((((justgivealittle)))),

I have been thinking this morning about my own journey with PTSD and where I am now, how could I put it into words that tell you that you WILL eventually be ok and that it does take time to work through and heal with PTSD. I think about what would have helped me when I was really struggling with nightmares and crippling days.

Well, it is an individual journey and each person has to work on themselves and whatever is in their past that has come to this struggle with PTSD that is taking place now. But the main seed for all those that do struggle is "safety". Something happened that truely threatened the sense of safety. And when that happens our brains try very hard to figure out how to learn from the event or events where our safety was in jeopordy.

When something threatening our safety happens we are designed to remember it and ask questions about it so that we can learn how to not have it happen again. And when we go through this process we also have emotions that take place too. We have these emotions so that we can get a sense of our environment and others so that we can use our environment and others to survive and thrive and we ARE designed to be with other human beings to group together and help each other thrive and reproduce.

So in the beginning, our childhoods, we really depend upon our families to help us learn how to be safe and we gather a lot of information during that period in our lives that is designed to help us thrive and be able to also have our own families. So just to help you understand the basics of how we are truely designed to exist.

When something bad happens and our SAFETY that we have established up until the bad thing happened, at first our instint/brains are designed to do whatever we can to get away from the danger that threatens our SAFETY and our brains only run on the level of shutting off all the senses except what we need to use to focus and survive.

When we do get away and are once again in a sort of SAFE environment, our brains then are designed to go over whatever it was that threatened our safety so that we can learn from it and do our best to not allow it to happen again. But this time that brain allows our emotions to attach to the event that took place. Because remember our emotions help us "feel" our surroundings and others so that not only do we see what may look safe, but we also learn to feel it as well.

So in PTSD, when we experience FLASHBACKS and troubling memories that did threaten our safety, we also need to place the emotions with the answers to how we can see what happened and learn how we ended up in danger and how we can not only identify it so we don't have it happen again but also feel it coming too. So, we are working on figuring out how to feel a danger coming and feel safety again once that danger is over as well.

When we are trying to sort through this our brains can also search our data bank on when we felt safe, what we learned about feeling safe and lets see if we can find our feelings information that way too around the event that threatened all of that.

OK, so when we experience PTSD, our brains are doing a lot of sorting and a lot of emotions are really on the surface and EMOTIONS all present chemicals to our brains when they come in so our brain SENSES AND FEELS THESE EMOTIONS and can attach information and responses to THESE INCOMING EMOTIONS. And because this is taking place, WE BECOME VERY SENSITIVE AND IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT WE ARE IN A SAFE UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENT WHEN WE ARE WORKING THROUGH PTSD.

When we are working through PTSD? Because it is intense work? We DO try to isolate so that our brain doesn't have to take in additional senses and EMOTIONS that present MORE CHEMICALS or even threats while we are trying to find our resolve from a tramatic event where we have to put everything together, memories and emotions to safety again. And this is because when the brain is trying to re-establish itself with resolve including the emotions fitting together? It is a lot of work because we are not only remembering but we are also feeling different things. And as feel these things we do have those chemicals coming forward in our brains. We are designed to exist in a very chemical way, more than we truely realize. And the more we learn and establish safety the more chemically balanced we become.

So, depending on who the person is and their personal history of chemical emotional balance and knowledge, this process takes different amounts of time. And if the person suffering from PTSD can be in a "safe" environment with a guide to help that person work through this process, the outcome and length of time for healing to be faster and easier is increased.

((((justgivealittle))), during this time, you have a lot to sort through and this time has to be about you and your recovery. Regular interactions that require you to have established emotions and sense of balance and safety have to be completely set aside. You cannot expect yourself to hand out balance in relationships until you actually HAVE balance again. Right now your brain has a lot of healing to do and yes your emotions are being sorted through and yes they are all on the surface and you have to allow yourself to truely be kind to yourself while you are sorting this out. NO GUILT OR PRESSURE SHOULD BE ADDED, and as you do try to work through this, understand that THIS IS NOT ABOUT PUNISHMENT OR THAT YOU SHOULD BE SUFFERING. This is NOT ABOUT LETTING THIS PROCESS SCARE YOU SO THAT YOU FEED INTO IT EITHER.

I can only speak for myself in my recovery thus far and at this point I have learned that I had to really go all the way back and finally get to a point where I understood how I established my own personal safety. I had to learn that when a big event happened that truely put so much of my personal safety in question/threat I was going to then be on a journey that entailed me sorting through not only that event but all the events where my safety was in jeopardy. I had no idea why all of this was taking place, if only I had been told this in the beginning it would have been much easier for me to understand it.

I keep telling everyone to truely be kind to yourselves. You CAN get through this and even get a much better understanding of yourself as well as a deeper understanding of life overall. But you have to take time to see what you have and what you need to learn to finally re-establish that desire to achieve a true sense of "safety" and emotional chemical balance. Nothing is your fault, it is not about that at all. Do your best to self sooth and calm yourself and make it a point to allow yourself to have therapy, talk things out and figure out what you have, what you dont and how you can learn to finally establish yourself better.

Open Eyes