You stretch selflessly your hands when I am in difficulties. You offer me your sincere heart when I am in pains. You walk with me when I am extremely happy or slightly discouraged. Oh, in the future, I would like to donate rich fruits to you. The challenge of trauma treatment is not only dealing with the past but, even more, enhancing the quality of day-to-day experience. One reason that traumatic memories become dominant in Post Traumatic Disorder (PTSD) is that it is so difficult to feel truly alive right now. When you cannot be fully here, you go to places where you did feel alive—even if those places are filled with horror and misery. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

Many treatment approaches for traumatic stress focus on desensitizing patients to their past, with the expectation that reexposure to their traumas will reduce emotional outbursts and flashbacks. I believe that this is based on a misunderstanding of what happens in traumatic stress. We must most of all help our patients to live fully and securely in the present. In order to do that, we are required to help bring those brain structures that deserted them when they were overwhelmed by trauma back. Desensitization may make you less reactive, but if you cannot feel satisfaction in ordinary everyday things like taking a walk, cooking a mean, or playing with your kids, life will pass you by. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

Beauty and pureness are everlasting; they are of God, and can never die. They may for a moment be obscured, but they shall reappear in brighter lustre. Angels have charge over them that they dash not their foot against a stone. Let us turn to the pleasant face of God in what is about us. What opinion can be intelligible concerning the nature of the Deity, which exceeds the powers of the human mind to understand? With God all things are possible. However, ofttimes He does His with awful instruments. There is a peacemaker whose name is Death. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

We are in sad want of good news about God; and what does other good news signify if we have not that? For everything else comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. However, God lasts when everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend? The great God absolute! The centre and circumstance of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality! My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verse for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. You are the most excellent of humans and your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you forever. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

You have given me all your love and World, so I know nothing of the bitterness and hardship of life. God, how I want to tell you that in fact I do understand you all the time. When I stumbled and required supporting, who told me beautiful stories and kissed my hurt—my God. I see a crystal-like heart through your beautiful eyes. One father is more than a hundred school masters.  Fathers like Sunshine, giving me firmness and enthusiasm. You look righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from palaces adorned with ivory the music of the strings make you glad. Do not let time dilute the cranberry juice of love and distance separate missing. I will never forget you. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5

How much kinder is God to us than we are willing to be to ourselves! Surely the absurdity of all the doctrines of religion, and the iniquity of man, are sufficiently evident. To fear a being on account of his power is degrading; to fear him if he be good, ridiculous. Badness always gets found out. Man, in his gropings down through the centuries, has concocted, shivered, and patched certain social conditions well enough calculated to develop the best and the worst that is in us, making it easier for us to be bad than good, that good might be the standard. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 9

Not all people react to trauma in exactly the same way, but in this case the difference between Britney and Justin’s brain scans are particularly dramatic, since Britney was sitting right next to Justin in the wrecked car. She responded to her trauma script by going numb: Britney’s mind went blank, and nearly every area of her brain showed markedly decreased activity. Her heart rate and blood pressure did not elevate. When asked how she had felt during the scan, Britney replied: “I felt just like I felt at the time of the accident: I felt nothing.” Blanking out (dissociation) in response to being reminded of past trauma. In this case, almost every area of the brain has decreased activation, interfering with thinking, focus, and orientation. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

The medical term for Britney’s response is depersonalization. Anyone who deals with traumatized men, women, or children is sooner or later confronted with blank stares and absent minds, the outward manifestation of the biological freeze reaction. Depersonalization is one symptom of the massive dissociation created by trauma. Justin’s flashbacks came from his thwarted efforts to escape the crash—cued by the script, all his dissociated, fragmented sensations and emotions roared back into the present. However, instead of struggling to escape, Britney had dissociated her fear and felt nothing. Thank you for enabling me to possess the freshest morning and the brightest Spring. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

