What we’ve said about Trauma

“there is a utility and there's a legal Clinical Reality to Preserving and Utilizing the DSM Model for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Being very specific with that criteria is useful because it sort of ties you to a well-researched and fairly well-constructed syndrome”

“Now, big T trauma, I think that most people, when they refer to that, they're talking about DSM criterion A trauma”

“trauma, properly, proper trauma, really clear trauma, and also not so clear traumas, emotional difficulties, clearly interfere with the process of self and relationship development. And that's the root of the personality disorders”

“the majority of people who experience a criterion A trauma don't go on to develop PTSD. And then it's really necessary to both... Specifically recognize the PTSD syndrome and then give the psychoeducation and treatment recommendations that you need to get better from that”

“similarly, substances and trauma, you would hear about a more stepwise down of functioning and attention at an identifiable time”

“I would say psychodynamic being more important for early onset traumas. I feel like that's an area where going pure CBT struggles. You know, there's actually a type of psychotherapy that seems to be more intended for people with multi-trauma, generational traumas or complex traumas called narrative exposure therapy”

“Cognitive processing therapy or written exposure therapy or even EMDR, fine, because none of those is likely to make bipolar worse and may help some”

“if your existing or past relationships were not safe enough or not giving you what you need, then the work has to be done eventually to find new relationships or build new ones. One way to do that is through shared activities”

“I saw a lot of PTSD patients or to me, their diagnosis of PTSD who carried the diagnosis of depression. And we're on their 30th trial of a new antidepressant. And, you know, they were substance use disorder and depression. It's like, no, this is a classic PTSD case”

“there's more to life than trauma. There's who you are when you're born, your temperament. There's non-traumatic but still upsetting things that happened to you growing up”

“We don't want blame, but we do want productive change, and some productive change will be limited in a mild or significant way if we don't look at how the subject, the individual, contributes to what's going on”

“You're telling me that to understand myself, I need a diagnosis that 80% of practitioners are going to negatively judge me and interpret my thoughts, behaviors through this pretty hurtful lens”