This week’s focus: Trauma Treatments

I am honored to have my Twitter feed included in this list of 50 Best Twitter Feeds for Psychology Majors! Go check out the other 49, broken out into these categories: News; Organizations; Patients; and Professionals.

Best Tweets for Trauma and PTSD Survivors is a weekly Friday feature. My selections are entirely subjective, and I know it will never be possible to include every great resource tweeted. But I can try! I’ve personally read all tweeted links, and believe them to be of great value.

Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for content found on any other website. Stay safe, and don’t follow links if you believe you might be triggered by them. Also, I will not be re-checking links from older Best Tweets posts, and if the site’s archived URL is different from the one I’ve provided here, you may need to do a search on their site.

Please Share My Stuff! You can now “like” and “share” this post everywhere with the touch of a button or two at the end of the linked tweets! Feel free to do any or all of that! (And thanks.)

Photo Credit

‏@LisaKiftTherapy “Find a moment of stillness
in your day to close your eyes
and breathe for a few moments.”

Some Tweets to Ponder

‏@AncientProverbs “You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.” ~ Chinese Proverb

‏@CarePathways “Unresolved emotions are so harmful to the body-mind system, they block energy, which then becomes a barrier to self-understanding.”

@zebraspolkadots “A good way to bring things back to manageable is to bring things back to focus. Zoom in to now — then out to today, and ask ‘is this mine?'”

‏@PemaQuotes “All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good…never touch our basic wealth.”

‏@Tamavista “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

@kdaigletherapy “Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I am with you, kid. Let’s go.'” ~ Maya Angelou

Linked Tweets

Trauma Treatments

@PsychCentral Blood Pressure Drug [Prazosin] Relieves PTSD Nightmares
[SEO: Prazosin is not a new drug, which I find a relief because most side effects will have been already well-established. “The studies showed the drug was well-tolerated and can take effect rapidly, within days to weeks, and some patients reported a return of nightmares when the course of prazosin was stopped. …” In other words, it treats the symptom but does not cure it, but anyone who’s had the nightmares would be grateful for the relief offered.]

@HealingToolKit Great article for people with PTSD, history of abuse or domestic violence
[SEO: A first person “anonymous” account of how finding a good therapist turned this person’s life around from one of unending depression and despair to one with some hope for the future. “It was so foreign to me that someone even wanted to help me, that I was worthy of help, and then to stick it out with me, and not abandon me like every adult had in my life when I was a child. It was profound and it stuck with me.”]

@Good_Therapy Art and Trauma: Creativity as a Resiliency Factor
[SEO: “There seems to be an unspoken premise that ingenuity is motivated by pain or pathology, or at least some might argue there is a sort of affiliation. Some might assume that this relationship is causal: that trauma causes creativity and thus most artists are contending with some type of affliction. An alternative possibility may be that art is not necessarily motivated by pain; rather the capacity for creative inspiration is something that is brought into the recovery process by those who have such inclinations. In other words, some survivors who are able to express through art may have access to a recovery tool that others do not.”]

@drcherylarutt Great post by Francine Shapiro | The Evidence on EMDR
[SEO: Interesting Q&A in the New York Times. “This week, readers of the Consults blog posed questions about eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or E.M.D.R., a psychological therapy pioneered by Francine Shapiro that uses eye movements and other procedures to process traumatic memories. The therapy has been used increasingly to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other traumas. You can learn more about how E.M.D.R. therapy is done here. Dr. Shapiro addresses reader questions about the current state of research on E.M.D.R. therapy.”

@OneLifeTherapy Spotting Your Patterns: How Your Life Can Be Your Therapist
[SEO: Or augment your existing therapy. “A lot of therapy is about sort of stepping back and seeing things – seeing yourself — from a different perspective. Getting out of the weave and the warp of the moment and looking more at the whole fabric of the situation you’re in. Seeing if there’s any repeating motifs or themes that might help you unlock some solutions… or even unlock parts of you. And the wonderful thing is that you can do this without being in formal therapy.”

“Don’t get me wrong, traditional therapy is a great way to get the hang of this pattern-spotting business. And it’s incredibly powerful to work with someone who’s got your back and can help you see any blindspots you might have. But once you’ve become a pattern watcher, you can use it anytime you like, to find deeper insights and often deeper healing, too. So what sort of things might you try to notice? What helps spot the patterns?” She offers many suggestions.]

The Rest of the Best

@RichelleCarey My mother opened up to me about her brother’s suicide
[SEO: “Richelle Carey recalls her family’s struggle with mental illness. Her uncle killed himself after struggling with schizophrenia. Carey hopes her family’s story will spark a conversation about mental illness in the black community.” While acknowledging her focus, Carey’s description of the impact on her family, and its associated feelings, is pretty much universal.]

@HealthyPlace Fear of Taking Psychiatric Medication
[SEO: My only quibble is the opening stance that a mental illness diagnosis automatically means taking lifelong prescription meds. If the illness has a biological basis, most likely yes. But not everyone has that. I’d been diagnosed for 10 years, but didn’t begin antidepressants until I was in a recovery phase (from acute symptoms of PTSD and dissociative identity disorder), and still couldn’t shake my depression. I no longer take those meds.

Other than that, this post is an excellent analysis of the fears you may need to address when starting psychiatric meds of any sort.]

@MentalHealthV DSM-5 Reform: Monetizing Mental Health Care?
[SEO: This is a press release by GoodTherapy.Org which outlines concerns about proposed revisions resulting in the new DSM-V in 2013. (GoodTherapy.Org is an excellent source of information on all things related to therapy, and includes a Find a Therapist database.) The specific charge of ‘monetizing mental health care’ is based on the idea that big pharma will greatly benefit from the DSM-V changes.

“‘Among all the problems with the proposed changes to the DSM-5, including the lack of supported research and lowering of diagnostic thresholds, the most disturbing change is the proposition that all syndromes are biological in nature,’ said [GoodTherapy.Org CEO] Rubinstein. The dangers of this radical stance taken by the DSM Task Force can include an increase in misdiagnoses, dependence on psychotropic drugs, and encouragement of counterproductive therapeutic tools.”]

@jodiaman Managing Effects of Anxiety (post and video)
[SEO: “Properly functioning anxiety helps us find our courage and overcome limitations. But sometimes, anxiety becomes dysfunctional and leads us down a road toward debilitating, circular thoughts and constant preoccupation with past or possible life events (read about anxiety attacks and anxiety attack symptoms). To top it off, when you discover that your anxiety is out of control, you may also feel anxious about your anxiety.” Includes 20 minute video interview of therapist and anxiety blogger Jodi Aman.]