Question:
Hello is there anybody out there? I am interested in making contact with others like me. Fear is ever present, stalking me, stunting my life. Perhaps we can help each other? The problem is most days I can hardley speak and if I do, that is if I am forced to speak I am so angry mostly to those who love me. This is causing me great anxiety. Have you ever tried to walk on ice, with just normal leather street shoes, it takes great control without any warning that control is gone. Thats how my mind is every day. I am so very tired of it all. Little Hel – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text ->jalna…@ozemail.com.au
Response:
Hello Steve: I want you to know you aren’t alone! I’m out here, with feelings very much like yours and so are many many others. Your feelings and ours are normal human reactions to unnormal human events. I’m NOT a health care worker but I am a journeyman PTSD sufferer. I’m a Viet Nam vet. and I experienced many combat and war related traumatic events. PTSD can come from a huge variety of traumatic events. Those of us who have it, have many of the same symptoms in common, no matter what our traumatic events were. The ever present fear you mentioned is something most of us with PTSD know very well. We all must learn to stay focused on the present, keep our thoughts in the here and now. Remember you are safe now. Don’t let your mind keep you back in your traumatic event. Take a deep breath, let your stomach expand instead of your chest. Relax your muscles. Look around and be aware that you are in the here and now and in a safe place. If you arn’t keeping a feelings journal, start one. Write down the feelings and thoughts you are having during the day or night. Include the things going on with your body. Tight muscles, sweating palms etc. Look for the things that are triggering your PTSD symptoms. As you write keep yourself focused in the present. The anger you spoke of is a classic symptom. I describe mine as walking around with my cup filled to the brim with scalding hot anger. It spills very easily and no mater who I spill it on I always get burned by it too. I have a sign taped to my bathroom mirror, it says STOP. BREATH. THINK. The STOP. is obvious. The BREATH. Use deep breathing, go buy some relaxation tapes. Learning how to breath, relax and learning how to get into a relaxed state quickly is a very good relief valve for many PTSD symptoms. THINK. Think about a calming image or begin counting backward. Doing these things will provide you with a time delay so you will not act impulsively. Practice these things ahead of time and have them ready. If it fails, forgive yourself and don’t give up, practice, practice, practice. If you are using alcohol or street drugs get off of them. They may help to numb your feelings but they also can add fuel to the fire of your anger. Reaching out for help is something that we all must do. You are doing the right thing! You will get some good support from this group. Here is something that everyone with PTSD has to learn sooner or later. You CAN get your life back but it requires the help of professionals. There are strategies and tools needed to be able to cope with this beast and it is NOT a do it yourself project. You however are the one who must do the majority of the work required for your own recovery and maintenance of your recovery. There is NO magic bullet for this thing as of yet and it isn’t curable. With the right tools and the knowledge of how to use them, it is however manageably. Keep present focused! Frank (From Tennyson’s Ulysses) To Strive, To Seek, To Find and Not to Yield
Response:
Hi 
Yes. Yes. Yes. At last, a link to some others who PTSD has taken away real life and who understand the struggle to try to get some of it back. Been to this group before and found some sympathetic responses, but also found junk mail in abundance, so just pop in occasionally to see what’s happening. FW Jones has some positive advice and I will be trying lots of it. The trouble with living in UK is that a therapist is a rare commodity, a good therapist almost non-existant and everyone "feels like that sometimes". Every time I try a session with anyone I always get the response "I get that feeling too ….. " or "Oh yes I hate crowds…" and so on. It seems to me that the only people who have anything like an understanding of PTSD in this country are other sufferers. I’ve tried the REM, hypnosis, shock, task and many other "treatments" and have come out with a feeling of inadequacy and failure from each one which has set me back. I am considering autogenic sessions, but know so little about it and am so frightened that I haven’t had the courage to say yes as yet. I too have constant fear …. constant flash backs and nightmares and cannot seem to break the cycle which prevents me from going forward. My feelings of total inadequacy to provide for my family or even to protect them (primeval instincts I suppose) make me feel even worse. Money problems exacerbate the feeling of helplessness. I have been here for eight years with no progress ….. I have taken some solace from Frank Jones success in achieving some relief and will continue to strive. Are there other UK sufferers ….. Is there a UK based news group ? I am not being parochial, simply need to find some more local help 
