Healing PTSD, Resolution #1: 4 Ways to Boost Belief in Your Ability to Heal

1 – Believe in the power of your own mind. Get hip to the idea of quantum physics and its ability to support healing. I know, I know, QM sounds freaky, but it’s really an everyday occurrence and we lay people ought to know how (and that) it works. On the most simple level, I’m talking about using the power of your own mind to boost your belief in your ability to heal. Quantum physics is a branch of science that deals with discrete units of energy (like, say, your thoughts) and how those tiny units of energy can effect big things. This article from Kirsten Harrell explains this idea and how it relates to the power of intention.

2 – Take some time to think about your ability to heal. Check out this ‘Believe You Will Succeed’ exercise by Nick Best. My discovery of his process began with an article he wrote called ‘Developing Self-Belief – The 10 Step Process’, which I thought laid out a great foundation for the development of belief in anything we hope to achieve, including PTSD healing. But then I read on and found that Best had actually devised a more deep and expanded process for getting down to our core beliefs and reinforcing them. Take some time to work it through as a way to bolster your healing intention!

3 – Get familiar with the fact that people self-recover from mental illness every day. It’s time to do some reading! And time to admit you are not unique, special or terminally chained to PTSD. The National Empowerment Center has tons of information and resources for healing mental illness -- not treating, but HEALING. As in, it can be done! Recovery, Inc. also offers a program and mindset that believes in the power of us to heal ourselves. Both organizations have good reading material as well as local options to support your healing adventure. On both sites you will find proof that regular people – that would include you – recover from serious mental illness all the time. Their secret? They choose to, and then they make the effort!

4 – Get a sense of humor. We have more strength to believe in the possibilities of what we can achieve when we’re happy, when we laugh, when we are amused. Staying stuck in our depression only further supports our belief that we cannot heal – a belief that is false. In order to support and enhance the belief that you can heal, you’ll have to actively take some time to lighten up your perspective. As you’ll see in this clip, ‘Medical Benefits of Laughter’ only 15 minutes of laughter a day can positively affect your physical body, which in turn affects your mental self, power and strength. Think I’m kidding about this? There is actually a model of therapy called ‘Laughter Therapy’ as you’ll see demonstrated in this clip. (It’s crazy enough to make you giggle just watching it.) But seriously, start to look for things to make you laugh. Watch a funny movie. Listen to a side-splitting comedian. Get into the habit of reconnecting to that self that thinks there is humor in the world; it’s also that self that contains hope, resilience and the ability to heal PTSD.

(photo: Steve Grunberger)

PTSD Healing: 6 Ways to Solidify Your Commitment to Heal

It’s one thing to walk around thinking you want to heal, and telling yourself and your loved ones that you do. But it’s another thing entirely to commit to what it takes to be healed. In order to support your healing intention you must make the commitment to act. In order to support that commitment it helps to have some structure in place. Today, 6 things you can do to solidify your commitment:

1 – Carefully define your healing goal. I really do love Nick Best’s ‘Believe You Will Succeed’ outline for achieving a goal. If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, find some time to work it through. Healing is just like any other goal: it helps to have a definitive plan. Also, it’s important to assess what would get in the way of that plan – and then get rid of those things! Nick’s outline is a step-by-step guide to planning your entire healing journey, both in terms of your time and your mind.

2 – Create a timeline. Let’s be serious, healing isn’t something that happens over night. After struggling to heal for so long, I finally gave myself one last year: By my 40th birthday I wanted to be free of this stuff. (I made it, just under the wire!) Choose a timeframe that works for you. Give yourself a lot of room – but not too much! One or two years of the really hard, deep work should set you up for great results. Choose a big event, or some quiet date to work toward. Get your subconscious into the game by developing the idea that you will be PTSD-free by that point. When we begin to imagine we begin to heal. If we see the end and know where we’re going, that helps us chart our course and our minds shape the idea of success.

