Creating a New Life Free of PTSD Symptoms

Writing is one of my best defenses against the darkness as I endeavor to live a life free of PTSD symptoms. Sometimes things get in the way and interrupt the quiet time I need to write.

Last week, my computer broke and I spent several hours getting it up and running. Then there was a holiday visit with family, always sure to stir the PTSD pot. But, in addition to writing, I have several other go to practices that help hold me steady.

RECOVERY from PTSD Symptoms

As I step back and look at my recovery over the last three years, I see more clearly that healing is a process. Step by step, day by day, we grow in strength and resilience. In time we become increasingly solid within ourselves and our relationships. There are always new opportunities to strengthen resilience, to go deeper and unearth lingering misconceptions and to heal those not-quite-yet-healed broken places.

Over the last weeks I have discover that,  indeed, I have become more resilient. I bend when the wind blows, sometimes so far that I think I’m going to break…but I don’t. But, have tools now. I know what to do when the craziness threatens to overtake me. No longer do I live on the edge of hysteria, feeling that any minute I’m going to lose it somehow, or break into a million pieces. The desire to curl up in a ball and die has become a distant memory.

A QUIET PLACE

Instead, I go inside of myself. I breathe in the quiet place I have discovered there. No matter where my body is, that place is available to me, waiting, ready to take me in, comfort and restore me and keep me safe. I find strength and comfort in this place where my soul lives. Always. I need no thing from outside of myself when I am there. I need only to rest, to stay, to breathe and know that there is enough strength within me to survive anything.

After resting in my inner sanctuary for a time, I take another step in the direction of self-care to relieve my PTSD symptoms. I run a hot bath, for instance, adding Lavender Epsom salts into the hot steamy water. Then I light a few candles, tune into one of my favorite audios (usually something by Clarissa Pinkola Estes) and climb in. Sinking down into the arms of one of nature’s greatest gifts, I breathe deeply, noticing the warm moist air as it enters my nostrils. Closing my eyes I tune into the loving lilt of Dr. E’s voice as she weaves her soothing words in and around and through my hurting places. When it is time, I climb out of the bath, dry myself off and move slowly back into the world.

EMBRACING IMPERFECTION

Every day I grow more certain of the necessity of creating a new life in order to let go of the old one. I no longer believe it is necessary to go back and fix the person I became as a result of my wounds. Nor do I need to understand in detail how I got where I got. It is still a bit of a mystery in spite of years of research and therapy. What I’ve come to understand, however, is that underlying my desperate need to understand, was not just a desire to rid myself of the pain, but a deeply held belief that I was broken and needed to be fixed. In other words, I believed I was not just wounded, but flawed, broken, and not right somehow. Therefore, I needed to do fix myself to be acceptable to myself.

But, I am not broken. I am not any more broken than the rest of humanity born into a broken and imperfect world. I do not need to “fix” myself to be loved and accepted. What I need is to love and accept myself. The need to fix oneself carries with it a sense of shame and embarrassment that siphons energy and life from us like a giant vacuum. We do not become cleaner and more acceptable to ourselves and the world. Instead, we become depleted, empty and vacant.

Though my mind continues to look for understanding and knowledge of the ways of the mind and the psyche, my sense of self no longer rests in that place. It belongs to another dimension entirely, where it has always belonged.

Dorothy Sander July 2014