PWCL's Trauma & Recovery Workshop

Next Thursday at 12:30, I'll be facilitating a presentation on Trauma & Recovery. I initially intended this workshop to focus specifically on the effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse, but as I read more of the literature on trauma, I found that different types of trauma (domestic violence, sexual abuse & assault, and even natural disasters can have similiar effects on survivors.

Here is a brief excerpt from my presentation:

All trauma stresses the mind, body, and spirit. Traumatic events are objective. A hurricane wipes out a town, an uncle rapes his niece, a stranger mugs a man in an alley. Reactions to trauma are subjective, so how a person reacts to a traumatic situation varies on an individual basis. Individual reactions to trauma can be influenced by personal temperament (i.e. our psychological make-up), the trauma itself, and most importantly, how those around us responded to our experience of trauma. A child who tells her mother she is being molested by her grandfather resulting in the arrest of the grandfather, comfort from her parents, and counseling will fair much better in the long run than a child a who tells his parents he’s being molested by his babysitter only to have his parents scoff at him and tell him he made the whole thing up.

I'll spend some time talking about the effects of trauma, and a lot of time talking about how to recover from it. My talk will be appropriate for service providers who work with trauma survivors as well as trauma survivors themselves.

To register for the workshop, please e-mail events@pwcl.org.

Hope to see you next week!