How To Heal PTSD

Healing PTSD: Courage, Baby, Courage

Getting back to Mark Twain, let’s take a look at the role of courage in the commitment mix. It’s easier to remain committed when we feel strongly supported in our actions by a deep resolve within.

But where does that resolve come from? Sometimes our introduction to our own courage comes from an external source, like it did for me. But in our healing journey we can’t depend on anything outside of ourselves to support us or to give us “a quality of spirit that enables [us] to face danger or pain without showing fear”. If we have an external source of courage, that’s great. But lacking that, we must create our own source.

Take a minute to think about where your courage comes from. We all have it, that quiet reserve of strength that, like the good set of china, we keep tucked away for a special occasion. Well, kids, healing PTSD is that special occasion. It’s time to dust off that courage, take it out, set it on the table, polish it up and prepare to allow its beautiful presence to infuse your ordinary day with extraordinary beauty.

If you can’t pinpoint the source of your courage – no problem! Map its source right now. Think back to times in your life when you felt courageous. What made you feel the swell of courage then? Make a list of elements, characteristics, traits, actions, and emotions surrounding that memory. Set a timer for 5 minutes. List as many qualities as you can until the time runs out. Then, read over the list. Which examples do you value most? Congratulations! These are all part of you. We hold an endless reservoir of courage in ourselves. It does not get used up. If you accessed courage once, you can do it again. Take a long look at the list you just made; this is who you are. That you don’t feel this way in the moment is irrelevant. This is your potential. You were this once; you can be again. Walk around today reminding yourself of the things on the list. Say to yourself, ‘I am ____________”. In this BRIDGE THE GAP rediscovery process it’s important for you to recognize the strength you do inherently possess. And then to begin to exude it. Life’s daily challenges give us plenty of opportunities to flex the muscle of the qualities that support, enhance or signal the presence of courage. Find them in each day. Practice your connection to your courage. Make locating and utilizing it as simple as a habit and it will support you in all the things you set your mind to do.

Don’t have any memories that showcase your courageous self? No sweat. Take a look around. Who do you know (or know of) that exhibits courage? Think of real life stories of those around you; think of characters in books you’ve read or movies you’ve seen. Think of celebrities, journalists, people in the public eye. Choose a figure who embodies courage as you perceive it. Now, take some time to make a list of the courageous qualities that person exhibits. What are they? When you clearly see what qualities you admire you can begin to adopt them yourself. Each day you will bump into opportunities to develop a quiet strength, an outspoken energy, a dogged pursuit of what’s right despite the cost to yourself – whatever makes up the definition of courage to you. Look for these chances to call up your courage from within. When we get in the habit of connecting with this part of ourselves on a small scale it’s easier to engage it during those times we really need it, like, say, turning our back on the past and bravely marching into an uncharted future.

To give you added inspiration – words of courage from sources who know something about it:

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death. ~Harold Wilson

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says… I’ll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey

Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid and act anyway. ~Robert Anthony

Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it. ~Tori Amos

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again. ~Anonymous

Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. ~Anonymous

True courage is not the absence of fear — but the willingness to proceed in spite of it. ~Anonymous

(photo: elvy)

PTSD Healing Resolution #1:

Are You Committed?

Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to and mastery of fear – not the absence of it.”

How are you feeling these days? Are you afraid? Well, of course you are, at least a little. You’re about to radically change your life – for the better! Even if we’re looking at a bright new future there’s always that little twinge of the unknown, that small flip of doubt that we’re safe in what we know and unsure of what we don’t know and maybe things are better that way. (Really? Are you really still thinking that? Do you truly want to spend the rest of your life mired in PTSD muck?? I didn’t think so.)

In order to move forward we have to take the strength of our healing intention and build it into reality. This takes commitment, which is the theme of the BRIDGE THE GAP posts this week.

First, let’s assess the level of your commitment. The way I see it there are four categories of commitment:

False commitment: This is the first phase in which we think about what needs to be done and we are overwhelmed. We say, “Yes, I want to heal!”, but what we really mean is, “Yes, that’s a nice idea!” We don’t actually intend to do the necessary work.

