PTSD Guide. Lise Leblanc

you always try to suppress your disturbing thoughts and unwanted emotions, those suppressed thoughts and emotions will become more and more difficult to manage. So instead, give yourself permission for short periods of time to start allowing yourself to think, feel, and process whatever you’ve been blocking and avoiding.

      • Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap with your fingers intertwined (try not to move your hands), and then let your thoughts flow.

      • If an upsetting thought or emotion arises, just let it be, reminding yourself that you are safe and that none of these thoughts or emotions have power over you, unless you give them power.

      • Do nothing. Do not try to think or not think anything. Try to allow your mind to handle itself for a few minutes, the way your lungs handle your breathing without any help from you.

      • If you feel an unpleasant thought or emotion arising, see if you can observe it and follow it from a detached perspective and let it pass through you. Sometimes putting your focus on it causes it to dissipate. Notice what you are feeling in your body. Describe it out loud.

      • Do this two or three times a day. Once you are done the exercise, you can consciously go back to your usual coping strategies, if needed.

       REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS

      • What repetitive thoughts are playing over and over in your mind?

      • In what ways do you fight or fuel your distressing thoughts?

      • In what ways do you fight or fuel your distressing emotions?

       AROUSAL

      When we think of PTSD, we usually think of the hyperarousal aspect of it — fear, anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, heightened startle response, inability to relax, low access to cognitive functions, and little ability to regulate emotions — which is characterized by excessive activation of the fight-or-flight response. When hyperarousal exceeds the threshold that we are able to tolerate, or when the threat is too powerful to fight or outrun it, the defensive freeze response is the only survival response left. In this case, the sympathetic nervous system turns things over to the parasympathetic nervous system, and you go from a state of hyperarousal to a state of hypoarousal (freeze). Here’s how these survival states work:

      1. Hyperarousal

      Most of us want to feel like we are in control and that life is predictable. We want to think we know what’s going to happen next, yet when we experience trauma, we realize we are not in control. That anything can happen at any time. Life can get turned upside down at the drop of a hat. Instantly, what once seemed certain no longer is. A traumatic experience can deconstruct all of your notions about how the world works. Things you believed about human nature are no longer certainties, and your assumptions about the world being safe and predictable have been shattered. You’ve learned that terrible things can happen to you and your loved ones at any given moment, and this has launched you into a state of fear. Your fears after a traumatic event can include things like fear of change, fear of judgement, fear of the unknown, fear of dying or of losing someone, fear of remembering details of the trauma, fear of facing your own difficult emotions, and all kinds of other fears that you never used to think about. Now you’re on guard, anxious, easily startled, and unable to relax. This may leave you trying to control all aspects of your environment, including the people in your life. Here is what one person with PTSD had to say about the fear and lack of predictability she felt following the death of both her parents in a double homicide: