All posts tagged: Trauma

Psychedelic retreats linked to mental health improvements in people with severe childhood trauma

Psychedelic retreats linked to mental health improvements in people with severe childhood trauma

Published by José Betancourt

People who have a history of severe early childhood trauma may experience marked improvements in their mental health following the use of psychedelic drugs in a ceremonial setting. A new observational study published in Psychedelic Medicine found that individuals who reported more adverse events during their early years showed greater reductions in anxiety and larger boosts in overall well-being after attending psychedelic retreats compared to those with fewer childhood traumas. These results suggest that guided psychedelic experiences could provide a novel approach for helping individuals with deep psychological wounds. Adverse childhood experiences encompass a wide range of stressful early life events that happen before a person turns eighteen. These events are generally divided into two broad categories. The first includes direct childhood maltreatment, such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, and extreme neglect. The second category involves household dysfunction, which can include growing up with family members who struggle with severe mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, or criminal behavior. The impact of these early adverse experiences often persists long into adulthood, leading to poor physical …

Healing From Our Trauma Helps Shape Future Generations

Healing From Our Trauma Helps Shape Future Generations

Published by Jenni Sidey

“I wish my parents had done the work of healing from their own childhoods,” Joanne said, letting out a long sigh. “Then I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, going over this again and again.” She added with a small laugh. “I mean, no offense!” “None taken,” I replied, smiling. “You’re right. If your parents had done their own work, maybe you wouldn’t need therapy as much—or at least not for this long.” Joanne had just completed her third year of therapy with me, and we had spent most of this time helping her unlearn dysfunctional patterns she had carried for decades. I continued gently, “But also, if their parents—your grandparents—had done their own healing, perhaps your parents wouldn’t have repeated the same patterns of abuse and dysfunction.” Joanne nodded, deep in thought. Then she added, “I realized the other day that I didn’t yell at my daughter when she spilled her juice. I normally would have snapped. I…I mean, there’s just so much going on, and sometimes spilled juice is the last thing I …

Childhood trauma linked to elevated risk of simultaneous physical and mental illness in old age

Childhood trauma linked to elevated risk of simultaneous physical and mental illness in old age

Published by José Betancourt

Individuals who endured difficult and traumatic experiences during their very early years face an elevated risk of developing simultaneous physical and mental health conditions in later life. A recent observational study tracked thousands of middle-aged and older adults over several years, finding that childhood adversity strongly predicts the later coexistence of chronic physical diseases and clinical depression. The research, which offers new insights into how early life trauma shapes long-term human health, was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Adverse childhood experiences encompass a wide variety of severe hardships that happen before a person reaches adulthood. These traumatic events include direct harm like physical abuse, emotional violence, continuous bullying, and general parental neglect. The concept also covers broader household dysfunctions, such as witnessing domestic violence, living with a family member who has a severe mental illness, or enduring extreme poverty and parental loss. Health researchers study how these early hardships shape human biology and behavior over an entire lifetime, seeking to understand the long shadows cast by early trauma as a person physically ages. …

How a Huggy Dog Is Helping Children With Wartime Trauma

How a Huggy Dog Is Helping Children With Wartime Trauma

Published by Jenni Sidey

We turn on the news and hear about war and devastation every day and wonder, what about all the children in these regions who are affected by wartime trauma? Who is helping them and how? If you have or know children, you must wonder, as I do, how these young people survive such staggering events or avoid symptoms of PTSD. I recently interviewed clinical psychologist Shai Hen-Gal of Tel Aviv, Israel. Hen-Gal works with wartime trauma in children and has created a successful short-term intervention we should all know about: Hibuki. Hibuki is a Hebrew term that roughly translates to Huggy, the name Hen-Gal has given to an adorable stuffed animal dog with a sad face and extra-long limbs that can hug a child as it wraps itself around the traumatized little one, offering some healing and a friend. Hen-Gal uses Huggy to help treat traumatized children who have experienced the horrors of war. Karly McBride: Where did this idea come from? Shai Hen-Gal: I was volunteering in refugee camps and wanted to find something …

Parental acceptance and trauma resilience are linked to faster brain development in 9-13-year-olds

Parental acceptance and trauma resilience are linked to faster brain development in 9-13-year-olds

