healing ways
Healing Trauma EMERGING THERAPIES OFFER FRESH HOPE by Ronica O’Hara
24
Columbia Edition
ColumbiaNaturalAwakenings.com
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efugee children with tear-stained faces, the frail elderly being wheeled away from floods or fires, the sobbing families of gunshot victims—the faces of trauma are seen in every heartbreaking newscast. And the faces are even closer to us than that, walking down the street: a woman that recoils from touch, a child that has withdrawn into himself, a man with incoherent bursts of anger. The trauma of death, cruelty and destruction has always been part of the human experience. In the U.S., surveys show that as many as 60 to 70 percent of people report being traumatized by sexual assault, accidents, violence, war combat or other causes, and as many as one in 11 may be diagnosed in their lifetime with the more severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The encouraging news is that in the last few decades, a revolution has occurred in the recognition of how widespread trauma is and how deeply embedded it can be, not only in our behaviors but in our bodies. That, in turn, has led to effective and ever-evolving approaches to heal what’s been broken. “Although trauma and PTSD are visible in the culture everywhere now, from films to popular literature and from legal to mental health fields, until 1980 the topic was virtually non-existent,” says San Francisco psychologist, PTSD researcher and author Harvey Schwartz, Ph.D., who has treated trauma clients
