The method of this study was semi- experimental study using pretest, post-test, and follow-up assessments to ascertain the effectiveness of the therapy. A total of 16 couples (32 individuals) were selected and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Participants of the experimental group received ten 45-minute sessions of Gottman’s couple therapy.

The results showed that Gottman’s couple therapy approach had positive effects on improving marital adjustment and couples’ intimacy. The study also showed that the results of assessments in the follow-up period indicated that Gottman’s couple therapy had enduring effects on marital adjustment and couples’ intimacy.

The conclusion of the researchers was that the Gottman method is an effective treatment to improve marital relationships, adjustment, and intimacy. The Gottman Method for Healthy Relationships is an integrated approach that helps couples manage marital relationships and develop problem-solving skills. These skills make couples more flexible in their relationships and help them achieve a high degree of emotional stability and a peaceful life. Therefore, the changes that are discussed in therapy will have a positive effect on marital relationships, compatibility, and intimacy among couples. According to the results of the study, the Gottman method can be used as an effective treatment in improving marital relationships, compatibility, and intimacy, which will result in increasing family strength. The authors of the study encouraged other researchers, and therapists, to study this theory. Moreover, to test the effectiveness of this therapeutic approach, it was recommended that this approach be tested in other statistical populations as well.

If you would like to read more about the Centers use of the Gottman method please click on the link below.

The post Gottman’s Couple Therapy appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

Healthy People is a national effort that sets goals and objectives to improve the health and well-being of people in the United States. Healthy People 2030 is the fifth edition of Healthy People. It aims at new challenges and builds on lessons learned from its first 4 decades. The initiative began in 1979, when Surgeon General Julius Richmond issued a report entitled, Healthy People: The Surgeon General’s Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. This report focused on reducing preventable death and injury. It included objectives to achieve national health promotion and disease prevention goals for the United States within a 10-year period (by 1990). The report was followed in later decades by the release of updated, 10-year Healthy People goals and objectives (Healthy People 2000, Healthy People 2010, and Healthy People 2020).

A first for the 2030 Guidelines

For the first time, the Healthy People 2030 guidelines have added four objectives on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), a step to recognize the systemic impact of childhood trauma on health. ACEs and childhood trauma did not reach “core objective” status in Healthy People 2030, due to limited baseline data and the need for additional data points, but four items were included in developmental and research objectives:

• Reduce the number of young adults who report 3 or more adverse childhood experiences.
• Increase the proportion of trauma-informed early childcare settings, elementary and secondary schools.
• Increase the proportion of children and adolescents with symptoms of trauma who get treatment.
• Increase the proportion of children and adolescents who show resilience to challenges and stress.

Additionally, the following research objective is relevant to addressing childhood trauma in schools: Increase the proportion of public schools with a counselor, social worker, and psychologist. If both baseline data and evidence-based interventions become available, this objective may become a core objective.

Who developed the Guidelines

The development of Healthy People 2030 took years with input from: a) members of the public, b) public and private organizations, c) the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, d) a diverse group of federal and nonfederal subject matter experts, and e) federal agencies

“Toxic stress is endangering the current and future health of our society,” said Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio. “Amid the mental, physical, and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is even greater need to prevent the risk factors for toxic stress, which are severe, intense, or prolonged stress, trauma, or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) like physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.”

If you would like to read more about ACE’s, please click on the link.

The post Healthy People 2030 appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

I just came across a blog from a teacher in Australia who has spent most of his career teaching what you and I would call troubled youth. What really struck me about his posts is how many times he mentions Dr. Bruce Perry and the help his work has been to him. Some of his posts about the children are to say the least heart-wrenching. A short excerpt from a post is:

Children with trauma

            “One of my first students was a girl who was notorious in the ‘care’ system. Mention her name to anyone working in welfare in the region and it seemed everyone had a story about her. She knew more about “the system” than any other kid or staff member I had met and she loved to talk about it. She found it somewhat endearing or refreshing that I knew so little about the world and spent many of her mornings talking to me about all her different resi units, her time in juvie and how many appointments she had per week with case managers, drug and alcohol counsellors and youth justice workers.”

