Category Archives: Childhood Trauma

You Don’t Need 8 Hours of Sleep to Have Sweet Dreams

Not for a lot of people! And, even if you don’t have insomnia, we all have sleepless nights from time to time. Just because you close your eyes doesn’t mean you will go to sleep, but we can’t go to sleep without our eyes closed, so… we try again and again for it to work. Why can’t you go to sleep? And, is it important if you miss sleep?

You’ve heard “8 glasses of water and 8 hours of sleep” is what we need. Maybe the water is true but not the sleep part. Research has shown that some people get by just fine with 7 or less hours of sleep per night. “Just fine” is defined as being able to be alert, rested, productive, and awake during the day.

Now, it is true that babies need lots of sleep and parents get concerned if they are not sleeping. When those babies grown to be teens, they do the same thing. Then, parents get concerned at the amount of time they spend sleeping. But age definitely matters when it comes to the amount of sleep we need.

The amount you need now can change. To learn how much sleep you need, keep a diary for the next week or two. Keep track of how many hours you think you slept and how alert you feel the next day. You can put a smiley or frowning face to indicate your mood.

You may have “sleep debt.” If you need 8 hours of sleep and get less (say 7 hours each night), after a week you’ve lost the equivalent of almost one night’s sleep. That’s how to measure your sleep debt. If this is your history, don’t be surprised how much it accumulates over a year. This may explain feeling fatigued, burning eyes, feeling grouchy or depressed, loss of focus and hungry for things you think will perk you up, like sugar, caffeine. Sleep debt has been linked to weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes and more.

Determine what’s causing your sleep debt. Do you have Insomnia? If you take more than 30 minutes to fall asleep and if you wake up during the night, can you get back to sleep? If this happens three or more times a week, you should get evaluated for Insomnia. There is treatment and it doesn’t have to turn you into a zombie or be addictive.

The good news: a night or two of poor sleep is common and most people bounce back by taking naps or sleeping in on the weekend.

What you can do is experiment with bedtime. Keep your wake-up time the same but move your bedtime back an hour for several days. If you’re still waking up tired and living by the coffee pot, move bedtime back 30 min. until you hit your magic hour. You will know what the magic hour is when you wake up feeling refreshed and rested.

Make it easy to go to sleep. Lay off alcohol and caffeine. If you are worried, cope with it by doing mindful meditation, full body relaxation, or journaling. These are just a few techniques that can help you relax.

If these things don’t help, reverse the strategy. Go to bed one hour later than usual, so you make yourself more tired.

Still can’t sleep? Try these:

breath counting exercises
visualize yourself in a deck chair on a cruise ship in calm, sunny, soothing rocking
Get up and leave the bedroom, do something else like reading.
Take a warm bath just before you go to bed.
Exercise during the day. Not night.
Take a nap early in the day, such as a lunch time snooze.
invest in a white noise machine.
keep a sleep diary before going to see your doctor
if you can’t turn your mind from negative to neutral thoughts, see a therapist for Cognitive Behavioral therapy.
10 Do something. Don’t let sleep debt ruin your health.

Who is the Thief Breaking Into Your Mind?

You’d want to know if a thief broke into your house and if something was taken and it’s value, right? You’d have an emotional reaction. Perhaps you’d feel angry or sad, scared, or victimized. It would not be fair.

And, what would you do if the thief came every day? Same thief, always stealing something you value.

You wouldn’t put up with it. When a thief breaks into your mind, you have the same feelings you would have if your house were broken into, but you open the door for the mental thief. The thief makes themselves at home and wreaks havoc, stealing things from you.

The mental thief steals time and good intentions. Not only does the thief steal, they leave things in chaos. They leave signs and messages for you, mostly negative ones. The messages left behind sounds like, “You didn’t get it right.” or “You’re not ready to start.” Everyone has their own messages learned in early childhood when we were learning and we didn’t get it right, but we tried and we wanted to please and appease. You may not remember all the praise you received, but you surely remember criticism. Most of us remember the negative remarks and non-verbal messages, too like “the look” or in my case, the “ah-hem” said a certain way.

This foundation of working hard and trying to please is not entirely a negative trait. Who doesn’t want to do their best? But, when we examine the fragments, we see that perfectionism is a response to fear of being criticized or a triggered memory of being criticized. This “perfect child” part of our personality develops early, and it sticks like sticky paper. It’s hard to let go or wiggle free because we learned to depend on approval.

What did we learn? We learned to smile and to cover up how we really feel. We learned to be overly agreeable and worried about achieving an outcome that will please someone else. Ever see the painting of “The Scream?” Ever feel something other than the smile? When there is such a conflict, we get stuck, paralyzed, and we have a difficult time making decisions and solving problems.

This is an important remnant of our lives. Examine it. Ask yourself these questions: “What do I need…to be perfect or to be done? Do I need to hide behind a smile or accept my true feelings? A handy journal can capture the answers to these questions.

Putting things off in a hope of staving off criticism only makes the thief get louder. You tell yourself you know what to do and how to do it, and yet…the critical voice is your own, adopted as the voice you think will make you work harder. But, it backfires.

Take out your handy journal and try this exercise:

Your reaction to this article.
What parts do you agree with?
Disagree with?What parts do you wish weren’t true
What purpose does your mental thief serve?
How can you close the door on this thief when you feel you are being robbed of forward progress?

10 Ways to Treat PTSD

You’ve heard the term PTSD since Vietnam. That’s when the medical and psychological communities began learning about it and how to treat it. Yes, it is treatable!

