feeling this.

Man’s search for meaning

“A provisional existence with no end.”

“A focused forward type of therapy” = logo therapy

Question: after surviving, Auschwitz, the author wondered how people, even people facing the worst horrors in life, find meaning in living.

Conclusion: Life finds meaning in the value we give to even the most basic choices we are able to make as humans. For instance, we are able to look at suffering as an opportunity rather than an pointless pain. Seeing this as an opportunity changes the way we view our future. Thus, giving our lives meaning.

Chapters, to highlight main topics within the book.
* Chapter 1: The Psychological Journey of a Concentration Camp Prisoner
* Chapter 2: Methods of Psychological Resistance
* Chapter 3: Logotherapy and Meaning
* Chapter 4: Paths to find meaning
* Chapter 5: Challenges in Finding Meaning
* Chapter 6: Using Logotherapy to Combat Anxiety

Similarities:
* I didn’t see a lot of similarities with topics discussed in class, but I did see a some similarity between a couple topics I am personally familiar with.
1. Buddhist philosophy on suffering.
2. Stoicism.

Critiques

Honestly, I don’t have any critiques of this book. I found it to be something I resonated with personally. I don’t mean to presume that living through the holocaust is the same as living through a brain injury. I do believe I heard a lot of similarities, between my experience and the experience of the holocaust survivor spoke about in his book. I also firmly believe that suffering viewed as an opportunity is the gateway to finding meaning in your life.

Question

Did the author only identify with Judaism culturally or religiously also? And if religiously, how did that impact his time in aushwitz and his search for meaning?

Career

I read both required texts for class with the lens of learning valuable information I can use in my future counseling work with brain injury survivors.

Through reading this text I drew a lot of hope from the authors’ personal confirmation that viewing suffering this way, truly does provide meaning to people suffering great horrors in life .

The Body Keeps the Score
* Question: The author wondered why the many and diverse groups of trauma survivors he met, developed physiological conditions after their survival, whether they consciously remembered their survival or not.
* Conclusion: The human body not only keeps the “score” of the traumas we experience, developing physiological conditions, but our bodies’ also hold the keys for our healing.

* Chapters, to highlight main topics within the book.
1. Lessons from Vietnam Veterans
2. Revolutions in Understanding Mind and Brain
3. Looking into the Brain: The Neuroscience Revolution
4. Running for Your Life
5. Body-Brain Connections
6. Losing Your Body, Losing Your Self
7. Getting on the Same Wavelength: Attachment and Attunement
8. Trapped in Relationships: The Cost of Abuse and Neglect
9. What's Love Got to Do With It?
10. Developmental Trauma: The Hidden Epidemic
11. Uncovering Secrets: The Problem of Traumatic Memory
12. The Unbearable Heaviness of Remembering
13. Healing From Trauma: Owning Your Self
14. Language: Miracle and Tyranny
15. Letting Go of the Past: Emdr
16. Learning to Inhabit Your Body: Yoga
17. Putting the Pieces Together: Self-Leadership
18. Filling in the Holes: Creating Structures
19. Rewiring the Brain: Neuro-feedback
20. Finding Your Voice: Communal Rhythms and Theater

* Similarities
EMDR
Early childhood experiences impacts health of psychological development within the child.

* Critiques
I’m not surprised, but I would have liked to see the author speak about traumatic brain injury survivors. It seems like a clear association between tbi survivors and neurobiology.

* Question
1. Has the author studied and found more efficacy with the use of psychedelics with trauma patients. And more specifically, with
2. what populations,
3. using what regiments, and
4. the use of which psychedelics.

* A 1-2 page response that indicates how the main ideas will impact your future counseling career.
I read both books required within this course, with the intention of taking concepts within into my future work with brain injury survivors. The most salient part of what I’ve learned within this book and during this class is how integral it is for any survivor of trauma to find agency in their lives again as early as possible with whatever choices we can offer them. This concept seems critical because after many, if not all, survivors of trauma
have lost power over their own lives for a time. Brain Injury survivors, even in measured and controlled environments, are not given the sweet blessing of having agency over their own lives until the very end of their recoveries. This can take years, or even a lifetime. Not one survivor has any kind of prognosis given to them. Likely due to the minimal and/or new research done on the brain.

Matthew 11:28-30
28 “Come to Me, all [a]who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find [b]rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.”
Step 1. Take off your shoes and socks. Step 2. Go outdoors somewhere you're able to feel the earth. Step 3. Feel the earth beneath your feel and maybe feel it with your hands. Step 4. Take a second to describe it to yourself using as many senses as you can. (touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste). Watch the documentary, “the earth-ing movie”, on youtube!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!