Relational.trauma Quotes

because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place. “Relationships

Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are often given more to experience in this life than we can bear to experience consciously. This problem has been around since the beginning of time, but it is especially acute in early childhood where, because of the immaturity of the psyche and/or brain, we are ill-equipped to metabolize our experience. An infant or young child who is abused, violated or seriously neglected by a caretaking adult is overwhelmed by intolerable affects that are impossible for it to metabolize, much less understand or even think about.

Still another time have I come to a place where it is very difficult to proceed. I ought to be hardened by this stage; but there are some experiences and intimations which scar too deeply to permit of healing and leave only such an added sensitiveness that memory reinspires all the original horror.

My client who has only three alter personalities besides the ANP was unaware of her multiplicity until she encountered a work-related trauma at age sixty. She became symptomatic as the hidden parts emerged to deal with the recent trauma.

I regard longings for twinship or emotional kinship as being reactive to emotional trauma, with its accompanying feelings of singularity, estrangement, and solitude.

Jane snorted out in disgust. "Okay, the good news is spotting the saurus just got a hell of a lot easier. Plus we've got a ton of free bait." "The bad news?" Taggart asked. "Smart boy. Cookie for knowing that there's bad news." Jane eased her SUV across the worn divided line to drive along the berm. "Bad news, Pittsburgh beef cows are the meanest son-of-abitches." "So, we have to dodge several tons of pissed off sirloin while filming one hungry dinosaur?" "Welcome to Pittsburgh.

That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people.

At our wedding, our college creative writing professor read a poem—John Ciardi’s “Most Like an Arch This Marriage.” It’s a poem about imperfection, about being more together than we can be on our own: “Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean / into a strength. Two fallings become firm.” Being married isn’t being two columns, standing so straight and tall on their own, they never touch. Being married is leaning and being caught, and catching the one who leans toward you.

This was Dr. Ham’s whole theory: that because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relationship trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place. “Relationships are like sports. It’s muscle memory, it’s all the action of doing. You can’t just read about tennis and know how to play tennis. There’s a lot of duelling involved. Interpersonal duelling!” As he saw it, his office was a safe place to practice duelling. Learning how to listen, how to talk, how to ask for what I needed.

Due to the harm done to the emerging self, the scapegoated child may struggle to identify wants and needs and will have difficulty forming secure attachments with important figures in their life. As an adult, the FSA survivor may lack the confidence to pursue goals and dreams and will have difficulty forming lasting, trusting attachments with others due to relational traumas sustained in childhood. They may feel that they don’t have a right to be, to feel, or to express themselves authentically due to an inner sense of self-loathing rooted in toxic shame

Taggart finally broke the pattern. "Can you at least explain why?" Jane growled. God, she hated being outnumbered. This was like riding herd on her little brothers, only worse because "I'll beat you if you do" wasn't an acceptable answer. "First rule of shooting a show on Elfhome." She grabbed Hal and made him face each of the two newbies so there was no way they could miss the mask of dark purple bruises across Hal's face. "Avoid getting 'The Face' damaged. Viewers don't like raccoon boys. Hal is out of production until the bruising can be covered with makeup. We've got fifty days and a grocery list of face-chewing monsters to film. We have to think about damage control." "Second rule!" She let Hal go and held up two fingers. "Get as much footage as possible of the monster before you kill it. People don't like looking at dead monsters if you don't give them lots of time seeing it alive. Right now we have got something dark moving at night in water. No one has ever seen this before, so we can't use stock footage to pad. We blow the whistle and it will come out of the water and try to rip your face off – violating rule one – and then we'll have to kill it and thus break rule two." "Sounds reasonable," Taggart said. "Would we really have to kill it?" Nigel's tone suggested he equated it to torturing kittens. "If it's trying its damnest to eat you? Yes!" Jane cried.

It was like having two children in the car with her. Okay, one child and a young adult that kept backsliding. Hal, of course, was attempting to prove he was really only eight years old. Taggart could resist the taunting part of the time. Nigel was the senile grandmother who never noticed that the children were fighting. He sat in the backseat, smiling serenely at the passing landscape. What made things worse was that Taggart called shotgun so he could film through the front window. That made it so she couldn't reach Hal to swat him into silence. She found herself tempted to hit Taggart just because he was beside her. And because he'd changed into a dark blue silk shirt and cologne that smelled so good she just wanted to roll in it. "I can kill us all," Jane growled, gripping the wheel tightly, and resisted the urge to drive the production truck into the ditch to prove her point. Somehow they reached downtown without her killing anyone.

I would like to say at the outset that I have little or no interest in mindlessly categorising individuals, and certainly not of “reducing” them to mere labels. If I attempt to group together certain individuals’ experiences, it is to better understand them, their distress and motiva- tions, and what underlies their difficulties. As will become clear, in one sense the term borderline becomes redundant, as the individual’s par- ticular early relational experiences are understood to play the central role in their development and life experience. Yet even these do not ultimately “define” the individual, but rather, through understanding and working through their traumatic experience, the individual can be freed to fully develop, use, and manifest themselves in satisfying and fulfilling ways. The term borderline is, for me, left as a signifier of the particular kinds of reasons that the individual’s struggle to reach this position may have been so difficult.

But you're stuck filming crap now." Hal snorted. "Chased by monsters? Better be damn good at running." "And exactly how do you get hurt filming a landscaping show?" Taggart retorted. "If it can't kill us, we don't film it," Jane said, to stop the fighting before it could start. "There's a lot of dangerous flora and fauna in Pittsburgh and it doesn't stay beyond the Rim. It comes into people's backyards and sets up shop. We teach our viewers how to deal with it, but it means we have to actually get close enough to get hurt." "Deal with, as in kill?" Nigel seemed flabbergasted. "This isn't Earth. These aren't endangered species. This morning we were dealing with a very large strangler vine in a neighborhood with lots of children. There's no way to 'move' it to someplace where it isn’t a danger, especially while it's actively trying to kill anything that stumbles into its path. Pets. Children. Automated lawnmowers." "That one is always amusing to watch but it always ends badly for the lawnmower," Hal said.

We thought we should list all legendary animals," Nigel explained – apparently without realizing it – why they had visa problems. "Can't hurt to ask. Dragons are real, right?" "Elves say they are." Jane desperately wanted a scotch but if she had one, Hal couldn't resist needing one, and she didn't want go back down that road. "This list is suicidal if you're not willing to defend yourself. This isn't Earth, where you can sit in your Jeep and take picture of lions, or go sit in the middle of a bunch of apes. Most of these things will peel open an SUV like it’s a can of sardines and make a snack of everything inside." "It would be amusing to watch but it would end badly for you," Hal murmured. It was hard to tell if he was making a play on his previous statement or if he didn't realize he was repeating himself. "The list is a starting point." Nigel leaned forward, face lighting up with inner fire. "To get us in the door. What we want is all of Elfhome. To revel in all that it has to offer. The virgin iron wood forest. The beautiful immortal elves. The strange and magical beasts. And the humans that live peacefully side by side with all this." Jane shook her head, trying to resist the power of a TV host beaming at her one-on-one. "Don't snow job me." "I've seen this kind of shit before," Taggart said with quiet intensity. "When a country goes dark, its means someone has something it's trying to hide. And often what they're hiding is horrible war crimes like mass graves and attempted genocide. Someone is keeping the media out of Pittsburgh.

