Treating PTSD: The Joy of Positive Psychology
Monday, November 9th, 2009 • Uncategorized •
OK, survivors, I realize some of you might question how joy can help relieve symptoms of post-traumatic stress, or how it can help you overcome PTSD altogether. I realize some of you may wonder if my devotion to joy has any support in the field of psychology whatsoever.
I respect that. You’ve been struggling for a long time and new ideas are a dime a dozen and you don’t want to be disappointed if they don’t work. HOWEVER,
1. if what you’re doing isn’t freeing you then trying out a new technique is the only thing to do.
2. if your healing isn’t progressing the way or as quickly as you’d like now is the time to go in a new direction.
3. if you approach new ideas with the right perspective (i.e. “Let’s just see what this is about”) then your success may be better; putting more pressure on any modality makes it a stressful experience and, the harder we force things the less they work.
Developing a joy addiction and incorporating joy into your healing process should be, um, a joyful experience. Healing is tough work. You deserve to have some fun!
For those of you who like clinical evidence today’s post is for you. Seeking joy and developing a joy addiction were my Hail Mary for healing. All of the regular and alternative therapies weren’t helping me and I didn’t know what else to do. Seeking joy and developing a habit of incorporating it into my life was just a logical place to go to try to get out of my deep despair.
It wasn’t until later, after I had healed and become PTSD-free, that I stumbled upon the idea of ‘positive psychology’. And what do you know? It supports what I had intuitively decided to try (what does your intuition tell you to do??).
I ran a joy experiment but you have the, er, joy of utilizing this idea with the full support of the clinical field because…..:
According to the Positive Psychology Center,
One consequence of this focus on psychological problems, however, is that psychology has little to say about what makes life most worth living. Positive psychology proposes to correct this imbalance by focusing on strengths as well as weaknesses, on building the best things in life as well as repairing the worst. It asserts that human goodness and excellence is just as authentic as distress and disorder, that life entails more than the undoing of problems.
Tags: Joy, post-traumatic stress, ptsd, symptoms, The Healing Power of Joy
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I think it can be hard to feel joy for a long time when in the midst of PTSD. But then, when there’s a possibility for joy, I think some of us have forgotten how! And then… there may be feelings of guilt that keep us from being okay with feeling joy. Or, we might be struggling with letting go of suffering. So joy can feel like a huge leap!
So I think making joy a part of our healing can only happen once we’ve accepted we can heal, and have taken the first scary steps away from the relative safety of identifying with PTSD, I think its only then that joy makes sense.
And then, yeah, its pretty wonderful to allow your body and mind to remember happiness like that. And very inspiring to keep going, too!
[...] up for a minute today because Svasti, in her yogic sort of wisdom, made a great comment on Monday’s post about joy and the PTSD experience. I wanted to share it with you and explore it a little [...]