《光华日报》Kwong Wah Newspaper: How to deal with trauma

面对创伤的受害者，需要的泰半不是如何解决问题，而是创造一个安全的环境让他们的情绪得以释放。但是，悲伤不是随意用闲聊就可以解决的。其实，情绪也不是需要解决的，而是学会如何去面对。

《光华日报》Kwong Wah Newspaper
Using clinical hypnosis, neurofeedback and expressive art therapy to deal with trauma issues

Six Ways Developmental Trauma Shapes Adult Identity

Developmental trauma is more common than many of us realize. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 78 percent of children reported more than one traumatic experience before the age of 5. Twenty percent of children up to the age of 6 were receiving treatment for traumatic experiences, including sexual abuse, neglect, exposure to domestic violence, and traumatic loss or bereavement. 

Adults who suffer from developmental trauma may go on to develop Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or "cPTSD," which is characterized by difficulties in emotional regulation, consciousness and memory, self-perception, distorted perceptions of perpetrators of abuse, difficulties in relationships with other people, and negative effects on the meaningfulness of life.

Understanding these basic themes, which are often a result of dissociative effects on the traumatized personality, can help people recognize areas of difficulty so they can begin doing the work of recovery, repair, and personal growth.

1. Loss of childhood: "I never really had a childhood" or "I can't remember much from growing up."

2. Missing parts of oneself: "I've always felt like something was missing, but I don't know what it is."

3. Attraction to destructive relationships: "I'm the kind of person that always dates people who are bad for me." 

4. Avoidance of relationships: "I'm someone who is better off alone."

 5. ​Avoidance of oneself: "I don't like to think about myself; it only makes me feel bad."

6. Difficulty integrating emotions into one's identity: "I'm not the kind of person who has strong feelings about things."

Moving Forward

While it can be disheartening to read about the effects of developmental trauma in adulthood, and daunting to contemplate doing the work of recovery and identity formation beyond that of the traumatized self, therapeutic efforts are effective.

Recovery, grieving, and growth often take place over a longer time period than one would want, and re-connecting with oneself has many layers. Developing a sense that long-term goals are attainable and worth working toward is important, even if it doesn't feel possible or true. Working toward getting basic self-care in place is a vital first step, as is working toward feeling comfortable seeking help when trust in caregivers has been broken. Developing compassion for and patience with oneself can be difficult, but useful.

More info:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experimentations/201707/six-ways-developmental-trauma-shapes-adult-identity

You May Be Able To Train Your Brain To Be Fearless - Neurofeedback Malaysia

A developing treatment called neurofeedback may help people suffering from anxiety and PTSD.

All your fears, stresses and anxieties have one thing in common. They are sensed by a pair of pea-sized patches of neurons, called the amygdala, sitting deep inside your brain. So what if you could control your amygdala? What if you could change your brain and become calmer and braver?

That idea has a particular appeal for people suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. But it’s easier said than done. The amygdala is an old part of the brain that does its job automatically, without much care for commands from more conscious parts of the mind. You can’t just tell an oversensitive amygdala to quiet down.

But a brain training technique known as neurofeedback might help people find a way to change such involuntary and automatic brain processes. In recent years, the technique is being developed and refined to address mental health issues. The treatment involves monitoring a person’s brain activity in real time using electroencephalography (EEG) or functional MRI brain scans, and showing those patterns of activity to the person so they can try to boost or reduce them ― basically, changing how their brain functions.

In a new study published last month in Biological Psychiatry, researchers set up a series of experiments to use neurofeedback to teach several dozen people how to regulate their amygdala activity.

“People were able to use this new EEG model to learn how to control their brain activity in a deeply located brain area, the amygdala,” said Dr. Talma Hendler, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the Tel Aviv Center for Brain Functions in Israel. 

Reading brain signals from deep parts of the brain is difficult, especially with a cheap and accessible method. Functional MRI, or fMRI, can access these areas, but the device is a complex, gigantic magnet that you can’t just set up at home, even if you could afford it.

EEG, on the other hand, is cheaper and simpler. It mainly involves a few electrodes placed on the scalp. The downside of EEG is that it can’t accurately zoom in on structures deep in the brain.

So, the researchers combined the two methods. They used the detail provided by fMRI to tease out the amygdala’s signal from the electrical activity picked up by the EEG.

“[This method] enables home-based imaging that [targets] brain regions relevant for our mental health,” Hendler said. “It opens a wide horizon of treatment possibilities for the mentally ill, but also for everyone on a daily basis as an empowering tool for mental activity and well being.”

