For those who recovered, how long did it take and are there 3 or 4 lessons you can share with us?

[Wendell_R]

It's really hard for me because I used to be really sharp, and the kind of work I did required the kind of sharpness I possessed, so when I can barely put two sentences together it hits me really hard.

What DOES seem to help a bit is meditation, but the catch 22 is that some days my mind is so off and I'm so exhausted that I just don't have the ability to even think about meditation. What about you, do you work and do you meditate?

Yes, I work. My trauma predates memory, so I think I learned to compensate as an infant. That has its good points (high functionality) and its bad points (its too easy to not make progress by avoiding the hard stuff). PTSD and therapy can both be exhausting because so much of your brain power and mental energy are wound up in it. So it's no surprise when your brain doesn't go so fast on other things. I think it's important to remember that this doesn't mean your brain is damaged, just that it's distracted in a major way.

What helped me the most are grounding exercises. They are a bit easier to do than meditation, although I guess they are meditation in their own way. There are also some PTSD workbooks that may be useful to regain some day to day control. There are a lot of posts on the forum about grounding.

As with @PURUSHA , parts therapy and reading really helped me.

 

[nomorefear]

Everyone is different, depending on several things: the severity of your trauma, the support you have, how hard you are willing to work, etc. Have you gone through the PTSD workbook? That is a great start.
My experience: I suffered with PTSD for decades - just didn't have a name for it. Once I got a diagnosis, I began to learn, read and study everything I could about the brain and how trauma affects it. I have been in recovery for over 5 years. I still have brief episodes when I am triggered, but I have learned a lot of coping skills and can get through the episodes and back to feeling "normal" a lot more quickly than I did in the past. The book "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life" by Daniel Amen was a big help in my recovery.
Also, you may not think there is a connection, but nutrition is a vital component. Avoid caffeine, alcohol, sugary drinks, sweets, processed foods, white pasta and white flour. Try to eat a pure diet: lean proteins - turkey, eggs, fish; nuts, fruits, vegetables and herbal teas. When I eat a lot of sugar or white flour I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof. My heart races, my mind races, I feel fidgety and nervous, I have trouble sleeping, etc. When I stick to a pure diet, I sleep better and am calmer and less reactionary.

 

[Starfish]

I have gone through layers of recovery and believe all steps toward recovery are not wasted. I am more able to hear and follow within myself the next step that will lead to lowering symptoms. Sticking with actively implementing a recovery solution that I have picked up through the years, is my current plan. Living in the moment (extremely difficult) is helping. I am fortunate enough to be retired (because of this condition) so have more control of limiting my triggers. Have also discovered my thoughts all the time trigger so am noticing and redirecting scary thoughts. It is full time, for sure. Accepting and not allowing myself to judge how I feel or think is key for me. It definitely helps to have my son and his family who have been so accepting and gentle to me since I opened up to them a few years back and a couple of friends with dysfunctional upbringing who like to keep in touch with me. Basically,though, I find it a pretty solo existence. Learning to love and accept my every thought and feeling as OK, I am one of the humans living on the planet with this condition and that is fine. Definitely a moment to moment journey.

 

[IceQueencop]

I have heard it said that PTSD is a journey of, “one step forward, two steps back.” In my experience, and I can’t say I’m cured, but I can look back and see progress. When I was diagnosed, I was dissociating quite a bit. I couldn’t multi-task at all. Seriously, I couldn’t make my lunch if the tv was on.
Eighteen months later, time has changed for me. But I remember a time when I couldn’t wait to get better, to feel better. Meds helped. Having a goal helped. Volunteering, helping others and having conversations with others who have PTSD helped. Talking with other people with PTSD helped me to feel more normal. To know that I wasn’t alone and that others feel what I feel and didn’t get scared when I talked about what I was feeling.

