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I Believe PTSD Is Curable - An Anonymous Source

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Great story. I didn't know forums like this existed until a friend showed this to me.

I suffered with this miserable condition for years and years.

I retired from the military 9 years ago after 23 years of service (Marine Corps/Army) and suffered much of my adult life in the military with severe anxiety. Having been in and our of emergency rooms throughout the world, as well as an inpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I can say that the cause of my suffering is not important to share, but what is important to share is my recovery process.

Total recovery is possible and I'm living, breathing proof. Don't let someone tell you that it's not. Over the years I have been on every drug imaginable, from Xanax to Imipramine to Prozac. As well, I've been to dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapitsts. The drugs and the people all meant well and genuinely wanted to help. But, unfortunately, they simply did not have the right combination. For me, that combination came through a program called CHAANGE. And, my permanent recovery started in 1988 when my wife read a book called "Free From Fears" and enrolled me in the CHAANGE Program. The Program has been around since 1979 and they have helped hundreds of thousands of people who have suffered with and overcame their battle with severe anxiety (this can be from PTSD, OCD, panic attacks, generalized anxiety, agoraphobia, etc ..). Like anything in life, it works if you work it.

I have recently learned that they now give the book away for FREE and you can download it through the Internet. I am hopeful it can do for you what it did for me. It literally set me free. The book is on the site freefromfears.com.

I wish you the very best in your recovery. Anyone in this forum is welcome to contact me at anytime. If I can somehow help you, I will.
 
I have not done this in quite some time, but some individuals have sent messages to me stating they want to read this but were unable to find it, so here goes.
 
Hello Hodge,

I am a musician and can only say that to master music and an instrument (but singing will do it too) both halves of the brain must work together. In fact stroke victims who were/are musicians usually repair faster and better due to this. In music and playing there is need for the so called logical parts to work with the so called creative parts as a unity. I am sure there is a vast difference in R/L Brain integration in music vis a vie golf for example. Not to say golf is not good, just not that same demand on the player.

Malibran
 
Soul guitar.

Very interesting. A year before I began to suspect that I might have PTSD, a year before I really acknowledged that there's a mental illness called "PTSD", I developed a theory on stuttering (and strongly suspected that it works for every mental illness), which main theme was the hemispheric imbalance. The theory was based upon my - I can't put it better - existential experience: that I stopped my stuttering, and experienced the same what Irs experienced in his "morning".

My "guitar" was thinking: purely, strictly logical, but I had to think with - excuse me - my soul, because I was at the bottom of a severe depression, facing my darkness, my inner demons, and I couldn't afford it to avoiding the truth anymore.

The key is not in the switched hands, but in the balanced use of your brain, or - excuse me (I too never had thought before that experience that I have one) - your soul, all the same. When you're playing guitar, you use both your hands, your whole brain. Irs wasn't that good player with his genuine hand: maybe because his brain wasn't balanced. And according to my theory our left brain has too low, and the right too high activity, so then why helped his left hand to Irs, which makes stronger the right side? So it's not ambidexterity what's makes the difference (I'm left handed but do everything else with my right side). - But:

When you learn to play it with your other hand, it needs very intuitive logic: just look at yourself as your fingers try to move instinctively - as they had learned before -, with your brain desperately calculating the mirror equivalent of the other handed playing. I emphasize: intuitive logic, instinct & calculation, instinctive calculation. And to achieve it, you must achieve patience, strict movements, strong focus, serious concentration, with the emotional sense of the tone, tune etc.; the traits which you couldn't achieve during the harsh and sudden trauma, thus your brain stuck. With that stuck brain you can play in the real world with a lot of acting, the help of drugs, therapies etc., but - funny thing - you can't learn to play guitar with your other hand. So in the end, a guitar helps you over your trauma.

That is what worked for me too, without any instrument but my brain/soul, and it surely had taken practice, a lot of pain, failure before the picture came together. I had to learn, step by step, patience (it is a torment for an anxiety sufferer!), I had to really really calm down (from then on I can't redo it, it's that hard), forcing my thoughts to be as strictly logical as "existential", etc.: that combination led me to a distinctive change in my brain, allowing me to let in the truth about myself.

I must emphasize the "existential" side of that, because after all that was the key moment in Irs's recovery. Because "brain" is just a physiological name of something much more existential thing, may I present it: YOU. It's YOU who had the trauma, it's you who reacted with denial, not your "brain", no, it is a scientifically respected lie, may have the doctors over with it, but not yourself. In whatever guitar you need to play your own song.
 
Cognitive Power Upon Our Instincts.

So again: what cured lrs was not that he learned to play banjo with his other hand, but that for relearning the already instinctive activity with the other hand needed stronger left hemispheric brain activity than right one: he had to break the instinctive movements of his fingers (= the dominance of the right brain in his banjo-playing) because with the other hand fingers have to move differently. Thus his brain perhaps for the first time in his entire life, experienced what does it feel like when the left brain is dominant over the right.
 
Anyway, I'm trying out Lrs's method with guitar (and I'm also learning to write with my other hand). But let's be realistic: with the knowledge that this might save me, there's not much chance that it'll work. Simply because while playing I focus on my mind, if it is changing. I constantly watch myself, if I'm getting better. But it would happen just if I for the first time in my life would not focus on myself, my mind, but just on the silly strings and fingers! Seems impossible. Anyway.
 
Awesome thread,,

For years we didn't know if my son was left or right handed. He used both always until he was attacked by a dog, now he is right handed. Somehow the trauma he experienced turned him into a right handed person. I am an artist and paint with both hands I can also write backwards fluently. I used to play guitar all the time, gonna give it another try. Thanks for this thread it makes a great deal of sense to me.
 
So Glad This Was Resurrected!

IT will take some absorbing andre-reading but what I have skimmed thus far is fascinating and makes sense. A lot of it does... the martial arts training how it focuses on equally controlling both sides of your body and the music or drawing... using the two sides and strengthening. When I read it, it was like... oh yeah, shoulda seen this! I have always felt better when playing piano or practicing Tae Kwon Do or exercising or painting. Anything that involves both hands!!
 
It's not the matter of ambidexterity.

I have to disappoint you guys: it's not ambidexterity what helped the Anonymous Banjo Player. It's not the hands, not the matter of the hemispheres either. It's about gaining control over complex movements. If you play drums, it's instinctive, doesn't help much. (Music, martial arts etc. helps just because they keep you busy.) - Maybe if you reconstruct your complex drum-equipment, it would be beneficial, because you would have to relearn with your left brain functions how to play the same score with totally different spatial relations, hand- and leg-movements. Thus the left brain would experience a little confidence at last.

Cross your fingers and touch your skin with them. You will be surprised, because the skin perceives the two fingers conversely. When you figure out, focusing on the fingers, which finger is which, you're using your left brain, breaking the false instinctive perception. The same strange sense is there when you try to play guitar with the other hand.
 
You ever try to learn a new beat on the drums, phil? Maybe for some it's all instinct, but some beats take alot of time to master (for me anyway...maybe you've more "instinct" than I do?! :)
 
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