Most people are aware of the two stress responses Fight or Flight. Back in 1920, Walter Cannon coined the phrase that I grew up with all my life. https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~berczii/hans-selye/walter-cannon-fight-or-flight-response.html My mother studied stress so I heard plenty about it. However, I was in counseling before I learned these basic primal responses have a couple of cousins,…
I started counseling over 15 years ago. At the time, I told my counselor I could count on one hand how many times I had cried, then I named them. He taught me that crying was an expression of deep emotion and was good for releasing pent up feelings. I was ridiculed as a child…
I’ve heard it all my life that happiness is a choice, sort of. What I couldn’t keep up was the demand that I be happy constantly and any time I was less than happy I was flawed, needed fixing, or needed to snap out of it. I am happy, sad, funny, weird, crying, excited, and…
I am fascinated that the last item on Pavelka’s toolbox is understanding fear. My counselor spent many, many sessions on this one subject. He explained to me that I lived a fear based life. I made decisions not on what I wanted but what I was afraid would happen if I didn’t take a certain…
Just do it is more than a slogan for a company. Pavelka referred to procrastination stealing time. https://ptsd-acceptingcopingthriving.com/2016/12/05/pavelka-toolbox/ I became a believer after reading the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. https://www.amazon.com/Feel-Fear-Do-Anyway/dp/0345487427 The most recent example was DH and I celebrated 40 years of marriage attending TSO Trans Siberian Orchestra concert. http://www.trans-siberian.com/ The stadium…
Change your mood….change your behavior…..change your thinking. Mood/emotions, behavior, and thinking are so interconnected that changing one changes the others. I am always searching for more articles and websites explaining ways that might help with coping with PTSD. I am learning more about emotions all the time. I spent a good share of my life…
I was raised with a taboo about emotions. I was not taught to recognize and rejoice in my emotions. My mother couldn’t control her emotions so she controlled mine. Worked to. My teen idol was Mr. Spock. I thought I would be perfect if I could show no emotion. I felt totally betrayed when they…
I learned a new term today. I follow Awareness of childhood sexual abuse on Facebook. Today she shared this term used years ago, Field spells. Now that I know what they are called, I’ve done this. I have gone out to an old abandoned field and cried and prayed and poured out my broken heart. …
Emotions confuse and clarify, hide and reveal, happen and suppressed. I am working on gaining control over my emotions without destroying my emotions. Most teenagers learn the art of feeling and what to do about it. They experiment feeling different ways and responding to those emotions….terrible teens is an indicator of how wild this time…
A post on Facebook led to a link to an article with 49 phrases to use to calm an anxious child. I am going to explain how these can be used to calm an anxious adult, especially yourself: (My inner child needed lots of calming, especially when I was in counseling and remembering my past.) …
PTSD - Accepting, Coping, Thriving 