Managing symptoms of PTSD and achieving full and lasting recovery from your symptoms of PTSD requires some effort. You need to prepare your mind first before you start applying strategies to manage and eliminate your symptoms of PTSD.

First you need to know that we are using a cognitive behavioral technique here. This is because cognitive behavioral technique has been researched and shown as the best and long lasting technique to manage and treat symptoms of PTSD. You need to be working actively and write things down and not just keep them in your head. This is because it will help you to stop the negative repetitive thoughts which prevent you from freeing yourself from your symptoms of PTSD. Or you can tape record your thoughts if you prefer that. Some people find drawing diagrams or pictures useful.

Prepare your path to recovery from symptoms of PTSD

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Recovery from symptoms of PTSD takes place in gradual stages and these stages build on each other. There is a risk you could forget where you started and how far you have already advanced in recovering from symptoms of PTSD and you could be tempted to slip back to your old negative though patterns. To avoid that, you should keep a record of your progress. Get a notebook that you only use for making notes about how far you progressed and date each entry. That will remind you of the progress you will be making over time in recovering from your symptoms of PTSD.

Recovery and freeing yourself from symptoms of PTSD is not an easy process and the hard thing about getting through to full and lasting recovery is that you will need to face your unpleasant memories rather than avoiding them. The following steps will play a very important part of your inner healing from symptoms of PTSD and you should commit yourself to them 100%. Commit yourself to these:

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Allow yourself time for relaxation and nurturing
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Allow yourself time for your recovery from your PTSD and symptoms of PTSD
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Keep a record of your thoughts and your progress
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Stick to this commitment
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Don’t abuse alcohol or drugs in order to try to avoid or ease your symptoms of PTSD
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Control your mind and eliminate and block any self-destructive thoughts including suicidal thoughts if you experience them
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Remove anything dangerous or potentially harmful from your home
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Be responsible for your safety on your path to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD

Take time to think about these steps and identify which of these apply to you. Which things in your life need to change to allow you to be ready to commit to your way to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD?

Notebook as a useful tool on your way to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD:

First you want to identify the obstacles on your way to full and lasting way to recovery from symptoms PTSD you are experiencing. You may divide these in two groups: external and internal. External obstacles on your way to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD could be time, commitments such as children or work, unsupportive partners, your physical condition, your abuse of alcohol or drugs. Internal obstacles on your way to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD could be your attitude towards change, your lack of motivation, being critical to yourself, undermining yourself. Write these obstacles in your notebook.

Now you want to think about how you could change aspects of your life to eliminate or reduce the obstacles you have identified. If you know you are too critical to yourself and that that undermines your self-esteem, start monitoring the times you thing negatively about yourself. Write down the critical or negative thoughts that you have about yourself and ask yourself: “Does this help me to get better?” Then try to think about something positive you can replace the negative thought with. Try to stay positive and allow yourself the time you need to recover. You can think: “I can only try and do my best.” Don’t be hard on yourself. The symptoms of PTSD are complex.

After you have considered your obstacles and how to remove as many of them as possible, write down a list of promises to yourself that will help you on your way to recovery from symptoms of PTSD. For example:

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will allow myself time for relaxation.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will take regular breaks from my daily tasks to do nurturing activities.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will aim to achieve a healthy balance in my life.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will pace myself in my efforts to recovery from my symptoms of PTSD and I will carefully listen to my own thoughts and recognize my limits. I will not be hard to myself if I progress slower than I expected.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I understand some of the techniques used will need to be repeated and practiced more than once. I will persevere with my efforts even if I fail the first time.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will not use drugs or alcohol to block out my memories, pain or discomfort
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will be honest with myself. I understand this could mean facing unpleasant or uncomfortable memories or thoughts and I am ready for being honest with myself.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I want to commit myself to the process of recovery from your symptoms of PTSD. I will make changes to my though process and my life and I will face and fight my negative thoughts. I will make an effort to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I won’t be hard on myself.
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: I will seek a professional help if I find any part of this process too distressing or if I think I could be a danger to myself or others.

Congratulations! You have made the first and an important step on your path to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD. You are now ready to take your second step towards healing and eliminating your symptoms of PTSD. Here you will learn to unlock the traumatic memories and thoughts you probably have been keeping secret. You should only continue reading if you have prepared your mind in step one.