Published by José Betancourt

An analysis of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study data showed that children accepted by their parents and more resilient to trauma tend to have an accelerated pace of cortical thinning, an indicator of brain development. In contrast, children exposed to household abuse tended to show slower microstructural development of the brain. The paper was published in Psychological Medicine. As children grow, the cerebral cortex undergoes major structural and physiological changes that support increasingly complex thinking and behavior. In early childhood**,** the brain produces a very large number of synaptic connections between neurons, a process known as synaptogenesis. This overproduction makes the young brain highly plastic and responsive to environmental experiences and learning. As development progresses, many of these connections are gradually removed through synaptic pruning, strengthening frequently used neural pathways while eliminating less efficient ones. One visible consequence of this process is cortical thinning, where the thickness of the gray matter in the cortex decreases as redundant synapses are pruned and neural circuits become more efficient. At the same time, axons become increasingly wrapped …

A Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Approach to Trauma

A Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Approach to Trauma

Published by Jenni Sidey

The most recommended psychotherapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder emphasize exposure-based approaches (Foa and Rothbaum, 1998; Resick and Schnicke, 1993), encouraging patients to recount and reexperience traumatic events. Exposure treatments have helped many people, but a significant number of patients drop out of them, in part because directly focusing on traumatic experiences can be intolerably painful (Steenkamp et al., 2020). Additionally, these treatments often focus narrowly on an “index trauma,” ignoring other traumatic experiences that may be emotionally relevant. They also typically do not address the deeper psychological meanings of trauma or explore how childhood adversity shapes the impact of later traumatic events. Moreover, even with current best treatments, about two-thirds of patients still have enough symptoms to meet a PTSD diagnosis (Shalev et al., 2017). Clearly, we need additional ways of understanding and treating trauma. One such approach is Trauma-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (TFPP) (Busch et al., 2021), a form of Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (Busch, 2022) adapted for PTSD. Rather than focusing on retelling the traumatic event (although this is sometimes important), TFPP explores how traumatic …

When Trauma Still Hurts: Memory Rescripting

When Trauma Still Hurts: Memory Rescripting

Published by Jenni Sidey

Content warning: The story you’re about to hear is quite graphic, with references to childhood sexual abuse and sexual assault. While I’ve built my whole career on helping people challenge and crush their negative thoughts in the here-and-now, let me tell you the story of a woman whose recovery required us to revisit a traumatic event from her childhood. I used a powerful technique called memory rescripting, developed in the 1990s by Drs. Merv Smucker, Edna Foa, and colleagues.1 Since then, a number of newer studies have supported memory rescripting as a promising treatment for some trauma survivors. Like every technique in therapy, it won’t be for everyone—for certain patients, however, it can be helpful2, 3, 4 as you’ll see in this article. The story features a young woman who came for the treatment of agoraphobia. Her fear was specific and intense: public transportation. Buses, trains, taxis, airplanes—any form of public transportation where she couldn’t immediately escape filled her with terror. Aside from that, she was doing well. She was a bright student at a …

Brain scans reveal a bipolar-like link to childhood trauma in some depressed patients

Brain scans reveal a bipolar-like link to childhood trauma in some depressed patients

Published by José Betancourt

A neuroimaging study in Italy found that patients with bipolar disorder reporting more adverse childhood experiences tended to have worse integrity of brain white matter. This association was present in depressed patients as well, but the effects were less pronounced and structurally different. The research was published in European Neuropsychopharmacology. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood and can affect a child’s physical, emotional, and psychological development. The concept was popularized by the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which examined how early life stress relates to later health outcomes. ACEs commonly include experiences such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence. They can also involve household dysfunction, such as living with a family member who has substance abuse problems, mental illness, or who has been incarcerated. These experiences can disrupt a child’s sense of safety and stability and may lead to chronic stress during critical developmental periods. Prolonged exposure to stress in childhood can influence the developing brain and stress-regulation systems in the body. Research …

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Our Sense of Trust

How Childhood Trauma Impacts Our Sense of Trust

Published by Jenni Sidey

A former patient of mine told me, with some anxiety, that they didn’t trust me. Rather than trying to provide reassurance or challenge their experience, I said, “Of course you don’t. How could you?” I knew enough about them to get a sense that, while they were hoping that therapy would help, they also feared that I will be another person who would be hurtful or disappointing. Many people come to therapy having a hard time trusting themselves or others. While it may not always be their initial concern, such challenges lie underneath a wide range of issues, from people wanting to be in relationships to being able to live the life they want. Trust issues can look very different from the outside: Some people might seem overly dependent on others, while others may have crafted an entire personality that denies any dependence or vulnerability. Trust is not a switch, something we either experience or we don’t. It’s also not a simple dial, something that grows or declines in a linear way. Trust is complex …