Half-hearted commitment: A better phase on the commitment continuum, to be sure, but not a lot gets done here. We make the appointments, we show up for the therapies, but all along we’re saying to everyone, “Heal me!” We don’t take the responsibility on ourselves.

Whole-hearted commitment: Now we’re moving up on the commitment food chain! We’re doing the research to find the right therapy, therapist, group, and program. We’re studying up on what’s happening to us PTSD-wise so that we understand where the problems germinate and what affects them. We’re taking control instead of constantly being controlled. Whoopee!

True commitment: Hallelujah! At this level we’re devoting our deepest selves to the healing process. We are saying, “I want to be healed!” In addition to understanding the value of participating in the work that’s done without, we’re also deeply engaged in the work that’s done within and we’re doing it every day.

Where do you fall in the commitment continuum? Take some time today to think about how deeply your desire to be well goes. What will you do to achieve it? Will you chase down that new therapist? Will you read one more book about trauma and PTSD and how to heal? Will you totally dismantle your PTSD self and reconstruct a new and improved, post-trauma identity that allows you to get on with living the life you were meant to be living?

Be honest in your appraisal of which commitment phase you’re in. And then, make a list of what things you will have to do to move to the next phase. Don’t try to leapfrog phases. The best healing comes organically when we progress through a series of moves that build on each other. Trauma severed us from a logical progression of change; healing is built one natural piece at a time so that the change becomes who we are, not a splintered effect of who we could be.

(photo: Koog Family)

HEALING PTSD:

DEFINING WHAT YOU WANT, PART 2

Well, were you surprised by all the things you desire about PTSD? Funny, isn’t it, how you can feel emotionally flatlined, but when given a chance to let some emotion bubble up you actually have a lot to say? I was surprised by this myself. When I received my PTSD diagnosis and finally began to understand what had been wrong with me all those years; when things finally began to make sense and I could target what I wanted to change about my life, I began to feel separate from PTSD. Whereas I’d been living as its captor, I suddenly began to feel it more as a condition and less of who I truly was. This little bit of space between us allowed me to see PTSD in its individual components the way we might see any competitor – and so I began thinking of it as such, and about why I wanted to beat it and from there, what I would do so that would be so and all of this want and why brought out a slow trickle of manageable emotions like a small army to support my quest for healing.

I’ve talked about desire before - as in, the desire to be well and the importance of our participation in that. Today though, I’m going to continue evolving that term (because the nuances of words, like we do, also change over time): I want to deepen this idea of desire to apply to what drives us every day outside of PTSD. In fact, today I want to forget about PTSD entirely. I don’t care about it. It’s not important. In constructing a post-trauma identity - which is the whole point of the BRIDGE THE GAP healing process - PTSD takes a backseat to YOU.

Beneath the PTSD symptoms, the real, untraumatized you has desires. You’re wrong if you think he or she doesn’t. The roar of PTSD is just so much louder than the voice of your inner self that if you don’t make the effort to listen you don’t get to hear the real you. When you wrote out your list of PTSD desires you began to listen to and woo your real voice. Let’s keep that up. PTSD plunges us into a deep internal silence. Part of healing is learning to make some noise.

I’ll give you a short example: Deep in PTSD, I graduated college and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have and couldn’t sustain any single motivation, desire or focus. I bounced around to a different job pretty much every year for 15 years. After I began trauma therapy (but before my PTSD diagnosis), the symptoms lessened enough for me to be a little more focused. I decided to take some time off from career hopping to investigate what I really wanted to do. It took six months of waiting for my inner voice to speak up and speak clearly, but when the answer came, I listened to it. I have been a writer since I was seven years old. The voice wanted to go back to school for an MFA in Poetry. And what did the voice want to do after that? It didn’t know, but I listened to it. I went back to school, and it’s amazing: when we do what we really want things begin to fall into place. Going back to school led me to fall into a teaching job, which led me into a university teaching career that I stuck with for four whole years before I moved out of New York City.

Desire to heal is strengthened by our desire to do something – what is that for you? Here’s your BRIDGE THE GAP exercise for today:

Get out that pen and paper again. At the top of the page write, ‘What I really want to do is…’ This can be career, family, lifestyle, sport — anything.
For example:

I want to learn to kite surf.
I want to travel to the Galapagos Islands.
I want to take a cooking class.
I want to try golf.
I want to see the sunrise.
I want to become a third degree black belt.

