PTSD Guide

By Lise Leblanc

After such an event, people are usually keen to move on with their lives. They want to get over it as quickly as possible, but if you are suffering from PTSD, you haven’t been able to. Things are getting worse, not better, and the people in your life may not understand what you're going through. They may imply that you’re faking, exaggerating, or just need to think more positively. You may even have heard, “It’s all in your head.” This can be very frustrating as you find yourself fighting what seems to be a losing battle against the persistent, debilitating, and unpredictable “enemy” within your own mind.
If you are suffering from PTSD, you may be at a loss on what to do and how to cope. But don’t despair. There is hope. A therapist for over twenty years, Lise Leblanc has learned that the first step in recovering from any illness is facing it. Lise has constructed this step-by-step, practical guide to help you understand your illness, manage your symptoms, and learn effective strategies to cope with the daily challenges and realities of PTSD. Through relatable and real-life stories, useful exercises, and reflective questions, the Mental Health Recovery: PTSD Guide will answer many of your questions while guiding you to achieve an optimum state of wellness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Next Chapter Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781989517369

Lise Leblanc

Lise Leblanc has the experience and insight to offer guidance for coping with PTSD. As a registered psychotherapist for over twenty years, Lise has learned that the first step in recovering from any illness is facing it. She applies her deep insights and effective strategies to each book she writes for the 'Mental Health Recovery' series. Through relatable and real-life stories, useful exercises, and reflective questions, her books will answer many of your questions while guiding you to achieve an optimum state of wellness.

Book preview

A man in a hat and overcoat has his back to the camera, walking along a narrow shore with blue sea to his right and left. Above the man is a sepia-coloured sky filled with clouds. Across the middle of the cover is a teal band with the words 'PTSD Guide' inside. At the top and bottom of the cover are grey bands containing 'Mental Health Recovery' at the top, and 'Lise Leblanc' at the bottom.

PTSD

Guide

Mental Health Recovery

Lise Leblanc

A black and white logo with a deciduous tree framed by a large crescent moon. To the right of the moon and tree are the words 'Next Chapter Press.'

Mental Health Recovery: PTSD Guide

Editor: Allister Thompson

Book Designer: Jamie Arts

Published in Stratford, Canada, by Blue Moon Publishers.

ISBN: 978-1-989517-36-9

Mental Health Recovery: PTSD Guide. Copyright © Lise Leblanc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, scanning, recording, or by any storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without written permission from the publisher. Contact: Blue Moon Publishers, www.bluemoonpublishers.com. The format, design and layout used in this book are trademarks and/or trade dress of Blue Moon Publishers.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author, based on her personal experiences in life and business, and the book is intended to provide inspiration and valuable general guidance, however, readers must consider their own circumstances before accepting the opinions of the author and applying them in their own circumstances. The author makes no representation as to the suitability or validity of the content of this book to the personal circumstances of the individuals who will read the book and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, loss, damage or claims arising from the contents of this book. Where inspirational quotations have been used, the author has used all reasonable endeavours to ensure that the materials are not in breach of copyright and intellectual property laws.

Next Chapter books are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, please contact [e-mail].

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Mental, Emotional, and Physical Effects of PTSD

Stress and Memory

Relationships

Communication

Treatment Options

Conscious Coping

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Next Chapter Press

Other Books in the Mental Health Recovery Series:

PTSD Collection

PTSD Guide

PTSD Guide Workbook

Books in the Wish I Knew Series:

Grief & Loss Collection

Conscious Grief & Loss Guide

Conscious Grief & Loss Guide Workbook

Gentle Quotes on Grief & Loss

Grief & Loss Guided Journal

Caregiving Collection

Conscious Caregiving Guide

Conscious Caregiving Guide Workbook

Caregiving Insights

Gentle Quotes on Caregiving

Caregiving Guided Journal

About the Mental Health Recovery Series PTSD Collection

The Mental Health Recovery series offers practical information and concrete strategies for people of all ages who are struggling with mental health issues. Arranged in brief sections, there are natural break points so you can take the time to process the information provided, reflect, practice, and instill these new strategies into your life before taking more in.

The PTSD Guide is a step-by-step, practical guide that will help you understand exactly what trauma is, how unprocessed trauma is affecting your nervous system and how to take action to heal yourself. You will learn effective ways to get relief from the confusing, debilitating, and very isolating symptoms of PTSD, as well as learn specific ways to retrain and soothe your traumatized nervous system.

The PTSD Guide Workbook is your essential workbook to accompany the PTSD Guide. Each chapter in the workbook corresponds to a chapter in the guide, including practical exercises, checklists, reflective questions, and more.

Foreword

As I read PTSD Guide — Mental Health Series, skilfully crafted by my dear friend and colleague Lise Leblanc, I felt my life being graced by her counsel to be patient, present, gentle, and loving to myself as I pursue my work as a community-based psychiatrist supporting so many individuals who have been exposed to trauma. I was deeply touched by her invitation to instil hope in the hearts and minds of individuals I support. She suggests I invite them to reinvest energies initially invested in attempts to avoid, resist, and hide from dysregulated nervous systems following exposure to single or repeated incidents of trauma.

As I read this guide, I recalled the words of Confucius:

If there is righteousness in the heart

There will be beauty in the character

If there is beauty in the character

There is harmony in the home

If there is harmony in the home

There will be order in the nation

If there is order in the nation

There will be peace in the world

Lise offers comprehensive, practical guidance to retrain and heal our traumatized nervous systems on the road to reclaiming our life after trauma. We are advised to take our time to heal. We are offered break points, reflective questions, and practical exercises to optimize our understanding of the wisdom she has accrued over the past twenty years as she listened to her clients and healed from her own trauma. In this book, we are given clear strategies to restore integrity, beauty, harmony and peace within ourselves and within our relationships.

The neurobiological response to trauma makes much sense when she explains it in such a clear and concise manner. She offers a discussion of the importance of relationships, connection, and open communication in this healing journey, with a reminder that our brains are wired for connection, but trauma rewires them for protection (Ryan North ). Connections between brain changes and symptoms become clear as Lise unites this understanding with recommendations for individualized recovery plans. She paves this road with personal stories and anecdotes. She consolidates our emerging understandings of the neuroscience of trauma with light humour. She advises how to create space for healthy discussion with loved ones, and the development of tools for self-advocacy. She reminds us that reaching out for help is a sign of strength in a world besieged by individual and systemic misunderstanding of mental illness. She emphasizes the benefits of self-forgiveness and self-love.

I was once very depressed, after being repeatedly vicariously traumatized. Lise was an angel in my support circle. She recorded my words for me when I was unable to see the light of recovery.

She now again blesses me and offers you the same gift, if you choose to accept it.

She has grown through her commitment to bearing witness to the suffering of others.

She has created safe places for her clients and their families to embrace their vulnerabilities as they retrain their brain and nervous system in the presence of compassionate professional support. Consider accepting this gift of knowledge, wisdom, and hope.

May you be blessed.

May you again be free to love yourself and others.

Dr. Bob King, MD, FRCP

Introduction

As a therapist and clinical supervisor for over twenty years, I have worked with many clients who developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of direct or indirect exposure to various types of trauma. Some involved a one-time traumatic event such as an accident, near-death experience, physical, or sexual assault, or natural disaster, while others developed PTSD because of repeated exposure to trauma (first responders, military personnel, healthcare professionals, crisis workers, dispatchers, victims of domestic violence or child abuse). Many of them were at a loss on what to do and how to cope with their trauma. You may feel this way too. You may even feel as though life is not worth living now that you are being tormented by PTSD. Don’t despair. There is hope.

This step-by-step guide will help you understand exactly what trauma is, how unprocessed trauma is affecting your nervous system, and how to take action to heal yourself. You will learn effective ways to get relief from the confusing, debilitating, and very isolating symptoms of PTSD, as well as learn specific ways to retrain and soothe your traumatized nervous system. However, this is not going to be easy. The fact is, there are no quick-fix solutions. There is no magic pill or guru that can cure PTSD, and anyone who promises instant healing is likely to disappoint you and potentially harm your recovery. Throughout my career, I have met many people who were looking for shortcuts and trying to build a wall between themselves and their traumatic experiences (I’ve done this myself). They spent an incredible amount of time and energy setting up distractions and finding innovative ways to numb their pain, but there always comes a time when they get to the end of that road, only to find out there is no light at the end of the tunnel. This is when their walls come crashing down and they realize there is only one way to recover from trauma, and that is to face it and get through it.

