What do Catholic trauma survivors need? This week’s resources

Inclusion does not equal endorsement of concept, source, writer, etc.

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. First up: if you still aren’t in the Lenten spirit or have already bombed at every penance you promised, I have opened up a private community on Facebook for people who want to spend their Lenten practice on creating intentional relationships where we can go for support when we are tempted to reach for those things not of God. Get heard at Heard Mentality.
2. “Reality is the only place to find God.” Helen Syski writes at Catholic Mom about how our limitations are love notes from God.
3. I don’t love everything in this article, so there’s that, but here’s a piece on how adverse childhood experiences in just one individual can lead to world war.
4. I know the meaning of suffering is a struggle-filled topic for us trauma survivors. Still, Rebecca Martin (All Things New editor, btw) writes at Catholic Mom about that very topic in Flat Tires and Unexpected Graces.
5. Last week was the feast of St. Frances of Rome. She’s the patroness of automobile drivers, but you might also want to read her story if you, too, could use a sensate experience of angelic protection & provision.
6. Adverse childhood experiences have a negative effect on brain function. Here are some things you can do (or not do, as the case may be) to lessen those negative effects.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: we haven’t heard from Dr. Ramani in a while, have we?

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

What do Catholic trauma survivors need? This week’s resources

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. First up: if you still aren’t in the Lenten spirit or have already bombed at every penance you promised, I have opened up a private community on Facebook for people who want to spend their Lenten practice on creating intentional relationships where we can go for support when we are tempted to reach for those things not of God. Get heard at Heard Mentality.
2. “I was only joking! You’re so sensitive!” And then there’s Msgr. Pope at OSV with “What does the Church teach about teasing?“
3. Faith Hakesley is at the Ruth Institute answering the questions many of us get asked, “Why did the victim keep going back to his/her abuser?” The answer is grooming. What is grooming?
4. And what is financial abuse?
5. Do you know the difference between codependency and enabling?
6. PTSD isn’t exactly a relationship booster. A recent study looked at how brains affected by PTSD struggle to process social interaction input.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: let’s talk ALL about Bruno!

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. First up: if you still aren’t in the Lenten spirit or have already bombed at every penance you promised, I have opened up a private community on Facebook for people who want to spend their Lenten practice on creating intentional relationships where we can go for support when we are tempted to reach for those things not of God. Get heard at Heard Mentality.
2. Restorative justice practices in the classroom build community.
3. US Catholic has an article with the same title as a questions many (if not most) trauma survivors ask themselves: Jesus loves you. Can you believe it? #lent
4. Are you being manipulated? Verywell Health has some signs for you to keep in mind.
5. Hey. You’re you. Make sure you don’t lose your identity in a relationship.
6. Feeling Troubled? Catholic Mom’s Jennifer Scheuereman has some reflections.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: watch my Catholic Mom Facebook Live–RATS! It’s Lent!–about how much we need community to stay faithful to our Lenten promises

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. First up: if you still don’t know what to do for Lent, I’m opening up a private community on Facebook for people who want to spend their Lenten practice on creating intentional relationships where we can go for support when we are tempted to reach for those things not of God. Get heard at Heard Mentality.
2. PREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEACH! Christi Braschler is at Catholic Mom with a post for all of us who didn’t/don’t have a village to help us raise our kids.
3. COVID & teletherapy: a match made in heaven. Maybe. This British study looks at the differences in outcomes between in-person therapy and online counseling in university students.
4. Lara Patangan of Simple Mercies has a piece at Catholic Mom about how celebration and reflection are two sides of the same spiritual coin. Trauma survivors, read her Shrove Tuesday for some ponderings on how celebration has its place next to remorse in the spiritual life.
5. Our Sunday Visitor News has a twist on a question abuse survivors and those who love them ask: Why would God create someone who will choose hell?
6. Music and art therapy seem to help with depression and PTSD, among other disorders. Scientists are at last interested in finding out why.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: can dogs get PTSD?

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. Am I the drama? Mashable actually has a pretty cogent piece on #traumatok and the risks and benefits involved in sourcing mental health support through social media. Fave quote: “High quality, culturally competent, and affordable mental health care is notoriously hard to get in the U.S. By comparison, social media is free. Public processing may be unseemly to those who view it as excessive; for others, it’s an improvised support system that meets an urgent need.”
2. “Calm down!” Yeah, has that ever helped? No. What actually does help? Naming stuff.
3. How does your parents’ divorce play into your congestive heart failure? Childhood adversity is a ’cause of causes’ of adult illnesses and mental health problems.
4. How do you break an addiction to a person?
5. Did you grow up with a narcissistic parent?
6. Before y’all flip out, I’m not promoting Buddhism by linking to something from Tiny Buddha. Dominicans are all about promoting the truth, no matter who’s telling it. So here’s a piece about how from this moment forward we are free to tell a new story with our lives.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: I found Paul Deiss Smith II via Catholic Mom. Give him a listen!

