Treating PTSD: What do you love?

Constructing a post-trauma identity means starting over, taking a good look at your life and yourself and deciding, Yay or Nay. Yes, or No. Do I like this? If not, what would I like better? Now is the time for you to discover your true self lurking beneath all of those groovy PTSD symptoms.

Don’t know where to start? That’s easy. Your post-trauma identity challenge today, answer this question: What do I love?

Discovering your true self is pretty simple when you focus your attention the right way. You know very quickly I love this, I don’t love that. Our responses to things are instant, intuitive and instinctual. Your intuition and instincts make up a lot of who you are. They guide your chioces, reactions and actions. In PTSD this becomes confusing; instincts become muddled with PTSD interference. Today you begin sorting things through so that the love intuition begins to balance out the fear.

In deliberately constructing a post-trauma identity the goal is to hear the clear signal your self sends to you. Walk around mulling this question: What do I love? And then, answer it?

BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise

You know the drill now…. Find a quiet place where you can relax. Take a deep breath in, hold it at the top, let it out, Whoosh!. Allow your body to release all tension. Take another deep breath in, slowly, hold it, let it out. And again. Slowly. Go inward. Ride that spiral down from the outside world deeper and deeper and deeper relaxed and into the true you, the you that exists outside of time and history, experience and memory.

Buried deep within you is a pure self waiting for you to come and set it free. With every breath you take you get closer and closer to that heroic self that lies within you.

With every breath you release feel your body loosens and the more loose your body gets the more loose your mind becomes. As the tension drains out of your fingers and toes the ice in your mind begins to melt. Your imagination, which has been frozen by the chill of PTSD begins to thaw.

As the ice melts and your imagination warms feel the tingling sensation all over your body that is the anticipation of your post-trauma self. It is real. It is there waiting for you to rescue it and bring it out from the darkness into the light.

While you feel yourself getting closer and closer to your true self let a picture form in your mind: Imagine what you love. Do not try to force an image. Just breathe… and let an image or images of what you love form in your mind. I know you can see them. I know when you open your mind to feeling what you love you can hear the sounds of it and see the picture of it and smell the odors of it.

Follow these images. As if you’re diving into a pool of cool water go headfirst into the realm where what you love is all that exists. Notice what you see. Notice what you feel about these things. Notice what you hear when you think of what you love.

Sit in this place for a while surrounded by what you love. These are options available to you. These are places where you can put your focus, where you can ground your attention.

Your love for things exists as strongly and as purely as your fear. Whichever one you feed will be the one that grows. Which one will you feed? If you give your attention to the things you love these are the things that will guide your life. Following what you love will give you strength and power and help you make good decisions based on the truth of who you are. Fear distorts you; what you love – what you truly, purely love – lies at the essence of who you are. Notice what that is…. Feel it. See it. Hear it. Hold on to it.

When you have spent some very focused time on these images or image take a picture of the image(s) that provoke in you the strongest feeling of love. Study them. Make some mental notes about details.

It’s time to come back to the present moment. Reverse the spiral and move back up through yourself toward the moment you’re in. Bring these feelings and images of what you love with you.

Slowly feel your attention come back to the room. Hear the sounds outside of it. Feel the seat you’re in. Feel the floor beneath your feet. Feel the love hiding inside of you. Now, open your eyes and set it free.

(Photo: CharmingLiisa)

Tags: Constructing Post-Trauma Identity, free, Healing and Overcoming PTSD, image, love, ptsd, symptoms, what do i