Snippets from Anna's Alcove

I first began to understand moral injury as a therapist working in a residential trauma treatment program for military veterans. I had quite a bit of experience working with active service members in outpatient settings prior to taking this position, and that may be why moral injury didn’t present so clearly to me before. Like PTSD, moral injury may not set in clearly until a person has gotten out of the environment associated with the disturbance. Veterans in this residentia

There’s a certain amount of self-discipline that can be really helpful in making life as a good as it can be, but life changes. We change. What’s good for us today may not necessarily make sense for us tomorrow...

The following is a story about a pathway to recovery. I invite you to settle into whatever state of comfort comes most easily to you right now. As you read this story, absorb only what feels helpful, and notice how easy it is to change or disregard anything that doesn’t fit for you. It’s just a story, and you get to decide what story fits for you.

Treatment has changed exponentially since the early days of AA. Important pieces that were missing in the 1930’s are pretty well integrated into treatment approaches now, nearly 100 years later...

Dissociation, essentially, creates an illusion of separation. We can use the word Dis-Association to describe an experience of actual separation, so that two things that once were or seemed connected are in actual fact connected no more...

In my role as a therapist, I consider myself a temporary person in the lives of the people who work with me. I hope that everyone absorbs something good from their experiences with me, but I also want to help people heal. I want my clients to get to a place where they have everything they need within and around them in a natural way, so that it no longer makes sense to keep me in their lives. One key to moving in this direction is to manage the amount of focus on one time per

My influence on my environment is limited and pain is a part of life. Sometimes we’re going to be in painful situations, and our only power will be to shift our thoughts so that we’re minimizing rather than maximizing our pain...

Human beings can be described as a system of parts - parts that we're born with and parts that develop over time.

The word “glimmer” can be used to describe something pleasant. When we seek out glimmers, we can increase the frequency of pleasant experiences and associations. This makes the triggers much easier to bare...

Some people know right away when they have a traumatic experience. Everything feels good enough, and then something happens and their world

There's no right way to recover from trauma. If it works, it's the right way for you. There's lots of evidence that there are more and less