By Helaina Hovitz
As I worked more furiously towards the deadline of finishing the edits on my memoir about growing up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while verbally telling my story over and over again to others, I noticed things were happening to my mood and to my body that scared me.
What I soon came to realize was that, while Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and 12-Step Programs were all very effective in helping me recover, they didn’t target the way my body experienced and processed the trauma itself.
So, I embarked on a new journey to healing with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) and Somatic Experiencing, which got me thinking about other methods that people might be using as an alternative for working out the way traumatic memories live inside of our subconscious brains, our muscles, and other body systems. And that’s how I stumbled on Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) as yet another approach to healing PTSD and its many systems.
Share This Post!
Integrating Mindfulness in Your Classroom Curriculum
By Giselle Shardlow Now more than ever, teaching mindfulness in the classroom is a necessity. Our children are stressed and anxious. Teachers and parents are stressed and anxious, too. Our lives are busy, [...]
The Long Shadow: Bruce Perry on the Lingering Effects of Childhood Trauma
By Jeanne Supin The “fight or flight” instinct has served the human species well, helping us respond quickly to threats, but according to child and adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry it can [...]
The Science of How Our Minds and Our Bodies Converge in the Healing of Trauma
By Maria Popova “A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity,” William James asserted in his revolutionary 1884 theory of how our bodies affect our feelings. Two generations later, Rilke wrote in a [...]
Epidemiology of Traumatic Experiences in Childhood
By Benjamin E. Saunders, PhD and Zachary W. Adams, PhD The epidemiology of traumatic experiences in childhood is a key context for research, clinical treatment, program management, and policy development. This article discusses [...]
Emotional and Psychological Trauma: Healing from Trauma and Moving On
By Lawrence Robinson, Melinda Smith, M.A., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D. If you’ve experienced an extremely stressful or disturbing event that’s left you feeling helpless and emotionally out of control, you may have [...]
How childhood trauma affects the brain
By Maria Cohut It is not news that people abused as children are more exposed to clinical depression, anxiety, and a higher risk of death from suicide. But now, researchers have begun to [...]