PTSD Self-Help

For individuals who have children who may have experienced something traumatic, or you yourself have experienced something traumatic, and are worried you may have symptoms of PTSD, there are some things that you can do by yourself to help get through this difficult time.  Now, as a future mental health counselor, I highly recommend seeing a counselor, even if only once to just have someone to talk to and process things with.  However, I know that it is not for everybody.  Before I entered this field I had so many issues I thought I could deal with on my own and I didn't want to go seek professional help.  I know that feeling.

There are ways to overcome things by yourself, if you put the proper effort into it and have the proper tools and/or guidance.

We all experience some sorts of traumatic experiences in our lifetime.  They can be anything from the death of a pet, to a school shooting, to just watching a scary movie that haunts our nightmares.

When I was in high school, I was in a 3-car accident on I-4 outside of Orlando, Florida.  I had left my parent's house without telling them to go to the beach with my friends.  We never made it to the beach.  I am lucky to even be alive.  I am also lucky that I didn't receive any injuries.  It truly was a miracle.

I may have left that accident without any physical injuries, but I left with a lot of emotional ones.  The next time I drove on a highway, I cried and cried and had to get off immediately.  I was on my way to get my Senior portraits done, and I was a mess by the time I got there.  Every time I was in the passenger seat of anyone's car, which is where I was sitting during the time of the accident, and I saw a person move even just slightly to the left into our lane, I freaked out and would immediately grab onto the door and the chair.  This is what I did when we got into the accident, and this is what I did for years afterwards because I was so afraid of it happening again.  For months I had nightmares of a red car coming at me, which is the one thing I remember from the accident, a red car just feet from hitting my side of the car as we were perpendicular to the road and crashed into a black pick-up truck.

As you can tell, I still remember this accident vividly.  I experienced a lot of symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I was never officially diagnosed, nor did I ever receive any professional help for it, but I tried my best to help myself.

I taught myself deep breathing techniques.  I tried to change my train of thought to that not everyone that moves a millimeter to the left is going to swerve into your lane and cause a wreck.  I traveled to Europe after graduating college and took the scariest taxi ride of my life with a French taxi driver that spoke no English driving 120 km per hour.  I think that in that moment I was more scared of ever being in a car that American drivers no longer worried me, so when I came back to the States my anxiety and stress seemed immensely diminished.

Why did I go on this long rant about my own PTSD? Perhaps you have gone through something traumatic, some type of crisis, and maybe right now don't feel comfortable getting help yourself.  I wanted to provide you with a self-help guide that has been shared with me at my internship site.  You can find it and print it out here:

http://www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/posttrauma.asp

It may have taken about five years, but I did, slowly but surely, get over my anxiety while in cars and on highways after that trip to Europe.  Sometimes I do still have little mini panic attacks but I assure you that now 7 years after the accident, I am doing incredibly better.  And I promise it does not have to take that long for you!  I do encourage you, if it doesn't seem like you are getting anywhere yourself, go seek professional help.  It doesn't hurt to at least try.

Child Sexual Abuse

Child sexual abuse: a hidden problem in our country.  It becomes more prevalent and more well-known when it occurs to celebrities or involves a big scandal, as does any topic in America, but this is a topic that needs more publicity because it happens every day.  Abuse is a crisis that affects not only the abused child but the entire family.  I see it all the time with families that I work with: the entire family must learn how to deal with the abuse.  It is a family crisis, not just an individual crisis.

While doing research for another class, I came across some great resources that defined child sexual abuse.  The first step in making child sexual abuse more known and public is to know what it can include.

According to the American Psychological Association,

       "There is no universal definition of child sexual abuse. However, a central characteristic of any abuse is the dominant position of an adult that allows him or her to force or coerce a child into sexual activity. Child sexual abuse may include fondling a child's genitals, masturbation, oral-genital contact, digital penetration, and vaginal and anal intercourse. Child sexual abuse is not solely restricted to physical contact; such abuse could include noncontact abuse, such as exposure, voyeurism, and child pornography. Abuse by peers also occurs."

Did you know that just exposing a child to pornography--even if unintentional--is considered child sexual abuse and punishable by law?  Did you know that a lot of children do not know or realize that what is happening to them is considered sexual abuse?  More often than not, child sexual abuse occurs by someone they know or love, whether it be a parent, other family member, friend, or anyone they trusted.  It makes it confusing for a child to think they need to tell another adult what is happening because they don't want that person they love to get in trouble, or they've been told that if they do tell someone others they love will get hurt.  What a struggle!

As someone who has life experiences involved in this, I know first hand how difficult it can be.  I highly suggest just taking a few minutes to read over this information provided by the American Psychological Association to better familiarize yourself with the definitions of child sexual abuse, who may be affected, who may commit the abuse, how to protect children, and other important areas.  I promise it is a quick and easy, and most importantly, highly informational read.

