Personal History Of Trauma In Family Therapy

My personal and educational experiences have influenced my desire in pursuing my degree in Marriage & Family Therapy. My last semester of college, I was interning at Care Fresno. During this time, I lived in a high crime apartment located in southeast Fresno. I was able to reach out and mentor at risk families. This experience has equipped me with skills, such as: be able to empathize, communicate, and lead other effectively. After I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, I started working as a Drug & Alcohol Counselor at Aegis Treatment Centers. While at Aegis Treatment Centers, I realized how much I enjoy providing empathy, psycho-educating, and teaching individuals how to cope with their emotions.

Family Therapy can be implemented in a different ways in a program that provides a facet of services, but it’s imperative that the approaches used are appropriate for the individual or families utilizing services. Functional Family Therapy is used to help deal with substance abuse in families but can also be used to assist with behavioral issues in children. A well rounded family service program can not only use this one approach but utilize other approaches to meet the needs of the population being served. And while implementing the service ethics will play a major role in the therapy being providing.

I have come from a well-meaning but very scarring, ambivalent and dysfunctional family. My father was a sometimes physically, but often times very emotionally abusive person. Using a large amount of fear and intimidation of him to control our family and home. My mother regularly took out her anger and frustration towards my father on me since my parent’s first major separation when I was seven years old which in conjunction with the negative impact of my parents’ off and on separations leading up to their eventual divorce I developed depression, anger and other behavioral problems as well. I suffered many years of abuse from my mother as a result of these things. I understood both my parents cared for me, even though their actions often time both demonstrated it and contradicted it which lead to much confusion in relationships and friendships outside of my family. One of if not the most scarring experiences were of my mother and the adults she surrounded herself with sympathizing her abuse towards me because of the abuse she endured by my father and

In this paper I will argue how family violence leads to complex trauma in children growing up to adulthood. Trauma is the result of people's adaptability to their experience of those events. It is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. To support my argument author Wendy Ide Williams stated that Pierre Janet became one of the first systematic investigators of the relationship between traumatic experience and its effect on the psychopathology of a person. He saw that a person's vehement emotions in response to an event were caused by the state of the person and the cognitive interpretation of the situation (Janet, cited in van der Kolk, van der hart, & Marmar, 1996, p. 309)

(Professional Examination Service, Inc. 2006) There is a wide variety of skills that family and marriage therapists possess. Strong communication is crucial when working with others; these therapists not only have to communicate well with their patients but also with co-workers. (mymajors.com, 2011) Family and marriage counselors also need to be active listeners; they need to be able to understand and focus on what their patients are saying and avoiding interrupting while a patient is speaking. (mymajors.com, 2011) Critical thinking is helpful for identifying problems and logically finding a solution. Family and marriage therapists are responsible for speaking clearly and in a way that patients can understand. (mymajors.com, 2011) Personality is extremely important and helpful in a career as a family and marriage therapist. Integrity is critical when entering any career; therapists are expected to be ethical and remain professional. (mymajors.com, 2011) Family and marriage therapists should be dependable and have self-control; they need to be committed to obligations and able to keep their emotions in check while working with others. (mymajors.com, 2011) Stressful situations are bound to occur sometime throughout a therapist’s career, keeping composure and accepting criticism is key to handling these situations. (mymajors.com, 2011)

These negative effects are often called vicarious or secondary traumas. For instance, a clinician might hear the individual’s traumatic story and feel shocked, which can lead to changes in behavior, mood, and relationships. The clinician may also have intrusive thoughts concerning the individual’s traumatic story. Thus, it is important to have a plan to counteract these changes. It is vital for counselors to increase their education on trauma, such as attending workshops and conferences, reading books and articles, and attending webinars specifically for trauma. Clinician’s can also speak with other helping professionals who work with trauma victims to normalize their feelings and behaviors. As always, counselors can go speak with their supervisor when they are in this

Two years ago, when I was working as an intern at the Committee Against Domestic Abuse, I came across a shelter resident who shared her experience of domestic abuse and violence to me. At that time, I realized I was lost of words and ended up staying in silence. That incident incited in me various questions, like what could I have said, was staying silent helpful, would it have been okay if I had asked more questions, and what could I have said to make it okay? These questions have followed me since, and even now, sometimes I struggle to find answers when I come across clients with a traumatic history.

Life Traumas come in so many forms disaster, leaving you helpless with emptiness wondering how did this happen. Trying to figure out how would you ever put all of the pieces back together again. Traumas have a different effect on survivors, First responder and other that assist in trauma. Mental Health Counselor is in more demand now due to the high incline of life trauma; crises people are facing. It is the Mental Health Counselor responsibility not to develop Vicarious or Secondary Trauma.

There are several types of therapy for Somatic Systems disorder. The first step, for a

Family therapy is essential to working with clients because it helps social workers connect the patterns within each family. According to Nichols, “family therapy considers how problems may be a product of the relationships surrounding them” (p. 50). It can help health professionals understand why there is problematic behavior in family members through the context of the family dynamics and relationships. Family therapy is how we aid our clients in understanding these relationships, and how we help them solve and work through the family problems. This paper will discuss, assess, and provide treatment goals for the Taylor family using the Structural Family Therapy perspective.

In the article, “Evaluation of Family Therapy” (Nielsen, 2006), the research hypothesis is the following, “Because children of mentally disordered parents have an increased risk of becoming subjects of mental disorder and psychological problems, adult psychiatry has increasingly paid attention to the patients’ parental skills” (Nielsen, 2006). The author states it at the beginning of the abstract in the research article. The worldview that I can associate the most with this research is positivism, when we talk about worldview is the view that generates a mental model of the world. I say is positivism, because, they identified the variable of interest, they involve the variables in the hypothesis

Many studies have shown a relationship between interpersonal trauma and substance abuse among women. The purpose of the researchers study was to examine the association between past interpersonal trauma and substance abuse consequences in male and female. They hypothesis that alcohol, heroin, or cocaine dependent with past interpersonal trauma would have more substance abuse related life consequences than subjects without this history (Liebschutz el at, 2002). The hypothesis does not reflect the purpose of the correlation and bivariate regression. The hypothesis: Is there a relationship between interpersonal trauma and substance among patients in a detoxification facility. The null hypothesis: There is no relationship between inter interpersonal

I have the requisite experience to work with children and teens that have experienced trauma. Each of the children I dealt with were exposed to or were victims of one or more of the following: Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Assault, Neglect, Catastrophe, Abandonment, Terrifying Experience, Medical Trauma, Grief & Loss.

1&2 In searching for someone to interview on the subject I picked one of my Professors, Frank Rubino. Mr. Rubino is a professor that I have had for multiple classes and I felt that he would be a good candidate due to the subject material he teaches about in his psychology classes as well as his experience with people who have suffered trauma in different phases of their trauma. I believed that he would give me a great in-depth look at the effects of trauma and after my interview with him I was not disappointed.

I started reading about trauma for my new role and set about learning everything I could about self care to empower myself and others. I was inspired by what I read and the changes I observed when people moved the focus to building self-care routines. I decided to change the way I was living and simultaneously started seeing a therapist which really supported this process. I wanted to see if what other people experienced and what I read about in text books could help me live a happier life. I started out slowly and cried lots often questioning why ‘bad things’ always happened to me.