Recovery International's Role in the Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Recovery International Interviews James R. High, MD

James R. High, M.D. is in psychiatric practice a member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Dr. High's specialty is working with patients who have experienced both recent and childhood traumatic stress.

Recovery: How did you first hear of Recovery International?

High: Over ten years ago, I witnessed a demonstration of the self-help method at a volunteer program put on by Recovery members at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. I was impressed both by the members and the importance of what Recovery techniques attempt to do for people.

Recovery: Can Recovery techniques be helpful in traumatic experiences such as rape or natural disasters?

High: When severely traumatized as adults, people often experience two seemingly opposing emotional problems. At times they are hyperaroused, hyperexcited and cannot stop thinking about or re-experiencing the trauma. At other times however, they are numbed and withdrawn, sometimes to the point of nonfunctioning. These people could benefit from Recovery's method of changing thought patterns and the focus on correcting the processing of symptoms. Unfortunately, these people often do not seek help, though these symptoms disrupt lives and cause misery.

Recovery: How does being subjected to trauma as a child, such as in child abuse, differ from being traumatized as an adult?

High: In childhood, mechanisms to control emotions, thought, and behavior are being formed and perfected. Abuse and neglect during these years, disrupts this maturation. Recent research has shown that as adults, these people typically show problems in seven areas: 1) alteration and regulation of moods and impulses; 2) alterations in attention or consciousness; 3) alterations of self perception; 4) alterations in their perception of the perpetrators of abuse; 5) alterations in their relations with others; 6) alterations in their experience of their own body (psychosomatic illnesses); 7) alterations in their systems of meaning.

Recovery: What do people learn at Recovery meetings that helps them with these problems?

High: The Recovery program focuses on correcting errors in the processing of experiences, including symptoms. Members learn techniques for practically, specifically, and effectively controlling excessive stimulus-response patterns by discussing daily life events and help each other apply cognitive and behavioral principles to the management of their moods and impulses. Thus, Recovery methods can attack a central problem survivors have by helping to repair and mature damaged control mechanisms.

Recovery: Can the Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) gain from Recovery techniques?

High: Absolutely. It appears that the vulnerable years for the seven areas of disruption I outlined above, extend up to about age 20. This turns out to be crucial. World War II combat veterans were 21 years old on the average, whereas in Vietnam, they averaged 19 years old. This means they missed the final formative years when they should have been stabilizing their self-concepts and world view -- all things we learn in the first two or three years after high school by getting jobs, going to college, living away from our parents, etc. Plus, the environment they returned to for recovery was hostile and non-supportive, so they did not recover well. Dr. Low's principles can be just as helpful to the Vietnam veteran still suffering 25 years later as to the adult victim of past child abuse.

Recovery: Are there any general benefits that Recovery International can provide to victims of trauma?

High: There are several important ones. For these patients, the recovery environment is extremely important to their outcome. Because of their disordered functioning, many of them live painfully isolated and lonely lives, within social support systems which are useless in helping them cope with their chaos. Dr. Low's pioneering cognitive behavioral approaches, learned through Recovery International training, can provide them with the first tools they have ever had to control this chaos. Furthermore, the mere existence of an international organization, providing regular meetings, with members struggling with the same issues, in almost any city in the country, can provide just the safe haven and recovery environment so lacking in their lives. This is not something that an individual therapist or even an entire university department of psychiatry can do, but it is essential to their recovery.

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