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Is Trauma Forever?

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Warren was a 28-year-old staff sergeant in the Air Force when he nearly killed a subordinate. He choked the man in a fit of rage so severe it shocked even Warren when he finally came to. He reached out to one of my students looking for help.

On the surface, Warren's issues looked familiar. Stress at work and trouble sleeping. While this was happening, his wife was pregnant with their first child and the anxiety around becoming a father sat on top of everything else. As one of my students began working with Warren to help release the negative emotions, something came to the surface that had a lot of charge.

Warren had been deployed in Afghanistan. He was in a motorcade when an IED exploded beneath the vehicle in front of him and four of his close friends died. He had avoided thinking about it for nearly a year. When it came up in session, the guilt hit hardest emotionally. My student helped him release and process that guilt and he left the session feeling better. But the next week, Warren came back angrier than ever.

It was like peeling back an onion. Underneath the combat trauma was the real root of his symptoms: a memory from when he was four. Warren's father found him playing with matches and then proceeded to grab him by the back of the neck and throw him across the........

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