What affects my soul and urges me forward is your true and selfless love. Oh, my parents, your lofty morality will be engraved on my mind. I see depersonalization regularly in my office when patients tell me horrendous stories of being kidnapped, held hostage, not allowed to go to the restroom, being forced to eat and drink and breathe poison and being attacked in the own house. All the energy drains out of the room, and I have to make a valiant effort not to cry. A lifeless patient forces you to work much harder to keep the therapy alive, and I often used to pray for them to recover in an hour or less. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

After seeing Britney’s scan, I started to take a very different approach toward blanked-out patients. With nearly every part of their brains tuned out, they obviously cannot think, feel deeply, remember, or make sense of what is going on. Conventional police trap talk therapy, in those circumstances, is virtually useless. Britney grew more and more self-blaming when she first began to watch herself distancing from Justin. She had fled from her first marriage to escape the burden of being forced to be a mother to her husband. Her leaving reinforced her growing image of herself as hard-hearted and unfair. However, she had not adequately resolved decision to leave her first marriage, so her self-blame became almost immobilizing, as well as remember the car accident and seeing that girl burnt to death, as she was trapped in the car and no one could help. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

In Britney’s case, it was possible to guess why she responded so differently from Justin. She was utilizing a survival strategy her brain had learned I childhood to cope with her teacher’s harsh treatment.  Britney’s best friend had passed away, and as a result she was compared to her and the teachers were subsequently often very nasty and demeaning to her. At some point, Britney discovered that she could blank out her mind when teachers yelled at her. Fourteen years later, when she was trapped in her demolished car, Britney’s brain automatically went into the same survival mode—she made herself disappear. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

The challenge for people like Britney is to become alert and engaged, a difficult but unavoidable task if they want to recapture their lives. (Britney herself did recover—she wrote a book about her experiences and started a successful journal called Blackout.) This is where a bottom-up approach to trap therapy (which documents anything you say and shares it with the police, but lies and tells you it is private, even if you are not dangerous, they put lies it your file to make you look like a threat) becomes essential. The aim is actually to change the patient’s physiology, his or her relationship to bodily sensation.  #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

When dealing with trauma, you can heal yourself by focusing on things you enjoy, reading books you like, and watching TV shows that bring you joy. It is also important to pay attention to your heart rate and breathing patterns. When you feel tension, pay attention to your breathing. Rhythmic interactions with other people are also effective—tossing a beach ball, not a person, back and forth, drumming, or dancing to music also helps. Numbing is the other side of the coin in Post Traumatic Post Disorder (PTSD). Many untreated trauma survivors start out like Justin, with explosive flashbacks, then numb out later in life. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

While reliving trauma is dramatic, frightening, and potentially self-destructive, over time a lack of presence can be even more damaging. This is a particular problem with traumatized children. The acting-out kids tend to get attention; the blanked-out ones do not bother anybody and are left to lose their future bit by bit. However, the LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted to be God my Savior! He is the God who avenges me, who subdues nations under me, who saves me from my enemies. You exalted me above my foes; from violent men and women and children you rescued me. Therefore, I will praise you among the nations, O LORD. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9

You are a flame of fire burning violently, brightening my life. I would like to plunge into your heart, melting the whole of myself. I know even if you go to the ends of the Earth, you are still pulled by innumerable threads of your affection to our motherland. If elements of the trauma are replayed again and again, the accompanying stress hormones engrave those memories ever more deeply in the mind. Ordinary, day-to-day events become less and less compelling. Not being able to deeply take in what is going on around them makes it impossible to feel fully alive. It becomes harder to feel the joys and aggravation of ordinary life, hard to concentrate on the task at hand. Not being fully alive in the present keeps them more firmly imprisoned in the past. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

One man said that he was reading a book, and was almost done, when his wife filed for divorce. He put the book down and could not read it for six months to finish the last ten pages because his brain was so distorted and his heart was in so much pain. Triggered responses manifest in various ways. Veterans may react to the slightest cue—like hitting a bump in the road or seeing a kid playing in the street—as if they were in a war zone. They startle easily and become enraged or numb. Victims of childhood sexual abuse may anesthetize their sexuality and then feel intensely ashamed if they become excited by those sensations that are natural pleasures associated with particular body parts.  #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

