Did you know that about 7 or 8 out of every 100 people (or 7-8% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives? About 8 million adults have PTSD during a given year.
First off, you are not alone, there are millions out there who are going through a tough time, saying this I want you to know that just because you have been diagnosed with PTSD or depression, anxiety or any type of limiting disorder, your journey isn’t going to be the same as any of those 8 million people.
Your past experiences, your beliefs and your values are going to dictate the way that you react to events that happen in your life, this is how it will be unique to you.
I had a question the other day about what PTSD really is, even though 8 % of the population will have PTSD at some point in their lives, there are still going to be people in this world who don’t know what it is and how it truly affects us and that is why I wanted to explain, so that they would have a little understanding of what people with PTSD face on any given day.
Posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, or rape or who have been threatened with death, sexual violence or serious injury. Now this definition came from the American psychiatric website for your reference.
When you understand that this is how the disorder is defined you can understand why so many people get diagnosed with it. These types of events happen daily throughout the world, either to a person or witnessed by a person. That is why people are so susceptible to PTSD.
Why am I wanting to share this with you, not to scare you but to make you become aware of how easy it is to fall into the disorder of post traumatic stress.
I want you to know this so that you can prepare for battle, now that doesn’t mean worry about the what ifs that come into your life, or may never come into your life, it is to build your resilience for when it does.
We are all going to have 1 or more situations in our lives, things that happen that can cause PTSD symptoms, but if you are already preparing for it then you will be better equipped to not have the results that are caused by PTSD.
Those sleepless nights, the fear of going outside, depression because you don’t feel worthy, the times you don’t thing you are right for this world anymore, contemplating suicide.
There are a number of feeling that you can go through that are caused by the stress caused by trauma, and the best thing you can do is prepare.
Now before I get into how you draw up your battle plans for that event, I want you to take a moment and think of the event that might have caused you to have the past experience that could have caused your PTSD.
When I refer to thinking about it, I don’t want you to relieve it, I think that is the worst thing you should do. If you go through a horrific event, how would making you go through that horrific event again help you get over it, I personally think that it would just cause more trauma.
So just think about it, make it seem like you are watching it on TV, that you are watching someone else go through that event, not even seeing you go through it. Don’t and I will repeat this DON’T attach any emotion to this event, just see it, don’t relive it.
Now that you see the event on your imaginary tv and seen it for what it was a single event that you went through, I want you to put yourself in a different event and great experience that you went through, put yourself at an event that you loved that you laughed at and feel it, feel it like it was yesterday.
How does that feel, do you feel happy or excited to have experienced that event, if you did that exercise right you would have. I wanted to show you that you can just as quickly change from emotion to emotion, but you have to be self-aware of the emotions that you are feeling, and you have to be committed to changing them.
You see our mind doesn’t know if an event that you are playing is real or not but it is more focused on protecting us from things that hurt us, so if you are thinking of an event that caused your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that will set off a chain reaction that causes fight or flight or freeze in your mind. Then weather the event is real in this world or real in your mind, you will still have the same emotional reaction to it.
If you are focusing on experiencing happiness then your mindset will have the impression that your life is good, which it is, and then you will have less emotional attachment to certain events, and it won’t cause as much hypervigilance in you.
Hypervigilance is that feeling you get when everything is out to get you, or you are preparing for everything that could happen, really causes huge stress in your life.
I lived my life in hypervigilance for years, I would sit in restaurants and know where the exits where, plan out what if scenarios in my head during the meal, really missing the blessing of being there with my family, because I was too worried about the what ifs, that never happened.
Then I changed my focus, I made the decision in my mind what was important and what I felt was just a lesson.
I read a quote once, I am not sure who it was from, but it is one that really speaks to every situation that you are going to go through.
“You may not be able to control every situation and it’s outcome, but you can control your attitude and how you deal with it.”
You see there are going to be countless of situations that happen in your life, countless events both good and bad, well what you will perceive as good or bad, and it is going to be your response to these events is going to give the meaning to that event.
This is where we are going to start with your battle plans, to know that you have control over the meaning of every event that you go through.
But you have to be aware of this, if you are just letting life happen to you then you are never going to be able to change the emotions that you have about events that you are going through, and yes, you do have control over all of your emotions.
You can direct your life, and your emotions, like a director, controls the feelings that you get from a movie that you watch.
Don’t believe me, think about this, when you watch your next horror movie, put in on mute, without the cues, example, the music that you hear, the noise of the door, the scream, your emotions wouldn’t get caught up in what is happening, it would be just something that you are watching, probably become a drama.
Or if the director wanted, he could probably make the horror movie into a comedy just by changing the music. The director has control of what you feel while you watch a movie, so why would you think that you had any less control of the emotions of your personal self?
You are the main character of your movie of life, but who is directing it?
Is the external world your director, or other people or events that control your emotions on any given day is this what is controlling your emotions?
What you are going to have to begin to change these habits.
And you do this by become more aware of what you are going through, start journaling. Write about an event that you went through, again don’t relive it, just write it down. Now what emotions did you give to that event and why.
Don’t add the worldly response, well this person passed away, so I am supposed to be sad. You are supposed to feel how you are supposed to feel, not have it dictated by the world.
When I talk about looking my son, I talk about it, will passion and cheerfulness, Because he was such a blessing to me and I am able to use his blessing to fulfill my purpose, sadness doesn’t come into it, yes, I would love to have him back, but I know that there was a higher purpose for me losing him. Now I am telling you this because when I talk to people about my loss they get sad, and tell me things like I am going to cry, personally I feel it is because they see society as losing a child should be a sad thing. I hope you are understanding what I am meaning from this.
I am not a heartless person; I just know that behind every event that I go through there is a bigger meaning than I am initially attaching to it. When you begin to find this meaning, you will begin to live a better life. You won’t be trapped by each event or controlled by each event, because you won’t allow it to have the power over you.
Now that you have looked at that event and your initial emotions, look at the same event but attach a different emotion to it, look at it from a different perspective, find something positive from it. I know for some events this is going to be hard. But once you begin to see the bigger picture of those single events that you are going to go through you will have a different picture for your life.
Think about the people that you can talk to who are wise in age, I like the way that sounds better than old people, LOL.
Ask them if there would be anything about events that they went through they would change, I would say there would be a select few, because when you can look back on your life, you will see the pattern or the process that you went through and that event was just a piece in your puzzle that is creating your life.
Finally, I want you to remember there is nothing in this world that has power over you unless you give It that power, only give your emotion to the incidents that are going to move you in your life.
If you come into an event that is causing you to create that fight or flight mode, the first thing to do is breath, take your time and think about the event that you are going though or just have been through and see it for that.
Did you know that your fight, flight, freeze response going all the way back to Paleolithic period times when the cave man was around, to protect them from the predators that were attacking them, yes there are still predators that will attack us today, but not as often and you have a better chance of controlling your life now, than they did.
We need to better equip ourselves for these new times and be more at cause in our minds than to be controlled by it.
Think about the different ways that you can look at each event that you went through, become self-aware of your life, begin to be the director, if you don’t like the way something feels, then change the feeling that you get from it, change the music.
If you aren’t going to direct your own life, who is?
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