However, as you mention, for other people this may be exactly what’s needed. Between the article I posted, and the comments I got, it’s becoming more apparent that there would need to be a good bit of background work done between me and a client before implementing something that’s as intense as a wilderness outing, or a soul retrieval, or other potentially dramatic activities.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Ravenari – I was hoping you’d respond. You bring up some really good points, some of which are why, while I’m happy someone is trying things in this vein, I’m still cautious.

I think part of the problem with treating PTSD is that, like so many other disorders, there’s no single cause or manifestation of it. Additionally, it’s not as well-understood, particularly among the populace at large, as things like, say, depression. One of the reasons I’m probably going to focus on depression rather than PTSD in my thesis is that I don’t have nearly as good a handle on the latter, and given that a year from now I’ll be doing research, I honestly don’t think that’s enough time (amid all my other school work, including the summer semester) for me to get a good grasp of it.

I am hoping that the folks in the article that I emailed can provide me with more solid information. If not, then this is a potential area of research down the line. One of the things about ecopsychology in particular is that most of the material on it is purely theoretical, and runs heavily towards “We need to think this way as psychologists and as humans, not the way we’ve been thinking”. There’s not a whole lot of actual research involving techniques and experiments yet–which is why I’m going for the M.S. instead of the M.A.

If I hear more, including on the long term effectiveness of this, I’ll post what I can here. I think there are very strong possibilities for ecopsych, shamanism, and PTSD treatment (as well as treatment of other disorders), but I want to have something more solid than a single article.

I resent any ‘healer’ who needs to put down or dismiss other healing modalities out of sight and out of mind, just because that’s not the primary healing technique they choose to use. And it would be deplorable if they told PTSD clients some of their absolute truths at their healing circles. That could potentially be more damaging than healing.

It makes sense to help PTSDers to reconnect with their spirituality. One of the big symptoms, particularly in C-PTSD, is a destabilisation of and loss of spirituality. But as this is a symptom, unless these people expect that they can cure a symptom before the root cause in all PTSD clients, PTSD clients are not all going to jump on a spirituality bandwagon. Many feel utterly deserted by and abandoned by ANY god, all gods, all energy, regardless. And some are angry at even being told to try that possibility.

Spirituality can help with PTSD, but I think the way these folks are going about it is very problematic; and narrowed. I speak from a biased perspective, I have PTSD, and I wouldn’t go to that spiritual circle because I don’t like folks doing the whole ‘this form of therapy doesn’t work, but mine does!!!’

Also, when one considers that new research is showing that with some PTSD clients the most healing part of therapy out of any healing techniques is simply a trusting, therapeutic alliance – doing shamanic groupwork may not be the way to go for some.

I’ve done / performed soul retrieval for clients with PTSD – I prefer working with clients with PTSD and that’s where the spirits push me, (non-core shamanic, of course), and it can be very successful. But, I firmly believe that the client should also be or have been in therapy, and should be in a place where they’re willing to process the results of those retrievals with me. It can be a long, ongoing process – and taking on PTSD clients in shamanism is not just a case of a soul retrieval followed by no aftercare; in fact I think the aftercare may be the most important part of the process, to prevent refragmentation.

The other thing this article states is that things work VERY quickly – but are they actually maintaining after care on their clients? Have they chased them up, 6 or 12 months later? Have they found out how well this work holds after additional ‘current’ trauma or conflict?

I’m cutting and pasting this to your therioshamanism journal too. *smiles*

Good post! Definitely provides much food for thought.