Meryl Streep - I No Longer

Coping with Traumatic Stress Reactions PTSD

When trauma survivors take direct action to cope with their stress reactions, they put themselves in a position of power. Active coping with the trauma makes you begin to feel less helpless.

* Active coping means accepting the impact of trauma on your life and taking direct action to improve things.

*Active coping occurs even when there is no crisis. Active coping is a way of responding to everyday life. It is a habit that must be made stronger.

Know that recovery is a process

Following exposure to a trauma most people experience stress reactions. Understand that recovering from the trauma is a process and takes time. Knowing this will help you feel more in control.

*Having an ongoing response to the trauma is normal.

*Recovery is an ongoing, daily process. It happens little by little. It is not a matter of being cured all of a sudden.

*Healing doesn't mean forgetting traumatic events. It doesn't mean you will have no pain or bad feelings when thinking about them.

*Healing may mean fewer symptoms and symptoms that bother you less.

*Healing means more confidence that you will be able to cope with your memories and symptoms. You will be better able to manage your feelings.

Positive coping actions

Certain actions can help to reduce your distressing symptoms and make things better. Plus, these actions can result in changes that last into the future. Here are some positive coping methods:

Learn about trauma and PTSD

It is useful for trauma survivors to learn more about common reactions to trauma and about PTSD. Find out what is normal. Find out what the signs are that you may need assistance from others. When you learn that the symptoms of PTSD are common, you realize that you are not alone, weak, or crazy. It helps to know your problems are shared by hundreds of thousands of others. When you seek treatment and begin to understand your response to trauma, you will be better able to cope with the symptoms of PTSD.

Talk to others for support

When survivors talk about their problems with others, something helpful often results. It is important not to isolate yourself. Instead make efforts to be with others. Of course, you must choose your support people with care. You must also ask them clearly for what you need. With support from others, you may feel less alone and more understood. You may also get concrete help with a problem you have.

Practice relaxation methods

Try some different ways to relax, including:

*Muscle relaxation exercises

*Breathing exercises

*Meditation

*Swimming, stretching, yoga

*Prayer

*Listening to quiet music

*Spending time in nature

While relaxation techniques can be helpful, in a few people they can sometimes increase distress at first. This can happen when you focus attention on disturbing physical sensations and you reduce contact with the outside world. Most often, continuing with relaxation in small amounts that you can handle will help reduce negative reactions. You may want to try mixing relaxation in with music, walking, or other activities.

Distract yourself with positive activities

Pleasant recreational or work activities help distract a person from his or her memories and reactions. For example, art has been a way for many trauma survivors to express their feelings in a positive, creative way. Pleasant activities can improve your mood, limit the harm caused by PTSD, and help you rebuild your life.

Talking to your doctor or a counselor about trauma and PTSD

Part of taking care of yourself means using the helping resources around you. If efforts at coping don't seem to work, you may become fearful or depressed. If your PTSD symptoms don't begin to go away or get worse over time, it is important to reach out and call a counselor who can help turn things around. Your family doctor can also refer you to a specialist who can treat PTSD. Talk to your doctor about your trauma and your PTSD symptoms. That way, he or she can take care of your health better.

Many with PTSD have found treatment with medicines to be helpful for some symptoms. By taking medicines, some survivors of trauma are able to improve their sleep, anxiety, irritability, and anger. It can also reduce urges to drink or use drugs.

Coping with the symptoms of PTSD

Here are some direct ways to cope with these specific PTSD symptoms:

Unwanted distressing memories, images, or thoughts

*Remind yourself that they are just that, memories.

*Remind yourself that it's natural to have some memories of the trauma(s).

*Talk about them to someone you trust.

*Remember that, although reminders of trauma can feel overwhelming, they often lessen with time.

Sudden feelings of anxiety or panic

Traumatic stress reactions often include feeling your heart pounding and feeling lightheaded or spacey. This is usually caused by rapid breathing. If this happens, remember that:

*These reactions are not dangerous. If you had them while exercising, they most likely would not worry you.

*These feelings often come with scary thoughts that are not true. For example, you may think, "I'm going to die," "I'm having a heart attack," or "I will lose control." It is the scary thoughts that make these reactions so upsetting.

*Slowing down your breathing may help.

*The sensations will pass soon and then you can go on with what you were doing.

Each time you respond in these positive ways to your anxiety or panic, you will be working toward making it happen less often. Practice will make it easier to cope.

