Treating PTSD: What Are You Thinking?
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 • Uncategorized •
I’ll come clean with you — I wasn’t always so positive about PTSD healing. In addition to being terrified about the whole shift in my identity and life, I was also pretty sure this whole healing business couldn’t be done.
Oh, there were days I was on a high when I felt I could achieve anything, but there were so many more days when I felt sure I couldn’t be helped, healed or freed from the PTSD prison. Instead I believed I was too weak to change, too frightened to fight back, too lost to be found, too debilitated to find resurrection and too hooked on the PTSD habit to ever let it go.
Sound familiar? These were just a few of my unhealthy perceptions. In addition, I felt my mind was too destroyed, addled and a mess to ever focus it on healing.
It’s a good thing I was wrong!
The more you cling to unhealthy perceptions the more they cloud your vision. Right now you need clarity about your healing intention, goals and strategy. Mucking up the vision with a lot of negative perceptions only does one thing: Makes it harder for you to do the work that needs to be done.
I receive a lot of email from survivors who are certain their worldview is soooo accurate. They are sure they are done for, sure suicide is the answer, sure they are the one who cannot be helped, sure they would be better off left entirely alone. Everyone’s entitled to have a bad day but in order to heal you have to deliberately CHANGE YOUR MIND. That’s right, you have to change your mind about yourself, healing, the process, the past, the present and the future.
Tip #9 for Staying on the Healing Path: Become aware of your unhealthy perceptions and actively work to change them. Listen to your self-talk. Do you support, appreciate and feel gratitude for the efforts you make to heal? Or do you only recognize what you don’t do? Do you believe healing is possible? Or have you decided from the outset you don’t think you’ll achieve it? When you find yourself thinking of things in a negative perspective (which you will do because, let’s be serious, you have PTSD!) you need to take back control in that moment. Use the power of your mind to deliberately change your thoughts to ones that are powerful, strong, courageous and confident. How you perceive the world is how it will be. Think your healing is doomed to failure and it will be. Imagine you can win and no matter how difficult it is you will find your way.
Training yourself to be aware of and change your unhealthy perceptions takes a bit of effort. Not to worry, we’ve got a Changing Unhealthy Perceptions series designed to put you on the right track. Begin here.
BRIDGE THE GAP Exercise:
Creating healthy perceptions means you have to see and appreciate the good in you and your world. OK, don’t get snarky and tell me those things don’t exist. You and I both know they do you’re just not in a good mood and don’t want to admit it.
But today you do need to become aware of them, so:
1. Think back over your life. There have been difficult things you’ve achieved, from learning to walk and then run, to learning to tie your shoes and do multiplication… You’ve achieved tough things before. Healing PTSD is just another thing to achieve and like you did the others, you can do this, too. Today, in your mind think back over your life and the things you’ve been able to do that you had difficulty doing. What did you do in order to achieve them? How hard did you work? How much energy did you put out? How often did you think you couldn’t do it? And then you did. You have a history of getting and doing and learning and achieving. Recognize it. Appreciate it. Think about it every time a negative thought about healing intrudes in your mind.
2. There are things about your world that are good, so take a look around and appreciate one thing today. That’s it, just one thing. A flower, a sunset, the color of the sky. A song, a movie, a book, a tv show. There is one thing that is not dark but brings a patch of light in your mind. Notice it. Indulge it. Get up close and experience it for one long focused moment, or thirty long moments. Remind yourself there is a world outside your problems and some of it is very, very good. Tap into this thing the next time the dark creeps up.
(Photo acknowledgement on Flickr.)
Tags: healing, ptsd, Staying on the Healing Path
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I feel I had a successful life. I ran my own business until I retired in 2002. PTSD has always been an underlying proglem for me. I live on a small farm and have a nice home but the depression/PTSD litterly kills me sometimes. I try to focus on positive things but someone will say one word and I totally crash. I take medication but it only helps some. Have not been able to tollerate the a-typical depression drugs. Some mornings I will wake up in the pit and think how much less pain there would be if I just pass on but I usually get up have coffee, pet the dog and start feeling better. I am bothered about the fact that PTSD is always waiting in the wings to pull me into the perverbial pit. GOD its miserable.
@ Wayne — I feel what you’re saying. PTSD IS miserable. You had a successful life — this means to me the power of your mind has always been with you as it allowed you to carry on and achieve. I wonder what would happen now if, with the right approach, you learned to turn that power on PTSD…? We always have the potential to heal. Sometimes, the biggest part of the battle is figuring out how to access that potential. There are so many techniques for resolving trauma. Maybe it’s time to try something new.
I have been treated at the Veterans Hospital and the VA for over 20 years. This is my observation. I have never been treated by ANYONE who sufferes with PTSD nor do they know the monster that is trying to eat you alive. Typically I tend to be a learning tool for them because they do not know how to treat this horrable crap. I don’t think they really listen either, they just make their own conclutions.
@Wayne — That’s been my observation, too! How is it possible we ask you all to serve the country and then we don’t appropriately serve you back?? And what I’ve noticed is more prescriptions are written than anything else that’s done. It’s just plain wrong.
If it were possible for one woman to overturn the system I’d be doing it right now. Since I can’t do that I can only invite you to email me whenever you want to brainstorm about your next step. The VA is beginning to outsource practitioners now; as that evolves perhaps you’ll have recourse to more substantial support.
Great post. For so many years I survived on telling myself, “…Bill, don’t base your vision of tomorrow on how you feel today.” I have no idea where that came from, but I’m sure glad it popped into my head. I use the same suggestion when I’m working with psychiatric crisis cases in the ED. Seems to be taken well…
@ Bill — It took me so long to realize I was actually sabotaging my own recovery every time I didn’t believe in it! And also, every time I hoped someone else could do it for me.