Trauma and Dr. Perry’s work:

Two paragraphs in his blogs that reference the work of Dr. Perry are:

• “My students have been rejected since the early stages of life. Rejected and abused by the people who were meant to protect them from the bad. I don’t want to get too caught up in the science (quite frankly there’s so much to it and I won’t do it justice), but being neglected, abused and traumatised in the early stages of life actually changes the brain. Before the age of 3, our brain is soaking up so much information, vital information, about being a relational and social being. Being held by our mothers actually regulates our body. Being tended to when we cry provides us comfort and stability. Being fed when we are hungry teaches us we can depend on other human beings. I know it might seem obvious that a parent should care for their child in this way, but it’s not so easy for everyone. If you want to read more about it, I would recommend checking out this website (amongst others): http://childtrauma.org/nmt-model/references/”
• “He attempted to begin Year 7 at a local high school, but that was very short lived and he was expelled shortly after. At age 14, he came to us, confused, damaged, rejected. At times, his social skills mimicked that of a toddler, having tantrums or wanting to play and he really struggled to fit in with the other kids. The trauma he had suffered had impacted his brain development and caused social delays. (Some papers and videos explaining that a little further can be found here: http://childtrauma.org/cta-library/brain-dev-neuroscience/ )”

What amazes me is how Dr. Perry’s work has centered this teacher’s methods. If you would like to read more about how the Center uses the neuro-sequential method in its therapy please click on the link.

The post NMT helps a teacher appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

Our Brains are like sophisticated operating systems. When they are overwhelmed, they experience glitches and can even temporarily shut down. We have all experienced these types of glitches. For example, it might be forgetting where we put our keys or entering a room and wondering what we came there to do?

We have all experienced it

Stress, anxiety, and pressures from others can trigger loss of awareness. It can also be a trauma symptom which is a temporary dissociation from what is going on at the present time. For example, most of us have driven past our destination without even remembering driving by it. That’s a mild for of dissociation. Olympic athletes like Simone Biles face extreme pressure to perform. Simone is in the most remarkable shape physically, but stress can take its toll mentally.

We are not crazy

The pandemic is a global trauma that has increased depression, anxiety, relationship conflict, child abuse, and many other problems. If we learn nothing more from these Olympics, I hope we realize that our mental health is just as important as our physical health. Seeking counseling or therapy does not mean we are crazy. We do not have to be in crisis mode to see a therapist. View it as routine, preventative health care just like going to see your doctor for a checkup.

Help is close

It is important for athletes and anyone who is struggling with mental health issues to know they are not: a) alone, b) crazy, c) broken, d) weak. Equally important is to know it is not their fault. They are having a normal response to live experiences. Effective help is an email or phone call away. The Center is here to help you, we would love to be a part of the solution.

The post Stress, Trauma and Mental Health appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

Three of the Center’s therapists have worked hard this year (Deborah Pettitt, Kent Bertrand and Danen Downs) and are poised to complete Level II training (Treatment of Developmental Injury) from the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. This training consists of 126 contact hours divided into 7 multi-day modules, for a total of 21 days. Modules are typically spaced 4-8 weeks apart; trainings typically complete within 9-12 months. If you would like to read more concerning Sensorimotor Psychotherapy at the Center please click on the link.

The level II training is primarily concerned with the interaction between trauma, attachment, and developmental issues. The end purpose of the training is to teach how to provide effective treatment to the client. In this training, research from the attachment and neuroscience fields provides the theoretical foundation for Sensorimotor Psychotherapy interventions and practices that address the effects of less than optimal and/or traumatic early attachment.

In the training, participants learn how to track and name developmental and attachment patterns, help clients make meaning from the bottom up, connect to early memories and unresolved grief and loss, and transform painful emotions held by early memories.

Some of the topics covered in the 9 months of training include:

• Trauma, Traumatic Attachment and Development

The history of attachment; developmental and traumatic wounds

• Body Reading for Attachment History

Track how body structure, posture, and movement reflects and sustains early childhood experience; interventions to alter the history of early attachment

• Changing Procedural Learning

Identify and work with the emotional, cognitive, and physical action patterns that reflect early attachment history

• Translating the Body’s Language

Understand how meaning is encoded in the body, and work to change meanings conditions from early attachment interactions

• Therapeutic Techniques for Developmental Themes

Learn body-oriented interventions that address learned habits and early attachment patterns

• Somatic Resources for Developmental Injury

Capitalize on the body’s resources for transforming painful unresolved attachment patterns

• Action Systems and Action Tendencies

Learn how motivational systems are disrupted by trauma and attachment failure, and discriminate negative action tendencies from adaptive ones related to these systems

• Befriending Adaptive Strategies

Explore how adaptive strategies form in childhood, how they affect us as adults, and how the can be a useful avenue toward healing.

• The “Child” State of Consciousness

The connection between early memories and the child part that holds the pain reflected in limiting beliefs

• Integration of Treatment Techniques for Developmental Injury and Trauma

How to work with clients who present with both attachment-related issues and unresolved trauma

Again the Center is excited for the commitment and training received by Deborah, Kent and Danen.  Thanks for continuing to pursue excellence in all you do.

The post Level II Training – Sensorimotor Psychotherapy appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

I just read an interesting blog published at www.strugglingteens.com about a seminar that the author went to featuring Dr. Bruce Perry and the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT). The author spoke about the seminar and the importance of Dr. Perry’s work.  I thought I would give you a quick summary of his thoughts.

In the first part of the seminar Dr. Perry states that the brain is responsible for everything we do. When a child has problems, the cause is usually some kind of developmental delay in some area of the brain. The trick is to identify what part of the brain has not developed appropriately and focus interventions to impact that area.

Dr. Perry believes that often the diagnosis of childhood trauma is a very tentative matter since categorization is based on results (or symptoms) instead of causes. This means diagnoses and drug interventions are more a trial and error process relating to observations of symptoms rather than based on isolating and treating the root cause of the problematic behavior which is the brain.

NMT therapy puts forth that the brain is constantly changing and develops in the growing child in sequence, roughly from the lower part to the upper part. The brain develops through the life experience of the child, in a sequence where vulnerability differs with age, that is, different areas of the brain are developing at different times. For proper development the brain must be exposed to the proper stimulation at the time the brain is ready to develop that area. How well each area develops depends on the life experience of the child at that time.

In the seminar Dr. Perry explained that cortical function of the brain is highly developed through the child learning to speak and read. In addition to those basic useful skills, this also teaches the all-important ability of self-control. He pointed out experience has shown that one of the best techniques to stop former inmates from returning to prison is teaching the inmates to read or to improve their reading and speaking skills.

Dr. Perry believes that the best biological intervention for problematical behaviors and brain organization or re-organization is human interaction. He points out that humans are not designed for the world in which we now live. Humans need small groups working with other small groups.  Relational health is vital to proper brain development throughout life and vital to a successful life. One of the most destructive aspects to proper development is a poverty of relationships. Dr. Perry used this poverty of consistent relationships as a major reason our foster system of childcare has such problems.

Dr. Perry goes on to explain that poverty of relationships creates stress, which creates a hunger for the reward that should have come from positive relationships. As a result, substitutes are selected for that craving such as drinking, drugs or other unhealthy behaviors. Treatment is based on developing an environment for the child of healthy relationships, where the child has enough moderate stress to feel safe enough to explore without being overwhelmed with unpredictable events creating harmful stress. A safe environment with moderate novelty for the brain to learn and develop will allow the brain to heal and reorganize from the unhealthy development from earlier life experiences.

I will end with a quote from the author summarizing what he walked away with: “The key thing in NMT is a change in focus. Instead of looking at symptoms and a checklist as a guide, the clinician looks beyond symptoms, to the brain as the root cause of the problematic behaviors. Treatment is then focused on healing the brain, which will take care of the problematical behaviors.” If you would like to read more about this model and its use at Family Christian Counseling Center please click on the button below.

The post Relationships are the Key appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

I thought I would share an article published in the “Harvard Business Review” that discusses how effective groups work in a business. I know you are probably saying what does this have to do with counseling? Their findings echo the 5:1 positivity to negativity ratio that Mike DeMoss uses at Family Christian Counseling Center during marriage therapy as discovered by Dr. John Gottman. So, what can business teams learn from successful couples?

The main question that was being studied was: Which is more effective in improving team performance: using positive feedback to let people know when they’re doing well, or offering constructive comments to help them when they’re off track? The answer is that both are important. But the real question is — in what proportion?

The study was conducted by Emily Heaphy and Marcial Losada, it examined the effectiveness of leadership teams at a large information-processing company. “Effectiveness” was measured according to financial performance, customer satisfaction ratings, and feedback ratings of the team members. The factor that made the greatest difference between the most and least successful teams, was the ratio of positive comments (“I agree with that,” for instance, or “That’s a terrific idea”) to negative comments (“I don’t agree with you” “We shouldn’t even consider doing that”) that the participants made to one another. (Negative comments, we should point out, could go as far as sarcastic or disparaging remarks.) The average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6 (that is, nearly six positive comments for every negative one). The medium-performance teams averaged 1.9 (almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones.) But the average for the low-performing teams was almost three negative comments for every positive one.

Negative feedback certainly guards against complacency but those benefits come with serious costs or the amount of negative feedback that leads to high performance would be higher. Negative feedback is important when we’re heading over a cliff to tell us that we’d really better stop or start doing something we’re not doing right away. It can change behavior, but it seldom causes people to put forth their best efforts. Only positive feedback can motivate people to continue doing what they’re doing well and do it with more determination and creativity.

