How To Heal PTSD

OK, so you read the previous post on reaching out and you thought, “Hell, no! I’m not ready to be a Chatty Cathy.”

That’s cool. No need to rush into healing head first. You can sidle around the idea; circle it like a puppy before he chooses to lie down on a big fluffy pillow.

For now, reaching out can actually be done in private in the comfort of your own home. (This is just in the beginning – don’t get too comfortable with the fact that you can always reach out without personally interacting!)

The first step toward reaching out does not have to be a big one. Often I write and speak about the proactive things we need to do to heal. However, sometimes reaching out means sitting still and doing nothing at all but listening to the voices around us. In order to fully reach out and engage in healing and the world outside PTSD – which is where you eventually want to end up feeling comfortable and functional – it helps to hear that others are thinking the way you do, are as confused, troubled and stumped as you are, and are working as hard at figuring it all out, too. Do this more. Find a wide range of PTSD bloggers you can check in with every day. Learn from them. Educate them. Befriend them.

Look, this is easy to do – you’re already doing it (you’re here on this blog, aren’t you?). I’m just asking you to do it a little more. There are plenty of us speaking out about PTSD. Are you listening to the others? Some bloggers chronicle their daily struggle; others approach things from the academic point of view. We’re all in a similar boat.

If you take little time to find the other PTSD bloggers out there, you’ll expand your range of information, emotion and experience. This is good to do. It gives us perspective. Carefully choose who you follow so that you’re reading posts that benefit rather than depress or trigger you. There are several bloggers who are honest in their struggle but not self-destructive or self-indulgent. The quest is to find bloggers writing about PTSD in a proactive, self-aware voice.

When you’ve got a good list (this can be between 3 – 5 blogs) begin to engage in the conversations. Every blog post is an open invitation for someone to jump in. Are you leaving comments on the posts that resonate with you? Why not?? You are an expert in your experience. What you think, feel and understand is valid and might lead someone else to a new comprehension. It’s time to begin letting your thoughts out into the blogosphere.

BRDIGE THE GAP exercise:

Today, reach out in the smallest of ways: As you surf the net begin to leave comments on the blogs that strike a chord in you. Is there something I’ve written in an earlier post that you thought, “Oh, yeah! I feel that way, too!”? Go back to the post and leave a comment. You can do this anonymously. You can begin to flex your reach out muscle without any of us asking you for a bigger commitment.

When you find other PTSD bloggers who write clearly and with emotion, use all of our words to tap into your own experience, and then reach out to tap into the energy of the collective community. Make at least 5 comments on blog posts that ring a bell in your own self. This can be 5 comments on one blog, or spread the love around and meet some new bloggers. The point is to respond to what bloggers are saying by telling them you agree or disagree, that you feel that way or similarly, that you’ve discovered this has helped or that has hurt. As long as you’re respectful you can say whatever comes to mind so: Read and feel and then translate that into words that reach out and bridge the gap between you and the blogger and his/her community.

To get you started, I offer you these three PTSD bloggers:

Catatonic Kid has a great post today about fear and love. I already left a comment because her words so completely tapped into my own experience.

PTSD, A Soldier’s Perspective today has an in-depth exploration about why vets’ patience, value structure and sense of self change in the post-combat environment.

Broken Brain – Brilliant Mind chronicles daily life with a mild TBI and PTSD.

Do some sleuthing and searching. Read with an ear for your own heart’s voice and an eye for appropriate opportunities to engage in the discussion, whether that means adding to one that’s ongoing or writing the first comment to kick off a conversation.

And then come back here and let us all benefit from your adventure! If you come across other PTSD oriented blogs that you feel have a great voice and focus on valid topics, post the links in the comments.

Reaching out means getting comfortable letting people know your PTSD self. That’s it. I’m not asking you to strip down to the whole you – yet. But stop being content to let the rest of us do all the work. You have thoughts, ideas and opinions that matter – let the world hear them!

(Photo: unfocused mike)

A lot going on recently. We wrapped up PTSD Healing Resolution No. 2. Today, we begin PTSD Healing Resolution No. 3: I WILL REACH OUT.

I want to begin by telling you a brief story:

Every Presidents’ Day weekend in Jupiter, FL, we have Artigras, an enormous art show featuring some of the best artists from around the country. It’s a juried show, so the quality of art is very high. My mom and I always go together to ramble through the stalls and spend the day together outside in the Florida winter sun.

This year, there was an exhibitor whose art is backpainted glass. Eric Lee of Presteau Studios does things with color that make me want to jump into a vat of paint and splash around. I’m not a visual person, but I fell in love with the vibrancy of the colors and the way he uses his brush to create swaths of life-affirming brilliance on the glass. Eric wasn’t in the booth, so I got to chatting with Pam (his wife and business partner) who is the kind of person you immediately feel comfortable with and want to sit down with for a long chat. Her eyes are bright, her smile quick and her laugh even quicker. She’s a happy soul. You feel good just being around her.
After looking through all of the pieces for sale, I chose a piece of art for my office – a long, horizontal electric-over-late-evening-blue piece with a wave coming out of a sort of mist at one end trailing across the glass to the other end. (If I was more tech savvy – which I will be soon – I’d upload a picture. For now, you’ll have to use your imagination.)
As we discussed the piece, I told Pam I wanted it for above my desk. I’m doing a lot of PTSD advocacy work, I told her, and the blue will add a calming and soothing but creative energy to the room. To which Pam replied, she’d had PTSD, too. You can imagine how the conversation deepened and unfolded after that. We compared notes, commiserated, exchanged ideas on healing and became fast friends.

This is what happens when we do the most simple kind of reaching out: We easily and immediately find others like ourselves who are wanting and willing to share. We find we are not alone. We begin to build a community that celebrates our similarities instead of making us feel isolated in our uniqueness. We make friends whose insights and contributions to ways of thinking and healing become invaluable on our journey.

Last month on Parasites of the Mind we took a long, good look at the value of talking. Specifically, that meant finding ways to communicate the story of our trauma. This month, exploring the I WILL REACH OUT resolution will build on those skills in less specific ways. We will discover venues to reach out both in person and virtually, plus methods to do this that make us feel safe, secure and strong. The goal will be to widen the mix so that by the end of the month we are less alone, more surrounded by people who understand us, and more engaged with the world outside our PTSD.

Standing behind the booth chatting with Pam, I did not tell her the details of my trauma. It was enough for us both to say, “I had PTSD.” We instantly understood the road each other had traveled. She, too, has healed. When I asked her how, she said simply, “Love.” Pam reached out and connected with a man who has restored her faith in love and the world and whose relationship with her has encouraged her to discover and find her whole self again. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and even more wonderful to know her and now count her as a friend and so benefit from her wisdom. This kind of connection can happen any day. You never know when you will cross paths with someone whose past is similar to yours. You will never find those people unless you develop ways to reach out, and then act on them.

Since today is the birthday of Dr. Seuss, it seems appropriate to end with this Seussism, which I think would be a great healing anthem for us all:

T0day you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than you.
We should all celebrate who we are - traumatized, healing or healed. In honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, do something that appreciates You today. Any suggestions on what kind of things this would be? Leave a a comment or shoot me an email.

(Photo: Chat in the Hat)