anthony
Founder
I want to share a little piece of knowledge with everyone, in the aspect of recovery from PTSD, and the best method to achieve a stable recovery. Regardless of how you do it, or what method of treatment you decide works best for you, baby steps is the only way to a quality recovery, without making yourself much worse along the way. Let me explain why!
Whether you use CBT, EMDR, etc., etc., etc., you still have to get going, get motivated, and function before you even get treatment. Generally even with treatment, you will never actually be cured as such, so you will always relapse at some point if triggered, or if a particular scenario occurs. Its not a matter of IF it will happen, but WHEN it will happen. So, remember this for your entire life.
Many people have written books, articles and so forth on taking baby steps within recovery. The reason why so much information has been produced is because it's very relevant to the stability of your recovery. You may have every single symptom of PTSD at once, all upon you, and you may want to get yourself clear as quick as possible, speedy recovery, etc., so you can get on with your life, but let me give you the hard hitting reality of the situation: you will make yourself worse, and that's a near 99.99% chance of occurrence.
When you break your symptoms down, you work on one thing at a time. As you conquer (learn to control) each sub-symptom of a major symptom, you then move to the next relevant stage. Where problems generally begin, though, is that people get too confident in their approach I guess, and they stop looking for tell-tale signs and symptoms of previously conquered sub-symptoms, and whether or not they are showing a presence again.
This is where baby steps comes into action. Because you are on the next sub-symptom / symptom, you never stop looking backwards for signs of previously analyzed symptoms recurring, because they generally will. Because you have worked through them for the most part, to get control of them again may only take a small portion of time, but is a significant step in order to ensure those previously conquered symptoms do not combine with others to end in relapse. Baby steps basically means: you may take two steps forward, and one step back to touch-up a previously worked area, but quickly controlled, which allows you to take a further two steps forward again.
This is how the entire road to recovery works, and it's an endless cycle. You don't need to over analyze your every thought, action or reaction, but you need to remain cognisant of all aspects of your illness, your specific signs and symptoms, triggers and tell-tale traits, so you can manage and control every aspect of your PTSD. When you stop doing this, what begins to happen is that you take one step forward, two steps back, and this cycle continues until you have relapsed completely.
Relapse is much faster than recovery, because it's common ground that the mind and body have already covered - thus they are familiar with the territory, and opposed to recovery, in which the mind and body are constantly discovering new ground, new territory as such.
A really easy way to think about your recovery, and how to best maintain your recovery is this. Your mind is a 5 acre paddock, which you have to mow completely with a push mower. Basically, by the time you would have finished mowing 5 acres with a push mower, where you started has begun to grow again, though it is not the length it was when you first started. It may have grown half an inch in length, so when you finish mowing the entire paddock, and return to the start, the effort is now less, as the grass is shorter. Imagine the grass as being your trauma.
Now, the more efficient you become at mowing that grass, the shorter it gets, so then you get smarter, and begin mowing the same paddock with a ride-on lawn mower instead. Now when you have finished, you have more time before you have to start mowing again, because your efficiency to cut the grass has increased. This now leaves scope for you to spend a little time on other areas that may need work: rebuilding a social life for yourself, active group interests, etc., etc...take your pick.
Now, you are getting much cleaner and efficient, so you upgrade to a slasher, which now cuts the time in half from the ride-on lawn mower. This now makes the process of controlling the length of grass much faster, easier, and less time consuming. One could say it would become second nature to the mind by this stage. Now you have even more time to now reach out into other areas of your trauma, life, and so forth.
So, as you become more efficient, without placing a timeline upon this: you started with a push mower, then upgraded slowly as you became more efficient and smarter about how to control the grass (being your trauma).
I hope this puts a really simple spin on how taking baby steps to achieve the end result with stability is accomplished.