she or he may still have residual effects from traumatic incidents that impact quality of life. PTSD can be a useful diagnosis. It identifies a cluster of symptoms, helps both sufferers and clinicians understand what is going on with the case, and helps researchers to study the phenomenon1. Much research has been done specifically on people who qualify for this diagnosis (which has also become a crucial point in qualifying for insurance coverage). Large segments of the population are affected by traumatic stress but are a symptom or two short of a full PTSD diagnosis. They tend to be neglected certainly in current academic studies, and even in treatment.

What Can be Done about the Effects of Traumatic Incidents?

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR, part of the larger subject of Metapsychology), is the most effective and efficient method of resolving the effects of traumatic incidents, according to my observation. (See the Appendix B, especially: www.tir.org for more information, also the book Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction, 2nd Ed. (V. Volkman, 2005), which you can preview at www.BeyondTrauma.com).

While this Life Skills book doesn't give you the training to do TIR, the theory behind it is very useful in daily life. Of course there are many things besides traumatic incidents that have a significant effect on our ability to function well in life, such as worries, upsets, confusions, misunderstandings and regretted actions to mention a few. Still, past traumatic incidents, large and small, cause some of the most significant impact on the quality of our lives. Understanding this impact allows us to understand emotions and behaviors in ourselves and others that were previously inexplicable.

Interestingly enough, modern film and fiction are getting more and more psychologically sophisticated and accurate in relation to the effects of stored trauma and the phenomenon of triggering, which we address in the next section. Of course there are still plenty of inaccurate representations as well, but the general improvement makes for much more interesting and satisfying entertainment.

Let's look a little further at resilience, a subject of great interest because it affects our ability to bounce back from difficult experiences and to live well. Resilience is so intuitively important to our survival that there are more individuals and organizations currently studying the subject than ever before, judging by a quick survey of the Internet.

Someone once asked me the difference between resilience and a prideful, hard heart. Pride and a hard heart are defense mechanisms a person uses to try to protect self from distressing experiences. Unfortunately they have the byproduct of making him/her more rigid and inflexible, and hence less able to respond to the environment intelligently and adroitly. Resilience, on the other hand is either the physical property of being able to bounce back into its former shape when compressed (as in, “Foam rubber is resilient.”) or the emotional ability to return to a good state rather quickly after something bad happens. Resilience in the second meaning means a person who is strong without being brittle. S/he has inner resources, and the ability to inspire and utilize support from those around him/her in order to return to a steady state.

A prideful, hard-hearted person definitely comes across to others as callous. A resilient person is more relaxed, less defensive, more comfortable in his/her own skin, so to speak, so he responds to others more readily and appropriately. The former is afraid of being hurt. The latter knows that if hurt, s/he will recover, so s/he is more willing to invest in relationships. Someone with less resilience stays “dented” longer—maybe permanently.

To what degree can resilience be inherited? Affected by environmental factors? Deliberately enhanced? These are the questions being asked. The good news is that resilient behaviors and strategies (see Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, 1997) can be learned and practiced. Also, resolving a trauma does more than improve a person's resilience by releasing the stored up pain and resistance. The actual work of facing up to and mastering a previously overwhelming experience strengthens the person's confidence and resilience.

Triggering of Traumatic Incidents

Understanding the concept of triggering or restimulation:

1. Can help one to understand one's own (less than perfectly sane) behavior and that of others.
2. Can help one to avoid needless restimulation of self and others (examples: scary movies, trigger phrases, geographic locations, etc.).

Triggering...