Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

  • Do you have difficulty sleeping due to a past event?
  • Do you startle easy in certain situations?
  • Do you feel like when you go out you experience a great sense of panic when you’re surrounded by people, or you feel like you don’t have an outlet?
  • Do you have difficulty concentrating, having a lot of difficulty staying on task when you’re asked even a simple task to complete?

Hi, I’m Gilles Brideau. I’m a psychotherapist, hypnotist and coach that lives and works in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is our next category. Know that within this category, I’ve worked with a lot of people, especially first responders, that deal on a regular basis with different traumatic events. I’ve also dealt with clients who were victims of some traumatic event in their life. That may be witnessing an event, a death, or it could be something that happened to them like a physical assault or a rape, that kind of thing. What I’ve typically done with these people is dealing with the issue in a different way.

Within this category we will talk a little bit about anxiety specifically. Anxiety Part 2 is one of the videos within this section that deals more specifically about post-traumatic stress. We’re also going to talk about the importance of stigma. Oftentimes in working with clients, they feel like their world has become so isolated because they haven’t been given the opportunity to get out of their world, or that the event seems to re-traumatize them on a regular basis. They feel like the only solution is suicide, so we’re going to talk a little bit about stigma and suicide in this section as well.

One of the things that a client said to me that was really wonderful in terms of my own understanding of how it works is she said, “Imagine that a movie plays constantly in your mind, but instead of being on a projection screen, it’s 5 inches in front of your face, and it’s in surround sound and technicolor.” I took that metaphor that she gave, and I changed it up a little bit. I said, “What if we could still-frame it, so that instead of playing like a movie, it’s just a still shot? If we shrank it and put it on the wall like a blank space, do you think that would help you deal with [your day 00:02:35] more effectively?” Even in that reframe, she found that really beneficial that there would be a technique that we could use, like EMDR. We’re going to have a video about that in the weeks to come, specifically about that technique and techniques like that, that help people change the movie, change the format in which the movie is played so that they feel like they have control back over their life. I asked her if it was muted and in a black and white shot about the size of a postage stamp on the wall of her memories, would that be beneficial. She said, “Absolutely.”

You have to know in working 23 years with clients who have experienced trauma, I really wish I had the light stick from Men in Black, where it’s like, just look at it here and it flashes and their memory is instantly erased. Because some of my clients have really went through some pretty traumatic experiences, and I feel for them. I guess that’s why I’m more motivated than ever to help them move from a place of anxiety to a place of freedom of peace. That’s my wish for you. Imagine you can let go of the fear that controls your life, that restricts the world you live in, and move you to a place of freedom and choice. That’s my wish for you. I hope you enjoy this section, and I hope you find the information beneficial. With that, I wish you peace of mind. Have a great day.

Anxiety Part 2

Hi guys, and welcome to part two of Understanding Anxiety Disorders. My name is Gilles Brideau and I am a hypnotist, coach and psychotherapist that lives and works in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

We’re just going to continue our discussion we had finished last on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the loop that creates it.

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Suicide and Stigma

Hi. It’s Gilles Brideau again just talking to you about suicide prevention, especially around ending stigma.

I’ve just found out recently that September is Suicide Prevention Month, and so I wanted to just make a quick video about talking about suicide and the importance of reaching out and getting people help. A lot of times, for me, in talking with my clients, it’s really ending the stigma about suicide, even in terms of having a discussion about it. In working at a collegiate level, what I’ve found was a lot of students, I would say a great percentage, probably about 25 to 30% of the student population, were having thoughts of suicide. Where a lot of them were just because of stress and what was going on in their everyday life, they just wished they wouldn’t wake up.

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