Coping With PTSD 3

Please learn something about dealing with PTSD as part of your disaster preparedness. Even if you are correct that you will never be troubled with it regardless of your circumstances, you are likely to have to deal with it in someone else. PTSD is extremely common in people who are in a disaster.


Yoga is also helpful for dealing with PTSD. I can not usually manage this in my worst phases of PTSD, but everyone is different. Yoga might work for you at any stage of PTSD. Yoga classes are all over, including through YMCAs and Senior Centers. There are also reasonably priced videos, CDs and DVDs. I learned it from a book. 


Remember that as long as it doesn't hurt you, there is no wrong way to do yoga. It is doing it that is important, not how you do it, or how you look while you do it.


You do not have to have the right clothes to do yoga. If you are alone and won't be interrupted, you do not need to wear anything. Wearing sweats or old underwear is fine. It only needs to be comfortable and let you move freely.


4. I sometimes have had thoughts coming into my mind repeatedly that were harmful and slowed or stopped my recovery. Sometimes the thought was a replay of something that caused the PTSD. Other times the thought was something negative about myself.


I found a way to almost entirely stop those negative thoughts in about 6 months. It is so simple it is kind of stupid, but it works.


I got a cloth covered elastic meant for holding hair back and put it on my wrist. Every time one of those negative thoughts came into my mind, I snapped the elastic. It was not a hard snap. It does not require a lot of pain to train your brain. The most important part is to do it a lot. 


After a little while the negative thoughts came less often. After I had done this for about 6 months, the thoughts were not coming much. I could get rid of them without the elastic. Every once in a while the thoughts will start coming back. If it is very bad, I use the elastic again for a while, until it is better.


5. No matter how bad off we are, we usually have some things we must get done to keep our lives going. Part of your recovery will be finding ways to get these important things done.


I used to cut up small pieces of paper and write the important things I had to get done on the paper. I have since discovered post it notes. I like those because they come in different sizes and colors and you can get a lot of them cheap. The small ones that are only about the size of 4 postage stamps are good for when your PTSD is still pretty bad.


This seems like another place to break this subject and continue in another post.