Depending on the severity, you may be able to treat it on your own. If not, there is help out there for you. If you or someone you know is experiencing PTSD so severely that it has caused you to consider suicide, self-harm, or harming others, please seek help immediately from a professional. It’s difficult to impossible to handle this on your own.

There is no one way to treat anything. Everyone is different, so different tools will work for different people. Here are a few approaches that work for most people.

1. Narrative therapy
2. EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
3. Art therapy
4. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
5. Pet Bonding, such as dog or equine therapy
6. Journaling/writing/poems
7. Eco-Therapy (nature inspired)
8. Biofeedback
9.. Mindfulness Practice / Meditation Practice
10. Yoga/Exercise

A FREE ART THERAPY EXERCISE – COLOR YOUR WORLD

One (very easy) therapy is coloring. You can let go of all thoughts when you are coloring and just enjoy the simple act.

As an act of love and healing, I created a wonderful coloring book for you to download. Adults or children can use it. Just print the coloring book, grab your favorite crayons or markers, and color your world!

DOWNLOAD COLORING BOOK.

Ways to Heal the Childhood Hurt

This month’s feature article, “Did you have a bad childhood?” was all about adverse childhood effects and their long-term impact.

BUT there are LOTS of techniques that can be used as methods to heal the pain and hardship trauma creates by channeling your energy and thoughts into something that brings you peace and joy.

Some calming activities include breath work, neurofeedback, guided imagery, creative arts expression and narrative interventions that foster a sense of autonomy and self-control.

These are practices that can be implemented by your therapist. If you’re not familiar with these, Google them. They are powerful! If you are a therapist, you can use these techniques with your clients.

Other calming activities include tai chi, exercise, volunteering, yoga and other mindfulness-based activities, and progressive muscle relaxation. Talk therapy can challenge internalized oppression.

COLOR YOUR WORLD

One (very easy) therapy is coloring. You can let go of all thoughts when you are coloring and just enjoy the simple act.

DOWNLOAD YOUR COLORING BOOK.

Did you have a bad childhood?

Trauma comes in many forms, and we probably all have suffered through something in our own childhood that we are still dealing with now.

It’s bound to happen. We are born with our own personalities, strengths, and weaknesses and we grow up dealing with all of that plus the product of whatever our parents went through.

Some level of trauma is relatively normal. And then there’s excessive trauma that can lead to long-term adverse effects.

Many of our issues / traumas are the product of something that we went through or witnessed in our childhood. It’s important to know that and identify it because that’s where the healing begins!

So, I’m going to give you a super short lesson on that here, so you can start to identify it and heal traumas in your own life and those that are near and dear to you. Here goes.

What are Adverse Childhood Events defined medically?

Adverse Childhood Events are defined as traumatic or stressful events that children endure between birth and age 18. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) lists the following specific traumatic events as ACEs.

Physical Abuse
Sexual Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Physical Neglect
Emotional Neglect
Intimate Partner Violence
Mother Treated Violently
Substance misuse Within Household
Household Mental Illness
Parental Separation or Divorce
Incarcerated Household Member
Parental Attachment Injury
Parental Institutionalization

Do any of these ring any bells for you?

Current studies suggest a strong correlation between high ACE scores and increased levels of life dysregulation (impairment to your body, psychological, or emotional processes), including the potential repetition of the initial ACEs themselves. You have most likely seen examples of this in your life. A friend had an abusive parent and then starting abusing their kids in adult life.

Children who suffer adverse childhood effects have a greater risk of disease, disabilities and early mortality. ACEs can interfere with development in ways that can be seen across the lifespan. Specifically, negative life outcomes are:

early initiation of alcohol and tobacco use that can be continued into adulthood
prescription drug use
lifetime illicit drug use
drug dependency
self-reported addiction
suicide attempts
lifetime depressive episodes
sleep disturbances in adults
high-risk sexual behavior
fetal mortality
negative pregnancy outcomes
mental health disorders, including mood, anxiety and behavior disorders.
a marked increase in the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Adverse childhood experiences accounts for approximately 30% of the nation’s known mental health disorders. The Center for Disease Control lists ACEs as a significant public health concern and considers them to be a prime determinant of health.

According to research presented in 2017, individuals who have an ACE score of 4 or more are 1,500% more likely to commit suicide than are their counterparts. Individuals with ACE scores of 4 or more are 550 percent more likely to suffer from alcoholism, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), liver disease and asthma. Individuals with an ACE score or 6 or higher can potentially see their life expectancy drop by as much as 20 years.

Basically, the worse the childhood trauma is, the more likely they are to suffer long-term consequences with lasting effects.

In addition, hormonal implications of stress and ACEs have the potential to permanently alter the stress response. This response is linked to many diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, asthsma, various cancers, irritable bowel, viral illnesses, alzheimer’s dementia, vascular dementia, depression and other mental health disorders.

Because of the drastic impact adverse childhood trauma can have, we want our children to have as stable of a life as possible or get treated as early as possible if they need help.

The good news is it’s not all gloom and doom! With therapy and by practicing life skills that help with coping and healing, individuals can work through these effects and have a good life.

There is more about techniques in my blog post Ways to Heal the Childhood Hurt.

**Some of the information on long-term adverse childhood effects was adapted from Baldwin, D. (Feb. 20180. What new counselors need to know about adverse childhood experiences. Counseling Today.

The Muses Kiss

Therapeutic Writing to Peacefully Navigate Life's Changes