I am doing a paper On Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and would like to show how to use Reality Therapy in dealing with it. Having established a Healing Relationship with Therapist (involvement), the three stages for recovery are: Safety (Personal and Environmental), Remembrance and Mourning, and Reconnection (with Self and Environment). Could anybody point me in the right direction? I would really appreciate any help, advice or guidelines for structuring my submission. Thanks Grace (Condra) Tralee, Co. Kerry

-- Grace M A Condra (gracecondra@eircom.net), October 30, 2000

Answers

Grace, I think I would use three approaches.

One is to reconnect people with what worked for them in the past and to encourage them to expand involvement in these areas even while feeling bad about it (on the basis that the change in feelings lags behind the change in actions).

The second is to encourage them to see that what they feel and what they do are not necessarily in harmony and don't have to be in harmony. Instead of waiting for their feelings to allow them to, say, to walk down the street again (if someone was attacked on the street) what they need to do is to walk down the street and bring their feelings with them.

A third is to explain that the PTSD symptoms are a natural result of a person's need to protect himself/herself (Survival). Something has gone terribly wrong from the point of view of defending oneself against pain and the mind will go over and over it like the security staff at a bank going over and over a robbery which they saw it as their duty to prevent. If a person can accept that this is a natural process the symptoms may begin to lose their power over him/her.

Padraig

-- Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@iol.ie), November 11, 2000.