In work and life, both negative and positive feedback have their place and their time. If some inappropriate behavior needs to be stopped, or if someone is failing to do something they should be doing, that’s a good time for negative feedback. And “the devils advocate” positions are useful in leadership team discussions, especially when it seems only one side of the argument has been heard. But the key even here is to keep the opposing viewpoint rational, objective, and calm — and above all not to engage in any personal attack.

The overall takeaway from the study was that all leaders should be aware of the ratio of positive and negative comments made by their colleagues in leadership team meetings, and endeavor to move the proportion closer to the ideal of 5 to 1. If you would like to read more about this 5 to 1 ratio in relation to marriage counseling at the Center please click on the link below.

The post Praise to Criticism Ratio appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

This is a third blog in series on the new book “What happened to You” by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. If you would like to read the first two please click on the links:

                What happened to you – part 1

                What happened to you – part 2

Oprah has put together her 8 favorite quotes of Dr. Perry from their new collaborative book. I thought I would list them for you in this blog:

1. “All of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with.”
2. “What attention, nurturing touch, reassurance—what love didn’t you get?…Neglect is as toxic as trauma.”
3. “Good relationships are the key to healing.”
4. “When someone is speaking from the space of anger or fear you can’t reach them with reason.”
5. “Connectedness has the power to counterbalance adversity.”
6. “When children don’t feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed.”
7. “We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to you as a child.”
8. “Each of us creates a unique worldview shaped by our life’s experiences.”

I thought I would let Dr. Perry expand on 2 of his quotes (number 4 and 8).

                #4 “The brain’s organized in a hierarchal way. So there’s a bottom, a middle, and a top. And the top part of the brain is where all your thinking sits. But in order to get to that top part of the brain, you have to go through the bottom and middle parts of the brain, which are exquisitely sensitive to the emotional climate. So if there is a sense of anger, frustration, fear, that is being projected by the person you’re interacting with, anything they say or do will be short circuited before it can get to the thinking part of the brain.”

                #8 “One of the amazing qualities of the human brain is that it begins to anticipate what is going on in the world around you. And so it really has certain expectations based upon your previous experiences. So if you have a world view that people are unsafe and you go into a classroom, your brain is basically going to be scanning for evidence that that’s true. It’s going to be ignoring the fact that that teacher is kind. It’s going to be ignoring the fact that the teacher tried to engage you and teach you, but it will focus on the fact that the teacher raised their voice when you handed in your homework late.”

If you would like to listen to Dr. Perry’s elaboration on each of these quotes please click on this link.

The post What happened to you – Part 3 appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

I thought I would do a follow up to last weeks blog about the book “What happened to You”.  In the last blog I summarized for you Dr. Perry’s introduction to the book and this week I wanted to quote for you from Oprah’s introductory remarks.

“As an adult, I am grateful to enjoy long-term, consistent, loving relationships with many people. Yet the early beatings, emotional fractures, and splintered connections that I experienced with the central figures in my early life no doubt helped develop my solitary independence…”

“Millions of people were treated just as I was as children and grew up believing their lives were of no value. My conversations with Dr. Perry and the thousands of people who were brave enough to share their stories with me on the Oprah Winfrey Show have taught me that the effects of my treatment by those who were suppose to care for me weren’t strictly emotional. There was also a biological response. Through my work with Dr. Perry, my eyes have been opened to the fact that although I experienced abuse and trauma as a child, my brain found ways to adapt.”

“This is where hope lives for all of us – in the unique adaptability of our miraculous brains. As Dr. Perry explains in this book, understanding how the brain reacts to stress or early trauma helps clarify how what has happened to us in the past shapes who we are, how we behave, and why we do the things we do”.

“Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately re-calibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships.  It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our lives.” 

If you would like to read more about how the Center works with children whose brains have experienced trauma and abuse please click on the link.

The post “What happened to you – Part 2” appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.

On April 27 of 2021 Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey released a collaborative book titled What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. Below is an excerpt from the introduction to the book, which begins as a discussion between Oprah and Dr. Perry. It is a rather long excerpt from Dr. Perry but I think it gives you a good introduction to what the book is all about.

“One morning in 1989, I was sitting in my lab—the Laboratory of Developmental Neurosciences at the University of Chicago—looking at the results of a recent experiment, when my lab assistant poked his head into my office.“Oprah’s calling you.”

“Yeah, right. Take a message.” I’d been up all night writing; the results of the experiment looked messed up. I wasn’t in the mood for a practical joke.

He smirked.“No. Really. It’s somebody from Harpo.”

There was no possible reason for Oprah to call me. I was a young academic child psychiatrist studying the impact of stress and trauma on development. Only a handful of people knew about my work; most of my psychiatry peers didn’t think much about the neurosciences or childhood trauma. The role of trauma as a major factor in physical and mental health was unexplored. I thought one of my friends was simply pranking me. But I took the call.

“Ms. Winfrey is convening a meeting of national leaders in the area of child abuse in Washington in two weeks. We would like you to attend.”

After more explanation, it became clear that the meeting would be attended by many well-known and well-established people and organizations. My work—studying the impact of trauma on the developing brain—would be lost among more politically accepted, dominant perspectives. I politely declined.

Several weeks later, I received another call.“Oprah is inviting you to a daylong retreat at her farm in Indiana. There will be two other people, you, and Oprah. We want to brainstorm solutions to the issue of child abuse.” This time, with a chance to meaningfully contribute, I accepted.

The dominant voice that day was Andrew Vachss, an author and attorney specializing in representing children. His pioneering work highlighted the need to track known child abusers; at that point they could move from state to state, and there was no way to keep tabs on where they were or if they were complying with restrictions to avoid children. Our 1989 meeting in Indiana led to the 1991 drafting of the National Child Protection Act to establish a national database of convicted child abusers. On December 20, 1993, after two years of advocacy that included testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the“Oprah Bill” was signed into law.

That day in 1989 led to many more conversations. Some took place on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss specific children’s stories and campaigns on the importance of early childhood and brain development. Most of our conversations, however, were in the context of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG), which Oprah founded in South Africa in 2007. This remarkable institution was created to select, support, educate, and enrich“disadvantaged” girls with high potential. The explicit intention was to create a cadre of future leaders. Many of these girls had demonstrated resilience and high academic achievement despite a range of adversities including poverty, traumatic loss, and community or intra-family violence. Early on, the school began to act on many of the concepts we discuss in this book; today, OWLAG is becoming a model of a trauma-sensitive, developmentally aware educational setting.

In 2018, I sat down with Oprah for a 60 Minutes story about“trauma-informed care.” Though only two minutes of our conversation ended up in the final segment, millions of people were watching and listening, and the excitement created in the community of professionals working in trauma was remarkable. But there is so much more to say.

The enthusiasm for our conversation was in part a reflection of Oprah’s own enthusiasm for the importance of this topic. On CBS This Morning, Oprah told Gayle King that she would dance on table-tops to get people to pay attention to the impact of trauma on the developing brains of children. In a CBS News supplement to the 60 Minutes show, Oprah called it the most important story of her life.

Oprah has been talking about abuse, neglect, and healing for her entire career. Her dedication to educating people about trauma-related topics has been a hallmark of her shows. Millions of people have watched Oprah listen to, connect with, console, and learn from people with experience or expertise in trauma of all kinds. She has explored the impacts of traumatic loss, maltreatment, sexual abuse, racism, misogyny, domestic violence, community violence, gender and sexual identity issues, false imprisonment, and so much more, and through this has helped us explore health, healing, post-traumatic growth, and resilience.

For twenty-five years, The Oprah Winfrey Show took a deep and thoughtful look at developmental adversity, challenge, distress, stress, trauma, and resilience. She explored dissociative identity disorder in 1989; the importance of early-childhood experiences on brain development in 1997; the rights of adopted children in 2005; the impact of severe neglect in 2009; and much more. In many ways, her show paved the way for a larger, systemic awareness of these issues. Her final season included an episode featuring two hundred men disclosing their histories of sexual abuse. She has been and will continue to be a champion and guide for people impacted by adversity and trauma.

Oprah and I have been talking about trauma, the brain, resilience, and healing for more than thirty years, and this book is, in many ways, the culmination of those talks. It uses conversation and human stories to illuminate the science that underlies it all.

Asking the fundamental question – “What happened to you?” can help each of us know a little more about how experiences—both good and bad—shape us.

There are far too many aspects of development, the brain, and trauma to cover in one book, especially a book written through stories. The language and concepts used in this book translate the work of thousands of scientists, clinicians, and researchers in fields ranging from genetics to epidemiology to anthropology. It is a book for anyone and everyone.”

The Centers Work

Many of the children we work with at Family Christian Counseling Center have experienced severe trauma and the foundation of how we work with these children is Dr. Perry’s Neuro-sequential Model of Therapeutics.  If you would like to read more about how the Center uses this model please click on the link.

The post “What happened to You” appeared first on Family Christian Counseling.