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I first became aware of PTSD when my late husband (Korean combat vet) started exhibiting symptoms after being mugged a couple of times and having his jaw broken. Eventually his behavior led to my having mild PTSD. I went into treatment, he did not. I got better, he got worse. I studied a lot about his symptoms and behavior and eventually lured him into treatment. I also received training and began to see civilians with PTSD type symptoms as a counselor. Most had been physically, and/or sexually abused by one or both parents, and were not helped by conventional talk therapy. Here are some of the things that seemed to work.

First of all, the combat experience or other adult stress can trigger early experiences which have been suppressed or repressed. In my husband’s case receiving a leg wound while fighting and killing a young Chinese soldier was lying in wait. As our son entered his teen years, and looked somewhat Asian (some American Indian ancestry) the guilt became very strong. One night he came home drunk and was whining and complaining about something. I said “poor baby”, which enraged him. I suggested we go into the sound proofed room where I saw clients and explore the issue. I started saying poor baby again and soon he was writhing and wailing on the mat. Turns out that at birth nurses had put a hot water bottle on his leg which left a faint scar he showed me. I rubbed the scar and said poor baby and he was off screaming again. After he had come up for air again, I asked him about the scar that looked like a cut that he would never tell me about. He burst into tears and started screaming “I killed somebody’s son,” over and over again (his mother was very religious) for more than an hour. This is just one sample of a number of issues we explored in this way.

For me a critical point was when I had a potentially fatal adult experience which I survived by exercising great self control. The most intense experience I ever had in therapy was when I relived an experience I had at age 7. My father and I saw a crowd down the highway and when we walked there a truck had jackknifed, a car crashed into it, and 4 people were hanging out the broken windows bleeding to death (this was before safety glass). The truck driver was banging his head against the side of the truck screaming something. I had perfect visual memory of all this but no emotional memory nor could I remember what the driver was screaming. What I remembered while reliving was the feeling of absolute horror that this was something my capable father could not fix, that the truck driver was screaming “I lost control,” and for me the message was that loss of control means death. I have become much less controlling thanks to all this.

So for anyone suffering from PTSD, I would suggest the following. Start taking good care of yourself, eating nourishing food and taking supplements. If you can, find someone who will partner with you or a good therapist who will see you more than an hour at a time. Reliving often takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours. And one who is not afraid to let you cry and scream and rage safely (if you can express your anger by hitting a punching bag or beating on cushions or a mattress). When I was in a training group, a rape victim asked our doctor how many times she needed to relive the rape. He said, “until it becomes boring”. If something in the present is triggering, try to remember the earliest time you felt or experienced the same kind of thing and work on that first. If you wake up from a nightmare, try to sink into the feeling of the nightmare and let out the emotion. This kind of process seems to work because traumatic feelings are mostly stored in the mid brain, but as you relive them the electro-chemical charge is burned off, and the experience shifts into the cerebral cortex memory storage area where it has no emotional charge. Feel free to private message me if you need to ask any sensitive questions.