Welcome to Dr. Zender’s Psychology Today blog, The New Normal.
Traumatic accidents can seriously impact every area of your life. However, with the proper information and support you—or someone you care about—can reclaim the life you were meant to live. In Dr. Zender’s blog, you will find tools, tips and ideas to facilitate your recovery process —tools that will help you to cope with your physical and psychological injuries and conditions. You will learn to do more than just survive, you will learn to thrive!
A note to auto insurance companies: You will find valuable information here that will help you better serve your insured customers. In fact, when patients get the proper supports, needed care and treatment up front, they need far fewer resources in the long run than if support is withheld. That translates into a big win-win for your company and a boost to your bottom line!
Omega-3s and Beyond: Could they be trauma miracles?
In my last blog post, I wrote about advances in our understanding of how neurosteroids, those hormones that are produced in the brain by glial cells, are impacted by traumatic injuries. The importance of looking at hormone balances post-brain injury is highlighted in the experience of Andrew Marr’s recovery from traumatic brain injury and the benefit he derived from hormone [...]
Is It Post-traumatic Stress or Traumatic Brain Injury?
Many of the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury overlap. I believe the original developers of the diagnosis of PTSD were not well informed about TBI, and that many patients diagnosed with PTSD may, in fact, be exhibiting symptoms of traumatic brain injury. Many of the symptoms of PTSD are neurobehavioral or neurocognitive. The role of the endocrine system needs to be considered when [...]
Chronic Pain and Trauma – Understanding the Opioid Epidemic in America.
I recently gave a presentation at the Michigan Brain Injury Fall Conference on understanding chronic pain from the mind-body perspective. With the rise of public awareness of the opioid epidemic in the United States—which is now the number one cause of accidental death, with over seventy thousand deaths from accidental overdoses of prescription drugs last year—discussion about the mind-body perspective [...]
Trauma as Disconnection with Self
While I have specialized in the psychological care of people who have been deeply traumatized by overwhelming life experiences, it has been difficult to grasp an operational definition of exactly what the trauma means. The problem is often focusing on the event, what we refer to as the traumatic stressor. We are often asked why the same kind of event [...]
Tips for Coping with Sleep Disturbance
In my work with patients recovering from auto accident trauma, a frequent problem patients report is sleep disturbance due to racing thoughts that play over and over in their minds. In psychiatry this is referred to as ruminating thoughts which can be symptomatic of depression and anxiety states. This is particularly common in post-traumatic stress disorder where intrusive thoughts related to a traumatic event tend to haunt the mind while attempting to [...]
Healing Trauma with Psychodrama
In ancient Greek and earlier Egyptian Mythology there lives a beautiful sacred bird capable of rebirth and who in that sense is indomitable. The one of a kind Arabian Phoenix or Firebird would live for a thousand years, and as it approached the end of life would fly to the coast of Phoenicia and build a nest of beautiful twigs [...]
