A “trauma sensitive” yoga class is taught very differently from the yoga class with which we are familiar -- soft music, altars, incense, physical adjustments. A typical yoga class may not be comfortable place for a trauma survivor and in fact may feel very dangerous. Merely saying the word "relax" can be a PTSD trigger if the person was told to relax and then was abused.
For someone who has been abused, a physical assist can be a severe trigger for PTSD. Many teachers say, "but I always ask first." Think about that statement. For someone who has a history of abuse and was not allowed to say no (so has issues with power and control), assists are problematic.
Looking to continue the physical discipline of the Army, Matt enrolled in a six-month program to become a personal trainer. However, his conduct in the classroom caused his classmates to recoil and ultimately keep their distance. He repeatedly buttonholed them to listen to his ravings and tales from Iraq. He screamed at the television when an Arabic speaker came on and jumped when someone dropped a pan in the training school’s pantry.To help better understand how to offer education to people with PTSD, the University of Connecticut is studying a new technique called Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy (TARGET). The two-year study will be funded by a $750,000 grant from from the U.S. Justice Department, and the school is seeking 90 male vets to participate.
He was a stocky, sinewy soldier, with a martial arts Ultimate- Fighting-Championship build, who always donned the same GI-Joe cartoon T-shirt and stocking hat. He had a brooding and sullen stare and remarked, incessantly and uncontrollably, on the stressors of his war experience as his one and only life experience. His classmates gave him the nickname “McMurphy” after Jack Nicholson’s iconoclastic, charismatic mental patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“Those guys on the side of the road with the cardboard signs — I can see how they get there,” Matt says. “I’m afraid of losing everything I came home to.” The 35-year-old soldier bitterly calls himself a poster child for PTSD.
To get—and to keep—a U.S. government security clearance means completing a long form detailing your personal history. There are many intrusive questions, but Question 21 is the one that keeps many soldiers from asking for help:
"In the last 7 years, have you consulted with a health care professional regarding an emotional or mental health condition or were you hospitalized for such a condition? If you answered ‘Yes,’ provide the dates of treatment and the name and address of the therapist or doctor below."
My security clearance had been granted years before, but every five years, everyone who has a clearance has to go through the investigation process again to renew it. If I went into treatment, I would have to answer "Yes" to Question 21 next time on the form. Answering "Yes" would cost me my clearance. Losing my clearance would cost me my job.
Until now [Don] Frederick has related his World War II experiences to only a close circle of fellow veterans. He's never discussed the experiences in detail with his wife, his three children, or even his brother, another World War II vet. That has changed.
Frederick is now sharing his accounts with people willing to listen to what he has to say including [Dr. Susan Czapiewski, a psychiatrist at the Veterans hospital in Minneapolis and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.]. The talking is therapy, Czapiewski said. Talk therapy hinges on the talker making a connection with a listener, she said.
"There's a muscle in our middle ear that focuses, that allows us focus on that human voice and sort of drown out what else is going on in the environment, and so there's this strong very primitive social connection that happens that is very soothing and very calming and very healing," she said.
