Treating PTSD: Taking Control of the Picture

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Trauma makes you feel powerless. PTSD makes you feel powerless. I read an article today, it lists causes of PTSD as the usual life-threatening events plus: extreme feelings of powerlessness.

Stands to reason that even when you want to heal your initial overriding emotion would be one of, you got it: powerlessness.

But you are not powerless. Your trauma is no longer present tense. If you are on a healing path then your trauma is behind you – this is a fact that is often easy to forget.

And if your past is behind you then theoretically it no longer controls the moment you’re in. Your mind now controls the moment, and your mind may be feeling powerless, so of course, so do you.

Healing PTSD means taking back your power, one step at a time, one day at a time, one action at a time.

Your post-trauma identity challenge today: Begin taking back the power of your mind.

This goes beyond mindfullness and being in the moment. It goes beyond telling your mind what you want it to think and feel and know. I’m talking about deliberately creating the details your mind sees.

Think you can’t do that? Think again.You are an artist. You create what pictures exist in your mind. You’re the photographer, director, sculptor, illustrator and painter.

What you see is what you decide. What will that be??

BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise

Today, we get rid of the wall. For those of you who think you cannot see the future, or who see a wall or a blank space when you try, this one’s for you:

Imagine the future you. Call up and summon a picture in your mind of you without PTSD, of you with a good, full, meaningful life without any PTSD symptoms whatsover. What picture forms in your mind?

If the frame is still blank or white or all you see is a wall, try this:

1- put a black border around the space
2 – shrink the bordered space down to the size of a small Post-It
3- shift it down to the bottom of your frame of vision, and off to the side
4- make the image very blurry
5- make the image very dark  so that it becomes a black shadow

6- now, look back where the wall was; what do you see?
7- turn up the brightness; there’s a knob in your mind for this, turn it to 10
8- make the picture very big
9- make the picture very focused
10- take a step closer to it; reach your hand out toward it

What do you see when you reach out your hand?

This doesn’t have to be an entire picture of yourself. It can be you from the knee down in skis boots. It can be your right arm and hand holding a lasso.

Let the picture be whatever it wants to be.

Describe it.

(Photo: Mike Baird)

Tags: artist, causes, Constructing Post-Trauma Identity, healing, mindfulness, picture, power, powerlessness, ptsd, see