Category Archives: Stress, Crisis and Trauma

Written by Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, NCC

Image: www.tifereth.org

“Why Is It Different?”
Each year in early spring, many people of the Jewish and Christian traditions join together to commemorate the Israelites’ escape from the Babylonian Captivity and the miracles of their long and perilous journey to the Promised Land. Passover, or Pesach, is the yearly remembering of a people’s hard-won healing from trauma. As in most trauma cases, this healing is not, itself, without cost.

Written by Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, BCC

Why We Work
Most people work – at least in part – to earn a living. They need to support their lifestyles and their families. Some people chose their work on the basis of salary alone, and that, while understandable in today’s uncertain financial climate, can be stressful in and of itself. Other people work in order to lend structure, interest, and meaning to their lives as well as to make money. Some people derive great ego satisfaction and a sense of identity from their work.

Written by Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, BCC, NGHC

Hearing Voices
As he remembers it, Edmund first began to hear “the Voices” after taking what are popularly known as “club drugs” at a party in a “cool” neighborhood in Atlanta’s inner city. He knows that he took Ecstasy (“X”), and he thinks that he may have used LSD as well. It was not Ed’s first experience with illegal drugs, and it was not his last. That party and its aftermath marked the beginning, for Edmund, of an Alternate Reality that some psychiatrists call “psychosis”.

Written by Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, BCC

Too Much Going On
Stress occurs when the environment is giving us all we can handle. One more thing is going to be too much. It will be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. In terms of energy, stress happens when we are expending more energy than we are taking in. When we work too many hours without resting; when we insist on getting just one more thing done before bedtime; or when we agree to take on tasks or activities that we will have to sacrifice our rest time to complete, a state of deficit occurs. If it is prolonged, our mental, emotional, and physical health are at risk. Some researchers believe that stress is at the root of all disease. Cancer is considered by many to be the ultimate stress disease.

Written by Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, NCC
(* Clients are never identified by their real names)

Coping skills are the ways in which we cope with stress. We all have them. The right coping skills, adaptive coping skills, can help us manage stressors in such a way as to lessen their impact. The wrong ones, maladaptive coping skills, can magnify stress to the extent that it becomes unbearable and capable of damaging our health and happiness.

Written by: Lane Gormley, EdS, LPC, NCC
(*Clients are not identified by their real names.)

 Did you know that stress can be good?  Healthful stress is called eustress.  Without it, some of us would be bored.  Eustress might be the result of facing a desirable challenge in a positive manner.  Examples: taking a test for which one is well-prepared; climbing a mountain if you are an experienced climber; going on an Outward Bound expedition with close friends; getting a new job; going back to school.  Eustress might also happen if you have a lot going on – all of it good.