Step two towards recovery from your symptoms of PTSD

You were probably asked a lot of questions by the police or ambulance service if you were a witness of a tragic event. Immediately after the traumatic event, most people feel very shocked and stunned and that might prevent them from sharing their true feelings with others. You probably feel no one ever asked you about your true feelings, because they were too preoccupied caring for others because their physical injuries were obvious whereas your emotional injury wasn’t. Or you found it too upsetting or impossible to talk about your feelings. Or maybe either you or other people felt you were to blame for the trauma because of some action you took. The following example illustrates one aspect of why people might be reluctant to express their true feelings:

Pete describes when he has been in a fire caused by a gas explosion at his place of work. He survived together with few others and sustained only few minor physical injuries. He was helping rescuing others who were trapped by collapsed parts of the building and were still at risk of burning alive. When emergency services arrived, they concentrated all their efforts on those that seemed worse off. Pete was put in a safe corner the rescue shelter and given little attention. He was checked in a hospital and discharged. His family was understandably extremely happy he survived and kept saying how lucky he was. His boss and the police later came to talk to him to take a statement and thanked him for his bravery. Pete emphasized how lucky he was, but secretly he felt guilty because he got away with it so lightly. He also felt ashamed for his intruding thoughts and feelings about the traumatic event that kept coming back to his mind day and night completely out of the blue and upsetting him again and again. Few weeks later he was still suffering from terrible nightmares and felt emotionally exhausted and distressed. He thought he was going mad, but wouldn’t tell anyone about it, because felt ashamed about his weakness. He kept quiet about his stress because he felt he had no right to feel this way when most of his colleagues were so much worse off.

Opening up - healing from your symptoms of PTSD

The above example describes and shows how people can be affected by their symptoms of PTSD and the whole traumatic experience in many different ways. And even though emotional trauma and the symptoms of PTSD you are experiencing are invisible, they can be more distressing than a physical trauma. You need to recognize that your symptoms of PTSD and your experience of the traumatic event are unique. This will help you to re-establish control and positively change your mind and your symptoms of PTSD.

In order to resolve your traumatic symptoms of PTSD, you need to process all aspects of the trauma. This means you need to make sense of what happened, how you reacted and what it meant to you. It can be enough to talk about your symptoms of PTSD to a friend or a person you can trust. You might experience some strong emotional reactions and this is an important part of your healing process.

How to process your experience

Before you are able to share your experience with others, you may need to find another way of processing your experience. One of the ways can be writing a personal testimony. Writing a personal testimony to the world, so that others could see and understand your symptoms of PTSD, where did they come from and what you have gone through.

You would be surprised how many people have gone through similar experience and have similar symptoms of PTSD to yours. The following rules will help you to stay on the right path to recovery from your symptoms of PTSD:

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Do not attempt to work on your traumatic symptoms of PTSD if it is not over yet. For example it is fine to work on your trauma if it was a road traffic accident that happened four weeks ago. But if your trauma is having an abusive relationship and the aggressor is still around or near you and continues to hurt you, then do not work through your experience yet, it would not be beneficial.

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Allocate an hour for your recovery from your PTSD symptoms every day with one or two days off and do something enjoyable afterwards. Make sure you stop after the time limit you allocate to your recovery process. It is important. And arrange meeting a friend afterwards, take the dog for a walk, go to a church, listen to your favorite music or take a relaxing bath with aromatherapy. Do something pleasurable.

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Don’t rush things. Allow yourself as much time for your recovery from your symptoms of PTSD as you need. You may need several days or several weeks until you have completely accounted for all aspects of your PTSD experience.

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Include as many details about your traumatic experience and your symptoms of PTSD as you can. Think about everything you saw, heard, sensed or smelled around you at the time. Remember that your experience is unique to you. No one else would have experienced the trauma in the same way you did. It might surprise you how many details do you actually remember about the traumatic event if you allow yourself time to think about it. Write them down.

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Use the present tense and the first person in your statement. Start your statement at a time shortly before the traumatic event and finish with the aftermath, your experience in the hospital or how you or other reacted. Write as if you are revisiting your trauma, for example: I go…As I see…Write down what exactly happened – start with facts. Where were you going? What were you thinking? Include your thoughts and feelings and physical sensations. What was the worst part? How did it change your life? What can’t you do now that you used to do before? What needs to happen for your symptoms of PTSD to be resolved?

• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: Allow yourself to experience the feelings that may arise, even if they are negative. It is normal to feel that way. You are a human being and human beings have feelings. If you didn’t have feelings, you wouldn’t be affected by the trauma, would you? These feeling may be strong. Remember and keep in mind that you had these feelings when you experienced the trauma, but they are past. The reactions you are experiencing are part of your recovery from PTSD. You may think that the trauma has brought people’s true characteristics out of them. Remember if you feel angry, guilty or ashamed, that you only reacted in a particular way because it was the only way you could have reacted at the time. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
  
• Recovery from your symptoms of PTSD: If your feelings and symptoms of PTSD become too overwhelming during writing your personal statement, take a break and do something else for a while. If your reactions continue to make you overwhelmingly distressed, make sure to seek professional help.

Other tips:

• Use a tape recorder
• Paint or draw
• Write a poem
• Write a song
• Make a sculpture
• Make a collage, use wood, colors, glass, metal
• Be as creative as you can