The development of a working alliance is crucial because it addresses a psychic phobia associated with relationships that is common in complex trauma clients. As we discussed, when primary relationships are sources of profound disillusionment, betrayal, and emotional pain, any subsequent relationship with an authority figure who offers an emotional bond or other assistance might be met with a range of emotions, such as fear, suspicion, anger, or hopelessness on the negative end of the continuum and idealization, hope, overdependence, and entitlement on the positive. Therapy offers a compensatory relationship, albeit within a professional framework, that has differences from and restrictions not found in other relationships. On the one hand, the therapist works within professional and ethical boundaries and limitations in a role of higher status and education and is therefore somewhat unattainable for the client. On the other, the therapist's ethical and professional mandate is the welfare of the client, creating a perception of an obligation to meet the client's needs and solve his or her problems. Furthermore, the therapist is expected to both respect the client's privacy and accept emotional and behavioral difficulties without judgment, while simultaneously being entitled to ask the client about his or her most personal and distressing feelings, thoughts and experiences. Developing a sense of trust in the therapist, therefore, is both expected and fraught with inherent difficulties that are amplified by each client's unique history of betrayal trauma, loss, and relational distress.

heartburn-related trauma,

[on t4t love] Nevertheless, it doesn't rely on a frictionless and easeful understanding of trans relationally; it hinges on the admittance that trans people often have a very, very difficult time with one another. Appearing together in public might increase the likelihood of being clocked; dwelling in intimate spaces with one another might render one's home places more difficult, rather than less, as trans-related trauma is shared and thus, perhaps, affectively amplified rather than diminished (a phenomenon that is not bad, per se, just complex and—sometimes—tiring).

our brain is designed with neuroplasticity. In other words, it is constructed to allow for growth and adaptation. As adults, this means that we can affect our neural pathways and steer them in the direction of secure attachment. We are fundamentally designed to heal. Even if our childhood was less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to find out more about what’s interfering with it and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant. Our goal is to excavate our secure attachment so that it will eventually prevail over any relational trauma or attachment disruption that comes up—or at least that we might become more resilient and recover more quickly from distress.

Betrayal trauma is so painful because nothing compares to the pain than being disappointed by the one person you thought would never hurt you. the resulting hypervigilance from this relational trauma typically goes one of two ways – either anxiously clinging on to your partner with a fear of abandonment or avoiding deeper emotional involvement all together as a result of not wanting to risk losing control again.

In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape—and can thus predict—the resulting mental disorder. - Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders

Relational trauma also emerges out of the oppression of communities, cultures, and nations. These relational systems of oppression and subjugation create and perpetuate complex trauma. We cannot separate a person’s developmental process from the society in which they are raised. There is a growing movement within mental health that speaks to these larger concerns and seeks to expand inclusion of more culturally informed perspectives and models. Within the trauma field, it is important to identify the historical legacy of brutality, oppression, and generations of complex trauma that has deeply impacted, and continues to impact, vulnerable individuals and cultures.

The more I worked with individuals and couples on their relationships, the more I noticed the similarities in their stories. Everyone in my practice was relationally anxious, with urgent concerns about their relationships, but despite the uniqueness of each person, the underlying themes remained remarkably similar: Everyone has relational trauma that they re-enact within the context of dating or in intimate relationships (trauma they’re not aware of and yet are anxious about). Everyone has unrealistic expectations about relationships and sex (expectations they’re not aware of and yet are anxious about). Everyone feels shame for how they’re experiencing their life, relationships, and sexuality (shame they are very much aware of and anxious about).

In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place.

people are not trustworthy, that when stressed he cannot really emotionally stay connected to them, and that he is unworthy of being loved. This way of seeing the world is typical of insecure attachments and these unconscious emotional biases will guide overt behavior, especially under relational stress. What is more, the infant of a misattuned mother will frequently be presented with an aggressive expression on his mother’s face, implying he is a threat, or with an expression of fear-terror, implying that he is the source of alarm. Images of his mother’s aggressive and/or fearful face, and the resultant chaotic alterations in her bodily state, are internalized, meaning they are imprinted in his developing right brain limbic circuits as an implicit memory, below levels of consciousness. Although out of awareness, they can plague him and his relationships for his entire life unless he finds a way to bring them into conscious awareness and work with them. Furthermore, when the caregiver is attuned in her early interactions, her more mature nervous system is regulating the infant’s neurochemistry and homeostasis. This, in turn, has a profound influence on the structural organization of the developing brain. Conversely emotional trauma will negatively impact the parts of the brain which are developing at the time of trauma. For example, if high levels of stress hormones are circulating in a pregnant mother, it up-regulates the fetus’ developing stress response – making the child, and future adult hypersensitive to stress. Relational trauma that occurs around the time of birth has a negative impact on both the developing micro-architecture of the amygdala itself, and the amygdala’s connection to the HPA axis, as well as to other parts of the limbic system. Thus high levels of early unrepaired interpersonal stress have a profoundly harmful effect on the ability to form social bonds, and on temperament. Suffering unrepaired and frequent emotional stress after about ten months interferes with the experience-dependent maturation of the highest level regulatory systems in the right orbifrontal cortex. This opens the door

