By Jim Smith
In just a little more than a year and a half, the Roslyn-based nonprofit Here to Help Military and Families has provided free counseling for about 40 post-9/11 veterans and their families. It also run three workshop retreats for 40 female veterans.
The group is an offshoot of a previous nonprofit,The Soldiers Project. It relies on referrals and keeps sessions confidential, so there is no paper trail. On April 13, 16 of Here to Help’s volunteer clinicians gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock for presentations by Susan Sullivan and John McDonagh about techniques being used to treat veterans and others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Here to Help President Laurie Sloane said, “Over the next two years, I hope we can service 100 veterans and family members, and I hope we can bring programs like this to the community and agencies and bring more awareness to the public.”
Nurse practitioner Sullivan, co-coordinator of the Long Island Trauma Recovery Network, said she uses Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy in treating veterans. According to the website www.trrhelp.org, the therapy involves directing a client’s eye movement with hand gestures with the aim of having he or she focus on the external stimuli, so the client “can remain grounded in the present and remembers rather than relives the past.”
Sullivan said having experienced a traumatic event causes a person to “get stuck and become mal-adaptive, have negative thoughts and uncomfortable feelings. EMDR therapy allows whatever is stuck to be experienced in a more adaptive way, a positive feeling state.”
Many veterans have been traumatized by the death or injury of a friend or by something they did or failed to report that goes against their own moral code. Sullivan said therapists should work to convince a client to acknowledge shame because “if you don’t talk about shame, you can’t deal with it.” She encouraged attendees to help clients reduce the feeling of shame by leading them to feel good about other aspects of their lives such as relationships, spirituality or mastery of a job, a situation or a hobby.
Sullivan said she encourages clients to breathe deeply and focus on the elements — Earth, air, water and fire — to reduce stress. She says grounding in the present moment, the simple act of having two feet on the floor, can help a client feel safe. Likewise, she said, breathing and centering helps, as does creating saliva in the mouth. She urges a client to close eyes, imagine a soothing place in nature and allow a feeling of comfort to spread through their body. She also urges clients to interlock thumbs with palms on their chests and pat themselves “so processing of traumatic memories can take place.”
“You want your clients to leave in a less stressful frame of mind,” Sullivan said, feeling calm and OK.” She said the long-term goal is a “trait change” where the memory of the traumatic event no longer is a trigger for discomfort. Therapy can be long-term, and can begin by discussing good memories rather than targeting traumatic events – to establish trust. She said she sometimes will ask a client to put negative thoughts figuratively in one hand and positive thoughts in the other and urge him or her to concentrate on the hand with the positive thoughts, giving it more strength. She also urges patients to make a memory smaller in their minds, or put it in a box, or make it black and white instead of in color.
Private practice psychologist McDonagh talked about “what goes wrong in the brain when trauma happens, adding “chronic stress does a number on the effectiveness of the brain.” He cited studies that say the prefrontal cortex of the brain becomes less dense after severe stress, the amygdala sends out distress signals and the hippocampus loses cells.
“We become conditioned to fear being in the situation [that sparked the trauma],” he said. “Our memory becomes fractionalized. People have been known to gradually remember details. It’s all a giant jigsaw puzzle.” He said mindfulness — using breathing techniques to gain focus and reduce distraction — has been shown to help in treating PTSD sufferers.
McDonagh said studies show people with high heart rate variability tend to be more resilient, and meditation uses guided imagery to increases heart rate variability and ward off PTSD symptoms. He said equine therapy and use of a service dog have helped some veterans develop a feeling of being in control as an antidote to triggers which can spark bad memories and loss of control.
Attendees at the workshop came away with some techniques they can use in treating veterans. Officials of Here to Help said they plan to appear at veterans events leading up to Memorial Day to spread the word about themselves. “We’re thrilled,” the nonprofit’s vice president, Linda Caginalp, said, “that the community has accepted us, trusted us and given us so much support.”
To contact Here to Help Military Families for help or to volunteer as a clinician, call 631-602-0075 or email militaryandfamilyhelp@gmail.com. Donations may be sent c/o Laurie Sloane at 1025 Northern Blvd., Suite 301, Roslyn, NY 11576.
