JG Gillis Counselling

When does trauma end?  The short answer is that it doesn't.  More precisely, no matter how short-term or long-term the trauma has been, or is, the brain's response to trauma is the same. It rewires itself to protect the person from further trauma. So, while the incident(s) may be over with, the trauma lives inside of the person and needs to be processed before the brain can heal itself.  I saw this image today of PET (positron emission tomography) scans of a normal brain's function and that of someone who had experienced trauma. It was very telling. The front of the brain is where we do our thinking and make decisions. The temporal lobes (circled in the image) are where we process new information so the front of our brains can decide what to do. The back of our brains is where we have our automatic reactions: fight, flight, freeze, and so forth (it's also called the "lizard brain.")  Trauma interferes with our ability to process new information and to make int...

  They sleep. Dormant beneath the cold ground, beneath the snow and ice, the hardy crocus sleep, awaiting the first signs of spring: the sunlight's increasing duration, the softening of the maple's skin, the increasing temperatures, the melting, the run-off, the smells of decomposed grass and leaves.  The crocus bulbs wait beneath the earth, held in suspended animation until the first signs of life return to the land. In PEI, these come in April, no matter what the calendar says is the first day of spring. In warmer climates, they arrive in February. Here, winter is long and it can be harsh. However, these little cloves of crocus are not destroyed. They are one of the harbingers of hope that warmer times will return. Others are the return of the female mourning doves, which sends the males into bursts of billing and cooing. And the last - the very last - is the appearance of the robins on OUR lawn, the last to get these rare beasts because the neighbourhood (outdoor) cats use ...