Treating PTSD: You Have To Have A Goal
Monday, August 31st, 2009 • Uncategorized •
Today is the 28th anniversary of the beginning of my trauma. Five years ago I wouldn’t have told you that. Five years ago I wouldn’t have been able to handle the feelings this date brought up. Instead, I would have been complaining my hair was falling out at an alarming rate, I was sleeping even worse than usual and I felt like there was some presence shadowing me all day, walking behind me, a little bit to the left.
This year, however, my hair isn’t falling out. I slept seven straight, deep and restorative hours last night, and there are no shadows anymore. It’s a great day to begin Month Nine of the BRIDGE THE GAP healing workshop!
By working through these monthly subjects you are actively developing self-empowered resources to help support, sustain and energize your recovery. Way to go! Unless you participate, engage in and take responsiblity for your healing recovery will not come. When you focus your healing intention and take deliberate steps to commit to it your ability to find healing dramatically increases. When I began giving myself a plan my healing became more focused and effective.
Today, we begin exploring Healing Resolution #9: I WILL SET HEALING GOALS.
Think about the things you have accomplished in your life. Perhaps you ran a marathon, or studied for an important test. Maybe you saved money for a big purchase or taught yourself a new skill. In all of these you would have automatically given yourself goals for what to accomplish by when. You would have run two miles a day for a week, and then added to miles a week to build yourself up to twenty-six miles by the time of the event. You would have decided to set aside $X each week to have the money you wanted by a certain date. Setting goals for yourself in the thing you want to achieve is a natural action you already take. Are you applying it to healing?
The PTSD fog can make you forget even the most simple of achievement sequences. Not to worry! For the next four weeks we’re going to redevelop your ability to plan, manage and execute your recovery process.
BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise
The first step in setting healing goals is recognizing what those goals are. Today, take some time to assess your healing desires. What do you really want to heal? Breaking down the overall goal of The Ultimate Freedom into smaller components makes it easier to accomplish.
Make a list of your PTSD symptoms and complaints. Put them in the order of most severe to least severe. This one simple activity will help you see what’s most important to you. It will also help you prioritize your healing goals.
For example, if your therapy is working most directly on quelling your anger but your biggest issue is hypervigilance, it would help to reassess your healing schedule. Deal with the hypervigilance first and the anger may abate by itself.
Being aware of what you want, and then strategizing about how to get it – setting goals for what you do and how you do it – helps take the chaos out of healing. Now that’s a goal in itself!
How do you plan and strategize your healing process? Share your tips in the comments!
(Photo: dayrain)
Tags: fog, goals, healing, ptsd, recovery, resources, Setting Healing Goals
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“How do you plan and strategize your healing process?” I have been trying to find a way to answer this question and not having much luck with it. Not because I don’t have an answer but rather because there are too many.
The first was to give myself permission to let “it” out instead of keeping it in.
Second yet more importantly was to withhold judgment.
The plan was to dump it all out on the table and sort through it after that. Because I had multiple traumas over a long period it was more like unraveling a tangled ball of yarn. I had to allow for incompletion along the way.
There were small daily goals medium and large goals all under the umbrella of the Big Goal. I made sure to surround myself with physical reminders of my sucesses no matter what they were. I would use those reminders like life rafts when I was sinking. I was also very assertive about creating an environment of positive triggers. If I was going to get triggered I might as well make it work for me instead of against me.
There are a million more goals items tasks and so on. Healing something like this is such a layered and complex effort. You have to work with your own mind and how you process things. It requires following your own clues about what is hurting you. You have to be willing to listen to youself and that is probably the hardest part of all.
I worked on the ones that most stopped me having a ‘normal’ life first. It is like untangling spaghetti but at the same time being afraid to go to a mall or be around strangers is much more damaging to life than nightmares or lack of exercise.
As long as you continue to work on what you can see needs work and are able to work on then gradually the spaghetti gets untangled and cleared away.
In the early days I focussed on desentisiation for all the triggers that would prevent me walking out the door. In later years I worked on everything that prevented me having a proper social life.
Through all this time I worked on the source of my nightmares.
There was no perfect plan.
@LeSan & Mike – We’re all thinking alike! Tomorrow’s post is about flexibility. Goals are great and understanding the process is not a direct path is so important.
I need to rethink my goals and make them smaller I think I took on to much at once. and when I couldnt do it I felt like I failed. working through this PTSD is like undoing 10 to 20 chains that are so knoted your not sure if you should just throw the ball away. Today is a new day, I will try again.
@Lorrie – Now THAT’S the way to look at it! I like the image of the ball of knotted chains. If we wanted the chains and decided it was worth the effort we’d sit down knowing that unknotting them would take a great deal of time and patience, things that are also necessary in healing PTSD.
Goal setting can be a goal itself in the beginning when the overwhelm is like a tidal wave. I recommend really small goals focused on self-care and self-love. ALso goals should reflect the physical needs of PTSD such as calming down the nervous system, eating healthily to support the body through such an intense time and clearing symptoms.
Michele,
Great minds think alike! I echo your approach in “breaking it down” to smaller pieces. Here’s a warrior’s perspective: http://thewarriornationsitrep.blogspot.com/2010/05/waging-war-on-ptsd-objective.html
All the best,
Beau