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. “This year, try making a Valentine’s Day resolution to alter the pattern of how you love.” Read more from Elayne Grosmith at Catholic Mom.
2. BozLaw is a interstate law firm that specializes in representing in court survivors of sexual abuse. They have an insightful post on The Many Deceptions of Sex Offenders Who Get Caught and Those Who Believe Them.
3. “There’s a gift there in the near darkness.” For those of us who were punished for breaking our parents’ sleep (and for those of us who as parents punished our children in any way for same), Carolyn Astfalk has a beautiful peace about nighttime parenting.
4. February is Teen Dating Violence Month. On that note, here’s a piece for those who may still be healing from dating violence: Reflecting on My Abusive Relationship As an Adult.
5. Speaking of dating & Valentine’s Day, what’s the difference between love and attachment?
6. A breakdown of eight, count ’em, EIGHT types of scapegoating in the narcissistic family system. What flavor are you?
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: even Matthew Kelly is talking about the damage caused by narcissism in relationtionships!

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. This is both mindblowing and completely not a surprise. Here’s a study showing that individuals with adverse childhood experiences explore less and underweight reward feedback. Translation of academic-ese: if you experienced trauma as a child, as an adult, you are less likely to discover/take chances, more likely to be manipulative, and when things do go your way, you don’t attribute as much value to those experiences as you do to painful ones.
2. Anyone who is at heart honest and has experienced any kind of harm in a relationship has asked, “Does my reaction to being abused make me an abuser?”
3. Micole at The Face of Mercy has written a Litany of Self-love–highly recommended. Thanks, Patrice Fagnant-MacArthur, for sending idea this my way!
4. Social Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder… if you’re a lucky double-winner with these two, you might be interested to read up on how fearful attachment interplays with anxiety and depression.
5. Here’s an article on a tool to help you replace negative core beliefs.
6. Andrew J. Bauman has a heartbreaking, troubling letter from an honest misogynist.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV? More from Cinema Therapy with the sweet, gentle, ridiculously imaginative My Neighbor Totoro.

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. PTSD treatment options: here’s an update via an efficacy study comparing prolonged exposure vs. cognitive processing therapy. TLDR: what the patient prefers actually makes a difference in outcome. Who knew.
2. Breaking free from narcissistic abuse? You may need these tools for surviving a narcissist’s smear campaign.
3. I find it healing to see survivors stand together and stand up for each other against any authority figure who uses that authority to cause harm. #IstandwithCharismaCarpenter and #IstandwithRayFisher
4. In case you needed to love dogs even more, Dog training therapy may improve symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
5. In a relationship but can’t quite put your finger on what’s wrong? Maybe you’re experiencing a trauma bond.
6. I’ve been criticized for letting my kids turn down hugs from me. Here’s why I don’t make them hug me when they don’t want to.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV: we’re on another LOTR kick, this time with Second Shift of Kid. I might even be able to get her to listen to this one:

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

[Psst… I’m finishing up a 5 Day “Sabotage Your Self-sabotage” Challenge over on social media today. If this is the first you’re hearing of it, the hub is on my Facebook author page. I’m also running a limited time offer: give $10 towards my Truth Heals work on ko-fi through January 24, and get a signed copy of All Things New sent to your US mailing address. And now with this week’s list.]

1. Liv Harrison (hey, fellow recover-er from obesity!) is at OSV is reminding us to give ourselves permission to be boldly transformed by God.
2. I keep hearing people tell me that they exhibit symptoms of trauma survivorship and yet “But I don’t have trauma like YOUR trauma.” Maybe you need to read up on Attachment Trauma.
3. The Good Men Project has a piece on a subject I find fascinating: restorative justice.
4. What is a good safe man? Let’s see what men’s advocate Andrew Bauman has to say.
5. Interesting article to be had here on how a study explores how effects of childhood abuse extend into middle age.
6. Has anybody seen Hawkeye yet? I have not, but Fr. Vince Kuna has.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV is my Catholic Mom Facebook Live from last week, where I share the weird tip that helps me keep my resolve in the face of temptation.

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.

This Week’s Resources for Catholic Trauma Survivors

Update: My Domestic Church has taken over the weekly 7 Quick Takes. I’ll try linking up there.

1. Michelle Hamel has an amazing blog about God’s long game, healing the wounded so their message will draw others to Him for healing: The Gift of an Unexpected Connection.
2. Oh my goodness, here we are two weeks into the new year and I’m just sharing here that All Things New made it onto TWO best books of 2021 lists. First, go take a peek at ARK Watson’s Insta, where she says “And All Things New was more revelatory than a year’s worth of therapy.”
3. And Carolyn Astfalk includes ATN in her Best Adult Nonfiction category. Thank you!
4. Speaking of Carolyn, she has a lovely piece at Catholic Mom about nighttime parenting–a ship I alas missed, but reading this article was a balm to the wound not only to what I should have been but to what I should myself have received.
5. A support group sister turned me on to Rumi’s poem “The Guest House.” I found it a great reminder of the fact that our feelings and thoughts are neither obligations nor life sentences but rather guests that do not stay forever.
6. Dr. Craig Malking of Rhttps://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Narcissism-Secret-Recognizing-Narcissists/dp/0062348116ethinking Narcissism has a quick read out there: 8 Lasting Effects of Having Narcissistic Parents.
7. Ending with your weekly reminder that All Things New: Breaking the Cycle and Raising a Joyful Family is available for purchase. Already read your copy? Leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads (please, leave a review–it takes courage, but it helps the people who need the message find it), and don’t forget to link up with this month’s An Open Book from Carolyn Astfalk & Catholic Mom.

This week’s AV, as we approach the birthday of Robert Burns why not, here’s another goodie from Cinema Therapy, this one on BRAVE.

Thanks for reading, listening & watching, fellow image-bearers. Now give My Domestic Church a look-see.