Hi!

It's good to be back. Last post was preparing for a snowy Purim and today once again snow is comin'...preparing for what BETTER be the last snow of this year...

All my training and clinical experience keeps on leading me to the same conclusion. Over and over. Symptom after symptom. Patient after patient.

Complex trauma. Developmental trauma. Complex PTSD. Little "t" trauma. It's all the same.

And we (the clinical world) are only in the beginning stages of appreciating its underpinnings in pretty much most if not all of what we treat in our offices.

Maybe I see it everywhere because I want to see it everywhere. I don't think so. It's everywhere. If you see trauma as existing on a spectrum (as we should see all disorders). So see it with me. We will all become more effective therapists and do more effective treatment.

You'll be hearing more from me on the subject.

“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psychotherapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. (personal note: I left original line intact despite its obvious inappropriate choice of wording)

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase