PTSD Healing: Taking a Time Out

It’s good, every now and then, to stop the world and get off. We push and push through these PTSD days at such a rate that our energy becomes depleted and could use a nourishing, restorative infusion.

I’ve talked before about the power of meditation. Elizabeth Stanfill on DESTRESS YOURSELF had a good piece this week about Deep Relaxation Meditation, which can be a wonderful practice to restore your energy stockpile. We heal better, faster and more deeply when we give our bodies and minds the right kind of fuel.

In addition to meditation, guided visualization is also a strong component in healing – as a form of meditation, not only does visualization boost energy, but it also feeds your mind (and your subconscious) with details for your imagination to chew on. Laura, the hypnotherapist who healed me always says, “Imagination is stronger than knowledge,” so it can be a very crucial component in the healing mix.

A few weeks ago I posted an interview about and some exercises for guided visualization. One of the guided visualization creators was Grant Barrett. I love his voice, it’s soothing and calm qualities, and I think his attention to detail in his pieces is very unique. I wrote to tell him I’d posted 5 of his pieces here, and why. He turns out to be a very wonderful human being. When he heard about our healing quest he offered to design a guided visualization just for us. And then, he designed not one but two!

Taken together, Parts 1 and 2 of “Release and Let Go” are a soothing meditation on movement, appreciating our ability to live through experience, safety, forgiveness and love for ourselves. When you have about 15 minutes take some time to listen to Release and Let Go, Part 1 and Release and Let Go, Part 2. You don’t have to be an expert at meditation or visualization to do this. The imagery is simple and the ideas just right to put your mind in a state of peace and ease, which is just where you need it to be because, as Laura (and L’Oreal) like to say, You’re worth it.

(photo: flyheli)

Healing PTSD: 4 Tricks to Strength Training Your Subconscious

Last week I wrote about tips for harnessing your subconscious power based on the book PERFECT ENOUGH, by Laura King. When we reflect on Laura’s ideas it becomes clear that the subconscious mind is exactly like the body: You are what you eat.

Take a minute to think about that. You use extra care to nourish your body with wholesome foods, exercise and rest. How much thought and effort do you give to doing the same for your mind? Too often the answer is, Not enough. But your subconscious mind needs this kind of attention, too! If you feed your subconscious muscle mass building food it becomes stronger and a more effective partner in healing.

Consider these tricks to design your subconscious mind strength training routine:

1. Pump up your affirmation crafting skills

2. Do some creative visualization reps

3. Work the relaxation/visualization/affirmation circuit

4. Stretch it out by writing what’s within


(photo: mjzitek)

PTSD Healing Resolution No. 1: Thinking From the End

A couple of times I’ve mentioned the importance of the subconscious in the healing mix, plus the fact that ‘imagination is stronger than knowledge’. One way to put these ideas into practice is to begin what Wayne Dyer calls (in his book THE POWER OF INTENTION) ‘thinking from the end’. He says,

I’ve used this power of imagination over my will in the production of all my life’s work… This thinking from the end causes me to behave as if all that I’d like to create is already here. My credo: Imagine myself to be and I shall be, and it’s an image I keep with me at all times.

Your imagination allows you the fabulous luxury of thinking from the end. There’s no stopping anyone who can think from the end. You create the means and surmount limitations in connection with your desires. In imagination, dwell on the end, fully confident that it’s there in the material world…

Think from the end: …. Assume within yourself the feeling of the wish being fulfilled, and keep this vision regardless of the obstacles that emerge.

Part of healing is retraining the brain to see ourselves as other than survivors; to see ourselves as healthy, well and PTSD-free. To encourage the subconscious mind to let go of the PTSD identity it has so lavishly developed (and to replace that image with the new, healed and healthy you) we must actively discover, determine and decide who that newly whole self will be. Here’s a simple exercise you can do to imagine, visualize and commit to your future, PTSD-free self:

Settle into a comfortable position either sitting up or lying down. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths in through your nose – hold them, and then slowly release through your mouth.

Let your mind drift and relax.

When your mind and body have settled, slowly begin imagining what you will look like and who you will be when you are PTSD-free. This means consider your hair, your eyes, your skin, your weight, your clothes and your smile. Imagine the sound of your laugh and the lightness in your voice. Imagine the friend, colleague, lover, and family member you will be when your energies are not sapped by memory. Think BIG! Who do you wish you would have become if trauma had not gotten in the way?

The healing journey you are on is your chance to start over. It is your chance to deliberately decide, create, and build the new YOU. The more specific you get in your imagination the more powerful this image will be in your subconscious mind.

Take all the time you need to deliberately draw the picture of the future you. When you finish this visualization and feel you can see it clearly, hold it in your mind’s eye for at least one long moment. Then, slowly let it recede. Allow yourself to become aware of the room around you, the sounds, the smells, and the presence of the outside world. When you are ready, open your eyes and resume your day.

Tip: It will help you crystallize this visualization to write it down. Take a few moments to write out a whole description, or jot some notes about the main characteristics. As you look this over, you might recognize ideas you would like to add. Note them, too, and focus on them in your next visualization session.

The beauty of this exercises is that it can be done at any time of day or night, as often as you want. When you get used to the process, you can do this during a train commute, an airline flight, or even waiting for a meeting in a practitioner’s office. After a week or two of very deliberate planning, you will have completely designed an image of your future self. While you can always use a short visualization session to update it, you can now move into a new phase of thinking from the end: putting it in your daily thoughts. While you’re walking around, doing the laundry, driving to class – any time you’ve got a few minutes to spare conjure the future you. Get familiar with him or her. Become friends. Welcome him or her into your imagination and allow the image to grow. You’re the artist here, sculpt your new yourself!

