PTSD Professional Perspective: Are you in denial?

Elizabeth Stanfill has been teaching stress management to Emergency Personnel for 16 years, and to the general population for a decade. I like her approach because it’s direct, to the point, upbeat and self-empowering. Today, she explains that denial is an enormous clue about the presence of stress. As in, post-traumatic stress….

Did you know denial is the number one sign of stress? In the medical field, a “sign” is something the medical professional can see and a symptom is something that the patient describes.When we are in denial we are usually unaware. We are unaware of the denial and unaware of the stress we are causing ourselves.

Denial is something I see quite frequently in people who come to me for help.

Oftentimes when people come to me they have high levels of stress. What I do is help them understand their stressful habits that are causing unhappiness so they may create successful practices. But, if they are in denial they cannot overcome their stressful habits.

The other day, someone said to me, “there is always room for improvement.” When she said it, it was like she was saying something she thought I wanted to hear. When she was saying it, I knew she didn’t believe it because she didn’t want any change at all. How do I know that someone doesn’t want change? I know because of their excuses.

If we have excuses why we can’t change our behavior or why our life is the way it is, then we are in denial. What I mean by excuses is, instead of trying something new, since what we are doing isn’t working, we have reasons why we cannot try something new.

If what we are doing is not working, we must try something new. The only way we get improvement is by trying something new, not by doing the same thing harder.

So many people come to me for help and they want me to fix things when the truth is, only they can fix things. As I always say, you are the boss of you. You are the only thinker of your thoughts. You are the only feeler of your feelings. You are the only actor of your actions.

It is time to take responsibility! Take responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, actions, and attitude. You can take responsibility of your thoughts by thinking about what you want and how to get it. You can take responsibility for your feelings by getting excited about life and feeling motivated. You can take responsibility for your actions by moving towards solutions to your problems and moving towards enjoying life. You can take responsibility for your attitude by being positive.

YOU GOT THE POWER!

If you are having a hard time with your stress, email me, elizabeth@destressyourself.com or call me 661-877-7800, and let me help you discover how to destress yourself. There is no reason anyone should not live with happiness, energy, and vitality no matter what you are going through.

Don’t forget to have fun and be playful, it’s in your nature!

Destress Yourself with Affirmations
Elizabeth Stanfill
www.destressyourself.com
http://destressyourself.blogspot.com
661-877-7800
elizabeth@destressyourself.com
Follow on Twitter @Stanfill

Tags: denial, elizabeth stanfill, post-traumatic, stress