This came up on my Facebook feed as a memory. I felt it was a good reminder for friends and family of someone with PTSD. Holidays often have multiple triggers attached to events. Plan ahead for possibilities and share possible coping skills to those you trust to help. Really, touch can be another layer of…
Canada’s Thanksgiving day already happened. In the United States we are coming up on the Holiday blitz – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years followed by Valentine’s day. After my third year in counseling, my therapist pointed out how I wiped out each Holiday season. Well I am consistent in something. I learned to plan ahead…
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,…
The next item on Pavelka Toolbox Pavelka Health Revolution is the Magic of 3…..List 3 things I want to accomplish the next day and place it in a prominent place. For me, it is an instant fail because lists are a trigger for me. His idea is a good one. 3 is manageable. Placing it…
I became unreasonably dismayed that my online art therapy teacher asked me to make a family tree as one of the projects. I pushed pause and walked away. (Nice advantage of an online class.) I took all day to hash through why I was so unreasonably upset over a simple assignment. Well, with my family…
I wrote this for my other blog but I believe this applies here too. I get news of conferences for education. One of them pointed out an issue that children and those with PTSD struggle. https://www.socialthinking.com/ The Size of the Problem Problems happen all the time – perhaps you dropped your ice cream cone on…
I read several PTSD blogs to keep up on what other people are discovering and trying with PTSD. I appreciated the post over at Healing from Complex PTSD discussing the difference between a trigger and discerning current bad behavior. https://healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/when-triggers-are-actually-intuition-discernment-lilly-hope-lucario/ My thoughts on the issue is that it isn’t a trigger if the bad behavior…
One of the challenges of looking for help is finding someone that understands PTSD. The second challenge is the mistaken belief that they can fix you. I started counseling with the vague idea that going the therapist would magically fix my problems. Doesn’t work that way. A good counselor in my opinion shares with you…
I’m not sure I am ready….yet, this was what I did in my 10 years of counseling. Embraced one trigger, fear, incident, memory at a time, even if they tried to crowd forward all at once my counselor would help me focus on a bit a time. I read this article that set me thinking…
PTSD - Accepting, Coping, Thriving 