In a common therapy resulting from this isolating orientation, the therapist instructs the PTSD victim to assert control over his feelings, to manage his aberrant behaviors and to alter his dysfunctional thoughts. Contrast this alignment to that of shamanic traditions, where the healer and the sufferer join together to reexperience the terror while calling on cosmic forces to release the grip of the demons. The shaman is always first initiated, via a profound encounter with his own helplessness and feeling of being shattered, prior to assuming the mantle of healer. Such preparation might
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