Go here: www.apa.org/pubs/info/brochures/sex-abuse.aspx?item=1

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Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This post is for counselors and those in the mental health field who work with children who have experienced some sort of trauma.  While this blog encompasses children in crisis, a trauma may be a long-term type of crisis with lasting effects.  Our roles as counselors is to try and alleviate those long term effects and help the child--and the family--to overcome the crisis.  To be specific, this is not crisis intervention, but more of long-term counseling after the crisis or trauma has initially occurred.

If you have a child who has experienced some type of abuse (physical, emotional, sexual or neglect), or if a child has experienced a traumatic event such as a car accident or natural disaster, this training that I am providing information for may be helpful in treating them or understanding their situation better, especially if you already take a Cognitive Behavioral theoretical perspective.  The training focuses on CBT origins but tailors it to be trauma focused.  The trauma can be a wide variety of different things; it isn't just limited to abuse or disasters.  One module gave an example of a girl who got bit by a dog and put blame on herself for when the dog then got put down. 

If you're not sure where to start, or what types of interventions or techniques to use, I have this training that I completed during my internship that I frequently use in counseling that I would like to share with you.  This training is on Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and is completely free and completely online; it takes approximately 10 hours to complete but can be paused at any point and picked up again later.  This training does not make you necessarily competent in TF-CBT but does provide you with a Certificate of Completion to state that you completed the online training.  Counselors may also receive ten (10) continuing education units (CEU) by completing this course.  For more information on CEUs you can visit http://tfcbt.musc.edu/ceu_statement.php.

To take the course visit tfcbt.musc.edu.  

You must create a profile and indicate that you are in the mental health field (either a counselor or a student).  The training was organized by the Medical University of South Carolina and includes evidence based practices.  It is divided into 9 different modules:

• Psychoeducation
• Stress Management
• Affect Expression and Modulation
• Cognitive Coping
• Creating the Trauma Narrative
• Cognitive Processing
• Behavior Management Training
• Parent-Child Sessions
• Evaluation

 It takes you step by step, has videos to demonstrate the interventions, and has a pre- and post-test during each module.  You can also print out transcripts of the videos to review later.  There are also print-outs of different homework assignments and behavior charts that you can use in practice.

I have found that this training has significantly increased my confidence as a counselor and knowing the background of these evidence based practices increases the confidence of the parents that I am working with when I provide them the psychoeducation.  I highly recommend this to all counselors who may be working with children.   I hope it is as helpful to you as it has been to me!

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Introducing.....

I have begun this blog with the hopes that it will be a great tool to refer back to for myself and others.  I hope that it can be utilized by different people, whether you be a mental health clinician looking for ideas for your clients, or you feel you may be in a crisis with a child or within your family and could use some tools, or you're just interested in helping children and would like some more information.

As a current Mental Health Counseling graduate student at Florida State University, I have a great deal of experiences working with children and families, and I enjoy it so much.  Many times they are in some state of crisis, whether it's aggressive outbursts that have gotten out of control, or a parent was recently incarcerated, or a child wrote a suicidal note while in school, or there was some child abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, or neglect).  I have seen all of these and more at some point in my life experiences and clinical counseling experiences.  I have learned about many tools and therapeutic interventions that have become extremely helpful, and I continue to learn more that I want to share with others.

When I came to FSU in 2008 as an undergrad, I had no idea what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to work with children, and I really liked the idea of working in hospitals.  I thought that maybe pediatric physical therapy would be fun... Perhaps the career is fun, but the chemistry, biology, and anatomy classes to get to the career were not my cup of tea.  I switched my major to Family and Child Sciences and quickly fell in love with it.  I thought I would be a Child Life Specialist, but after some discussions with those in the field, I didn't think it was for me.

It was when I looked back on my life experiences that I realized I lived to help calm people in crisis.  I was always that person that my friends came to, I could always empathize, I could always be the calm one listening while people cried or got angry or wanted to vent.  It became my dream to be a counselor to children in hospitals who may be battling cancer or chronic illnesses or some other type of crisis.  Now as I approach my graduation date, I am looking into making that dream a reality.

I've been told time and time again that it takes a special person to do that kind of work, that some people just don't have the right personality, or enough patience, or enough emotional stamina to work with children in crisis.  I hope that the tools that I share on here, whether they are trainings you can go through, apps you can use, websites with useful information, or videos to gain a better understanding, that everything is helpful in a least a small way.  Mother Teresa said, "Do small things with great love."  I hope that these small things will bring you a little sense into my world of great love for children and families and my desire to help them.

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