PTSD
August 22, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“PTSD is a condition of the body and mind in which a person stores the memory of a violent attack or life-threatening event.” BRBp.344
“When we got to ACA, we knew our minds and emotions were affected, but our bodies? We saw that the literature talked about how our bodies carry original trauma, so we started to pay attention. We soon noticed something very disturbing: we had a lot of automatic body reactions that happened without our “permission.”
Eventually, we realized that our present-day bodies were acting on auto-pilot to safeguard us from perceived threat signals that our child-bodies stored long ago. It was overwhelming to hear that, because how do you change your body?
We found that one way was to keep reading encouraging words in our Fellowship Text. It gave us hope that our bodies could recover when we read on page 621 that “What can be learned can be unlearned… ” and on page 626, “We now have gathered the knowledge and experience needed to transmit a vision for healing the injury and hurt caused by childhood trauma.”
As we worked the Steps, followed the Traditions, and attended meetings, we saw that our minds, emotions, spirits, and bodies started to heal. We were amazed at this program’s power. It was larger than the effects that we carried in our blood, tissue, nerves, and bone.
On this day I will help my body recover by acknowledging when I have a physical reaction to a seemingly nonthreatening situation. I will then reach out to try to uncover where the reaction is coming from to help myself heal.”
My Experience:
I have so many PTSD events that I have noticed them for years, I just never recognized them to be the symptoms of some traumatic events. My symptoms include strong tightening in my back, a rush to my head, sometimes extreme tiredness, extreme emotional fear, irrational thoughts, irrational responses, the list goes on. When I start to feel these things now, I take the time to feel it and then analyze what is going on for me. Am I reacting to something? What triggered me? What do I do in this triggered state? Now, I usually wait and not have a discussion in the moment, but I instead take a look at what the trigger was and work through it. If I need to have a conversation about it, I do but later so as not to lash out but to express my true pain and other emotions that I felt when the person did what they did. I also leave myself open to the possibility it is just something that I have to work through and that it is not that person’s responsibility to manage my feelings surrounding the event. What a difference this program has made in my thought process.
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