Hey, I just wanted to make contact with you. I have PTSD too, and a few weeks ago I had a very disturbing associative experience which brought out a reckless, self-destructive part of myself previously unacknowledged.

The incident felt like 'something snapped' and I went on autopilot. Shared the heck out of me and could have had more disasterous results than the already disruptive results it offered me and anyone around me.

I just wanted to reach out and let you know you're not alone.

I did go off to a seminar/retreat that offered me tools that helped ground me.

One that helps me now--because it was the intrusion of flashbacks and negative memory that caused my dissociation--is to invite the possibility of positive memory to have a place in my life.

At the workshop two internal focusing techniques really had a profound effect on me.

One was to remember a time when I felt really loved. And you could use anything including a puppy or a teddy bear. I'm lucky to have a partner for the last 24 years and she came to mind for me. Then its to make the memory as vivid and sensual as possible. To really feel the sensations of warmth and glow that come from the memory of what it feels like to be loved.

Another exercise that was similar regarding positive memory was to recall a time when someone had really paid attention to me in listening and I felt completely met in the present and heard. I remembered my therapist that I saw back in the eighties. She used to sit with her arms wide open and just listen to me with her full being--so deeply that she would cry when I couldn't cry about a story I was telling about my abuse. The instruction was to go into the sensations of the body and the memory of what that was like.

I thought I'd share that because in my experience at this stage of my therapy, I feel I need these positive installations.

The post workshop instructions were to at night review the day and recall small moments when things were kind of 'ok' or there was a moment of presence and relaxation, such as the dog licking my hand or the cat purring in my lap or some view I saw of a flower--or some small delight like that. To begin capturing these kinds of positive memories.

I just thought that story may offer you something.

I think when we are in the middle of PTSD recovery it's like we are paying selective attention to everything that is wrong with us and our past, and we even think WE ARE that bad memory or feeling. We are a whole lot bigger than that negative memory--however vivid and horrible things really were back then.

We survived and we owe it to ourselves to take back the joy and the aliveness and the love and affection that are available or at least a possibility in our lives. Take care,

sky