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Interactional trauma takes place when there is constant bickering, yelling, and conflict between parent and child over many months or years. In this toxic environment, an unhealed traumatic event cannot heal. A good analogy is a wound’s inability to heal when it is constantly being reopened. Within this context, the trauma therapist must possess the skills to stabilize the interactional trauma or parent-child conflict before moving into direct trauma. Or use what we term a hybrid approach to...

We discuss her journey, transitions, mission, podcasts, and a glimpse into her trauma story, as well as what she's doing to help other women heal. I love the idea of finding that hand to hold that works for YOU.

The 2018 legislative session officially wrapped up on September 30th with Governor Brown taking action on all pieces of legislation that made it to his desk. This year, the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) endorsed three bills that were aligned with 4CA's objectives. We're happy to share that SB 439 (Mitchell & Lara) is officially law! This means that children 11 years old and younger are excluded from prosecution in juvenile court, except when the child is...

Stressful times push people to the limits. For many young people, stress comes from tuition bills, roommates who are late on rent, and job interviews that might have gone better with the right degree or certificate in hand. For new parents, it’s daycare bills, diapers and work days that might have gone better with more than three hours of sleep. Now imagine going through both sets of experiences at the same time. Combining young adulthood with parenthood is not easy, but nearly 3 million...

We all know that the justice system is broken and that there is so much that we can all do to make it better. For a long time there have been a lot of people trying to reform the justice system because we all know the system is set up to put certain people behind bars. Most of the people who have power to make these necessary changes are people who have absolutely no idea what it’s like to struggle alone in life. Most of these people who have the power to take action have not been affected...

Two powerful articles published in the Annals of Family Medicine examined the issue of white privilege within the medical community. In the first piece, 1 author Max J. Romano, MD, MPH, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, opens with an anecdote of an experience during work at a hospital, when he witnessed other staff members making generalizations about a recently deceased patient based on that patient's race: "One hospital staff member removed a...

5 Rhythmic Movement Practices That Can Calm Our Anxious Mind

Much has been written about what happens to mothers hormonally during pregnancy and after, but what about fathers? In a first-of-its-kind study, University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Anthropology Lee Gettler and lead author Patty Kuo, visiting assistant professor of psychology, focused on how dads' biology around the birth of their children relates to their parenting down the road. They partnered with Notre Dame psychologists and Memorial Hospital of South Bend to analyze...

SEATTLE — The part of this city east of Northgate Mall looks like many of the neighborhoods that surround it, with its modest midcentury homes beneath dogwood and Douglas fir trees. Whatever distinguishes this place is invisible from the street. But it appears that poor children who grow up here — to a greater degree than children living even a mile away — have good odds of escaping poverty over the course of their lives. Believing this, officials in the Seattle Housing Authority are...

Before he went to prison, Mark Loughney used watercolors and acrylics to create bright, playful portraits of his favorite musicians. His early work features Trey Anastasio and Grace Potter and Snoop Dogg, all smiling and content, deep into their guitars and joints. But then Loughney himself took a dark turn, committing a crime that even now, years later, he can barely explain. Before he went to prison, Mark Loughney used watercolors and acrylics to create bright, playful portraits of his...

When public-health researchers look at people—for studies, at least; not sure what they're like at dinner parties—they think in terms of "exposures." Exposures are factors in the environment that have the potential to affect people's health. Exposures can include everything from air pollution in people's neighborhoods, to how much radiation folks encounter at home and work, to the racism people face (which has been shown to hurt their health ). One "exposure" that's gotten a lot of attention...

After 2,000 years of practice, Buddhist monks know that one secret to happiness is to put your mind to it. What is happiness, and how can we achieve it? Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world—a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks. [For more on this story by Matthieu Ricard, go to...