An ancient proverb says, It is better to dig one well deep enough to reach water than to dig nine shallow wells which provide nothing. This seems pretty obvious, and yet when you hit those figurative rocks and roots, you will want to stop digging. Unless you are willing to dig longer and deeper than you ever have before, you will not break through to reach water. Digging down past the rocks and roots that are acting as a fragile and patchy barrier between you and your traumatic experiences will be painful and scary. But if you are reading this guide, you already know that trying to avoid, resist, and hide from your trauma is only making things worse. Trying to ignore and repress trauma is the biggest mistake you can make because it keeps you in the downward spiral of pain and suffering. Breaking this negative momentum is difficult, but it is the key to releasing PTSD’s grip on you. At first, it will feel like an uphill battle, with many slides backward. You may feel like quitting and going back to your negative coping strategies. Then you’ll remember you’ve been down that destructive dead-end path before. It is only when you make a solid decision to take the energy you are using to repress your trauma and commit EVERYTHING you’ve got to your healing that you will start to see amazing results. The problem is, if you don’t see immediate progress, you may want to give up. You may stop doing the things that are healing your nervous system and fall back into the negative patterns that are bringing you down. You may see small progress as not enough or see a brief relapse as complete failure. You may think or say things like, nothing ever works or I’ve tried everything and give yourself excuses to go back to what you already know won’t work. However, if you stick with this recovery process and give it your ALL, this guide and the accompanying workbook (or a personal journal) will help you come to terms with your trauma and with the disturbing memories that are keeping you stuck in a cycle of stress and suffering. If you want to release PTSD’s hold on you once and for all, start by believing it is possible and making a decision to wholeheartedly commit your efforts and energy to your recovery.

Please don’t wait for a magic pill or for someone to come and save you, because it just isn’t going to happen. Instead, PTSD will continue to consume you and rob you of your life. It is likely that PTSD has already robbed you of your precious time and energy, but think of what else you will lose if you don’t face this now. If you can no longer tolerate the constant fear, flashbacks, nightmares, emotional outbursts, and broken relationships, and are ready to commit to getting through your trauma, please review and sign the commitment contract at the end of this book (Appendix A). Then print it and put it somewhere you will see it throughout the day to remind you of your commitment.

It is important to note that many who suffer from PTSD have lost their ability to concentrate and have significant impairments when it comes to attention and memory. As a result, you may have to read things two or three times before you can fully grasp the information, which is why this guide is broken up into small, bite-size chunks. This will allow you to slowly take in and process each section, giving you break points so you can take the time to reflect, complete the exercises, and practice the strategies before taking more in. Take it slow. Stick to one or two sections per day. You may be tempted to skip the practical exercises and reflective questions at the end of each section. Please don’t. The benefits you reap from this book will depend entirely on the effort and energy you put into instilling these new practices into your life. Without deep reflection and practice, the tools and strategies will quickly be forgotten, and you will likely feel overwhelmed by too much information and little ability to use it toward your recovery. Therefore, I urge you to use the accompanying PTSD Workbook (or start a journal) to complete the exercises.

The personal stories and snippets shared throughout this book are not graphic in nature, and traumatic details are not included. However, you may find that the experiences shared by others hit close to home and trigger disturbing thoughts and emotions, especially as you start facing your own traumatic experiences. Therefore, I highly recommend you seek some type of support — ideally, support from a therapist who specializes in PTSD. If you do not have access to professional help, find someone you trust and can talk to. Someone who is supportive. Someone who understands and can add new perspectives. The information and suggestions in this book are not meant to replace counselling or medical advice.

With that, let’s get started!

Chapter One

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Almost every human body is under a great deal of stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from within the mind.

— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

When we think of all of the external threats in our world today — worldwide pandemics, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, wars, motor-vehicle accidents, sex trafficking, bullying, workplace harassment, relationship and child abuse (mental, emotional, physical, and sexual), as well as other events that anyone would consider traumatic and extremely stressful — we cannot deny that trauma is part of many people’s lives at some point. While no one wants to believe PTSD can happen to them, the reality is that it can. Millions of people worldwide are affected by PTSD.

After a traumatic event, people want to get over it as quickly as possible and get on with their lives, but if you are suffering from PTSD, you haven’t been able to. Things are getting worse instead of better. The people in your life may not understand what you’re going through. Heck, you likely can’t make sense of it. You may have heard things to imply you’re exaggerating or being treated as overly sensitive. You may have heard, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or you just need to learn to deal with it. This can be very frustrating and isolating as you find yourself fighting what seems to be a losing battle against the persistent, debilitating, and unpredictable enemy that is attacking you from within your own mind. The fact is, PTSD produces real, measurable changes to areas of the brain responsible for mediating stress, emotion, memory, as well as other cognitive and physiological functions. Although PTSD has many psychological effects, its basis is in your nervous system. However, this doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do about it. In fact, many do recover from PTSD to a point where they can live productive and meaningful lives, sometimes recovering to such a degree that they no longer experience symptoms or qualify for the diagnosis. Before talking about how to recover from PTSD, first it is important to understand what is happening to you. The aim of this chapter is to help you understand PTSD, trauma, signs and symptoms, risks and protective factors, as well as the duration, prognosis, and neurobiology of this condition. You may have already done your own research, in which case this chapter will serve as a review and will provide foundational knowledge for your recovery.

What Is PTSD?

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the most comprehensive, respected,