So much of what we achieve has to do with what we imagine we can accomplish. So glad your voice is out there spreading the healing word.
God Bless you Michele. Talk to you again soon. Yesterday was good and I did find some joy..
@Wayne — Excellent!! It just takes a little each day to begin to form a habit. You’re on your way. Keep it up and keep in touch.
Good morning Michele. Have you ever kept walking in a circle trying to find something to do but in reallity you were looking for something to make you feel better. I do this a lot. I need to fill the emptiness I feel. I’m sure this is part of being depressed. Like you said, feeling good is what we seek but “joy” is so elusive. Isolation is sometimes what I do when I can’t find it. There, there are no demands made on me and I feel I am going nowhere when I do it but I isolate just the same. I want to feel happiness so much it hurts and I have been trying for so many years. Like this morning, I am feeling relaxed just because I am able to write about my feelings. This does help but is not the cure. I believe there is no cure. I think the trick is to learn all the tricks to side step the down side. Have a great day and you need not respond to my writings as I know you do read them.
@Wayne– Of course I’ll respond! Part of the joy of the community here is that we do connect and communicate with each other.
Yes, for a long time I kept walking in a circle. And yes, one of my favorite things to do was to isolate — for all the reasons you mentioned and also, because it made me feel more real; I could stop pretending to myself and others I was ok, or managing, or trying to get better.
And sometimes isolation was the best thing for me because it allowed me to get real with myself, to BE real with myself and face who I was and had become and then…. when I decided I didn’t like who I was, isolation gave me time to think things through, form a plan and start plotting my escape.
I think it’s a really good thing you want to feel happiness so much it hurts. First of all, you FEEL, which is courageous in and of itself. Second of all, you’re very in tune with your desire, which is a powerful change agent.
Writing is actually a very good way to begin to quell the chaos in the mind. Writing was an enormous help in my own recovery. It allowed me to begin finding words for my trauma and PTSD experience, plus it stopped all that whirring around in my head and go it OUT! Whew, it was sometimes tough to do but the end result is I could get rid of some feelings and anxieties that way.
Have you ever thought about writing every day? Just a short journal sort of entry about what you’re thinking? Here’s a great site to get you going: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/writing/
Here’s also some interesting clinical data about the healing power of writing: http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun02/writing.aspx
One last thought: If you believe you can heal, or you believe you can’t, you are right. Whatever your beliefs are will guide your way and form your reality. If you’ve already decided freedom is impossible you will never achieve it. Perhaps it’s time to change your mind.
I guess I want to re-define “cure” I think the word cure can mean many things. When I said cure, I was referencing the PTSD. I don’t believe it ever go’s away. I Believe by learning how to deal with this stuff and learning how to control your environment and if you get really good at it, it could be construed as a cure. I think (and Im just rambling right now) that if I can do this it could be a piece of my cure. Like I have just found out how effective writing can be. If I were to go crazy with it I would probably max out your que but I certainly will not. I tryed the journal while I was in therapy. For some reason it didn’t seem to help that much of course I was a basket case back then. I know I have made headway over the years but still have trouble with emotional relationships and crowds (get me outa here). I am (from this day forward) going to set goal steps and I will try to write them down and post each one, one at a time on the wall above my computer. See how you inspire me.. Have a good one.
Sorry for all the jib/jab. I will try to focus on the healing aspects of my PTSD. Sometimes I’m like a barrel of words and someone pulls the cork. Will try some of your suggestions and web sights.
Thanks
@Wayne — Nothing you say is jib/jab. I hear it as a man doing the work to figure things out. I think a comprehensive approach to healing — layering as much support and actions as you feel comfortable doing — is a great way to approach healing. In my experience healing is cumulative: it comes from all the efforts we make as they coalesce toward our freedom. In that way, we seek to change our depressed state, manage our symptoms, and heal our traumas.
You’re doing all the right things… including pulling the cork, which is so necessary!
My first goal will be to spend 15 minutes each morning, meditating. I had some success with this some 10 years ago. Breath in the good and let the bad drain out my feet. It really dose work. FIRST STEP.
Excellent new year resolution, Wayne! I love meditating. My therapist taught me Transcendental Meditation and it really had a huge impact on my ability to manage stress. Yay!
You might like the exercise in this post, too. Check it out: http://healmyptsd.com/2009/04/ptsd-treatment-creative-self-hypnosis-another-tool-for-self-healing.html
Each step counts. One at a time. 2010 will be a better year when you have a focus, a plan and a strategy. Onward!
I have started my Meditation. I have another question. I take medication for depression and anxiety. This of course to help with the physiological aspects of my problems. Did you ever take meds and if you stopped, what course did you take to do so.. I take the meds but it is only partially effective. I have a friend who is a Homiopathic Dr. and am waiting for a reply from her about a natural path one might explore.
@Wayne — I didn’t take meds. My trauma was the result of an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, so you can imagine how my hyperarousal/hypervigilance and anxiety made me feel about taking meds! I muddled through without that kind of help, so I can’t offer my experience of eliminating meds.
I can, however, wholly support your holistic exploration. I have clients who were on meds when we started our work and have weaned off them in the process so I do believe it can be done.
Best thing, too, would be to consult your doctor or a pharmacist for insight on this topic.
Glad to hear you’ve already started your meditation. What a wonderful way to begin a new year: already committed to proactive, self-empowered steps toward wellness. Whoo-hoo!
Michele; I have an article I wrote back in 2003 when I was in Therapy. I Titled it “PTSD from the inside out” It may have some interesting information in it. It is too long to put in this area and I have it in a Microsoft Works word doc. If you would like to read it, I can email it to an address where you might be able to pick it up. Keep in mind its not professionally written. I never submitted it as I wasn’t sure who would print it. Have a great day.