My job is to educate, its to get you to understand what PTSD looks like. I need to talk about the symptoms and the way they journey into the mind.
PTSD is an experience of the mind.
Lots of people hear the word triggers
and believe this is where the problem lies.
A trigger is the thing they believe started the feeling or experience they are having.
That has not been my experience at Breakthrough. FAR FROM IT.
The trigger for me is the flag even the answer!!
To the WHY is this happening.
Looking at things differently, outside of the medical model has brought people back from the brink time and time again.
What I do is different, it’s working. It’s so far from what people know and recognise as therapy.
I’m damn proud of what I’m creating and achieving so others may live. My own brand of magic. And I will call it that happily.
We all need optimism and hope in our lives.
I was given a beautiful way of describing what I do today “you grow people”.
Where as the medical model puts a tablet in someone’s hand and says feel better.
I because I am not a doctor or trained in traditional methods of the mind or human behaviour can not do that.
A astronomical blessing!
What that’s meant, I have had to look at it all differently and use my unrelenting curiosity and resourcefulness to find a way to bring about change.
Life affirming change.
No two individuals are the same and there fore each individual has to be treated as such.
That’s where I get the edge on mass treatment.
The current state of affairs in the UK is
the traditional approaches are not working… levels of suicide, depression and socially life limiting behaviours are on the rise in younger and younger populations.
I have a big ass problem with this. Like Mission specific game face time. Get shit done Mand!!!
Enough ….we need better and we needed it yesterday.
It’s not good enough that creative and alternative solutions are not readily available for people to get help when it looks impossible or they have become stuck.
Possibly feeling that the future they want isn’t out there for them.
So what I have to really talk about and discuss are our senses in their interity.
How a person makes sense ‘literally’ of the experience they are having. Their world.
From my standpoint and from years of working with humans it is understanding how to read entire person, every single detail.
Remember not a Doc or Psychotherapist
I gotta come at it from a different approach.
If you can look at someone with a soft focus only hear what they say, understand the deep language and body language.
Assisting humans with change is hugely simplified.
Certainly with high stress inducing experiences. PTSD, chronic fatigue anxiety and depression.
Having a better understanding of the layers of the sensory system.
I’m able to prise apart just where that traumatic or early difficult experiences is hidden with in the nervous system.
The thing thats dominating and destroying their world.
Often in my experience you don’t have to invite anywhere near the whole experience to bring it forward into the conscious awareness.
And so often it is right under the surface permeating every part of this persons life.
One word, sentence or thought is enough to flash a whole cascade of memories feelings or experiences .
Any number of online campaigns will bring decades of anguish to the surface for so many, and the above is why.
The ‘flag’ it’s so so present in people‘s lives. Just holding under the surface.
Clients tell me in any number of ways. Luckily for them. I speak the language of the body.
Every time someone speaks about their experience. When they say it felt like this I know I now need to scout particular experiences within the experience of feeling.
If they say ‘I heard’ this that is them talking about ‘the hearing of the experience’
I have to work within the heard experience. They then they might go on to express I just got a feeling.
Or it’s a visual flashback in that and they saw particular look on someone else’s face it confirmed their internal experience.
“I saw the look and my stomach sank”
I’ve seen flashbacks show up in our smelling abilities. That will drive a person to destruction. A repeated experience of a smell day after day for months. And whoosh immediately their mind is in those moments. Real ground hog day stuff.
The great news is as soon as I track the sucker down and see how it’s holding it’s possible with in minutes to change the situation. It really is about understanding what is really happening.
The metaphors that people use to speak with me tell me a great deal. They will use particular words because that’s how we contain or experience in our minds. A picture paints a thousand words right!
I have to think about the human in his or her simplest form everything we do is ultimately about protection.
Recognising they are for them in a state of perfection even though it may not feel that way.
I’m honouring the incredible intelligence we embody.
No one is smarter than the human brain and working along side it, instead of against it always gets me some serious headway when it comes to change.
Understanding how we make sense of the world, understanding our senses brings us vast information.
We always know whats wrong. I’m yet to meet a client that didn’t drop the most enormous bread crumb.
So PTSD can be hidden in amongst the senses and the senses are more complex and fascinating that most people appreciate.
We know we can sense sounds, taste, see, touch and smell. Those groups can be broken down into sub categories!!!!
Imagine someone who experienced the shockwave from a earthquake at distance. Things will have been experienced by them even unconsciously.
It might be that the essence of their PTSD is wrapped within the vibrational sensory system so every time they experience a particular resonance in sound they flashback, and can’t work out why.
Because it wasn’t clear when the imprint took place.
So listening to what they describe takes a refined ear.
I had a client once who had severe PTSD it was dominating their life.
It was in everything thoughts, feelings ways of making decisions. And life was becoming a shadow of the one the once lived.
Making the invisible visible is a big part of my work.
We even have sensory receptors in the body that understand stretch, how far away one joint is from the other in particular positions…
The trigger the flag, the look at me….
It was immersed in the active bending of their knees…
I mean just imagine that every time you move a certain way a feeling would wash over you…
The nervous system monitors range of movement this, so you don’t injure your self. Movement = life.
Now this person would experience not feeling safe, feeling very vulnerable every time they went to a certain movement.
It was only when we got to the point of listening to what they were saying and that the focus became “I was on my knees” it was to do with the angle and pressure every time they entered that space physically the same thing would happen to their mind.
There were a couple of things going on.
They haven’t had the opportunity to complete and end the experience in a suitable way for them. That causes vast inner conflict.
If you are a person that expects to flight ‘run’ and you freeze. That leaves a mark that often needs addressing. It is internal conflict and lots of questions come from something like that.
The other part is energy I mean literally.
With a body tight and coiled expecting to explode to escape and it doesn’t …
That also leaves a shed ton of energy stuck within a nervous system pathway.
In this case it would have been a lot
It was held in a particular position.
So every time the brain gave the option to feel the experience. In essence it was saying finish this we are containing all this energy from this day and it’s exhausting.
The brain looked for completion of the energetic cycle.
Animals will do this instinctively. Ever seen a hare freeze on a road then bolt and eventually just stop. Even though it’s not being pursued. It’s dispersing the energy from the expected reaction.
That looks like escape … When ever a human needs to move to a position of safety this is a player.
Except in this example they couldn’t because they froze. This was the reality, and the conflict.
So every time they felt a certain position in their posture that matched that day they experienced a feeling of fear and freezing.
It felt like it was coming from no where. Except it was the bodies way of demanding they finish of the experience, Release the energy and learn from what had taken place.
We did do that between us we created a subconscious experience of running until they felt they didn’t need to run or evade any more. That what had transpired was so so far in the distance it could no longer be in or around them.
They never experienced those sensations again. The PTSD lifted and their entire outlook about life and choices altered.
The biggest take away I can leave you with is if what you are doing isn’t working maybe you need a different approach.
If you have been talking to or paying and seeing someone for years and your life isn’t improving looking or feeling different is that really good enough?
You might have just come to a point where you just don’t want anti depressants don’t believe in them and want out of the funk.
You might have something you think is so random or uncomfortable to even discuss.
I’ve heard some of the most incredible ways a person is coping with living.
It really really can change
Get in contact reach out if you have questions or want to know more.
Change happens fast at Breakthrough
Why?
Because no one ever told me other wise
Amanda x
