Master Your Disasters
Be there for a loved one. No more bystanding. Even if they don't speak "feelings" language.
I developed the tool below to help you help a loved one, friend, client, inmate, alcoholic, or anyone with deep dark pain to confront and process past events that have left enduring marks. So many people believe the only way they can deal with a tragedy is to avoid, suppress, numb out, distract, get high, etc. None of these practices reduce the pain, and using them prolongs their suffering and despair. This is so resolvable, and healing can be gently achieved.
This Comprehensive Trauma Organizer educational tool integrates theory and practice from the best approaches to suffering caused or exacerbated by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic disorder, depression, anxiety, ignorance, stubbornness, and more. It is the fruit of a doctoral dissertation and years of working with victims of combat, sexual assault, addictions, eating disorders, relationship problems, depression, anxiety, identity problems, career turmoil, personal and societal injustices, loss of life to suicide and other causes, and many other things.
The entire workbook can be completed in as little as 2-3 hours, or spread over several days, depending on the person and what occurred and how willing they are to do the work. I prefer a surgery-type approach to education versus returning for numerous sessions.
Many people won’t need therapy after this learning experience. Some, however, may decide to engage a helper in rebuilding the life that has been on hold until this unique learning experience.
Research Basis.
This is the third version of this tool, developed and implemented with approvals by Institutional Review Boards and Supervisors, as appropriate. I tested the first version as a pilot with 5 college students, then expanded to a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with 83 college students for my doctoral dissertation, with half the group receiving this intervention and the other half completing 3 essays about their worst life experience. Each participant was only seen once, for a single 2-hour visit and randomized into either the essay writing or the “Brief Trauma Organizer” protocol.
Results were positive to a shocking degree, with improvements maintained a month after the intervention. I followed the dissertation study up during postdoc on the inpatient psychiatric unit of a VA hospital, and also used it with outpatient Veterans. After witnessing an implementation of it, and the patient expressing euphoria for the changes he experienced, the head of my residency program expressed belief that, “maybe we’ve been doing it all wrong.”
The protocol did not work with everyone. One Veteran asked to stop early in the intervention. Another remained focused on avoidance strategies, thus preventing adjustment. A third may have focused on a lesser trauma instead of the actual one that needed attention (another avoidance strategy).
Among those who did see a large symptom reduction was a combat Veteran who had been tormented for years after having killed civilians; he had had 26 suicided attempts and required inpatient hospitalizations multiple times prior to this intervention; therapy using this intervention was life-changing. Another had been convinced he was responsible for the suicide of a friend, and left the ward finally free of that conviction. Another was suffering decades of nightmares related to being vastly outnumbered and holding off dangerous rioters in a foreign land. Another had been the one to find and bandage a badly bleeding parent who had attempted suicide. Another was constantly reliving mortar fire and hearing voices, and depended on alcohol and cannabis to cope; at follow-up he was still expressing great joy from the intervention and denied hearing any more voices. Another missed the intervention due to discharge but later received it as an outpatient. He had been misdiagnosed with psychosis, which should have been PTSD with psychotic features; both conditions resolved following therapy with this intervention.
The papers below are unpublished. A key stumbling block for reviewers has been that I did not use the “gold standard” assessment, which takes 45 minutes to administer and thus made little sense when the entire intervention is intended to be delivered within 90-100 minutes. Dissertation findings have been hard to publish due to lack of a neutral control group (i.e., receiving no intervention) and so reviewers have dismissed it.
Master Your Disasters already!
If you would like guidance in using the tool, I sometimes lead masterclasses. I also set up an online course with videos offering a step-by-step explanation of the workbook. ASK ME FOR A COUPON CODE. The video course is simply a self-paced tool to guide users through the workbook, which you can access above already. Many will not need the entire course to understand and apply the workbook. The workbook was originally written as a stand-alone tool to help therapists be more thorough and effective.