Zentangles

I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to meditation.  The moment I sit down to meditate or pray I can see the checkered flag waving, the start of the racing thoughts flooding my mind.  Meditation fail.  I am working on an Art therapy online class.  My teacher posted a blog post…

Change your thinking…..

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…

Taboo subject

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…

Recognizing Hope

Suicide is rising as feelings of hope are diminishing.  I work at a school and see how often teachers and administrators focus on what is wrong, how kids are failing, and how to test to find more things wrong.  Hyper-focusing on all the negative we reach a point of only seeing the negative.  Our school…

Unproductive Blues

In today’s fast paced World, people treat you like a criminal if you have an unproductive day.  Epitaphs such as lazy, slug, bum, and other cruel name calling come your way.  Here’s the deal, I would love to be productive but my get up and go, got up and went without me.  I remember as…

Self Punishment vs depression

There are times in my life when depression has the upper hand and makes my life miserable.  I feel like I need a gold star for getting out of bed.  I drag around barely able to function.  I do nothing that I enjoy.  Life sucks. Self punishment is when I am feeling fairly healthy.  I…

Limit time

One of the interesting things I learned from my counselor was to limit the time I work each day on improving my life with PTSD.  He stressed the importance of setting aside only one hour a day to focus on past, journal writing, studying and other activities focused on healing.  He explained that I needed…

Coping Skills

I am working on The PTSD Workbook, 2nd edition, Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS and Soili Poijula, PhD.  In their book, they refer to another book, A Clinical Handbook/Practical Therapist Manual for Assessing and Treating Adults with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (Meichenbaum 1994)  the authors noticed that there are personality traits that influence how much…