If trauma survivors are forced to discuss their experiences, one person’s blood pressure may increase while another responds with the beginnings of a migraine headache. Still others may shut down emotionally and not feel any obvious changes. However, in the newsroom, we have no problem detecting racing hearts and the stress hormones churning through their bodies. Some people are always behaving like a parody of an antiquated Mother Goose nursery rhyme—always jumping over the professional candlestick, trying to avoid being burned, without much success. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

These reactions are irrational and largely outside people’s control. Intense and barely controllable urges and emotions make people feel crazy—and makes them feel they do not belong to the human race. Feeling numb during birthday parties for your children or in response to the death of loved ones makes people feel like monsters. As a result, shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth central preoccupation. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8

They rarely are in touch with the fact that these sensations have their origins in traumatic experiences. That is where trap therapy comes in— trap therapists may assist people to mindfully observe their emotions and sensations and help them get in touch with the context from which they emerge. However, the bottom line is that the threat-perception system of the brain has changed, and people’s physical reactions are dictated by the imprint of the past. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

The trauma that started “out there” is now played out in the warfield of their own bodies, usually without a conscious connection between what happened back then and what is going on right now inside. The challenged is not so much learning to accept terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8

When you relive the trauma, the brain does not know if it is the past or the present. It activated just as the event, in this case a deadly fiery car crash, were happening at that moment, triggering powerful stress hormones and nervous system responses. These were responsible for Justin’s sweating and trembling, his racing heart and elevated blood pressure: entirely normal and potentially lifesaving responses if a truck had just smashed into your care. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8

It is important to have an efficient Christmas day smoke detector: You do not want to get caught unawares by a raging fire after passing out and forgetting you had put a roast in the oven. However, if you go into a frenzy every time you smell smoke, it becomes intensely disruptive. Yes, you need to detect whether somebody is getting upset with you, but if your amygdala goes into overdrive, you may become chronically scared that people hate you, or you may feel like they are out to get you. And she know he got hurt behind all that and his spine is fractured in two places, but still keeps harassing him and spreading rumors. #RyanPhillipe 8 of 8

A path takes shape through too much walking of travelers. To open more roads, one has to turn to where there is no track. While in Canada, a couple witnessed a horrible accident, as they were trapped in their own car. A girl was trapped in a car and screaming, “Get me out of here—I am on fire!” Helplessly, they saw her die as the care she was in had been consumed by flames. Justin’s wife, Britney was sitting there frozen in fear. They were rescued from the car later that evening and taken to the hospital. While in the emergency room, they were assessed and besides a few cuts, they were found to be physically healthy. At the house that night, neither Britney nor Justin wanted to go to sleep. They felt that if they let go, they would die. As a result, the couple was irritable, jumpy, and nervous.  #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6

That night, and for many nights to come, the couple drank copious quantities of wine to numb their fear. They could not stop the images that were haunted them or the questions that went on and on: What if they had left earlier? What is they had not stopped for gas? After three months of this, they sought help from trap therapy. The trap therapist, at the Trauma Center, was a student at the time and told Britney and Justin they she wanted to have their heads checked and also recommended they have Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) done which is a noninvasive scan of the brain to check for damage or activity, and changes to blood flow in the brain. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6

The medical student thought it would also be nice to form a script of what had happened at the accident and replay it, along with using sounds they might have smelled, images they may have seen, sounds they may have heard and other experiences they may have had while trapped in the car. Justin went first and immediately went into a flashback, just as a professional would expect. He came out of the scanner soaking wet from sweating so much, with his heart racing and blood pressure as high as the Empire State Building. This is just the way I felt during the accident. I was sure I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do to save myself, reported Justin. Instead of remembering the accident as something that had happened three months earlier, Justin was reliving it.  #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6

Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own. The sensory fragments of memory intrude into the present, where they are literally relived. Having a human body brings an undeniable sense. When the trauma is relived and on purpose, separation is experienced, and changes in the status quo of life are experienced as threatening and fearful. We feel limited when we live only one dimension of life. Fear limits life, but also signals that we are refusing one-half of the equation. In order to heal suffering, we must recover our transcendental nature are Presence, which refers to the aspect of God’s nature and power that is wholly independent of man and their labels. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6

