Best Tweets for Trauma 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.
NEW and REALLY COOL: You can now “like” this post, and “share” it 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
@SmilingSpirit “Autumn is a second spring
when every leaf is a flower.” ~ Albert Camus
Six Standalone Tweets to Ponder
@Mindfully Change “Our acts and words are a wee part of our lives! Our real life is led in our head, and is known to none but ourself.” ~ Mark Twain
@SavvyBabii “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.” ~ Ayn Rand
@LillyAnn “Observing ourselves does not require thinking, judging or blaming. It only requires observing.” ~ Ezra Bayda
@Gemma_Stone “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.”
@Tamavista “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk…any experience that reveals the human spirit.” ~ e.e.cummings
@GabrielaKortsch “Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” ~ Robert E. Lee
Linked Tweets
Mental Health Wellness Week
Beginning Sunday, October 3, 2010
@NIMHgov Feeling sad, stressed, or anxious? Take a free, anonymous mental health screening on National Depression Screening Day, Oct 7, 2010.
[SEO: “NDSD is the nation’s oldest voluntary, community-based screening program that provides referral information for treatment. More than half a million people each year have been screened for depression since 1991.” Links to find local screening resources for: military; students; and communities.]
@QueCEUs After traumatic event, early intervention reduces odds of PTSD in children by 73%
[SEO: Truly listen to your kids, and to their friends. If they tell, or have signs of abuse or other trauma, or have witnessed violence occurring to others, you must act. Not only will you help them in the now, but you help to preserve their future. Early intervention is becoming increasingly endorsed as the best preventative course of action — whether your loved one is a war veteran or a child in desperate need of a champion. Be that person.]
@NAMIMass Strategies for Good Mental Health Wellness
[SEO: Bullet point lists of good coping skills; negative coping skills to avoid; and tips for better mental health. Especially good for anyone trying to understand where to start in a very complex subject, but also a refresher for those of us further down this road.]
@800273TALK How to deal with mental illness in the family
[SEO: Excellent article derived from PBS series, “This Emotional Life: Mental Health and the Family Tree”. With mental health funding cutbacks, family members are increasingly filling support roles, but often have mixed feelings about it. This article describes some of those feelings, and validates them. But it also states, “The key to successfully embarking on a path back to wellness is to remain as non-judgmental as possible. By removing the added guilt of facing up to what he or she is doing to the family, the patient will be better able to focus more readily on getting better.” I know this is a lot to ask of some families, and some people. Ask yourself: would you be judgmental had the illness been purely physical?]
The Rest of the Best
@ssanquist The Secret Science of Change
[SEO: Significant change for which we hold the power (as opposed to things out of our control) rarely occurs without an internal struggle with doubt, fear of failure, fear of being judged; sometimes fear of success; and much more. This detailed article discusses five stages of change: Pre-contemplation; Contemplation; Preparation; Action; and Maintenance. For any issue involving change, the author provides a scoring system to determine at which stage you currently sit. She then outlines what being in each stage means in terms of what steps are required to move into the next stage.]
@goodthingZ 6 Ways to Maintain Balance During Times of Change and Uncertainty
[SEO: Another aspect of dealing with change (see article immediately above). “Before we can learn how to ‘thrive’ we must learn to ‘cope’ because, no matter how much we desire change, it is almost always emotionally and physically unsettling.”
@dontcallmesybil Understanding Dissociation blog asks, “Are Flashbacks a Dissociative Symptom?”
[SEO: Blog by clinician, Paul F. Dell, who specializes in dissociation and PTSD, and is the current President of the International Society for Study of Trauma and Dissociation. He concludes that not all flashbacks are dissociative; the discussion continues in the comments.]
@psychcentral Blaming: The Ineffective Art of Scrambling for Comfort
[SEO: “So the next time blaming arises in your mind, label it and see if there is a feeling associated with it. Is there fear, anger or sadness there? Perhaps a deeper emotional freedom lies in coming down from the blaming and into an intimate dance with our very own feelings we’re trying to avoid.”]
@SarahEOlson2009 My Peaceful Place: Close your eyes and relax, deeply (This really works!) (YouTube)
[SEO: A 10 minute video by Paul Collier with tranquil, relaxing music. Relax deeply, and don’t forget to breathe.]
@Flipbooks 33 Ways To Overcome Frustration
[SEO: “…growth never happens without [frustration]. The more frustration you are able to harvest, resolve and overcome, the more growth you’re experiencing. Avoiding it, hiding from it, deluding the game, none of these strategies will make you a better human being. On the contrary.”]
@zebraspolkadots A Journey… Am I Living My Own Truth?
[SEO: Thought-provoking examination of the consequences of living someone else’s truth — and how to recognize your own. Part of an ongoing series.]
@ssanquist The Secret That All Clients Should Know but Few Therapists Share
[SEO: It wasn’t until I found a truly great therapist that I experienced feeling much worse in the beginning of therapy before I felt better. “…while you may experience more pain in the beginning, this process is necessary in order to fully explore your situation in a way that will lead to new insights.”]
@NAMIMass Stress: Know the signs — Mental Health America gives you tools to manage stress
[SEO: This fact sheet has a great diagram of where in the body stress occurs, and the symptoms that result. Also lists typical signs of stress, and links to study further.]
@Mindful_Living 9 Ways Mindfulness Can Change Your Life
[SEO: “Through his experience in working with brain trauma, Daniel Siegel, M.D., author of ‘The Mindful Brain, The Mindful Therapist’ and others, found that the prefrontal cortex hosts 9 critical functions that happen to associate with outcomes in mindfulness research and healthy attachment in children. As we look at this list, you may even ask yourself what life would be like if these came natural to you.”]
@ssanquist Addressing a Misconception in Body-Psychotherapy
[SEO: Great article using analogy of an ant bite that gets worse when scratched. [Physical catharsis such as primal screaming, etc.], “should only be a means of understanding the energy that we carry within us, energy that we often hide from ourselves and from others. Once we understand the capacity we have, and our many coping skills, we realize that no good can come from reaction-based behavior. Noting the times that our (ant) bites weren’t attended to, witnessing our pain from this safe adult vantage point, and bringing attention to the patterns and reactions in the present that stem from those past experiences goes a long way toward detoxification and healing without generating more surface scars.”]
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