A PTSD Survivor Speaks About Healing PTSD

Recently I received this terrific email from Rik. He’s agreed to let me share it with you….

Here’s Rik from the Netherlands, I contacted you before a few years ago. I was reading back a reaction I sent you and  feel the need to share again. The power we have to heal PTSD. For me I recognice it is not just for some of us but we have it all just find that passion where you can share for the bennifit of others. For me creativity, juggling, made my breakthrough in life. Now I focus on sustainability and how people and companies can contribute to a world with an everlasting future.

Here I send you my copy of a few years ago. Still actual and even more came into a flow to inspire others, serve the community, empower those who are still in their first fase of recovery and share my joy and passion.

PTSD and Creativity: Juggle your healing

What a great gift to read this story about music as a healing instrument for both the one who makes the music as the ones who hear and receive the music.

After being in several periodes of dark PTSD and different trauma’s through the years I discovered some 7 years ago juggling as a way to heal myself from the darkest period in my life after a strangulation. I learned juggling with three balls and from there I learned that juggling gave me an unlimited path of growth, joy and passion. First to heal and develop myself. Soon I started to train and inspire others with my passion. I followed workshops all over the world and connected with jugglers who all are gifted with the share-my-expierence for the bennefit of both of us. The juggling brougt me in contact with social circus, clowning, theatre, impro and acrobatics. From there on I started a foundation to empower children with creativity as a source and in the same stream I started a profit organisation to help people in organisations in changeprograms using creativity as a source.

Now I am a few days into your website and again empowering and healing myself. I am thinking of an idea to use juggling as a way to empower other PTSD-patients and people on their way to recovery.

In the last years I allready gave juggle-workshops to groups of 10-1000 in business and in humanitarian field allready a several thousands of children benifitted from juggling with joy, proud, growing self-esteem and thinking of the fact that we did several projects in Bosnia where secondary traumatised children healed just of the connection and the juggling.

As a way of selftreatment I also started joggling( this is a combination of running and juggling three balls at the same time). I joined that way in half marathons in Holland several times and I think of ideas to do so global in a Forrest Gump way.

My good juggle friend, Dave Finnigan, is a man you realy want to meet. He empowered over 1.000.000 children all over the world and he wrote the book “Zen of Juggling” a wonderfull story about personal leadership, spirituality and the secrets juggling has to teach us. Especialy people who suffered from PTSD can benifit from this. Since my multi PTSD and so many times recovery I am much more sensitive, creative, energetic, positive, visionair and in a state of mind to accomplish great events and results.
Unfortunately I am living in a world where people like to act small, where my attempts to get help make me walk on to walls and creating all kind of psychiatric diagnoses that doesn’t fit me. I’ve worked myself for 15 years in forensic psychiatry and know that it’s PTSD I am healing from and it helps me to find recognition and support on your site.

I will be glad to support you with my story and my way to empower people with creativity as a source. I also had wonderfull expierence with EMDR as a therapy in the first months after the strangulation in 2004.

Tags: psychiatry, ptsd, recovery