When I first contacted Anthony, and later Dr Roerich, the question you are asking now, WAS the big question.
I do not know of a guide, or any literature that pertains to your question. I don’t know if anyone has yet to address this issue because PTSD is still considered incurable.
But I can relate my own experience.
Four years ago I found myself asking this question, and I have been asking myself this question since then.
I was 44 at the time. My childhood was terrible, my adult life was dysfunctional. Even at 44, I was a socially and emotionally immature person. I had been diagnosed with PTSD, I fought drug addiction, and my mental state was deteriorating. PTSD was incurable, and there seemed to be no hope. That is how it was.
Then there was this day, which I will never forget. I realized that for the first time my mind was not ruminating out of control, reliving terrible things from the past, or imagining new terrible things. I felt clear and relaxed. I had not had any nightmares in more than a week.
I literally asked myself, “Now what do I do?”
I have no professional education, training or experience in psychology or a related field. All I had to go on was my own intuition based on my experiences as a patient and a recovering drug addict / alcoholic. At that time I had 2 years sobriety.
I did have the benefit of the knowledge and experience of the AA program, and being a patient in 2 residential treatment centers.
In AA, the most important thing I have come away with, is that you MUST live a life of RIGOROUS honesty.
In my opinion, the man who started AA was a genius, and wrote 2 books that are among the most profound writings of our time. Much of the program applies to insane thinking and believe it or not, many of us have this.
Some of these principles could certainly lend themselves to a portion of an after care program for PTSD, if aftercare was needed.
I, like many others, believe the cause of PTSD lies with errant right brain processing and function, coupled with a hemispherical imbalance of right and left hemispheres. I believe this does not have to be permanent, though it certainly will be, if nothing is done to change it.
It is not difficult to accomplish this. It is relatively simple, if a bit awkward at first. I did it by using a stringed music instrument. The instrument I used was a 5 string banjo, but I think almost any stringed instrument would accomplish the same results, as long as a style of playing is used that has a high degree of difficulty.
I am right handed and had played for almost 25 years. I then changed to a left hand instrument, practiced about 40 minutes a day, and within 3 months I stopped experiencing the symptoms associated with PTSD. I HAVE NOT HAD ANY SYMPTOMS OF PTSD SINCE THAT TIME, which was 4 years ago.
This imbalance and the errant right brain, is responsible for producing the symptoms of PTSD. In addition, this imbalance does not lend itself well to the overall process of normal functioning, reasoning and processing. Instead, what tends to happen is a distorted thinking process.
Going back to that time when my mind was first clear, I intuitively knew I was still the product of a lifetime of dysfunction. Likewise, I intuitively sensed this was going to change.
I did not know what I was supposed to do exactly, and it was a little scary. So I decided the best thing was to keep doing what I was doing, go slow, and be watchfull for anything starting to go wrong.
It took approximately a year to grow and develop from the person who was a product of a lifetime of dysfunctional living. That was such a good year, perhaps the best of my life.
A while back, in a treatment center, a counselor gave me a handout, and I read it. It was a list of types of distorted thinking. I read it while he stood there, then I told him, “Yeah, but if I did not have these thoughts, I would not HAVE any thoughts.”
I have come to believe that an unbalanced mind produces a distorted thinking processes. This type of process has long been known about in the field of psychology.
I did not invent this list, but I feel this best articulates my thinking and view of the world when I had PTSD.
*FromThoughts & Feelingsby McKay, Davis, & Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.
1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.
2. Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black or white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example-You have to be perfect or you're a failure.
3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.
4. Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.
5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.
6. Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue to your worth and value.
7. Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and that every decision affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).
8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.
9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.
10. Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.
11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.
12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.
13. Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgment. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.
14. Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.
15. Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You fell bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.
I use this list as a guide. I have learned that I can consciously exert some control over my thoughts and actions.
I have not mastered the process of Non-Distorted Thinking by any means, but I am much better than I once was.
It is similar to “living a life of rigorous honesty”. It is more involved than one might think, and in fact, is a process that continues daily. I don’t think you can get to point where you can say, “There, I got it.”
My “aftercare” if you will, has been along the lines of the program of AA, and of addressing the distorted thinking produced by PTSD.
I have expressed these thoughts in private to Anthony and to Dr Roerich in the past, but I don’t think I have addressed this area in any posts I have made.
I believe PTSD is curable, although what I accomplished has not been tried by anyone else, to the best of my knowledge. So right now, until others try it, and a bona fide scientific study is done, I am one person making my own statement.
