I was teaching a class on emergency preparedness.  As each person walked in the door, I handed them a band aid.  After everyone was settled, we started.  I asked people to list all of the possible emergencies that can happen.  They started rattling off things like losing a job, car accident, lost child, earthquake, flooding, the list went on until we filled an entire chalk board with all the things that can go wrong.  I then asked them how many of these items can be taken care of with the band aid.  They got my point that when we talk about being prepared a band aid just doesn’t cover what you need.  Coping with PTSD takes a whole lot more than a band aid.  Web pages are devoted to how to cope with stress yet their idea are like band aids, so small compared to what I am dealing with.  I remind myself that every little bit helps.

Here is a list of web pages that were suggested by Hope For the Broken Hearted.  I need to remember that sometimes getting back to basics, simplistic answers, and often suggested ideas are a place to start.  Sometimes I forget that the simple solutions are the baby steps that can get me moving forward.  I didn’t follow every link on these pages but the ones I followed were reminders that there are somethings I can do to give myself some relief from some of the stress.  Too often I tend to throw out a choice because it doesn’t solve the whole problem.  Reminded of the many times my counselor talked about putting together my puzzle pieces.  Simple answers can help with part of the puzzle.

Hope For The Broken Hearted  Shared these links about stress

http://1stholistic.com/Reading/liv_36-christian-ways-toreduce-stress.htm

Literally a list of things for a Christian to help reduce stress.  Pray is topping the list.  The amazing thing I find about prayer is I define my problem to God and He already knows and listens any way.  Kind of awesome when I think about it.  I like the list.

http://helpguide.org/topics/stress.htm

This one included a stress test.  Crumbs my score was almost double the high score.  Yup, I am very stressed right now.  Makes sense why a  list of web pages about stress would get my attention.  I feel like stress has me by the throat and shaking me like a rag doll.  Set aside one major project.  Realized that one thing added a huge amount of stress that I hadn’t acknowledged.  Also has links to a lot more information about stress.  More clinical feel to the page.  I didn’t follow all the links.

http://stressmanagementtips.com/

This is the home page which lists everything on the web page.  This link http://stressmanagementtips.com/tips.htm listed a wide variety of common solutions.  Nothing I didn’t recognize.  I still don’t do them, I just know what they are.

One of the common solutions to reducing stress is to go to sleep earlier.  Get enough rest….without nightmares I could.  Not that simple for me.  I would love to get more sleep.  But once I feel rested the nightmare increase.  It just sucks.