Don’t try to think big or small, just think. Sit still and let that inner voice work its way up through your center until the words come out. What do you want? What have you always wanted but been afraid to try? What have you recently realized you desire in your life? I want, I want, I want… When was the last time your gave yourself permission to use those words? Life is about experiences. What experiences do you wish for?

Set a timer for 5 minutes and write everything that comes to mind. Don’t worry about or check spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Do not edit your thoughts for brilliance or stupidity. Remember, there is no right or wrong here; there is only your voice on the page. When the 5 minutes is up, take a highlighter and read through what you’ve written; highlight the desires that seem most important. This can be all or just a few.
Now, put those individually highlighted things into a list so you can easily see them. Set the timer again and take the first thing on the list; finish this sentence: ‘I want to _____ because….’ If you finish before the timer goes off, keep writing about anything that comes to mind. It can be what to buy at the grocery store or what CD albums you want to buy. The important thing is to keep writing. As you do, new thoughts about the original sentence will come to you. When they do, allow yourself to switch topics in mid-stream and get back to the original question.

When the 5 minutes is up set the timer again, take the next item on your desire list and repeat the process. You don’t have to do this all in one sitting. This can be done over a series of days. The point is to continue with this exercise until you’ve written about each thing so thoroughly you know exactly why you want what you want.

When you’ve completed this task, sit back, congratulate yourself and treat yourself to a reward. Go buy one of those CD albums. Forget about the groceries; take yourself out for a meal. It’s time to celebrate! You’ve just begun the inner dialogue that’s going to lay the foundation for your entire post-trauma identity.

(photo: Oh My Rachael)

HEALING PTSD:

DEFINING WHAT YOU WANT

It is not possible to survive trauma and remain unchanged – we all know that. But the truth is, we’re all changing all the time anyway. Trauma just makes us notice it in a bigger, more calamitous way. But think back for a minute. Are you exactly the same person you were at age 5? Age 25? Age (fill in the appropriate number)? The answer is, NO. We are always evolving in subtle ways, sometimes so imperceptibly we don’t even notice, but the truth is, while there is a core self, there’s also an evolutionary self. Our inner life is sort of like the solar system: there’s a constant sun, and then planets that revolve around it. In PTSD our solar system has been swallowed by a Black Hole, but somewhere in another galaxy the sun still exists and our goal is to get back into orbit around it.

Deepak Chopra explains it this way:

“I” never goes. Only “I am this or that” goes. Ultimately, enlightenment is for you to always be grounded in “I,” but the limited, “I am this or that,” goes.

You had a sense of “I” when you were a baby. You had a sense of “I” when you were a teenager. You have a sense of “I” now. You’ll have a sense of “I” when you are an old person. But, in each of these cases that sense of “I” will be identifying itself with a different person. The baby’s not the person you’re in now. You have a different body, different ego, different personality, different thoughts, and a different way of looking at the world.

The problem with trauma is the shock. Rather than changing gradually from a child to a teen, we change in an instant from powerful to powerless. Over the course of any trauma, lasting one day or over several years, we can all think of at least one moment in which we felt ourselves violated and so immediately altered for the worse.

But we are mutable beings, with free will – we do not have to remain stuck in this altered, sad, horrible state. We can choose to alter again, this time for the better. The question is, How? While the answer and the path vary for each of us, the core for all of us is the same:

In order to revamp ourselves, we need to get back to basics, to know ourselves again. But not our traumatized selves. We know those all too well! Instead, we need to pull aside the curtain of PTSD and see who’s huddling behind there. What is his or her desire? Knowing who we are has a lot to do with knowing what we want. Which has a lot to do with healing and moving on to live a joyful, productive life.

Desire is defined as:

To want strongly; the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state; hope: expect and wish; an inclination; a natural state of longing.

You have those feelings over a lot of things. This week, as part of the BRIDGE THE GAP healing process we’re going to focus on reclaiming your desire.

First, we turn our attention to what those desires are in the PTSD state.

