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Thank you so much for reaching out and taking time to share information and support. It means a great deal to me. It sounds like you are a pro when it comes to PTSD and you were right about things getting worse. I plan to follow your suggestions and I will look into the books you mentioned as well. Thanks again, I’m grateful!My sympathies. On the upside, this is a terrific opportunity for your own personal growth. That can be the focus away from the hopelessness that you feel and perhaps you can hold onto that as a glimmer of hope. At the end of all of this, with your own personal experience of trauma, you will be a kick ass helper for those suffering trauma. Your biggest job through your healing from my own personal experience is to look for a purpose in your own suffering. That will keep you waking up each morning and putting one foot in front of the other.
A few things that really helped to ground me during my healing:
1. Try if you can to think about who is important to you right now. For myself there were a couple of motivations.
a) I couldn't die because of the people who were attempting to help me. I couldn't leave them with the burden of thinking they didn't do the right thing by me.
b) I needed to help others in my position because most of the professionals that I was dealing with at the time were incompetent, egotistical, cold, and at times cruel. I wanted to provide better for others once I healed.
c) Try to think of someone who actually loved you during your life. Like really loved you. For me, it was my grandfather. He was only with me for 5 or so years, but his love for me was such a rock along the way and provided me with an example of how I needed to LOVE MYSELF when I was ready to do so.
d) Be careful of the drugs they give you. Research them carefully. Make sure their side effects are not worse than your symptoms.
e) Learn all you can about the nervous system. A great resource is Irene Lyon. She is damned good.
f) Feldenkrais is a great resource as well to help to resync the body mind split that occurs during trauma.
g) Learn to breathe. Properly. Not crazy breathing but boxed breathing to calm the nervous system. I used 5/5 and then graduated to 5/5/5/5. Always when I was feeling well. Never when I was f*cked up.
h) Have a crisis plan in place with trusted people to hold roles that they can handle. This is too much for most and it feels like we have no people around us at times. We do, they just can only handle small slivers.
2. Cathy O'Brien has a really good book out right now called PTSD: Time to Heal that is invaluable in understanding how to manage the thoughts/flashbacks/space cadet thinking that comes with PTSD.
3. Pete Walker is great as well at teaching what is going on and how we are affected by trauma.
4. Life will most likely get worse before it gets better. Find a safe place with few responsibilities and don't demand a lot of yourself.
5. Speak to yourself with kindness and compassion. Now is not the time to call yourself bad names in order to motivate yourself to 'get better'.
I think that is a good start for now. I hope it is helpful to you.
Safe journey.