Schore emphasized that when the caregiver is unable to help the child to regulate either a specific emotion or intense emotions in general, or – worse – that she exacerbates the dysregulation, the child will start to go into a state of hypoaroused dissociation as soon as a threat of dysregulation arises. This temporaily reduces conscious emotional pain in the child living with chronic trauma, but those who characterologically use the emotion-deadening defense of dissociation to cope with stressful interpersonal events subsequently dissociate to defend against both daily stresses, and the stress caused when implicitly held memories of trauma are triggered. In the developing brain, repeated neurological states become traits, so dissociative defense mechanisms are embedded into the core structure of the evolving personality, and become a part of who a person is, rather than what a person does. Dissociation, which appears in the first month of life, seems to be a last resort survival strategy. It represents detachment from an unbearable situation. The infant withdraws into an inner world, avoids eye contact and stares into space. Dissociation triggered by a hypoaroused state results in a constricted state of consciousness, and a void of subjectivity. Being cut off from our emotions impacts our sense of who we are as a person. Our subjective sense of self derives from our unconscious experience of bodily-based emotions and is neurologically constructed in the right brain. If we cannot connect to our bodily emotions then our sense of self is built on fragile foundations. Many who suffered early relational trauma have a disturbed sense of their bodies and of what is happening within them physiologically as well as emotionally. The interview moved along to the topic of how we can possibly master these adverse and potentially damaging relational experiences. Schore replied by explaining that the human brain remains plastic and capable of learning throughout the entire life span, and that with the right therapeutic help and intervention we can move beyond dissociation as our primary defense mechanism, and begin to regulate our emotions more appropriately. When the relationship between the therapist and the client develops enough safety, the therapeutic alliance can act as a growth-facilitating environment that offers a corrective emotional experience via “rewiring” the right brain and associated neurocircuits.

her takes a good deal of clinical experience. More importantly, the therapist needs to have worked deeply with her own early life experiences, and has to actively work with it throughout the life span. A successful therapeutic relation precipitates emotional growth not only in the patient but also in the therapist. Sieff refered to the fact that short-term cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is currently very popular and widely used. Can it help with healing relational trauma? Schore answered that CBT is grounded in cognitive psychology, and its research base is grounded cognitive processes such as explicit memory, rational thought, language, and effortful conscious control. Cognitively based therapy’s basic theoretical assumption is grounded in the assumption that we can change how we feel by consciously changing how we think and what we believe. This means that cognitive therapy focuses on language and thought, both of which are located in the left brain. People who have trouble regulating their emotions typically have a left brain that is already more developed than their right brain, and they may well have learned to use rational thinking and words to obscure the deeper emotional experiences and to keep them dissociated. Cognitive therapy may strengthen the very strategies that keep the affect dampening defense of dissociation in place. Even if the left brain becomes more able to control the emotions of the right brain, it can only control emotional arousal that is of low or moderate intensity. As a rule, when emotional arousal reaches a certain level of intensity the left brain goes off-line and the right brain becomes dominant. Changes made in the cognitive strategies of the left brain are unavailable when this happens. At these times, emotionally-focused therapy may enhance the neural connections between the right amygdala and the right orbifrontal cortex which allows the patient to more effectively tolerate and regulate intense emotions. Cognitive therapy which exclusively focuses on the ability of the left brain to control the right cannot directly alter changes within the right-lateralized limbic system. The

