Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal
by Belleruth Naparstek

This book has been extraordinarily helpful to me in my pilgrimage of healing from PTSD. She validates my experience, which is enormously comforting, as so many people don't get it and say things like "Can't you get past it?" They don't understand that PTSD is physiological, not psychological, it's in the BODY and has to be worked with on that level. (For more about Jenny's experience, see about Jenny)

     "I think heroes are people who do good or necessary things at great personal cost. Heroism must be judged by the courage and grit required to do what needs doing. That's why trauma - that great terrorizer - produces heroes. No one has to override fear the way a trauma survivor does.
     "Sometimes the heroism looks like nothing at all. When a phobic rape survivor makes herself go to an evening PTA meeting, even though her heart is pounding with terror and her body is drenched in sweat - that's a form of heroism." (From the Introduction, p. xv)

     Instead of blaming the client for "Resisting", Naparstek recognized that her skills weren't helping. This often happens when the client has been traumatized and the therapist doesn't know very much about the physiology of trauma.
     "My standard therapeutic plan was not working. Frannie was supposed to share the horror by telling the story; get her feelings out about it and cathartically release her anguish; examine her behavior, shed whatever irrational guilt, self blame and shame she was carrying; experience her delayed grief, and integrate the experience into her life. But the plan wasn't happening.
     "Baffled and frustrated, I took my dilemma to the clinical colleagues in my practice. Instead of trying to work with her story, they suggested that I teach her some relaxation, breathwork, meditation - garden-variety "self-regulation" tools to help her master and calm the waves of panic and terror. My peers were giving me very uncharacteristic advice for a group of traditional therapists." pp19-20

     Once she begins to get what life is like for a trauma survivor, she becomes conscious of all those psychological underpinnings that untraumatized people take for granted.
     "Self-awareness grounds us and supports us. We have a need to know where we stand. It's a sense of having a stable core, a center of gravity that allows us to feel we can claim our spot on the planet, and claim our membership in the human race.
     "Most of the time this view of ourselves as a consistent, coherent entity is something we take for granted, the unseen operating system that drives our behavior and provides a context for our daily doings. It's critical to our conscious functioning, our choice making, and our self-evaluation. And when it's missing, we find ourselves swimming in chaos. Trauma disrupts internal continuity, interferes with coherence, and at least temporarily shatters identity." p43

     "Boston psychiatrist and groundbreaking trauma expert Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery, writes, 'The survivor is continually buffeted by terror and rage. These emotions are qualitatively different from ordinary fear and anger. They are outside the range of ordinary emotional experience, and they overwhelm the ordinary capacity to bear feelings.'
     "Most psychological description (Herman excepted) is too pale and flat to communicate the roiling emotions of a survivor with post-traumatic stress. The intensity and severity of the feelings involved are better described by poetry, drama, and fiction, or with first person accounts... Those who haven't experienced these things may suspect these stories are tainted with melodrama or overstated in some way. They are not. This is how it is. People who have suffered similar experiences immediately recognize the truth of them." p96

     "Survivors oscillate between very intense feelings and their opposite: numbness and internal deadness. This is the emotional counterpart to the wildly oscillating hormonal shifts happening at the bioneurological level. People feel as if they are sleepwalking, barely alive in these periods, and as time goes on, it's the numbness that tends to predominate, taking over more and more days and weeks.
     "Summoning up great courage and energy they don't feel, people with chronic PTSD haul themselves from task to task, somehow getting through the day without a shred of interest in it. One survivor says: 'It is like walking in a fog. I walk the fog walk.'" p 106

Last Chapter: Ten Ingredients for Comprehensive Healing
     "Survivors who fared best were the ones who researched their own options, found out about the new therapies, tried various combinations, and essentially took charge of their own healing. ... People who do well use one or more imagery-based therapies, while simultaneously working on themselves on many fronts and from many angles."

The ten components:
     1) Regular sessions with a trustworthy therapist - for me, that's Karen, my emotional anchor.
     2) A support group or therapy group. I did the breathwork group for survivors of sexual abuse, and part of the S.E. Training, also have ongoing supportive friendships, especially with other survivors.
     3) Some basic cognitive information on the nature of PTSD. I read Waking the Tiger, did part of the S. E. Training, continuing to read relevant books, workshop with van der Kolk, etc.
     4) Support from medication. Imipramine gave me my first experience of normal brain chemistry.
     5) Regular prayer or symbolic ritual. I write for guidance, pray frequently, and have the ritual aspect of circle dance.
     6) Developing self-soothing skills. I do meditation, and use tapes for relaxation (some of them Belleruth's), also tapes by Pema Chodron, Sharon Salzburg, etc.
     7) Some sort of physical exercise. I do yoga, circle dance, and regular walking.
     8) Some manner of bodywork. I see an osteopath, someone for cranial-sacral, and Kevin who has an eclectic practice based in rolfing.
     9) Regular journaling in a personal diary, or some other form of expressive practice. I write every day, dance at least twice a week, and paint or work with clay regularly.
     10) Guided imagery. I use Belleruth's tapes, and also pay close attention to my physical symptoms & the images that go with them as learned in S.E.

For copies of the book and related guided imagery CDs, go to Belleruth's website.