Treating PTSD: What Are You Afraid Of?

In my own PTSD healing I was very, very afraid. Afraid to give up my survivor identity. Afraid I would be obliterated by the emotions healing released. Afraid I’d get lost in the darkness of my own mind and never find the way out. Afraid my symptoms of post-traumatic stress would get exaggeratedly worse.

I was afraid healing would be so overwhelming I’d be out of control and lost. I was afraid of my self, the past, the present, and the future. Afraid of the possibility I would heal. Afraid of the possiblity I wouldn’t.

I was as afraid to say the words as I was to keep stuffing them down. I was afraid of who I was, had been and might become. Are you getting me? Throughout my recovery I was TERRIFIED.

Still, I carried on. I pushed forward. I drowned in fear and clawed my way back to the surface. I choked on fear, learned to hold my breath, regulate my breathing and exhale s-l-o-w-l-y. It’s absolutely natural to be uncertain, insecure and a ball of nerves while you walk over the necessary fire of recovery. None of that, however, is license to give up.

In my work with clients I see it over and over: The #1 thing stalling recovery is FEAR.

Tip #7 for Staying on the Healing Path: Acknowledge your fear but don’t give in to it. And if you do get bowed down, rise up and face your fear again. Anything in life worth achieving has risk attached. Any goal worth accomplishing requires more than a little courage and guts to get the glory. Expect you will be afraid. Accept you will be insecure, uncertain and unnerved. See it coming, meet the fear head on, wrangle it and build your strength. If healing was easy everyone would have done it yesterday. Healing is not easy. Don’t be shocked by the fear it instills in you. Know that walking through the fire of fear sears trauma with the burn of new experience and you… come out the other side renewed. Hold your up. Stand tall. Be brave. Walk on.

BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise:

Feel like your fear(s) is bigger than you are? You’re in luck, it only feels that way. The truth is that the fear of healing is of your own making, which means you can unmake it. Here’s how:

Sit in a safe and quiet place. Invite the feeling of healing fear to come into and wash over you. Be very aware what thoughts, ideas and emotions flood your mind and body.

It’s time to take control. Make a list (like I did above) of what frightens you about healing. The first way to bring fear down to size is to make it concrete. The more it whirs around your head the bigger it gets.

Write as many fears as you can think of. When you’ve exhausted your ideas, order the items beginning with the number one most enormous fear, all the way down to the smaller fears.

Good! With each step now you take more and more control. Keep going…

Consider your biggest fear. Is it really plausible? Forget how it feels now and consider it coldly. Could your fear really happen? Sometimes, when we get objective we can see, like a child looking under the bed, that what we’re afraid of is only a meaningless shadow. You didn’t need to be afraid and so the fear naturally ebbs.

On the other hand, you might very well believe the fear is legitimate. If that’s the case, right now, today, put an action plan in place, intall boundaries to keep what you fear from happening.

For example, whenever I was very afraid I was getting too far into my own head I took myself out into the city where I lived. I forced myself to get out of my apartment, to be around strangers whom I could observe nonchalantly living their lives. If I was out among people I felt less afraid that I would get lost inside myself. If I could connect to my surroundings they would anchor me in what felt like safety.

What makes you feel better? What makes you feel safe and connected and secure? Figure out what that is and bring more of that experience into your healing.

Don’t forget to join me for a special BTR radio show today @ 1pm EST: Healing and Creative Play with trauma therapist, Tanya Ruckstuhl-Valenti. For info, click here. Can’t make it? No sweat, listen to the archive at your convenience.

(Photo acknowledgement on Flickr.)

Tags: healing, post-traumatic, ptsd, recovery, Staying on the Healing Path, trauma