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

@AnnTran_ “Your current safe boundaries
were once unknown frontiers.” ~ Unknown

Six Standalone Tweets to Ponder

@sgbrownlow “When therapy helps people feel better without coping or choosing better, it has helped them avoid instead of grow.”

@CarePathways “It doesn’t matter how many people are on your side, cheering you on. If you can’t get on your own side, you never get past ‘go.'”

@Good_Therapy “Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

@visityourself “Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true. Hint: hateful beliefs about yourself = not true.”

@LillyAnn “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ~ Aristotle

@soulseedz “The word ‘intimacy’ sounds like ‘into me I see’. Relationships are mirrors of your inner world.”

Linked Tweets

In the News

@WikiaNews Awesome resource on @Wikia: Suicide Prevention Wiki — worldwide directory of hotlines, text-lines, and more
[SEO: Bookmark this site. You never know when you’ll meet someone online who is despondent and needs resources asap. It could even be you.]

@SarahEOlson2009 PTSD Awareness Day Monday, June 27th — National Center for PTSD
[SEO: Site contains resources for spreading PTSD awareness, as well as links to find help for yourself or a family member. All of these resources are available for anyone with PTSD, whether a veteran or not.]

@psychcentral America’s Mental Health: Budget Cuts, Poor Training and Stephanie Moulton
[SEO: An important post details how state budget cuts for mental health resources are creating situations which put the lowest paid and least trained mental health workers in danger. Stephanie Moulton was one such worker who was murdered by a group home member with schizophrenia who had gone off his meds — and the staff knew he had a history of violence. Ms. Moulton, a group home aide, was paid between $12-14/hour, and given only one week of training.

“Have we gone too far with cutting the budgets of mental health services to the poor and in-need? While the answer may be obvious to some of us, what is less obvious is how we stop such cuts from occurring during rough economic times. And if we can’t, how we can at least ensure patients like Chappell don’t fall through the cracks of the system — a slip that resulted in a young woman’s death.”]

The Rest of the Best

@Soc4ArtinHealth Read how drawing can help children who have had traumatic experiences
[SEO: An excellent post that directly connects drawing with implicit memory, and why that is crucial for a child’s recovery from traumatic events. “As a researcher and helping professional, I continue to be intrigued by just how drawing ‘helps’ bring about recovery, whether through decrease of worry or fear or reduction of more complex acute trauma and post-traumatic stress reactions. But of equal importance, giving traumatized children the opportunity to express through images what is often impossible to say with words underscores my responsibility to bear witness to their very human suffering, honoring those voices that might otherwise have remained silenced.”

For those who remained silenced for far too long, into adulthood, art therapy shows similar benefits. See also (linked in the above post), Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children’s Lives — and Sensory Activities Make the Difference.]

@Mindful_Living The Joy Of Play
[SEO: “The point is make it time just for you, a time of intentional play that you normally would not give yourself permission to do. Don’t negotiate with your mind that’s telling you there’s no time, just plan it and do it.” I have that negotiation with my mind a lot these days. Play has never been my strong suit, which I attribute to childhood crap, which gives me impetus to try to restore this missing piece. Still, as an adult, it’s difficult. See more on linking mindfulness with play in the next post below.]

@Mindful_Living PLAY NOW: How to Bring Mindfulness into Your Life
[SEO: “Play deprivation doesn’t just apply to kids, but to all of us. We can easily fall into a state of being overly strict with ourselves and taking life too seriously. To bring mindfulness into our lives and cultivate a healthy, flexible and resilient mind, we need to loosen up on ourselves, allowing openings to arise, and then like cultivating a garden add in nutrients that facilitate the kind of change we’d like to see. You can think of play as a fundamental way of bringing mindfulness into your life creating spaces for your healthier mind to take root.”

The post then discusses in depth six components of bringing mindfulness into your life: play, love, acceptance, yoga, non-judgment, openness, and welcome, which can be remembered by the acronym “PLAYNOW”. “There’s nothing mysterious about applying PLAY NOW into your life. It’s very practical. In the same way that you can learn, practice and repeat how to read and over time it becomes automatic, the experience of cultivating this playfulness can create a natural sense of flexibility, resiliency and a healthy mind.”]

@heykim Find Your Calling: 5 Steps to Identify Your Purpose
[SEO: Five steps to identify that which brings meaning and purpose into your life. “We each have hundreds of callings in our lives, some big and some small. Rather than one ‘life purpose’ or mission, we actually have many opportunities to experience aspects of what brings us alive. The degree to which we listen to and act on our callings determines how fulfilled we are with our lives.”

@JeffreyGuterman An On-Off Switch for Memory?
[SEO: “For the first time, scientists have recreated the brain’s learning process and can restore long-forgotten memories.” The focus is on memory recovery in dementia, stroke, or brain injury patients, but the potential to eventually apply something like this to other trauma survivors for whom memory loss is devastating seems quite high.]

@psychcentral What if it’s Already All Inside You? Perfect Imperfection and the Art of Letting Go
[SEO: “Are there parts of you that you hold really tight, too anxious to let them uncurl? Maybe there’s some fear of judgment. Or fear of failure. Or feelings of self-consciousness. Or worries about success. Are there times you might sort of ‘get in the way of yourself’ – trip yourself up – stop yourself just being as you are? Perhaps times when the inner critic gets to decide whether you’re ‘good enough’ to show yourself to the world (or not). What might it be like to stop gripping so tight for a moment, and let go just enough to let a small part be released?

“Which part comes to mind for you? Which part might be aching for that right now? Which part might want to come out of hiding if it knew the coast was clear?”]

@DrKathleenYoung “So now is the time, this time of confusion and brokenness and fear and sadness, to get up on that fear,…”
[SEO: A brief, inspirational piece on the theme that we are/were “never not broken”, which opens the way for each of us to be unlimited.]

@tinybuddha 6 Ways to Deal with “I Should Be Better” Syndrome
[SEO: This post is just excellent. I need to engrave it on my brain. “The word ‘should’ is not exactly enlightened or peaceful. Nor is the practice of judging yourself or believing that you’re not exactly where you’re meant to be. But we’re human so our thoughts inevitably go there from time to time. We judge ourselves. We hold ourselves to standards that someone else made up — standards that may not even make sense for our current life.”