Tag: trauma
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The Four Mindsets of Healing: What I Learned from Chronic Illness and PTSD

For years, I believed I had left my childhood trauma behind—until my body told a different story. Living with PTSD, chronic pain, and the emotional weight of disability, I found myself stuck in a resigned mindset. But rediscovering the four mindsets described by Dave Rees and Dr Field reminded me that I have choices. This…
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Three lessons in life from flying a glider and loosing control

As part of my ongoing effort to recover my mental health and focus on the positive lessons life gave me, I was journaling the other day and reflecting how I felt I was in a tail spin hurtling downwards. My emotions absolutely out of control. As I wrote I remembered the occasions i was actually…
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The positive impact of words can last a life time.

As part of a series to try and focus on the moments in my past which helped get me through. Here is the first of my anchors in the storm. My first anchor point was the briefest of conversations. Not really a conversation, actually just a statement someone said to me once. Words which always…
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Take back the power. Why you might not want to name your depression.

This is a concept I first came across many years ago. The idea is that you name your anxiety or depression and then you can refer to this “other” when you think about or struggle with it. People will says things like “It’s just Bob winding me up again.” I have seen this work to…
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Three ways to help yourself on the journey from beginner to expert.

Accept you will get it wrong and give yourself room to learn… Often when we set ourselves goals in life we decide we just want to be there. Jump straight to the conclusion. If we do accept that there will be some work to do, to get from A to B then we often look…
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Trauma Therapy Session 30. That’s it Therapy done. I am out of here!

Almost exactly a year. Thirty sessions, mostly just fifty minutes long. Thousands of words, hundreds of tears. A huge amount of realisation and a few laughs. And that’s it, done. Singing off… We covered a few things in our last ever therapy session. I enquired briefly about the discharge letter I had asked Chris for.…
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That’s was hard but I did it with a little help…

Anniversary of my mothers passing. One week and one day before Christmas. I still remember the night I got that call. And I remember every moment leading up to it. Today though I faced a different struggle. This is the first year since she passed away that I have had that emotion chip turned on.…
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Gearing up to finish therapy. 3+ Ways to make it great

So I only have two sessions of therapy left. One of which is today! I know transitions are hard so I am trying my best to make it a good conclusion, here’s some of the how’s… Celebrate… This is top of my list for a reason. Therapy can be hard work and even if we…
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Trauma Therapy Session 21 EMDR. When the world needs you to hide the darkness

I have to admit this post is well out of sync. This session happened weeks ago now and I have just failed to be able to write about it. I would tell myself I was busy but I know in reality it was just bloody hard. This session was about EMDR and “the box”. The…
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Trauma Therapy Session 21 Part 1: The art of conversation and surviving when it’s lost.

I wish that the treatment of PTSD was easy and the rest of your life just opened up and accepted you lovingly when you choose to face a traumatic past. I have been struggling for a while with the conversation around my parents. Other family members often drop them into conversion. Either a passing comment,…