For the experiments, Hendler and her colleagues asked the volunteers to listen to a sound. They were then instructed to lower the volume of the sound by “exercising mental strategies.”

It sounds like a vague instruction. What are the mental strategies that can, seemingly telepathically, control the volume of a sound? No one really knows, and that’s sort of the point. People have to try many different ways of thinking ― thereby changing their brain activity ― until they stumble upon a desired activity pattern.

What the participants didn’t know was that the volume of the sound was programmed to change based on the electrical activity of their own amygdala, and it would lower if the participants managed to dial down that activity. In other words, they were listening to their own amygdala’s firing, disguised in a sound.

A series of tests afterward showed that this game seemed to help participants become more capable of regulating the activity of their amygdala. In response to viewing a series of images, for example, the participants’ amygdalas seemed less sensitive compared to those of people in another group given a fake neurofeedback treatment.

The participants in this study were healthy. But Hendler believes that people with mental health problems, too, would respond to training with neurofeedback.

“We already have indication for this (unpublished yet) that people suffering from depression, chronic pain and post traumatic disorders are able to learn and greatly benefit from such training,” Hendler said.

If the method proves useful in treating mental health conditions in the future, this low-cost, personalized treatment could be used at home to complement and sometimes substitute medications, Hendler said. 

Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/neurofeedback-mental-health_us_57fbee6fe4b0b6a43034b431

4 Ways to Start Healing the Wounds of Childhood Trauma

The goal is to be more flexible and less afraid. Change can come in several steps:

1. Start by recognizing and taking a hard look at your stance and its limitations.

How do you view the world and how to cope with others? By doing this, you are not only being honest with yourself, but you begin to separate the past from present.

2. Get closure.

You want to begin to heal some of the trauma by trying to create closure, expressing what you could not express at the time. Try writing a letter—in Bill's case, to his mother; for Teresa, to the car driver or the doctors at the hospital or perhaps her family who wasn’t always there; for Oliver, to his parents—saying what you could not say then. Then write a second letter, from them to you, saying what it is you most want them to say—that they are sorry, that it wasn’t your fault, that they loved you. Make the letters as detailed as possible, and allow yourself to write down whatever comes to mind.

3. Step outside your comfort zones and patterns.
Time to be the grownup rather than the frightened child. Experiment with stepping outside your comfort zone: Speak up rather than being passive, open up and lean in in rather than being closed and isolated, focus on the present rather than constantly looking ahead to the frightening future, or experiment with letting go of anger and control.

4. Get support and help.

All of this is easier said than done, of course, and support and help is what you never really received. Here you may take the risk of seeking professional help to support and make those baby steps towards behavioral change; you may, on a therapist's advice, consider medication to help break the cycle. It's not about doing it right but doing it different.

Be bold, be patient. What’s important is moving forward so you don’t have to keep always protecting yourself from danger, so you can lean into your life. To quote Benjamin Button: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be….


Source:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-families/201603/4-ways-start-healing-the-wounds-childhood-trauma?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost

Letting Go Of Emotional Pain With Self-Hypnosis

“Letting go is the willingness to change your beliefs in order to bring more peace and joy into your life instead of holding onto beliefs that bring pain and suffering…”
― Hal Tipper

That's right!

Everything that has a beginning, has an ending. 

However, are you aware that every ending is a new beginning?

No matter how good or bad it may have been in the past.

It's time to bury those negative thoughts.

And let's not forget to plant a positive seed of thought in your mind and nurture it carefully.

As a clinical hypnotherapist, I will guide you to plant the positive seed in your mind and your processed thoughts will turn to fertilizer.

We all scream for ice cream in hot day. Quite simply, because it makes us feel good. 

As if you can't let go, you may not be aware but it's for a reason.

I believe that a good pair of shoes can serve you for many years and you can walk a thousand miles in a good mental health status.

Emotion, a key factor related to happiness.

With clinical hypnotherapy you can change your emotional state.

As I work on your emotional factors, your subconscious mind.

 

It's indeed exciting to get to know how the subconscious mind works, isn't it?

I am one of the few certified biofeedback specialists in Asia.

Biofeedback is a new method for individual behavior therapy and is scientifically proven.

Let your brain teach itself to work more efficiently through brain biofeedback.

I can assist you to see your brainwave during your clinical hypnotherapy session. 

The first of its kind in Malaysia!

Contact me now for more info about self-hypnosis.