What Participants have said (when asked):
Question: What was the best thing about this program?
Some Answers:
"Giving me a safe place to go into myself. With someone listening, I am still the one exploring and coming to a calm place. Everything about this program opened me up to change."
"Peer support and repetitive, predictable questioning that effectively discharges fight and flight response."
"Education about trauma. Opportunity to speak honestly to a nonjudgmental witness in a safe space."
"That it embodies complementary knowledge and techniques; is not a commercial enterprise; is non-labeling and pathologizing; is peer-to-peer, highly intuitive and does not support victimhood."
"Learning how to create a safe environment for someone to be able to share authentically."
"The community."
"Doing the actual sessions."
What Participants Have Said (without being asked):
"Every time I have a strong ending point in a session, I'm able to take command and lead much more efficiently at work and in life. My focus is much more on point. I think these traumas we carry around steal or "borrow' our power from other parts of our lives, if that makes any sense. When I work through mine, I feel I reclaim that power and put it back into the place in my life where it belongs." San Francisco - The Resilients
"Thank you for your wonderful program. It has changed my life. Even though I was certain that it couldn't."
"Over the course of this program, I have experienced a few deep and fundamental shifts."
"I feel a lightness now."
"I feel the past is in the past, now."
"I feel a great sense of relief, I feel definitely better, I feel the best I have ever felt, emotionally." San Francisco - The Lotus Flowers
"The program is geared toward serving survivors of any kind of trauma, from abuse and domestic violence to medical injuries and all losses including death of loved one. I'm no exaggerating when I tell you it changed my life, healed some of my deepest wounds, and eased some on my most persistent painful memories and internal conflicts. I highly recommend this valuable resource, and in fact I am returning to participate in the program a second time." San Francisco - Caravan of Healing
"The community program has been the most effective and lasting treatment for and resolution of 9 our of 10 ACEs that are part of my childhood experiences. In a matter of weeks, the work that I did together with a peer partner quelled childhood traumas that have plagued my adult life with addiction, mental health challenges and, more recently, life threatening physical illnesses." San Francisco - Caravan of Healing
"I am so grateful you have taught me to walk in dignity."
"In 2015, after completing a book that describes and illustrates the earliest traumas of my childhood home, I called my therapist and said, “if you don’t get me some help, I’m going to get a gun and kill myself.” I had finally remembered what happened in my childhood, and I was not happy about it! She told me that Kaiser Permanente had a new, experimental group starting the next day for PTSD survivors. I got the last seat in the class, and began the next day to learn to listen to another trauma survivor without affect, judgement, sympathy, or any comment other than 'thank you'. I learned to listen and work with my peer partner in a way that helped her to be able to come to her own inner wisdom and control over her troubling traumas, behaviors, emotions, or feelings. In this way, my peer partner has listened to me and this has helped me to find a way to finally move life-threatening experiences from my childhood (circling endlessly in my amygdala, holding me in a constant state of hyper-vigilance and extreme stress) that have kept me frozen for forty years in a state of complete terror—for my life, my brothers’ lives, and the life of my mother." Heidi Hardin, Artist
Through Turning the Tide of Trauma, my traumas, which dictated behaviors, emotions, intrusive thoughts and overwhelming feelings, have moved from my amygdala, to my hippocampus where I now hold these events as stories, not as ever-present dangers. Amazing, huh? I have corrected my brain’s neural networks that had been overstimulating me to dangers that were long past—sixty years past in some cases." Heidi Hardin, Artist