Feeling like the trauma is happening again (flashbacks)

*Keep your eyes open. Look around you and notice where you are.

*Talk to yourself. Remind yourself where you are, what year you're in, and that you are safe. The trauma happened in the past, and you are in the present.

*Get up and move around. Have a drink of water and wash your hands.

*Call someone you trust and tell them what is happening.

*Remind yourself that this is a common response after trauma.

*Tell your counselor or doctor about the flashback(s).

Dreams and nightmares related to the trauma

*If you wake up from a nightmare in a panic, remind yourself that you are reacting to a dream. Having the dream is why you are in a panic, not because there is real danger now.

*You may want to get up out of bed, regroup, and orient yourself to the here and now.

*Engage in a pleasant, calming activity. For example, listen to some soothing music.

*Talk to someone if possible.

*Talk to your doctor about your nightmares. Certain medicines can be helpful.

Difficulty falling or staying asleep

*Keep to a regular bedtime schedule.

*Avoid heavy exercise for the few hours just before going to bed.

*Avoid using your sleeping area for anything other than sleeping or sex.

*Avoid alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. These harm your ability to sleep.

*Do not lie in bed thinking or worrying. Get up and enjoy something soothing or pleasant. Read a calming book, drink a glass of warm milk or herbal tea, or do a quiet hobby.

Irritability, anger, and rage

*Take a time out to cool off or think things over. Walk away from the situation.

*Get in the habit of exercise daily. Exercise reduces body tension and relieves stress.

*Remember that staying angry doesn't work. It actually increases your stress and can cause health problems.

*Talk to your counselor or doctor about your anger. Take classes in how to manage anger.

*If you blow up at family members or friends, find time as soon as you can to talk to them about it. 

 Let them know how you feel and what you are doing to cope with your reactions.

Difficulty concentrating or staying focused

*Slow down. Give yourself time to focus on what it is you need to learn or do.

*Write things down. Making "to do" lists may be helpful.

*Break tasks down into small do-able chunks.

*Plan a realistic number of events or tasks for each day.

*You may be depressed. Many people who are depressed have trouble concentrating. Again, this is something you can discuss with your counselor, doctor, or someone close to you.

Trouble feeling or expressing positive emotions

*Remember that this is a common reaction to trauma. You are not doing this on purpose. You should not feel guilty for something you do not want to happen and cannot control.

*Make sure to keep taking part in activities that you enjoy or used to enjoy. Even if you don't think you will enjoy something, once you get into it, you may well start having feelings of pleasure.

*Take steps to let your loved ones know that you care. You can express your caring in little ways: write a card, leave a small gift, or phone someone and say hello.

A Final Word

Try using all these ways of coping to find which ones are helpful to you. Then practice them. Like other skills, they work better with practice. Be aware that there are also behaviors that DON'T help.

By Abuse No More

That Kick In The Astral

That day when you start to feel normal, like a human being again..

That day when you’re finally able to notice and focus on something great going on in your life, not having your thoughts tightly wrapped around him.

When you can breathe without hurt, when your energy level is high enough to do some very needed house work, like cleaning windows, changing drapes, do laundry….and so you do and you kind of mindlessly just check your emails with the coffee while waiting for the spin cycle to finish.

And there he is. And because you’re so conditioned into it you open the email without thinking and read how much he is missing you.. Just that. ‘I miss you’.

And so now you’re right back where you were.

All that good work right down the drain.

All the great energy drained right out with those three words.

And that’s the dance.

The nature of the beast.

Leave her alone, let her build up strength and resistance and then kick her right in the astral by reminding her directly of his existence right before she becomes strong enough not to care what he does at all.

They seem to have a 6^th sense about this.

Damn it!

Well, I started this housework mission, I’ll be damned if I’m giving him the power to stop me midway.

I feel like crap, but he doesn’t have to know that.

For all he knows I’m happy, I’ve moved on.

Because that is exactly what will happen. Eventually.

Thank God for inspirational videos, quotes and blogs.

With Hope & Love

Melissa Blue

Teal Swan - The Justification Roadblock

For one of those days when you need a gentle shake, and inspiration or a nudge in the right direction.

Lisa A. Romano - Breaking Up With Codependency

Healing Quote - Never Too Late

"It’s never too late – it’s never too late to start over, never too late to be happy."

Jane Fonda

Lies Lies Lies! Your Pants Are On Fire, Pinnochio!

