I'm sitting in in the sun, Saturday morning after yoga. Enjoying breakfast at a local cafe.
Reading the Good Weekend article Girls Gone wild written by Mandy Sayer. Violence is abhorrent in any form but I think there is a deeper shock seeing young girls being involved in violent crime.
It's the saddest thing - hearing their life stories of child abuse and an inevitability of their fate - gaol or pregnancy.
Who is there to love them. One girl says " Juvenile detention is paradise." Wow.
We punish these children , when clearly these girls missed out on family, state protection. Who was their for them ?
And then there are the victims of the victims. The cycle of abuse spreads.
In the story a mother of two says of a vicious assault she suffered at the hands of five teenage girls "it still affects me every day."
From her further description this woman is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). ..." I had nightmares. It took me two years before I could walk downtown on my own. Even now I'm still scared."
As a therapist I know that this woman and I would suggest those girls in the article would benefit from evidence based trauma therapy.
I use Eye Movement desensitisation Reprocessing ( EMDR) to help in these instances. It is an endorsed trauma therapy and gold standard treatment for PTSD and much more.
Only yesterday I was using it in a Skype session for a person suffering from panic attacks. Her first sense of this was rooted in a childhood memory with her mother delivering a brutal beating to her brother as she watched helpless.
In 20 minutes or so she said she no longer felt the crippling sensations and she felt lighter with a sense of relief.
This was definitely a case of the past being present. We had started with her response to a partners tone - a trigger for past memories of her mother that she had not consciously connected until our work together.
I love doing this type of work and do hope if you have a past incident or strong responses affecting you and your relationships you want to change I can certainly recommend EMDR.
Please find a certified EMDR practitioner today and get the help you deserve.
Best wishes Philipa
Www.psychsolutions.net.au