3 – Prioritize your healing process. The whole idea of healing can seem overwhelming. Don’t let yourself get distracted by this! Break down the phases so that the journey is manageable. Make a list of the top five healing acts you want to try, and then approach them one by one. My list looked like this: a) educate myself about PTSD, b) develop the ability to tell the story, c) reach out to other survivors, d) construct my post-trauma identity, e) find a hypnotherapist.

4 – Set a schedule. When you know your ultimate timeframe it’s easier to break down time into increments, and from there to break down the healing process into manageable chunks. We can’t do everything all at once, so set yourself a schedule that will guide your way. Give yourself a task each month, each week, or even each day. Developing a healing habit is important; setting a schedule ensures you find time for all aspects of this important journey.

5 – Buddy up! As PTSD experiencers we’ve been isolated long enough. For your healing journey, get a partner to support you along your quest. This can be anyone, but it should be someone you feel you can trust, and who will honestly help you maintain your commitment. (Mine was my mother because she was endlessly supportive, unfailingly resourceful, empathetic, compassionate and never got frustrated or angry no matter how many times I banged my head against the wall!) Tell this partner your plan. Share with them the timeline, your priorities, and the schedule. It helps to be able to talk these things out. Things sound differently in the spoken word than in our mind, and hearing things aloud can bring us to new thoughts, ideas and understanding. Plus, your buddy may have helpful ideas. Knowing that someone is standing beside us and expects us to follow through with our plans gives us even more motivation to do so.

6 – Reward yourself. Remember when you were a kid and you were given a gold star for good behavior or a good math or spelling test? Newsflash: Your grown up self likes to be rewarded, too. For every step in your healing process, reward yourself for the achievement. Make a list of some things you want to do for yourself. This may be as simple as a day alone, away from your responsibilities. Or, it can be the purchase of some item you’ve been putting off. Healing is tough work; when we reach milestones we should give ourselves something special. When we know we’re working toward a gratification, we’re more committed and motivated to succeed.

One more thought, just for good measure: Give yourself some room. While it’s important to plan, commit, act, and follow through, it’s also important not to become militant, rigid, obsessed or fanatical. Healing should be a return to grace, a recapturing of living life in flow and ease. If we force the healing process into a narrow chute and try to stuff ourselves through it there’s no way we can achieve the ultimate goal. There will be pitfalls and setbacks. Don’t beat yourself up over them! The surest way to kill your commitment is to feel abused by it. Healing is like the ebb and flow of the tide; it has a rhythm. Know that you’re on the path to wellness and have faith in yourself that you will get there.



(photo: Isaac B2)

Survivors Speak: The Power of the Word

This week's survivor speaking out is Catatonic Kid, prolific and insightful PTSD blogger, and also - a poet. I interviewed CK about how she uses poetry to heal. You can view her terrific poem, 'Before' here.

Also, in the reverse of this month's BRIDGE THE GAP topic about how we communicate and educate those around us about PTSD, yesterday Catatonic Kid wrote about our peceptions of how people communicate with us. Check out her post, 'Quit Taunting the Fish', for a great discussion about how we need to be aware of when our PTSD thinking gets in the way of our correctly perceiving what's being said.

What, if any, relation did you have to writing poetry before using it as a therapeutic method?

I started therapy when I was rather younger than most, so I'm not sure there actually is much of a before. I suppose, having grown up in an highly academic household, poetry was all around me. Easy enough to pick up a book as a tool before you even know what it is you're really holding or might potentially get out of it. I tend to think more in poetic terms and big ideas than not anyway.

My PTSD came to a head via a somewhat circuitous route: severe major depression that took hold around age 13 or so... I began writing poetry seriously around that time too. The poetry started a little before I totally 'crashed and burned', but honestly, the time period is basically one long fuzzy stream of not much of anything, so it's hard to say what writing was for me then.

Something in the way of a code perhaps, to keep what I expressed from the heart a little more private. It was so easy to lose track of things in those days that writing them down once in a while probably helped to ground me. That's saying something since I was 'off with the fairies'.

What first inspired you to explore your trauma/PTSD experience in art form?

