<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Author takes on the Media in Reporting Methods
Review: Gina Ross presents a unique outlook on the role the media plays in interpreting and affecting our perceptionos of traumatic events and our reactions to them. When overwhelming traumatic events impacts us, our nervous system becomes deregulated and the brain chemistry changes. As a consequence, a variety of symptoms may develop. We may lose our ability to self-regulate the nervous system and become prey to agitation, panic attacks, hyper-vigilance and loss of the ability to concentrate and to learn. We may lose the ability to contain emotions and feel out of control. We may be at the mercy of mood swings, emotional outbursts of anger, sadness, fear depression and apathy. We may lose the control over our actions, engaging in obsessive, repetitive defensive patterns or addictions, as a way of self-medicating the uncontrolled activation, and/or repetition of traumatic events (such as a series of accidents, rapes, abuse, etc.). We may lose our ability to reason and our shrinking becomes polarized, black or white, intolerant of differences, blaming and judging, leading to demonizing and dehumanizing behavior. People under the impact of trauma are easily re-triggered by other traumatic events, even by innocuous events that are vaguely similar to the original event. The media has the ability, through responsible reporting, has the ability to change these aspects. Additionally Ross addresses the "secondhand" trauma of reporting. Trauma's impact on the people who surround victims has not been well understood. In addition to the physical destruction of trauma, there is the psychic deterioration - breakdown start, rippling, stressing the system and exhausting its resources. Efforts are spent on (stress management and catastrophe fixing) managing and coping, rather than building and creating, creating a system of deficits rather than assets, which makes the family community or group lose its resiliency, become more vulnerable to further disorganization at the next traumatic events. When resources are already low, and the system is placed under further stress by poverty, lack of democracy, instability through ethnic religious mobilization, the system become more vulnerable its collapse more likely. Our actions therefore are run by out of control emotions, rather than by a stable, integrated, thinking process. Actions become more impulsive, less thought out; more risks are taken, endangering behaviors are rampant. Family and community networks breakdown. Paranoid thinking (the "sound" of threat) is internalized, engendering paranoia, negative confused thinking; Cynicism disenchantment affects reality assessment. Blaming and judging replace communication and exchange. The most dangerous aspects of the trauma vortex is that "bad feels right," the disconnection from any other possible reality becomes prevalent and the focus of reality becomes very narrow and trauma driven, fed by paranoia. The ethical self takes a back seat to a survival mechanism gone awry, unrealistic and destructive emotions are exaggerated. Danger is exaggerated, insufferable profound helplessness transforms into any kind of action that will relieve it, accepting and justifying violence for normal peace-seeking people. Furthermore, the raw and exaggerated emotions become over-coupled, mixed in a messy amalgam, where every activation of the nervous system is connected to feelings of fear and terror, blaming of the "other" hair-trigger situation from a hair-trigger nervous system. A macro trauma vortex is further exacerbated by the reactions it provokes: empathy without judgment (assessment) fear and counter-reaction, paralysis, and passivity, unconscious reactions to the trauma vortex amplifies it many times fold.
Only the capacity to hold both positions: empathy and judgment.
The focus on the possible outcome disappears - the "other" becomes a stereotyped, generalized negative figure. Distrust of anything originating from the other is couched as autonomy. Ross addresses these issues and suggests productive mechanisms to change the trauma vortex into a healing vortex. A must read for all media personnel, students of journalism, and the general public who believe things could be reported in a much better way. Sunny Sherat
Rating: 
Summary: An important subject, an imperfect look
Review: Gina Ross tackles an important subject and she does it from her own experience as a Jewish woman who has lived through difficult times in the Middle East. This book certainly expresses her passionate feelings about the effects of trauma on a community or a country. However, once she gets to the meat of the subject of the book she fails. What replaces the traumatic material, when that's a large part of the national news? How do communities heal from trauma or secondary trauma? How do individual stations help their communities heal when the stations control only about 5% of their content? Gina's prose also fails her. It's often confusing and occasionally states the opposite of what she apparently intends. Another failure is that she hasn't really thought through how the media might help a community once it is traumatized. Mostly she talks about techniques for healing individuals and even there her information is quite limited. Again, this is an important subject. It's clear to me that it has not yet been addressed.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Read
Review: Gina Ross's book is a learned and engaging study of the causes and effects of trauma in society. The book introduces a fascinating premise: if we understand the root causes of trauma, how it is generated and repeated, both wittingly and unwittingly, then we can find ways of effectively controlling or mitigating its effects. The central portion of the book deals with the primary source of trauma's proliferation, the modern media. Especially in a post-9/11 world, what the media chooses to discuss and how its thousands of journalists, reporters, and anchors represent various instances of trauma--terror, murder, rape, violence--is key to how the rest of us see, internalize, and ultimately repeat trauma. Beyond the Trauma Vortex makes its case passionately, articulately, and intelligently. Its approach to applying insights from psycho-therapy to the culture at large presents a powerful model for us all and the media at large to follow. Its timing couldn't be better. RB
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: The Foundation for Human Enrichment is proud to support and endorse Beyond the Trauma Vortex by Ms. Gina Ross. This book is a top seller in our home office and at conferences presented by Dr. Peter Levine. Our Somatic Experiencing® Practitioners and students have frequently commented that Ms. Ross's book is powerful and revolutionary. We have a hard time keeping this one on the shelf!
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: The Foundation for Human Enrichment is proud to support and endorse Beyond the Trauma Vortex by Ms. Gina Ross. This book is a top seller in our home office and at conferences presented by Dr. Peter Levine. Our Somatic Experiencing® Practitioners and students have frequently commented that Ms. Ross's book is powerful and revolutionary. We have a hard time keeping this one on the shelf!
Rating:
Summary: excellent approach
Review: This book is the best tool I've ever met to deal with trauma's result. It enables you to totally discharge the negative energy restored by your body as a result of traumatic expirience. I used it on my wife after a car accident and it worked excellently. I highly reccomand it to anyone. It can surely help the peoples in the middle-east to find peace.
<< 1 >>
| 