final problem of cognitive therapy is that it is generally a short-term treatment so it is unable to build a strong enough therapeutic alliance to allow the patient to experience the corrective emotional experience. Deep change does not happen when a patient is consciously reflecting on an emotion. Rather it happens when the patient actively experiences the emotion and when a resonating emotionally present therapist recognizes and regulates that emotion, thereby modeling new ways of being with another while one is under stress. There is no interpersonal space for this repair of attachment ruptures in current models of cognitive therapy, where left brain insight dominates over right brain interactive regulation. Coming to the end, Sieff asked Schore what message he would like people to take home from this interview. Schore answered that the earliest stages of life are critical as they form the foundation of everything that follows. Our early attachment relationships, for better or worse, shape our right brain unconscious system and have lifelong consequences. An attuned early attachment relationship enables us to grow an interconnected, well-developed right brain and sets us up to become secure individuals, open to new social and emotional experiences. A traumatic early attachment relationship impairs the development of a healthy right brain and locks us into an emotionally dysregulated, amygdala-driven emotional world. As a result, our only way to defend against intense unregulated emotions is via the over reliance on repression and/or pathological characterological dissociation. Faced with relational stress, we are cut off from the world, from other people, from our emotions, from our bodies and from our sense of self. Our right brains cannot further develop or grow emotionally from our interactions with other right brains. Too many people suffer alone with their desperate pain due to their early relational trauma. For somebody struggling with such emotional dysregulation, the way to emotional security, and to a more vital, alive, and fulfilling life, does not come from making the unconscious conscious – which is essentially a left brain process

Complex PTSD, in its most basic form, is a relational violation that disrupts our sense of trust and safety in the world and limits access to our Self-energy. Healing relational trauma puts us back in touch with our natural core and permits us to love and connect again with others.

This was Dr. Ham’s whole theory: that because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people—people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place.

When people experience relational trauma, they are generally not responding to a mortal threat. Instead, they are responding to a threat to the security of one’s sense of Self. This has profound impact on the neurodevelopment of children and self-organization. For young children, their sense of Self is dependent on their early environment. They are 100 percent dependent on their caregivers for their survival and well-being. A young child who experiences environmental failure has the lived experience that they themself won’t exist without connection and love.

The strangle vine is a dangerous plant to deal with as it’s a master of disguise. It can produce up to five different types of foliage, depending on the type of anchor it attaches itself to. It makes safely identifying this plant very tricky. Thus, it's best to investigate any possible outbreak with weapon in hand. Some people like a machete. Others: an axe. Personally, I like a flamethrower." He whipped up the wand and gave his signature evil laugh. The cackle inspired the rumors that he had accidentally killed someone on his previous show and thus his backslide to obscurity. She'd seen the videos. The only thing he'd killed was the ratings; he'd been bored silly doing curbside appeal remodels and it showed.

I was just sitting here when this freaking huge bird came swooping out of nowhere." Hal was attempting to use his charisma to talk his way out of trouble, only because he was on drugs, he derailed quickly into incoherence. "At least I think it was a bird. Might have been a superhero. I am Batman! Only more like Hawkman – without the goofy cow." He meant cowl. He put his fingers to his head to make odd points on Hawkman's cowl. Obviously he hadn't seen himself in the mirror yet; he already was masked by deep purple bruises. "Cow. Cow. Mooo." He noticed Taggart for the first time and he went wide-eyed. He tilted his head, still making horns. "My god! You're Taggart with the unpronounceable first name." "Yes, I am." Taggart rubbed at his face to cover a smile. "And you're Hal Rogers from Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden.