I needed to understand what was happening with my brain. I read everything I could about PTSD. #posttraumaticgrowth was helpful in understanding about what was happening with others, and giving me hope to move forward. I had to let go of the past and embrace an attitude of gratitude. I had to find what was important to me and make it a priority in my life.
My tips:
1. Be mindful of your presence
2. Be intentional about your presence
3. If it makes you miserable, don’t do it ( besides working through your trauma, cuz that can be miserable)
4. If it makes you happy, do it (not chemicals)
5.Be gentle with yourself
6. Be compassionate with yourself
7. Move your body often
8. Use your frontal lobe, the part of your brain that makes decisions and solves puzzles
9. Remember that those horrible images in your brain are pieces of your trauma, not an indicator that you’re crazy
10. PTSD is an injury of the brain, but it will heal

Hugs,
IQC

 

[Lionheart]

I am not cured, but have recovered from my trauma wounds. I am now in the maintenance phase of therapy and have been for many years now. I suffered severe, prolonged, multiple events of several types of child abuse and have complex PTSD. My therapist told me to expect therapy to take about 10 years. I don't know how she came up with that number or if it is because my trauma began at such a young age, but this is what she had said.

I have stayed in therapy because I need it to maintain my progress and have now been in therapy approximately 20 years. To be fair, I also have several other chronic illnesses and life stressors that I am working on in therapy. I also need medication management from a psychiatrist for my medications, so there are a few different reasons why I am still in therapy.

I think it takes however long it takes and there is nothing wrong with bettering oneself through therapy work.

One lesson I can impart is that to speed up progress, accept where you are at in your recovery at any given time. Give yourself plenty of time to heal and don't hold yourself to a strict timeline. Also, use any and all therapy modalities that are available to you to see what works best for you.

 

[Marvel545]

I am not fully recovered, but have made a lot of progress in just over a year of diagnosis. I struggle to admit that, but I have. PTSD is a very individual journey & it can't be rushed. Thats actually the no 1 tip I'd give. Other tips:

• Meditate as much as possible. (Don't kick yourself if you struggle)
• I've only done a couple of sessions, but yoga helps as well.
• Try to be kind to yourself.
• If you haven't already, start a diary here.
• You mentioned your therapist sucks, can you look into changing? I've been to 5 T's & I click with the one I'm going to now.
• Do what you can, not what you feel you should.
• Stay away from unhealthy coping mechanisms (Alcohol, drugs, gambling etc)

How you're feeling now won't be forever, emotions can be overpowering, but they are not forever. If you put the right work in for you, by that I don't mean working harder, I mean finding what is right for you, you can get better.

I needed to steer my therapy, change therapists 3x and expand my resources until I found the right fit and answers (an unexpected read for me was "The Trauma Toolkit" by Sue Pease Bannitt)

Pete Walkers books are great too & full of useful tips.

 

[New]

I am not cured, but have recovered from my trauma wounds. I am now in the maintenance phase of therapy and have been for many years now. I suffered severe, prolonged, multiple events of several types of child abuse and have complex PTSD. My therapist told me to expect therapy to take about 10 years. I don't know how she came up with that number or if it is because my trauma began at such a young age, but this is what she had said.

I appreciate you sharing this. I’ve also experienced multiple events and was very young when first event started. I keep telling myself I’m such a loser for being so slow in the process. I’ve been in therapy for 2 and a half years and I know I won’t be close to what you referred to the maintenance phase in 6 months. 10 years makes me part of me want to throw up but another part relieved knowing it could take much longer and that it’s okay.
My therapist (my 2nd therapist)told me it would be a long process and not to set a date. I absolutely love her and started working with her 7 months ago. It took me several sessions to trust her but in the last few months I’ve realized she is a perfect fit for me and my traumas.

It’s very hard and as others have commented it seems like it’s getting way worse when we work on hard things. My current therapist knows how to pull me back together if that makes sense before I leave and that is huge to me. My old T didn’t and I didn’t cope well after for days. Now I’m able to drive 5 minutes home and be alone to process, meditate, or go to my safe spot for a few hours before having to be in contact with others.

 

[Lionheart]

Hi @Faith Andrews ,

Please do not take the 10 year timeline to heart, it may not take that long and I definitely do not want to discourage you! What I do know is that eventually you will be feeling better and that time won't matter as much because you will be taking care of yourself, processing stuff, and that can be an awesome thing to do for oneself.

You deserve to get and feel better!!! It does tend to be hard at first, but it gets easier and is less painful as time goes by. I think it is great that you have a good fit with your therapist, that can make a world of difference.

You are not a loser for taking time to get better, to me you are a hero...someone to be admired and respected!.

I went at therapy as if my life depended on it because before therapy, I was drinking alcohol everyday, cutting on myself with razor blades, and praying to die. I was suicidal and was slowly killing myself with my negative coping style. So I took a notebook to my sessions and took notes on everything we talked about because actually my life did depend on it, at least to my mind.

I don't take notes anymore and I threw away my old notes after awhile, but I never lost sight of the lessons I learned or the progress I made. Processing trauma is hard work, it is not the easy way out, but it is definitely the best and only way for me. Please take stock of how awesome it is that you have hung in there for 2 and a half years. I hope you will continue to do well on your healing journey and I wish you all the best!!!

Lion

 

[New]

Thank you @Lionheart777

It didn’t discourage me! It gave me hope.

 

[ILoveLife]

I'm still recovering, but pretty much almost there. Have no symptoms, but that's not the end of recovery. There's a whole lot of consequences to trauma that are not on a diagnosis checklist. That's the hard part, but it's entirely possible to get better and heal that, with practice and time. I'm convinced my symptomatology is heavily linked to consequences I hadn't healed. Once certain things started coming together, making sense and then ceasing to exist in me, I got better.

But there are things, besides the quality of mindfulness others already mentioned.

I had to be humble towards trauma in order to grasp it. I mean, understand that we are this body and it pretty much works by itself, regardless of our expectations of it. We can get more in tune with it, sure. Meditation, yoga, general exercise help a lot, but there's a humility characteristic we gain towards mental health issues that we should cultivate. Understanding the monster it is for us, doesn't mean we can't work to make it less frightening and eventually overcome it. I think the ability to not be defeated by it, but working With it in order to get better. The most important piece of advice I got from a therapist was exactly that things exist for a reason, validating that reason and working with it makes the whole job a lot easier for us.

Another thing is making room for work. It's not just about going to therapy. Another important thing I learned is that however well intentioned, therapists do not live with our minds, and 50 minutes a week or even twice a week with a person (even if a professional mind-carer) does not make them responsible for our recovery, the slightest. The second most important piece of advice I got from a therapist was that the work I did, I did it all by myself. So as long as I didn't make room for work on things in solitude, I didn't get better.

Feeling emotions is equally important. It's important we realize we are in charge of that, there's no conspiracy inside of us to not allow us to feel. We just have to create awareness. I often see everywhere "I'm so numb and so angry about it" lol... if you're angry, hun, you're not numb. Accepting we have negative states of mind just like everyone in the world is an important step towards freeing ourselves from them. Doesn't mean they don't keep coming back, they will for sure. We just need to accept that.

Recently I've been coming to terms with the fact that (at least this is important for me) what happened right now is just a story I replay in my head. It happened, yes, but it's clearly over. What I do with that story is what matters, not the story itself.

Took me about 10 years to recover too, and only the final stages of it consisted mostly of steps forward. Before that, I kept walking backwards. Falling flat on my face also meant walking forward :roflmao:

 

[EveHarrington]

I often see everywhere "I'm so numb and so angry about it" lol... if you're angry, hun, you're not numb.

Sorry, hun, but unless you have experience with dissociated feelings, you don’t know what it’s like to be numb to some feelings, but not all of them.

I’m replying because yes, I am one of those people who has indeed posted about my frustration over feeling numb.

And you assume that numbness is 0 or 100. Not so, very not so. It’s very possible, even common to be numb to a few or a slew of feelings, but not all of them.

Saying all this as someone who has been there and experiences numbness to a few feelings, but not all, on a regular basis.

So please don’t judge that which you do not experience.

 

[ILoveLife]

Sure. I wasn't judging, and I've experienced plenty. Not here to fight you, as always, Eve. We can disagree, that's what worked for me.