Treating PTSD: How Do You Do PTSD?

Setting goals is good; knowing why you need to set goals and what you’re setting them for is even better. Today, it’s time to recognize just how much you participate in your PTSD experience.

Ouch. I know that hurt. It was tough for me, too. When I was still struggling with PTSD I never would have admitted that my own thought processess were contributing to how I felt. Time to ‘fess up, truth out and carry on.

The question today: What’s happening in your head?

You don’t wake up and feel depressed for no reason, so rewind the movie and figure out how it all begins. For example, when I recently put this question to a client he said,

“I feel depressed because beginning the second I wake up I start thinking about this one particular aspect of my traumatic experience. And then I hear my own voice saying, ‘I can’t be healed’, and then I see signs everywhere that I’m doomed to failure.”

Well, yeah, if that’s what you’re feeling, hearing and seeing no wonder PTSD seems to be winning. However….

If you back up that process to the begining and analyze it, a couple of interesting things become apparent:

1. You are the actor here: you wake up and immediately begin thinking of your trauma
2. One particular aspect of your trauma supercedes all the others
3. You compound your thoughts by adding your voice
4. You compound these actions by giving meaning to otherwise unspecified objects as symbols

Reaching your healing goals is so much easier when you have an idea of what’s getting in the way of reaching them.

Look back at my client’s paragraph about the process. Let’s imagine some steps that would change things right away:

1. Wake up and immediately begin running in your mind a movie of your favorite, most happy/peaceful/exciting memory.
2. Say to yourself, “I can and will and want and deserve to be healed and TODAY I’m one step closer!”
3. Look for signs you’re on the right path: A butterfly crosses the sidewalk in front of you. You catch all the lights on the way to work. (See how easy this is?!) We find what we seek. Make sure you look for the right things.

Now, what’s your process?

BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise

Imagine that tomorrow you will have the day off from PTSD. Imagine a temp will be performing this job function for you. Today, you need train that person, which means you have to tell him or her exactly how to do this activity we call PTSD.

If you had to explain to someone what they would need to do to feel the way you do,  what would you tell them?

Using my client’s statement as a guide, how would you describe what you do to make yourself feel the way you do? Put these actions into a bulleted list.

Now, go back to each item on the list and see how you could change that action to bring about a more positive outcome.

Need an example? I’ll give you my own: Every day I woke up and felt an almost absolute panic that I had to make my survival worthwhile. It wasn’t enough I had survived, I now had to do something that made me worthy of that survival. This thought began the moment I woke. It was the feeling that pushed me through the day and dragged me around all night.

But what if I had woken up and instead of making myself prove I was worthy of surviving I instead said, “I worked hard to survive and because I did such a good job I did survive! And now, I get to relax and enjoy the rest of my life!”

What if I had woken up and seen each day as a gift instead of a demand? What if I had sought out joy in the present instead of surrounding myself with commands to honor the past?

Just these little shifts would have changed my whole experience, would have lessened the stress enormously and helped me heal earlier than I did.

What changes can you make that will help shift your experience and put you in a solid place from which to pursue your healing goals?

(Photo: Firespray1138)

Tags: Setting Healing Goals