Today, let’s flex your desire muscle by getting a clear picture of all of the PTSD desires you have. We all walk around with this summary wish: I want not to feel this way. But let’s flesh that out a little.

Make a list of what you want that is PTSD related. For example:

I want the past to let me go.
I want the nightmares to stop.
I want the flashbacks to end.
I want to sleep through the night.
I want to not be so anxious.

I know I haven’t tapped out your daily PTSD-related desires. Add 10 more ‘wants’ to this list. And then keep going! I used to teach creativity and writing. One of my favorite exercises with my students was to give them a prompt and a time limit and then let them just free flow their ideas. The first things that come out are at the top of your consciousness, but the really interesting things surface when you’ve tapped the easy stuff and then keep on going.

When you have some time today, sit down with paper and pen. At the top of the page write, ‘PTSD things I want to be rid of’. Then set a timer for 5 minutes and write all of the PTSD symptoms and experiences and thoughts you want to end, be rid of and eliminate. Don’t worry about or check spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. Do not edit your thoughts for brilliance or stupidity. There is no right or wrong here; there is only your voice on the page.

When the 5 minutes is up, take a highlighter and read through what you’ve written; highlight the desires that seem most important. This can be all or just a few.

Now, set the timer again and finish this sentence: ‘I want to be rid of these things because….’

It’s not only important to know what we want, but why we want it. Understanding ourselves deepens and supports our intentions, which helps us focus so they can be achieved.

We spend so much time silently suffering, suppressing our desires, tamping down our personalities just so we can cope. Today, let your personality stretch itself a little, give it some exercise. Freeing ourselves from PTSD means freeing ourselves from everything about it. Give those suppressions a voice. I can hear them; they’re calling you.

(photo: tyla’75)

4 Ways to Boost Belief in Healing 

1 – Believe in the power of your own mind. Get hip to the idea of quantum physics and its ability to support healing. I know, I know, QM sounds freaky, but it’s really an everyday occurrence and we lay people ought to know how (and that) it works. On the most simple level, I’m talking about using the power of your own mind to boost your belief in your ability to heal. Quantum physics is a branch of science that deals with discrete units of energy (like, say, your thoughts) and how those tiny units of energy can effect big things. This article from Kirsten Harrell explains this idea and how it relates to the power of intention.

2 – Take some time to think about your ability to heal. Check out this ‘Believe You Will Succeed’ exercise by Nick Best. My discovery of his process began with an article he wrote called ‘Developing Self-Belief – The 10 Step Process’, which I thought laid out a great foundation for the development of belief in anything we hope to achieve, including PTSD healing. But then I read on and found that Best had actually devised a more deep and expanded process for getting down to our core beliefs and reinforcing them. Take some time to work it through as a way to bolster your healing intention!

3 – Get familiar with the fact that people self-recover from mental illness every day. It’s time to do some reading! And time to admit you are not unique, special or terminally chained to PTSD. The National Empowerment Center has tons of information and resources for healing mental illness — not treating, but HEALING. As in, it can be done! Recovery, Inc. also offers a program and mindset that believes in the power of us to heal ourselves. Both organizations have good reading material as well as local options to support your healing adventure. On both sites you will find proof that regular people – that would include you – recover from serious mental illness all the time. Their secret? They choose to, and then they make the effort!

4 – Get a sense of humor. We have more strength to believe in the possibilities of what we can achieve when we’re happy, when we laugh, when we are amused. Staying stuck in our depression only further supports our belief that we cannot heal – a belief that is false. In order to support and enhance the belief that you can heal, you’ll have to actively take some time to lighten up your perspective. As you’ll see in this clip, ‘Medical Benefits of Laughter’ only 15 minutes of laughter a day can positively affect your physical body, which in turn affects your mental self, power and strength. Think I’m kidding about this? There is actually a model of therapy called ‘Laughter Therapy’ as you’ll see demonstrated in this clip. (It’s crazy enough to make you giggle just watching it.) But seriously, start to look for things to make you laugh. Watch a funny movie. Listen to a side-splitting comedian. Get into the habit of reconnecting to that self that thinks there is humor in the world; it’s also that self that contains hope, resilience and the ability to heal PTSD.
(photo: Steve Grunberger)