“Narcissists lie to make themselves look good. They lie to get out of emotional responsibility. They lie to manipulate. They lie to gain influence. They lie out of habit. Life is a game to narcissists – a game they have to think they’re winning – and truth is one casualty in their game plan. The only time a narcissist has any interest in telling the truth is when it will serve them or cost them nothing to do so. The rest of the time, they don’t consider it necessary or important to be all that honest. Honesty can impede their self-gratification and compromise their powerful persona, and they don’t like that. To narcissists the truth is frequently “flexible” and optional. There’s no such thing as an honest narcissist.”

(Things Narcissists Do – Light’s House)

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Still no contact, no words from him.

Good! The more time I get, the more perspective I gain. The more perspective I gain, the easier it gets to uphold no contact. Forever.

The lies. The incredible, unbelievable, outrageous lies!

From the very beginning. Thinking back it’s amazing that I didn’t catch on earlier, because they started right away. It was the crazy exes (actually not all that hard to believe, one of them messaged me obsessively on facebook with all kinds of threats if I didn’t ‘leave him alone’.)

That was a little crazy, but armed with what I know now these guys always seems to sail through and come off like the most balanced, kindhearted, honest and loving guys in the world, and also the most unlucky in love; they have left behind a trail of ‘crazy bitches who presented themselves as someone nice just to turn out to be someone totally different’. They drive people completely off the hinges, so yes, they really do come off as the squeaky clean ones. The only ones with emotions invested in the relationship also are the only ones affected by their insane behavior of course – which can make anybody feel crazy.

We met on a social media site. It was ‘love’ at first ‘inbox message’ and he was conveniently (for him) far away, but so charming. He seemed so loving, compassionate, he cared about the same things I do. At least that’s what I thought, and what he used as the romantic adhesive.

He loved animals, I do too, he loved to read, I do too, he loved movies, I do too, he could mirror my every passion in life, my soulmate.

And turns out, he really was. Nobody ever smacked me awake more brutally than he did. Nobody ever expanded my consciousness faster and more effectively than him. He was my ‘before/after’ yardstick.

But from the beginning he was letting me know that he was nothing if not honest! He NEVER behaved in any way that he would ever have to lie.

He was nothing but genuine and kind. According to him.

But his exes were all crazy though. One had serious mental problems, one was some kind of home video porn star, another one was crazy jealous for no reason whatsoever, a couple were total drug addicts…and so on and so forth. According to him.

A few months into it I discovered that HE had a serious drug problem.

He also had a very convenient problem with his short term memory, very selectively though.

He make promises, he continuously broke. He forgot.

He started to misquote me, TO me.

He started to make up stories about me that he actually told me.

He lied about everything!

Even the things he would have gotten in less trouble for had he told the truth.

Compulsive and pathologically…lies lies lies.

And for every time I exposed one, he covered it up with another lie. Or he flew off the handle in scary fits of rages.

And he went offline, just simply disappeared.

Of course now, I know that absolutely nothing was real with this guy, but for a long time it really tore me up that he never felt I was worth the truth. With these guys there IS no truth. Not to anybody. And the moment I stopped taking his lies personally, I was already halfway out of the relationship.

The comments from women on his profile pictures with sexual and romantic hints.

His amazing friendslist with close to 100% women only.

Women calling him, wanting him to call him back, it was all there in plain sight.

Him still cybersexy facebook messaging his latest ex after we had established our relationship.

(Yes, his ex was ‘nice’ enough to forward me one of those graphic chats dated and all. How he managed to wiggle himself out of that one is still a mystery to me, but he did)

The messages from him to another woman where he explained me as a ‘friend’ he was just visiting.

The messages were filled with hearts and romantic words.

I discovered them by accident one day he was messing around with his phone, I was looking down over his shoulder and asked him who that woman was.

His answer was: ‘are you gonna get mad over this and ruin the rest of our time together now?’

So I shut up. I always did.

Yes, I’m definitely dealing with the lying aspect today.

Since that is what more or less was at the base of this whole relationship it’s probably going to be something I have to unravel and deal with for a long time before I can make my peace with it.

The lies.

To be held in the dark about everything.

To be deceived and betrayed on a daily basis.

It’s a hellish place to revisit, but to move on I have to put these things to rest. To face them, realize them, see them for what they were.

And I wonder who he’s lying to now. Poor woman.

The road to healing and personal freedom from one of these guys is long and painful.

But there was a time before him, before them, I was happy, there is a time after him, I will be happy again.

And that will make every hurtful sting worth it.

Love

Melissa Blue