He gazed at her with open worry. "Are you okay?" "Just – just…" Needed to remember that she was extremely pissed at him for invading her life. "I had a nightmare." He quirked an eyebrow. "Lawn gnomes had taken Hal. I couldn't find him." "Ah, so you don't really hate him?" She was caught off guard by the question. "No! Why would you say that?" "Friendship is a rare beast in our line. Most people only fake it." "I don't fake anything.

Nigel crouched beside the shark. It dwarfed him. "While the largest of Earth's requiem sharks rival the Great Whites, Elfhome's river sharks are remarkably larger. This one here is nearly five meters long. The record here in Pittsburgh is an unbelievable six point four meters. What do these massive creatures eat? Let's see!" In a move rival to one of Hal's, Nigel plunged his whole arm into the slit cut in the shark's stomach. He jerked back his hand wrapped in the pulsing glowing mass of a water fairy. "What do we have here?" "Put it down!" Jane cried in warning. "Trying to," Nigel said calmly despite the wince of pain that flashed across his face. "That's a water fairy." Hal whipped out his ever-present expandable grab-stick. Joining Nigel in the frame, he used the tool to pry the gleaming mass from Nigel's hand. "It's a distant cousin of the cuttlefish that has been crossed with a jellyfish. This one is just a baby, but still a sturdy little critter, despite its appearance." "How poisonous is it?" Taggart murmured as the water fairy was peeled free to expose a massive welt on Nigel's hand. "Not very. Keep filming." Jane headed to her truck for her first aid kit.

Then what's he doing here?" "Trying to get eaten!" Jane turned to face Chloe square on. "Taggart is here is with world famous naturalist, Nigel Reid, to film a network show called Chased by Monsters. They want to film Nigel coming face to face with Elfhome wildlife and hopefully surviving the experience." She let her sarcasm drip through since most Pittsburghers were slightly disdainful of newcomers. "If any of Channel Five's viewers hears of any monsters in the Pittsburgh-area – other than reporter Chloe Polanski – please let us know.

bloodied lace, which were both deadly in a very sedate way. "It was totally awesome! Yoyo Hal!" Juergen bounced up and down as an upright version of Hal falling repeatedly out of the tall wind oak only to be recaught and dragged upwards because he insisted on doing commentary in calm even tones. "It's important to note that a strangle vine can have as many as thirty-seven snare vines. Gak! You need to strike the base of the plant, its nerve center, to kill the strangle vine. Fuck! Never tackle one of these alone. Jane!" She stared at Juergen in dismay. He'd seen all that? Live? Unedited? With all the embarrassing parts still intact? How? The mechanic continued to act today's filming. "And you. Rawr!" He mimed the chainsaw. "That rocked! And then Brian! 'Don't try this at home, hire a professional pest control contractor.'" Brian was Brian Scroggins, Pittsburgh Fire Marshal and accidental guest co-host on a regular basis. "Just epic." She fled the embarrassing recount, ignoring the belated, "So how is Hal?

an "attachment injury" which comes about when one person in a couple fails to respond t the other at a critical moment of vulnerability of need. Typical moments include labor and childbirth, illness, trauma, loss, and times of transition. If a person feels betrayed, neglected, or uncared for by his partner in such moments, relational trauma occurs. the incident then becomes an organizing event and recurring theme that stands in the way of understanding and repair.

For this reason, although our thinking brains tend to consider chronic stress, shock trauma, developmental trauma, and relational trauma to be different things, they all create the same effects in the mind-body system. If they’re so similar in their effects, then why does our culture usually treat them so differently? The short answer is that many powerful and ambitious people have a hard time admitting their mind-body system’s vulnerability. Powerful, high-achieving, and successful people—and the high-status institutions where they work—have no problem acknowledging “stress.” Indeed, we tend to consider “being stressed” to be a badge of honor—the evidence that we’re successful and accomplished. In our collective understanding, “being stressed” means being overworked, overscheduled, extremely busy, and definitely important. It’s just a necessary by-product of being a Master of the Universe. Why else would so many of us boast about how few hours of sleep we got last night? Or how many days have passed since we’ve seen our kids awake by the time we got home from work? Or how many different activities or demands we’re juggling at the same time? Or how many years it’s been since we took a proper vacation—or even a full weekend off? In our culture, we romanticize our stress, even as we whine about it with humble-brags like these.