Thanx — wowjo…@argonet.co.uk __ __ __ __ / / __/__ / / / / / / / / / V V / /_ _ V V / _/_/ / _/_/ [Always finish what you have starte
Response:
Hi Jonesy and all in the group: Nice to hear from a fellow Jones. We are probably distant relatives, remember at one time a long time ago there was only one Jones and then he got married! Down to why we are here. You said it yourself, your in a cycle. Yep, that is classic. I been there, done that, got the "T" shirt and the cap. So we know we must somehow break that cycle. Break that circle and straighten it out and have it go in a direction we want to go in. Flash backs, intrusive thoughts and nightmares are tough to break into the cycle but there are ways to do it. I have been told and it is true for me, flash backs and intrusive thoughts have a triggering mechanism. The trigger is something you may discover in your feelings journal. You may also be able to discover you trigger using the S.O.R.C. model. I will do my best to explain this tool later in this post. The trigger may be something you see, hear, smell taste, touch or something touching you. Here is the key thing about this. The trigger is in you. Your PTSD symptoms can be triggered in a crowd or with you lying in a sensory deprivation chamber. Most people believe that when something happens to you it is that event or other person that causes you to feel a certain way. In reality that’s not the case. If you are able to find your trigger, it will be the place to break the cycle. If you can’t identify it that is all right the cycle can be interrupted in other ways. Here is one technique I use. There are others but this one is a classic. In a safe place, after going through your relaxation techniques. Keep your mind present focused. Write down your flash backs and nightmares. Write new outcomes and endings. Write them down and make them be positive for you and about you. Read these new positive thing back to yourself, read them till you can recite them even in your sleep, because that is exactly where you want to have them come to you. Have them consciously interrupt the old thoughts and dreams. Read the new ones concerning your nightmares several times before going to sleep. It works for me! Not all the time but the more I practice the more often I am able to break the cycle and any relief is of great value to me, as it will be to you. During a flash back, Go into the STOP. BREATH. THINK. That I spoke about in a previous post. Do the THINK. part or replace it with the new outcome that you wrote. Get your mind back to the present as soon as you can. A word on relaxation tapes. There are many out there. Some of them won’t work for you, some will. I had to search through a lot of them before finding ones that I liked and worked for me. Most therapist have them and may be willing to dub them for you. I have been able to find them in many different retail stores also. Deep breathing, using the diaphragm breathing technique. Letting the stomach expand not the chest. Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Using the relaxation tapes and many other relaxation Techniques are a wonderful way of slowing and quieting our thoughts and thus reducing our anxiety levels. Anyone reading this, give it a try! THE S.O.R.C. MODEL The S.O.R.C. model provides a practical way to look at how our thinking, our body reactions and our emotions work together to influence our behavior. This can be a useful tool in breaking cycles that lead to relapse or increased symptoms of PTSD. Most people believe that when something happens to you it is that event or other person that causes you to feel a certain way. In reality that’s not the case. The S.O.R.C model will help you prove that to yourself. In every situation or event which you experience you have thoughts, feelings and some physical reaction. That physical reaction arouses your senses and sends certain chemicals through the brain. Because of the way trauma effects the central nervous system, people with PTSD may have more intense physiological reactions than individuals who haven’t experienced trauma. They may also think about things differently than other people because of the way trauma effects perception. This makes it easy to blame others for our physical and emotional reactions. The first step to change is to accept responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and reactions. With practice using the S.O.R.C. model, you can change both the intensity of your physical reactions AND your feelings. Here is how it works. S: The SITUATION or event. This refers to what actually happened. It could refer to a person, place or thing. It’s something outside of yourself. Fill in your event here_________________________. O: ORGANISM. That’s YOU. It refers to what happens INSIDE of you. There are three things you want to look at: THOUGHTS: What were you thinking when this event happened or immediately afterwards? PHYSICAL REACTION: What did you experience physically? How did your body respond? FEELINGS: What feelings did you have while this event was happening? R: REACTION. What did you do? C: CONSEQUENCES. What happened as a result of your reaction? Include how you feel and think about the consequences. ………………………………………………………………… …………. Keep present focused! Frank (From Tennyson’s Ulysses) To Strive, To Seek, To Find and Not to Yield
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