Purpose, passion, and ptsd

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anthony

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Purpose!A philosophical role within our life that has real and lasting impact upon our physical and mental well-being. Purpose is one of those neglected topics, especially with regard to the healing of mental health symptoms.

What is purpose?Purpose is your sense of resolve or determination to achieve an outcome or objective. Purpose is a healthy method of distraction to focus your mental energy on something external to yourself. In other words, it removes your focus from internal mental self-chatter.

Wrap it all up and purpose equals a framework of goals toward which to dedicate finite attention and effort. Just like a compass offers direction so too does purpose.

Link Removed explain purpose:

As a life aim, a purpose generates continual goals and targets for efforts to be devoted. A purpose provides a bedrock foundation that allows a person to be more resilient to obstacles, stress, and strain. Purpose is a central, self-organizing life aim that organizes and stimulates goals, manages behaviors, and provides a sense of meaning.

Let's be honest. Every sufferer of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could do with less internal chatter and more external focus. Right?

When you awake with purpose, you're not wondering what you're going to do with yourself for the day, as you already know. A recent study of 7,100 participants demonstrated that the more purpose you have, the happier you are, and it seems the longer you live.

Purpose is directly linked to a healthy mind, healthy body and healthy aging. With PTSD, purpose can mean the difference between life or death when symptoms are severe.

PTSD has a definitive focus to consistently attack a person's purpose.That is to say, the diagnosis contains several symptoms with the direct result of destroying one's mental and/or physical functioning. With PTSD, purpose is more important than ever within your life.

You may now be questioning whether purpose can factually impact PTSD. Don't doubt yourself; this is a common-sense question that you should be asking. Interestingly, an empirically valid treatment used for trauma called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, encompasses purpose as part of its core.

A little PTSD fact. PTSD is just a name. It has no scientific validation beyond creating a box (diagnosis) that holds specific contents (symptoms) that are recognized as phenomena, which occur in similarly affected people. PTSD, like all mental health diagnoses, is fundamentally philosophical -- a theoretical structure designed to serve those suffering from a core set of symptoms. What that means is there is no scientific evidence to support diagnostic structure. Symptoms are real, but we create diagnostic structures to serve a purpose, which is to define something in order to identify the very best treatments for a range of sufferers.

We can see, looking at the symptoms used for diagnostic purposes, that PTSD has a directly negative affect on one's sense of purpose. However, identifying and pursuing a positive purpose within one's life then becomes a strategy for combating such symptoms. What this means for every PTSD sufferer is that purpose has the ability to positively change negative symptoms for possibly life-changing effects.

We all love examples. Picture two famous basketball stars. One retires by choice based on planning, and one is retired due to injury. Both athletes define their purpose in life as surrounding their sport. The planned retiree has established a media career in basketball for himself, able to celebrate his career and the sport in spite of retirement. The injured retiree had no such planning in place and now finds herself distant from the team, passed by and no longer useful due to injury. She turns to gambling, drinking, drugs -- all negative distractions -- loses her partner, home, everything she had enjoyed.

It isn't that the injured player lost her purpose. Instead, she lost sight of it, clouded by negative symptoms. She could coach, manage players, or otherwise remain in touch with her passion. There are many opportunities for her in basketball, even still at the professional level. She hit a period where she lost her focus, and it consumed her, causing her to seek new distractions that were harmful and served no productive or invigorating purpose in her life.

PTSD is no different. You have a life, job, relationship, everything you wanted: then you're struck with PTSD, and you may lose some, or all, of these things. Negative symptoms may cloud your present, yet finding and accepting your purpose again can help you remove the negativity and get back on track with your life. You limit the negative self talk and expend your energy by placing your focus on external tasks. In other words, you begin doing, not thinking about doing.

Find purpose again. Finding purpose can change everything with your PTSD symptoms. Whilst it does not solve PTSD, purpose can resolve several symptoms you're negatively affected by in your present life, such as avoidance, intrusive thoughts, mood and arousal. Remember, purpose encompasses your goals, achievements, behavior and more.

Purpose generates motivated behavior, stimulates behavioral consistency and psychological flexibility, fosters efficient use of your mind body resources and provides a higher level of cognitive processing.

Everyone has purpose. Some may acknowledge their purpose more than others, some may not know their purpose. Some may have multiple purposes that they follow in their life. Religion is a purpose that many embrace, to live a life being the best version of themselves they can be within a religious paradigm. For those who embrace religion, they're often people who have multiple purposes. Many have extolled the well-studied benefits of gardening, which gives gardeners a definitive purpose to foster flowers or edible plants, and it provides a simple and hands-on structure for spending energy investing in something over time. Still others find solace in volunteering at soup kitchens or visiting with the elderly.

Do you know your purpose?

Put purpose back into your life.Don't create stress; that is not purpose. Purpose is not things you can't do. Purpose is passion, things that make you happy, things that are achievable and within your circumstance. You may need to try new things in your present to find future purposes.

We all have something we do well. What is that for you?

Age is not a barrier. The link between purpose and mortality does not come with a specific age. There is no age limit to finding one's purpose. A life with lost purpose at 60 can become a purposeful life again.

Still unsure? Google Nick Vujicic, watch his videos on YouTube, and determine your current position in life with regard to your sense of purpose.
 
Interesting read. Just one question bothers me a lot, why couldn’t I find purpose earlier in life, i had a rough childhood, which later gave birth to a lot of various symptoms & to put cherry on the cake my parents just dont support me today even though they know what I’m going through. I got CPTSD, trauma, depression,, it like i just cant get out of my head..I feel my life is over. I’m 27 and cannot figure out what to do next..afraid of the world around me. Troubled by questions like, why was i born, n wat am i suppose to do with my life..even though i see a therapist n due to recent events, i wanted to run away n as i didn’t have any money or place to go.
 
I don’t think there is an answer to when a person finds their purpose. Like outlined, some people never will for various reasons, or they simply cannot acknowledge what their purpose is. Don’t beat yourself up though please, trauma is one of the reasons that some people cannot find and establish their purpose, especially complex trauma.

If you can get yourself through the worst of your past, and have dealt with it, you will be in a much better place to find, or simply acknowledge, your purpose/s in life.
 
Anthony,

Getting out of my own head has been the most beneficial healing tactic for me. Doing so has allowed me to stop thinking negatively about myself and situations. My purpose, is my job and supporting myself. When I stopped thinking negatively, my job stopped being just a job, and it became a challenge and something I put pride into
 
When I first got PTSD (I didn’t know it was PTSD at the time) My Mum sent me to an NLP therapist. I was acting out, really angry, very destructive, and super unhappy. Nothing good ever happened, only bad, and I felt like I was not long for this world.

The therapist asked me what I wanted to get out of the sessions. I said I wanted him to hypnotise me so that I can take all the bad stuff that happened to me (which was truly awful, take it from me) and use it to fuel my creativity. Essentially take all the negative, and turn it into a massive positive. The more negative it was, the more positive I should get out of it. So that is what he did. He also gave me these self hypnosis exercises to do each morning, which I did religiously. I would not have been able to get out of bed without those.

Previous to, and during aforementioned bad stuff, I was an underachiever. After the therapy though, I went back to Uni. I got a distinction for that, and a Royal Academy Award. I then got into a better Uni, and did an M.A. I got a distinction for that too. I have since won lots of awards for my work. Whilst I still have PTSD, (I am working on that) I have my art, and by extension, my work… and I love it. Because of it, I have travelled the world & met amazing people, done amazing things. I don’t think any of that would have happened, if it weren’t for the PTSD.

Each time I sit down to work, it’s a bit like I am putting love and care into my life. I have a particular flavour of creativity that I think is a reflection of my past- it’s not dark and angry (as you might imagine) it’s fun, quirky, kind, and sweet. I think the PTSD makes it so. People say there is something about my work, they can’t put their finger on it. Only I know what that something is… it’s my secret weapon, my super power, my PTSD.

In this way, I am thankful I went through all the bad stuff. Find the thing you love, and go for it, PTSD be damned.

May the bridges you burn, light the way to your future.
 
This is an excellent article and I can attest that focusing on a purpose or new direction is sound guidance. I have lived with PTSD for 55 years. I know that first acknowledging that I am a survivor and that PTSD use to dictate that I was a victim, was critical to my change. For the last fourteen years I have use this focus or purpose to aid my overcoming victim-hood.

I still recognize that if I fail to maintain my focus and purpose that I could easily fall back into a ‘victim mindset’ and then sub-come to depression, despair and self-loathing that comes with PTSD. I applaud this article and encourage my friends at ‘myPTSD’ to consider the guidance herein.

Be well!
Surefoot
 
Good advice. I always counsel people to get OUT of yourself. Go help someone else, even on days when you don’t feel you can help yourself. You will find your value, then your purpose.
 
The article is correct but does not go far enough. PTSD was created during the Vietnam war as an opposition to it. Persons with identically the same symptoms will be diagnosed differently if any excuse is found to claim a “trauma” history for the subject. No one in mental health services, or research is aware of a preventable problem of everyone’s physiology of sight, visual subliminal distraction, explained in first semester psychology lectures under the physiology of sight, and peripheral vision reflexes, which can produce all the symptoms of PTSD. Unaware the problem engineers discovered, and solved fifty years ago, no one screens for Subliminal Distraction before diagnosing mental illness.
 
I would say… what does purpose living with PTSD have to do with the Vietnam war or subliminal distraction? The article is not about those topics… so maybe it goes just far enough already?
 
I love this article.

It was only through therapy I realised I was just existing, not living and the more I faced my reality the way I felt about that, made me realise I was making myself miserable. I was utterly bored with my life and miserable in my relationship, and stuffing my feelings down with food so I didn’t have to feel how awful that made me feel.

Finding purpose has been the most rewarding stage in my therapy, I am now socialising, and learning how to paint. I find pleasure in life, it has taken on meaning, at times I feel like a kid who has discovered something new.

Finding purpose led to me repairing my relationships, developing my own needs and meeting them, and those needs included outside interests. I am no longer depressed, and while I have ups and downs in my life, having purpose has made them seem manageable.

It took me so many years in therapy to see the truth of how much PTSD fear had shrunk my world, until I was barely doing anymore than working and sleeping and eating. PTSD need not be a life sentence.
 
Interesting read. Just one question bothers me a lot, why couldn’t I find purpose earlier in life, i had a rough childhood, which later gave birth to a lot of various symptoms & to put cherry on the cake my parents just dont support me today even though they know what I’m going through. I got CPTSD, trauma, depression,, it like i just cant get out of my head..I feel my life is over. I’m 27 and cannot figure out what to do next..afraid of the world around me. Troubled by questions like, why was i born, n wat am i suppose to do with my life..even though i see a therapist n due to recent events, i wanted to run away n as i didn’t have any money or place to go.

This is me but I am 54. After my accident my purpose was to heal physically. Then - boom- I can walk and I can drive and my old life, work, friends are gone. I've been in therapy for over a year looking for that elusive purpose. I found out that my PTSD is really CPTSD. Accident or not I was heading toward a crash. For all of the other times in my life that I have found resilience, it isn't working this time.

I don't have an answer I am thankful for forums like this. I feel less alone. I'm not the only one in the struggle. I may appear recovered on the outside but the inside is hard.
 
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