Complex Trauma – Page 2 – Laura K Kerr, PhD

Psychological First Aid for Sexual Abuse in Adolescence and Early Adulthood

May 9, 2022

Sexual abuse can happen to anyone at any age, although it is a crime perpetrated largely against youths, especially during adolescence and early adulthood. Tragically, relatively few receive the professional support they need. For many, the failure to access care is...

Too Stressed to Meditate?

Mar 19, 2022

Buddhist psychology claims there are three primary emotions or sensations — pleasant, painful, and neutral. Arising from these primary emotions are our reactions to them, the so-called secondary emotions. For example, we might feel desire or joy in...

Love and the Split Self

Mar 16, 2022

In the movie Take This Waltz, a young Canadian woman, Margot, is happily married although not excited about her life. Her work doesn’t fulfill her. She designs brochures but would rather be a “real” writer. She describes herself as afraid of being...

BBC’s “The Why Factor”: On Cultural Memory

Mar 9, 2022

BBC’s The Why Factor has a short podcast on trauma well worth your time (18 minutes). Cultural Memory explores how societies respond collectively to traumatic memories of war and extreme human rights violations, which too often involves...

Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy Puts the Body – and Love – Back in Mental Healthcare

Mar 8, 2022

For the past 50 years, psychotherapy took a back seat to biomedical psychiatry, largely due to reliance on medications for the treatment of mental disorders. Yet clinical evidence increasingly points to chronic, unresolved traumatic stress as a primary contributor to...