This really hits home for me mindfulguy.......I have so often seen myself through what I perceive the mind of others to be and it truly is never satisfying

In fact it usually ends up really warped .... thus failed relationships that just add to to inadequate feelings

My last husband who I had been separated from for a few years committed suicide at the end of 2018 and I know it had nothing to do with me but I felt a great deal of guilt for a while

Then as usual I shut down and felt nothing.... I do this a great deal .... I wish I could afford trauma therapy... Here it's about 250.00 an hour and there's no way I can afford it

Thank you for this help.....xo

Childhood abuse makes us crave approval

Sort of very codependent

Our self image is steeped in unworthiness

That is not true

Others can not touch our core our true self

They can hurt our ego and our bodies but not our core

We are the only ones who can do that

Here is one helpful skill

Affirmation

Say this out loud and record it

In the moment, right now, I feel my body overflowing with kindness approval and safety

Play it over and over while doing things

In the car let it enter ur subconscious


I sat in front of a mirror in the bathroom

It was awkward and hard

But it helped

Your mention of reflecting here reminds me of my post graduate on site training in counseling at the hospital, mindfulguy, in which our Clinical Pastoral Education supervisors taught us the value of learning the skill of "mirroring" with our patients. It made a difference.

Thanks... I am copying these for myself....xo

Even more than mirroring a Ptsd client needs to trust you

He needs to feel safe to expose his trauma openly with a stranger

Yeah, mindfulguy, and that trust depended on mirroring and not parroting. It wasn't enough just to repeat the client's words back to them. Mirroring was different in that it meant the LISTENER had themselves reflected upon what they had heard. Then when mirroring that back to the client it was about meaning, not just words. We counselors were trained not to use the client's own words, in fact, but to take care to put what we'd heard in our own words to show we had made their meaning our own.

It really was effective and humbling, because I found that it wasn't about us, really, since many clients really want to heal themselves. Often they just need the support to do try it. Accepting support often began with that trust you mention.

Listening and knowing how to use your tools, after mirroring you need a direction and skills to teach

Actually I believe we heal from the inside.

A therapist is a mentor a guide to give us direction and skills.

We do the work

You sound very skilled

Thank you mindfulguy. This resonates for me in so many ways, not only from cptsd but also my other traumas. I was a very successful in my career. I received so many awards, but what meant the most to me were the people my work helped. The awards were nice, but did not make me feel any better about myself. In my last years facing a hostile wok environment made me feel even worse about myself. Trust is a huge factor for me. I try to trust, but after what I’ve seen and been through it’s still a long way off. My therapist has me taking one step at a time but tells me it will take me a long time to build trust. Thank you for this. I will definitely try.

Our paths are not easy and it takes willpower to not give up when things seem hopeless.

We are on this journey together, in harmony.

Nefiver give up never give in

Yes, I found that to be true, too, in my experience, what you say about healing being from the inside, mindfulguy. Experience with patients over 10 years made me believe healing from the inside went much farther than I had previously imagined. My ER doctors in Chicago required that I be at the front of our ER intake team for that reason.

They made me be the one to open the ambulance door and be our hospital's first healer the patient saw upon arrival. I asked why, and they said because my hospital chaplain's uniform required that I wear a clerical collar. In their experience, my ER doctors said, most times rather than upset a patient, the sight of a priest first thing calmed patients spiritually and established a positive mind/body dynamic in the midst of all of the chaos of the patient's arrival at our ER.

I didn't believe it but I played along because they were the doctors, they'd worked the ER for years, and I was the new guy. But as I played along I saw something positive happening. When I was the one to open the ambulance door and the patient saw me first there wearing my Christian hospital chaplain's clerical collar, it was undeniable that more often than not the patient's going in to shock was avoided.

The ER doctors told me that really helped them treat a patient's emergency right off the bat. Since it was Chicago, a lot of those patients were gunshot wounds from gang shootings. Having the patient awake and not in shock helped our ER doctors find out fast the point of entry and point of exit of a bullet and what organs may possibly be damaged. That way they could act swiftly to save the patient's life in those crucial first minutes of treatment.

That's how I motivated myself to do that job of being the one on our ER team who had to be first to open that ambulance door when it arrived at our hospital. It was a real surprise experience for which one could never fully be prepared. Sometimes you opened that ambulance door and it wasn't gory at all. Other times you opened that door and there was blood everywhere and bones protruding through skin. Yet other times you opened that door and a patient vomited on you right off the bat.

It was a tough job, but my ER doctors kept telling me over and over that at the very least it helped them cut down on having to treat patients in shock. They said that it helped them target their emergency medicine more quickly because they were more able to talk to the patient and get to the trauma fast.

As for me, it really helped me use that meditation you've talked about here, mindfulguy. In those last moments as I stood in our ER doorway at the front of our Chicago hospital trauma team with an ambulance coming at me with its siren wailing, though I was a Christian hospital chaplain I recited the lovingkindness meditation from the Buddhist Vipassana tradition to myself.

"May I be filled with lovingkindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy. May I have mental happiness, may I have physical happiness, may I have ease of well being." It's short and sweet but packed with meaning as to making getting my own mind/body connection going so I could lower my own PTSD anxiety to help them with their trauma.

Then since it was short I'd usually have time to repeat it changing all of the "I" pronouns to "you" so as to say it for the patient. That would put me in the right frame of mind to possibly be a reassuring sight for the patient to see when they saw me open that ambulance door for the first time to let them into our ER.

The mind/body connection is real. It helped me with my own PTSD so as to help trauma patients in my ER where I worked. Thank you for teaching us about it here.

Amazing journey mujiptsd

You helped these patients calm their minds, a vital, part in healing

That must take a toll after a while and some get ptsd themselves from being a nurse, er doc or chaplain

Yes, mindfulguy, so I didn't even got to grad school to start chaplaincy training until I'd been in therapy and practicing meditation in a weekly meditation for 5 years first. It was really important to have that foundation. It worked; I saw it take its toll on other once I was a chaplain, but having that meditation practice daily helped keep it from taking its toll on me at that point. Your posts about meditation are really helpful here.