The Community Resiliency Model wellness skills in action. The Community Resiliency Model (CRM) comprises six wellness skills aimed at nurturing individual and community resilience. These skills highlight the innate human capacity to enhance well-being by cultivating body literacy and leveraging positive life experiences to foster inner balance. They serve as a framework for wellness practices, integrating seamlessly into daily activities to restore harmony between mind and body. Body literacy involves attuning ourselves to internal bodily sensations and honing the ability to interpret how thes ..read more

Personal Perspective: Empowering women to transform shame and betrayal. During the pandemic, many of us found solace in the Ted Lasso television show. In a world engulfed in chaos, we sought refuge in the show's imperfect yet endearing characters, drawing inspiration from their trials, tribulations, and transformations, which mirrored our own… …An especially poignant and powerful transformation was that of Rebecca Welton, the owner of the fictional Richmond football team. I call this transformation the "Rebecca Effect," and believe it can serve as a beacon of hope for anyone who has felt margi ..read more

Take me to the full blog The Stress Spectrum is described as positive, tolerable, and toxic. It refers to the stress response system's effects on the body, not the actual stressful experiences or events. Understanding the science behind reactions and learning skills like reading the nervous system, also called "tracking" in biological-based models like the Community Resiliency Model and the Trauma Resiliency Model, can help a person learn to become aware of the physical reactions of the stress response. This sensory awareness, also called interoception, can be a portal to self-healing as a per ..read more

Take me to the Blog Understanding survival responses and how they activate biologically without thinking can help reduce the shame experienced by many trauma survivors. The survival responses include fight, flight, and freeze. It is proposed that the fourth survival response be "friend" rather than "fawn" based upon the theory of "tend and befriend," a survival strategy referring to the protection of offspring—tending—and seeking out the social group for mutual defense—befriending. "Tending and befriending" was first described by Dr. Shelley Taylor. Taylor does not explain this response as mal ..read more

The profound pearls of wisdom found in the Bible, the Koran, and the teachings of Buddha underscore the paramount importance of human dignity…No one possesses the power to strip away our dignity. A challenge for all who seek peaceful resolutions is that there may be people we encounter who do not treat others with dignity or respect. The question then becomes, "How do we nurture our humanity when faced with inhumanity?" … CLICK HERE to read the full blog   ..read more

Trauma-informed care serves as a guiding light for countless individuals who have endured traumatic experiences. It embodies a benevolent and compassionate approach, with its paramount objective being to avoid inadvertently re-traumatizing trauma survivors. There are many healing practices categorized under an overarching set of practices called "mindfulness" that, although helpful and transformative for many, can retraumatize a survivor if not practiced through a trauma-informed lens. … CLICK HERE to read the full blog   ..read more

Body literacy entails the skill of attuning ourselves to sensations originating from within our own bodies, much like how we acquire reading literacy in childhood. We can develop the ability to tune in to these bodily sensations and decipher how our "body sense" influences our daily decisions and behaviors. As Gendlin (2007) noted, one can directly perceive their living body (their sensory experience) beneath layers of thoughts, memories, and familiar feelings. Becoming aware of these sensations provides what Gendlin called a "body-sense of meaning," granting conscious access to information ab ..read more

Hopeful strategies can help young people deal with the climate crisis. Educators, mental health experts, parents, and environmental advocates offer hopeful strategies for helping our children and youth navigate their complex emotional responses to the climate crisis. Disseminating accurate scientific information about climate change and involving them in participatory initiatives to address its effects can foster understanding and optimism. Equally crucial is the awareness among adults in their lives that children and youth may grapple with a range of emotions necessitating sensitive handling ..read more

The Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM) is a clinical intervention based on research about the brain that reflects the knowledge that a biological response to stressful and traumatic events exists. TRM is both a model for trauma reprocessing treatment and a model promoting self-care. When I first trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing over 20 years ago, it was stressed to keep precisely within the EMDR protocol for maximum effect of EMDR. Concurrently, when trained in EMDR, I was also trained in a somatic-based model. As a therapist who leans into innovation, It was clear that soma ..read more

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an integrative eight-phase psychotherapy that has evolved from a technique that can be integrated into other models of therapy such as cognitive behavioral, transpersonal, family, psychodynamic, experiential, feminist, hypnosis, schema-focused and is also a full-fledged stand-alone psychotherapy approach. EMDR is the first trauma-informed psychotherapy approach developed to reprocess trauma through neural network integration. This is Part 1 of Elaine Miller-Karas’ interview with Kathleen Wheeler, Ph.D., past president of the EMDR ..read more