Healing The Writer: A Personal Account of Overcoming PTSD Book Review

Healing The Writer: A Personal Account of Overcoming PTSD is the second published book by my friend Dan L. Hays. It isn't the second book Dan has written. It is the second one that he published. Healing The Writer is Dan's story of why the first books weren't published and the healing that had to take place for Dan to be able to write again and become a published writer.  

Dan's is a story of healing from PTSD and facing fearful memories that his inner child blocked from adult Dan's memory for years. Through inner child exercises, over a period of time, Dan is able to get little Danny to tell his secrets and share his fears. 

What I like about Dan's books is that I always find something about Dan's healing journey that I can relate to. Sometimes it feels like Dan is telling part of my story in the feelings of being a survivor. Dan's writing always teaches me something about myself. 

I highly recommend Healing The Writer to any survivor of PTSD and anyone who has ever experienced writer's block. Dan shares some valuable exercises in working with your inner child too. 
Patricia

If you are interested, here is the link to my book review of Dan's first published book, Freedom's Just Another Word.

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/04/freedoms-just-another-word-book-review.html

Is Your Trauma Therapist/Counselor Qualified?

If you are an incest survivor, a sibling abuse survivor or a survivor of any form of child abuse and you decide to seek professional help, please make sure that your therapist or counselor is qualified and properly trained to work with you. Ask to see their certificate or license whichever is required for their particular field of work. Also some therapists and counselors are not trained specifically for trauma victims or for PTSD. Be sure that the person that you are working with is someone who is trustworthy.

With availability of the internet, not everyone that you meet is who they say they are. Don't assume just because someone asks you to let them do EMDR or some other new form of therapy with them that they are fully trained. The internet makes it easy for all of us to reach out to each other and to receive support and compassion from other survivors. Sadly, there are some people out there too that will take advantage of our goodness and our woundedness. Don't assume that someone has received training just because they sound knowledgeable.  Don't let someone manipulate you and guide you in a direction that may harm you. Pay attention to what your gut/intuition tells you about a person. Ask someone else that you trust what they think about this person. Listen to what this person tells you about themselves. Don't minimize what your inner voice is telling you. Trust it.

Not all people who trick you are evil. Some are misguided themselves. Others are self-centered and don't care how their actions may hurt others. Some act out of their own woundedness. None of that really matters and I don't mean them as excuses for what they do. It saddens me that they act out of that place in themselves but I have learned from my own experiences and my own healing that I don't have to let another person fool me because of their woundedness. I can pay attention to my boundaries and enforce them when needed. I can remove myself from that person's presence, even online. I don't have to let another person use me just because I feel sad for them. Today, as a survivor/thriver, I can protect myself. I can also learn from my past mistakes and grow past them.

Sometimes because I look for the good in people, I will miss or choose to ignore my inner voice that says something isn't quite right with this scenario or with what this person is telling me. Each time that I have ignored that voice, I have later learned that I should have paid attention to it. People sometimes disappoint me. Sometimes, I get used even. I am still learning in this area. I won't let a few disappointments keep me from looking for and seeing the good in others. I will be more cautious. That is all I can do. I can also share what I have learned here with my friends.
Patricia

Grieving Is A Major Part of Healing From Abuse

To facilitate more healing on my part and sometimes just out of curiosity, I read a lot of blogs every week.  On Twitter, I found a blog article on grieving that is one of the best articles on explaining grief that I have read in a long time.  This article is entitled Grief Has A Mind of Its Own posted on soulseeds: SEED THE CHANGE blog.  The link for this article is here:

http://www.soulseeds.com/grapevine/2011/08/grief-has-a-mind-of-its-own/

This blog article was written by Ian Lawton who calls himself a "Spiritual teacher of inner wisdom, divine love, deeper consciousness, oneness, peace, and abundance."  Thank you Ian for sharing your thoughts on grieving.

Grief is such a big part of healing from childhood abuse.  Every time a loss of any kind happens in your life, you have to grieve the loss.  As a child of incest, I had a lot of grieving to do when I started healing. 

Another new friend that I have recently met through Twitter is Nancy Fox-Kilgore, M. S.   Nancy's blog is called Sibling Abuse & Bullies which you will find at the following link:

http://siblingbullies.com/blog/

Nancy's is a fairly new blog in the healing child abuse community.  I know that Nancy would love it if you would leave a comment on any of her blog articles. I hope that you will encourage her to continue writing and sharing her journey so that others can also start to heal by reading her words.  Nancy is an expert on Bullying and Sibling Abuse.  If you are ever looking for a guest speaker on either of these two topics, Nancy is the person to contact.  Nancy is a national speaker for the United States Department of Justice.  She speaks on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in rape and incest victims.  I wanted to introduce you to Nancy today rather than waiting for you to meet her in my next blog article.  My next blog article that will be posted here on Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker will be a Guest Interview with Nancy Fox-Kilgore.  Look for the post on either the coming Monday or Tuesday.  In the meantime, go to Nancy's blog Sibling Abuse & Bullies and become aquainted with Nancy and her mission to protect children from bullying and sibling abuse.  You will learn some things that you didn't know about the two forms of abuse.

Patricia