I am Gary Scott Martin. I am the oldest of three children and the only son of Conrad Lee Martin, Jr. and Loretta Ollie Thomson. (May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.) I am a first-generation Californian. I was born in Long Beach, lived briefly in Santa Maria/Orcutt, grew up in Nipomo, went to college in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, and have resided in Tehachapi for my entire adult life (excepting the academic year of August 1985 through August 1986, spent in Palo Alto). I have been married to Kathy Ann Nusbaum since 1978. We have a daughter and a son. We have five grandchildren. We have been parishioners at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church here in Tehachapi since we were newlyweds. I am a 1974 graduate of St. Joseph's High School in Santa Maria, California; a 1978 graduate of the University of So...
*Title borrowed from a series of articles by Sandra L. Bloom, M.D., published in the Psychotherapy Review in September, October, and December of 2000. I highly recommend the series. #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth #RelationalTraumaReaction #RTR #ComplexTrauma #cPTSD #Depression #Retraumatized #IFS #InternalFamilySystemsTherapy #CBT #REBT Prologue I wrote and updated this piece to raise awareness of a mental health condition that I believe to be too common, relational trauma reaction (RTR). RTR is more commonly referred to as complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD). cPTSD is an accepted diagnosis under the World Health Organization's (WHO's) International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11). The symptoms of RTR/cPTSD are summarized in this download from the Out of the Storm Online Community . However, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declined to include cPTSD in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental...