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REGISTERED NURSE EXPLORES ALTERNATIVE STRESS
THERAPIES -- "We've learned so much from
Vietnam
veterans on the streets. They've taught me what
works."
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http://www.theadvertiser.
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Health professional brings new strategy to
helping veterans cope
Laroussini focuses on what therapies coax best
reponse from the brain
Bruce Brown
bbrown@theadvertiser.com
Jill Laroussini has volunteered at enough homeless shelters to see what
happens when veterans don't get the support they need when they come
home from war.
That's why she wants to make life different for current veterans coming
back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We've learned so much from Vietnam veterans on the streets," said
Laroussini, a registered nurse who teaches at UL and has brought
students to homeless locations in Lafayette for some 14 years. "They've
taught me what works.
Research by Laroussini and others has found that Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, as well as other forms of trauma, can be treated in a number
of ways. She advocates supplementing conventional medicine with healing
practices such as meditation, yoga or expressive arts.
That approach reflects studies on how the brain processes traumatic
events, with the left side of the brain handling verbal and language
skills and the right side more attuned to visual, feelings and
sensations.
The left side of the brain processes information in a linear manner. It
processes from part to whole. The right brain processes from whole to
parts, holistically. It starts with the answer. It sees the big picture
first, not the details.
"A traumatized brain is compelled to train its focus away from language
and verbal content, and to fix instead on nonverbal danger cues - body
movements, facial expressions, tone of voice - searching for
threat-related information," said BelleRuth Naparstek, author of
Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal and an
inspiration for Laroussini.
"The right brain is much more active than the left brain after trauma,"
Laroussini said. "There is no language for what just happened to them.
You need to go to a place that's more active, more receptive.
"You can find empowering information that will settle this body, to find
that resource, that happy place. New research indicates that talk
therapy may not be the best. Talk therapy has its place, but mind-body
research is empowering to the individual."
Laroussini treats soldiers using guided imagery, aromatherapy and light
touch to bring the body back to calm. She has had success as a
volunteer, working with the approval of the Louisiana National Guard in
numerous sessions to help veterans find peace.
She stressed that most veterans will heal, eventually, and that the
human brain has the capability to remodel itself for "leaner, meaner
pathways." That ability is called plasticity, and it offers options for
treatment.
"When you're exposed, 24-7, to scan for threats, when you're constantly
in that fight, flight or freeze mode, you will wear yourself out,"
Laroussini said. "You get to the point of disregulation. You can get
stuck in hyper-vigilance, or stuck in depression, or vascillate from
both.
"We need to help them find that resource."
Just as the brain can adapt, so too does the body have "an amazing,
innate ability to heal itself," Laroussini said. "The body must have
some wisdom. In this country, we study illness more than wellness. We
need self-soothing skills."
Those who have worked with tsunami victims have found Eastern people
recognize the body and what it can do, while the Western mind wants to
analyze with logic, at times overlooking the body's self-healing
ability.
Laroussini helped start the Ready4theReturn.org Web site as a member of
the Wholisticwellnessnetwork.org, in her pursuit of a more enlightened,
soothing way to bring peace back to returning warriors - a re-set button
that clears the thoughts so they can focus on life.
"We didn't have this for Vietnam veterans," Laroussini said. "I've seen
the faces. I don't want to look up in 20 years and see those faces
again."
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Larry Scott --