As long as the trauma is not resolved, the stress hormones that the body secretes to protect itself keep circulating, and the defensive movement and emotional response keep getting replayed. Unlike Justin, however, Britney was not aware of the connection between her “crazy” feelings and the reactions and the traumatic events that were being replayed. She had no idea why she was responding to some minor irritation as if she was about to be annihilated. She collapsed in her fear, and the inner critics of her mind introjected harsh feelings and thoughts and tried to convince her she had no control over her own life nor destiny. Britney kept thinking: If I just do what they say, I will get the love I am looking for. Britney felt small, deficient, worthless, isolated and cut off from herself and the World around her. She wanted to get out of here, but felt lost and incapable. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6

Flashbacks and reliving are in some ways worse than that trauma itself. A traumatic event has a beginning and an end—at some point it is over. However, for people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a flashback can occur at any time, whether they are awake or asleep. There is no way of knowing when it is going to occur again or how long it will last. People who suffer from flashbacks often organize their lives around trying to protect against reliving these painful memories. They may avoid certain people, areas, or situations, excessively exercise (but no find they are never strong or skinny enough), they may numb themselves with drugs, or try to cultivate an illusory sense of control in highly dangerous situations (like motorcycle racing, sky diving, swimming to the Golden Gate Bridge, or working in life threatening jobs). Constantly fighting unseen danger is exhausting and leave them fatigued, depressed, and weary. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6

Revolutions of great serenity and peace may occur after prolonged eras of continual surrender. Being in a state of constant joy, an event occurred which brought to awareness a conflict that stemmed from the deepest way in which we can relate to others. For a while, the inner conflict seemed as if it would be unending; however, previous experiences with the surrender process had confirmed that every feeling sooner or later runs out, if we just keep letting it go. When there is more peace in your life, it is because you have less things distracting you. However, when conflict deepens, more painful feelings come up with more vengeance than ever before because the bottom of the pit has finally been reached and a White Squall of overwhelming intensity is now reacting to restore an equilibrium in your environment.  #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in common clothes and fancy clothes pretending to be nice, but inwardly they are ferocious animals. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tress bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in Heaven and on Earth. Many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!  #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. However, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand with not enough mops or maids. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; one cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. My eyes reflect back to you the compassionate openness that I am feeling in this moment. I know that the compassion that I feel exists as the background of your consciousness, even as it is being obscured by your present foreground experiences. As we gaze, your heart suddenly melts as you experience a rush of loving kindness towards yourself. The inner mind grows quiet and there is a feeling of great silence and understanding that washed over us. In the moment, we are experiencing grace, and a glimpse of your true nature. Grace is the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of pupils and the bestowal of blessings. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6

I support you to rest in this glimpse of grace, so that your heart might open wide with forgiveness toward yourself and gratitude for simply being, in spite of current difficulties. Nevertheless, I think it expedient and justifiable to continue to use the illustrative idea of the systems of religion and psychology together, as they work well to compliment each other, as one is a doctrine for the antiquated World and one is a doctrine for the modern World and they form an equilibrium. We shall avoid any abuse of this mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts, and psychic formations in general must not in any case be localized in organic elements of the nervous system but, so to speak, between them, where resistances and association-tracks from the correlate corresponding to them.  #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6

Everything that can become an object of internal perception is virtual, like the image on the telescope produced by the crossing of light-rays. However, we are justified in thinking of the systems—which have nothing psychic in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic perception—as something similar to the lenses of the telescope, which project the image. If we continue this comparison, we might say that the censorship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays on passing into a new medium. Thus far, we have developed our psychology on our own responsibility; it is now time to turn and look at the doctrines prevailing in modern psychology, and to examine the relation of these to our theories. The physician and the philosopher can meet only when we both acknowledge that unconscious physic process is the appropriate and justified expression for an established fact. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6