And whereas in WWI and WWII the symptoms of stress were apparent during or just after combat, and were treated using frontline clinical care (sometimes called “forward psychiatry”), combat stress during the brutal Vietnam War was rare.62 The spike in the prevalence of combat-related trauma among veterans of the Vietnam War only occurred well after the United States left Vietnam—hence the postwar development of the apt term “post-traumatic stress disorder.”63

What else did Network drop on us?" There was a too-long silence that meant she was going to hate what Dmitri said next. "Network wants us to provide a 'native guide' for a crew filming on Elfhome…" "You want me to play babysitter?" "No, they asked for a guide, they're getting you as a producer, and you're going to keep them out of trouble even if you need to hogtie them, which I know you're fully capable of." "I don't do babysitting!" "It's not babysitting, and you're very good at it, otherwise Hal wouldn't be alive now." Chesty went to point on a strangle vine staging a surprise rear attack. Jane sighed. When was Hal ever going to learn that these things were more like octopuses than snakes? "That is debatable," she said as Hal went down with a yelp.

The fire is out. Brian isn't going to press charges. Hal has a broken nose, a dislocated left hip, probably a mild concussion – once again that damn pith helmet saved him from anything serious -- and third degrees burns on his foot after his boot caught on fire. Nothing major but we're still out of production until his face heals." Dmitri picked up the insulated pitcher full of coffee and tilted his head in a "follow me" signal. "Oh, didn't know you could dislocate a hip." "It takes talent." Jane growled as she followed him through the studio.

They said I could leave if you came and picked me up." He dropped his voice to a whisper and pulled the camera closer. His pupils were blown wide, almost touching the rims of his irises. "The angry penguins scare me." Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off a headache. "They've given you pain medicine, haven't they?" "My state of medication does not make them any less scary. Tiny, angry, little birds." He was talking about the ancient Catholic nuns of Mercy Hospital. They were one of the few things on the planet that actually frightened Hal. She suspected he would be even more cavalier about getting hurt if there was a hospital other than Mercy to go to in Pittsburgh. "Please, please, please, please, please, please." Hal whimpered. "You've got the Fortress of Solitude. All those empty beds! Please!" "Fine. You can stay at my place. I'll come get you." She slapped down her hand, cutting the feed. The two men were staring at the display with surprise and amusement. "Who was that unfortunate fellow?" Nigel asked. "That's – that's the host of Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden, Hal Rogers. We had a rough shoot this morning." Taggart was clearly confused by the answer. Obviously he thought PB&G was a simple landscape show.

Get dressed!" She gave him a shove and turned around so she wouldn't be flashed as well as mooned. Although after five years working together – and all various plant assisted disrobing and the subsequent ambulance rides -- she'd seen the entire package more times than she could count. "Does Dmitri know he's here?" Hal asked and then answered himself. "Of course Dmitri knows. Dmitri knows everything. He's freaking omniscient. That's just an act when he calls right in the middle of something amazing and goes 'what are you doing?' like he doesn't damn well know you plan a glorious explosion. Just freaking glorious." Hal was rambling on about his recent misadventure with high explosives. If Taggart weren't standing there, she would take advantage of Hal's drugged state and quiz him on that, because she still was trying to figure out where he got the C4. More importantly, if the source was going to supply him with more in the future. The network cameraman was eyeing Hal over her shoulder with open surprise and dismay. "What exactly happened this morning? He looks like he's been flogged." "We were victorious!" Hal shouted. "We looked that thing in all seventy-four eyes and burned out its heart!" Jane sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. So many things wrong in that sentence, she wasn't even going to try. God, she prayed that Nigel wasn't anything like Hal. "Right, let's get going. I want to get home before dark.