(photo: rnolan1087)

Healing PTSD: Putting the Subconscious to Work, Part 2

Last week I wrote about the importance of engaging the subconscious in the healing work we do. Today, I want to follow up that post with some tips from a trusted source.

Last weekend I was reading PERFECT ENOUGH, by Laura King. Laura always tells me, “Imagination is stronger than knowledge” and over the weekend I was thinking about how our imagination supports our healing intention.

Laura states in the book, “… if you fill your subconscious mind with positive things, you will soon manifest positive things around you. What you think and feel today becomes what you experience in life tomorrow.”

Which means, if we want to be healed and feel well and free we need to originate some experience of this in our subconscious mind. One of the ways I did this was through the pursuit of joy. It worked; the joy I felt infused my subconscious with the idea that life was not all bad, and gave me the courage to imagine that I could, one day, be PTSD-free, which gave me the necessary energy to plug away at healing until it was complete. And now here I am, PTSD-free with a great capacity for feeling joy, which I do on a weekly basis. This can be you, too – IF you get your subconscious on the right track.

These tips from Laura’s book should get you in the proper frame of mind and give you some ideas for harnessing the great subconscious power you possess:

What you put your energy on is what is created.

If your perception is that your life hasn’t been full of good things, tell yourself that your past may have been negative, but that time is long gone, and only good things come to you, in abundance.

…when you use your imagination, … you must have a clear idea of what you want, you don’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae of how you’ll get it.

File away your problem-solving skills and your willpower and simply imagine yourself, possessing vitality, focus, and good health.

Imagine yourself at your best and let your subconscious figure out the most effective way to make your best happen for you.

The subconscious and the conscious minds complement each other; they work together, each doing separate tasks. Your subconscious registers your feelings and impressions, and promptly passes them on to the conscious, at which time they register in your awareness.

The only thing the subconscious can do is agree with you; it was designed by nature to be your servant. If you say, “I’m fat and ugly”, your subconscious will produce exactly what you tell it to produce. It cannot say “No” to you.

(photo: arodasi)

Healing PTSD: Putting the Subconscious to Work, Part 1

It’s been a busy week here in the BRIDGE THE GAP healing workshop. We’ve been assessing the role of commitment in the healing process and the importance of having courage to support our commitment. If you haven’t had time to work through the exercises this week, you still have today and tomorrow before we move on to the final week of executing PTSD Healing Resolution No. 1: I will create a powerful healing intention.

In the meantime, a little recap about what we know about the subconscious and how we can use it during this year of healing so that it helps us instead of hinders us.

Today, a few things to remember:

1- The subconscious is the warehouse for storing all of our memories.

2 - The subconscious is the origination of all our emotions.

3 - As the largest part of our mind (88%), the subconscious provides the motivational source for everything we do, feel and perceive.

4 - What lies buried in the deep dark of the subconscious mind is the root of our PTSD.

5 - The imprint of traumatic experience hibernates in the subconscious, quietly directing our subconscious mind to behave in ways that are meant to protect us from imagined danger.

6 - The subconscious mind’s response to the fear generated by the imprint of trauma is the crux of all our PTSD problems.

7 - The power of the subconscious mind is limitless.


Why does all of this matter? Because the culmination of this gathering of facts is this one most important thing: What we think about is what we create. And that's on both conscious and subconscious levels. Beginning at the origin: what’s housed in our subconscious – what we focus on and are driven by – is what we bring into our lives.

A little story to illustrate this point: My own traumatic experience was medically based – I was given a medication to which I had a rare and severe allergic reaction. No one on the medical staff of a major New York City hospital had ever seen the illness with which I was admitted. There was no treatment protocol, no expert to consult, no one to guide my parents and I through the ordeal. Forever afterward one of my biggest fears was that this situation would repeat itself; that I would have some strange medical problem for which no one could find a cure or help me with a solution and which would threaten my well-being and my life.

For years I lived with this fear daily, thought about it often and worried about it constantly. It became such a priority that…. Voila! As my PTSD grew in size and proportion, my subconscious worked overtime to create what I was thinking about until, 16 years after the original trauma a trigger sent me into an insane spiral in which I was, again, presenting with physical problems for which no doctor could find a cure or diagnosis. My greatest fear had come alive because (through the power of my mind) I had, unwittingly, willed it into existence.

How am I so sure of that? Because when I was finally diagnosed with PTSD and began to heal it, suddenly all of the medical issues evaporated. While none of the 50 doctors I consulted could help me with my symptoms, suddenly when I began to heal my mind my liver, intestines and stomach all spontaneously healed, too. Imagine that. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The years I lived in fear brought on more and more reflections of that fear until I was completely debilitated by it.

Conversely, when I began to live in determined hope of wellness and PTSD healing, more and more healing came to me in several ways and from several sources. We are the creators of our own destiny, not just in life, but in the world of PTSD, too.

What are you thinking about that is creating negative experiences in your life? Become aware of these thoughts. Write out your fears. Make a list so that you can see what is swirling around your mind. Many thoughts can be as flimsy as the Wicked Witch of the West: stand up to them with a bucket of water and they shrink in size. For each stated fear write a sentence that is the antithesis of it. And then repeat this sentence to yourself every time you hear your fear thoughts or feel your fear emotions. Get in this habit. Repeat the antithetical statements with conviction and authority. Carry them with you. Say them out loud. The healing process includes a rigorous effort at retraining your brain. It starts now. You are the ring master. Crack that whip!

In the coming week I’ll delve into this idea further with a post that gives some tips on how to use our subconscious, and some tricks on how to keep it in line. In the meantime, what tips, tricks or testimony have you discovered about harnessing the power of the subconscious?

(photo: *caramimi*)