When one is stuck experiencing an ongoing trauma, and no one to turn to for help, this poses a real challenge for recovery. Once you recognize that posttraumatic reactions start off as efforts to save your life, you may gather the courage to face your inner music, but you will require help to do so. You have to find someone you can trust enough to accompany you, someone who can safely hold your feelings and help you listen to the painful messages from your emotional brain. You need a guide who is not who is not afraid of your terror and who can safeguard the wholeness of you while you explore the fragmented experiences that you have to keep secret from yourself for so long. Most traumatized individuals require an anchor and a great deal of coaching to do this work. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6

The training of competent trauma therapists involves learning about the impact of trauma, abuse, and neglect and mastering a variety of techniques that can help to stabilize and calm patients down, help to lay traumatic memories and reenactments to rest, and reconnect patients with their fellow men and women. Ideally, the therapist will also have been on the receiving end of whatever therapy he practices. While it is inappropriate and unethical for therapists to tell you the details of their personal struggles, it is perfectly reasonable to ask what particular forms of therapy they have been trained in, where they learned their skills, and whether they have personally benefited from the therapy they propose for you. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6

There is no one treatment of choice for trauma, and any therapist who believes that his particular method is the only answer to your problem is suspect of being an ideologue rather than somebody who is interested in making sure that you will get well. No therapist can possibly be familiar with every effective treatment, and he must be open to exploring options other than the ones he offers. He must also be open to learning from you. Gender, culture, and personal background are relevant only if they interfere with helping the patient feel safe and understood. Feeling safe is a necessary condition for you to confront your fears and anxieties. Someone who is stern, judgmental, agitated, or harsh is likely to leave you feeling scared, abandoned, and humiliated, and that will not help you resolve your traumatic stress. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6

There may be times as old feelings from the past are stirred up, when you become suspicious that the therapist resembles someone who once hurt or abused you. Hopefully, this is something you can work through together, because in my experience patients get better only if they develop deep beneficial feelings for their therapists. I also do not think that you can grow and change unless you feel that you have some impact on the person who is treating you. The critical question is this: Do you feel that your therapist is curious to find out who you are and what you, not some generic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patient needs? Man is no poor drifting seaweed of the Universe. Man has a soul; which, if he will, puts him beyond fortune’s finger and the future’s spite. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6

Waves know the last secret of many a stout albatross, never heard of days the days he left the port and drifted into the White Squall. Every wave in my eyes seems a soul. There is no house for the soul where dwells a shadow of untruth. Are you just a list of symptoms on some diagnostic questionnaire, or does your therapist take the time to find out why you do what you do and think that you think? Therapy is a collaborative process—a mutual exploration of yourself. People who have been brutalized by their caregivers often do not feel safe with anyone. I often ask people if they can think of any person they felt safe with. Many of them hold tight to the memory of that one teacher, neighbor, shopkeeper, coach, or minister who showed that he or she cared, and that memory is often the seed of learning to reengage. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6

We are a hopeful species. Working with trauma is as much about remembering how we survived as it is about what is broken. Imagine what you were like as a newborn—you were lovable and filled with spunk. Imagine what you were like before you were hurt. People joyously welcomed you into existence, recognized the uniqueness of your subjective life, and affirmed your special talents. Your song expresses my fantastic ideal. I will never forget you and please think of me and come to see me often. May you be satisfactory and happy. Let the Sun and blue Sky wake up the hidden memories that are good. The soul requires air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it. Morbid influences, in a thousand-fold variety, gather about hearths, and pollute the life of households.  #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6