I'm not sure 'inspired' is the word I'd use. It felt/feels more like an instinctual need. When you're as disconnected as PTSD/trauma makes you, for me, writing bridged the gap.

At first, when the snowball really got rolling down the mountain, I was essentially in the state my online nick implies (borderline catatonic). I started with my first psychiatrist at 14, and was barely able to speak at all for the first 6 months+ with her. She was, thank the powers that be, extremely patient and in the meanwhile (when I couldn't see any light in that indescribably intense fog) I used writing to express a little of what I was going through, when I could.

Somehow I'd concluded that being invisible was a workable solution to the trauma, so when I couldn't talk except in blank yes/no statements reading and writing became my voice. That was how I began to figure out how to filter out the pain and focus on the present, bit by tiny bit.

In what way do you feel using artistic expression has furthered your healing?

I'll answer this one with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's words because they far better capture how I feel about it:

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death."

When you begin with creativity, in whatever way/s, you reach for both the lost and the sublime. You will only rarely get there, but just knowing that those heights exist in contrast to the devastation trauma leaves behind re-ignited some of the passion, love and self-awareness I've needed to cope.

What's the single most important benefit you've discovered from expressing your trauma this way?

Top on the list has to be that, quite frankly, writing helped keep me alive and kicking. When you're living like a ghost, so distant from the world that you cannot even see the world (quite literally), then any means of expression, anything to communicate even just a little of what you can sense is a great thing.

There's a fitting story I recall. It's like you're hanging from the edge of a cliff, and you know you don't have the resources to pull yourself back to safer ground. You know you're probably going to die, but instead of staring helplessly at death you look around you.

And what do you see? A red rose tenaciously clinging to life in a clifftop cranny. So you think to yourself, if that rose can grow here and still be so very beautiful then maybe I can too. Poetry was like that for me. It kept me going until I was able to recognise for myself that I have needs - something I took great pains to ignore for as long as possible.

What have you learned about healing by filtering it through art?

Oh, many things. First, I suppose, that healing is about feeding your whole self, and that art can tap into the parts we don't normally have particularly brilliant access to. Wisdom comes in more ways than we could possibly comprehend.

I mean, we often think of healing as being about curing sickness. But one of the things I've learned through getting creative is that healing can mean a whole range of things, and it's a different path for every single one of us.

People respond to my poetry in ways I would never have imagined when I first started writing, and I'm grateful to have been taught probably more by their reactions than my own words. That process has shown me that healing is a commitment of the first order, and that it isn't a destination but a complex, dynamic journey.

Creativity is just like that, you see. Maybe you don't have the 'right' words today, but you have faith that somewhere in this grand Universe of ours you will find them... The force is out there - just to horribly mix my pop culture references. ;)

Do you have a single piece of work that you feel best embodies what you were trying to express? What elevates this piece above the others?

Nope because all this really is a continuous process. That single piece is, if anything, the future. What elevates it is its potential to be. I guess writing/healing/trauma has also taught me to value what I might become over what has been.

Creativity is the best friend/teacher I've known, and I'm not just talking about my own creativity here but human imagination. It has been there regardless of whether I was in a fit state to be around other sentient life forms or not. You don't have to leave your safe zone to find it; it's always there, in everything.

What tip would you give someone who is interested in exploring the idea of addressing his/her own traumatic experience through poetry?

Tips 'eh? I'm not sure I'm entirely qualified for this sort of thing, but I'll give anything a shot once.

First off, write because you want to.

Try not to be too hard on yourself in the process. It doesn't need to be a masterpiece. It only needs to be somewhere near your truth.

Writing takes practice, like anything else. But when it's something as close to your heart as healing, then it only matters that it's your voice in action, your journey recorded at your speed.

'Survivors Speak' is a weekly feature written by or interviewing a survivor and PTSD experiencer about some positive aspect of healing. If you would like to participate in the series (anonymously if you prefer), please email me thoughts, ideas, and topic suggestions: parasitesof.themind @ yahoo.com.