Category Archives: Vets

Steps to healing 1-2-3-4-5

Steps 1-2-3-4-5

Below are some very simple steps all healing goes through.

1) Determine to free yourself — “I am willing to see this differently.”

Healing cannot be forced upon you. It needs to be invited before it comes to help.

2) Assure yourself that you are safe here & now…

Look around you, make sure that you are safe, here and now. Assure yourself that your story happened in the past and the past is gone. Breathe into any tension or tightness, bodily sensations, you notice. Let the breath massage all the fear and tension out of you.

3) Tell or write your story in the first person, or as if it is happening to someone else…

Continue reading Steps to healing 1-2-3-4-5

Love & Fear

All healing is essentially the release from fear.

To make our healing work very simple, it helps to think of the light switch on the wall that is either on or off. If we agree to call our inner emotional states by two terms, either love or fear, then our progress will be rapid.

Just as one is never just a “little” pregnant — you are also neither a “little” in love or fear. You are either relaxed and happy and aware of love — or not. You could think of the inner human state simply as, “love on” or “love off” — and we call “love off”, for want of a better term, fear. Continue reading Love & Fear

Returning soldiers face new enemies – PTSD & TBI

From National Public Radio -- September 4, 2010 -- Listen to the audio and read the transcript at NPR.

More than seven years after U.S. troops first invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, President Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday to commemorate the official end of the Iraq War. However, the legacy of one of America’s longest combat missions will continue to affect the thousands of troops who came home suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Continue reading Returning soldiers face new enemies – PTSD & TBI

Depression is not irrational – Suicide is not a solution

I was depressed from an early age. As a child, I always wanted to be dead. Life didn’t seem worth living. One night, when my parents were asleep, I went to the kitchen to get a knife to cut out my heart, but I was too small to reach the sharp knives – I didn’t even know where they were kept.

When I went back to my bed that night, I heard a voice say, “What makes you think it would be any different if you were to die?”

I had to admit I had no guarantee. But I saw the implication was that I would have to live through those early childhood years again – no way! – and so I have stayed. My teen years and early twenties were no better. But after that, each year my heart has grown more full and rich and happy. I have no external possessions to brag about, but peace of mind and joy are my priceless treasures.

Depression is not irrational, it is an accumulation of legitimate, yet unreleased fears, angers and sorrows. Much of our society does not allow grieving and does not offer anything much better than “You are born. Life is for suffering. Technology advances. And then you die.”.

Religion often makes life on earth sound like a prison sentence, a valley of tears, after which – if you are perfect (and who among us could claim that?) – at any rate, if you are perfect, you get to go to “heaven” and experience something that might or might not be all that much better than what you have known on earth… but there are no guarantees and there are many hoops to jump through.

What finally brought me out of my depression was the discovery that when I was very very quiet, I could feel my heart.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer… no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. ― Albert Camus

Another way to say that is, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” It is! And it can be known NOW. But only one thing can exist in one place at one time, so as long as we hold on to negative feelings from the past, we do not feel that beauty that already exists in our own hearts.

I came to understand that I had something important to do here on planet earth. Until I released all that old baggage, until I released everything that was blocking me from feeling my heart, I might just have to come back over and over and do it all again. What a horrible thought that was! And so I began to do my work and began to let go of that old and ugly fear, sorrow, anger… and am still engaged in that process.

We are fortunate in this age to have lots of help – from people and healing systems like Jed Diamond, Byron Katie’s “The Work”, Gary Craig’s “EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique”, Hale Dwoskin’s “The Sedona Method”, and many others. It’s all about healing – letting go of fear/anger/sorrow. It’s why we’re here and why “stuff happens” – so that we feel the old stuff and release the past – to “forgive”, which is “for giving ourselves peace of mind, joy and health.” Feelings got stuck when we held our breath in fear. So whatever feelings come up, breathe into them… that’s how we tell ourselves that we’re safe here and now.

Release one little fear, tension, today, here and now. You will be so glad you did. Then move to another… and let it go… until all the fear is gone and only love remains.

Emergency help for PTSD

Trauma happens. Daily. To many. Those of us who have been suddenly exposed to terror, horror and shock, those of us who have lived in it for extended periods of time, all of us suffer at least some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The two videos in this post demonstrate emergency relief for anxiety using acupressure points for stress. This might come in handy as you are reading, learning, practicing, addressing issues, and releasing them. Get these two helpful stress-release tools under your belt and then scour and devour the rest of the healing methods here on this site. Any one of them might be enough to heal all your wounds. But one might “speak to” you more than another. Try them all.

As we release fear, we feel safer; as we feel safer, others will feel safer around us.

Sufferers of PTSD — even veterans — are not always correctly diagnosed and are even more often not treated. However, those who do receive attention do not always reap sufficient benefit from conventional treatment.

Sometimes it takes a child to say what no adult will — the emperor has no clothes and the medical field has no cure for PTSD. The conventional mental health system offers diagnoses and medications, but the mere labeling and numbing of symptoms does not equate to genuine healing. Terror and horror persist in the hearts and minds of victims and witnesses, both. The good news is,

All healing is essentially the release from fear.
Healing is always certain.

We can do it ourselves. Fact is, we must. No one else can. Here is where we start. Here is where we learn to release the fear that has tied our minds and bodies into knots. Here is where we learn how to let go of fear.

We learn the principles of self-healing. We practice with ourselves and one another. We address one memory, one pain, one tense muscle at a time. Soon we are free of the shudder, the revulsion, the horror, the past. We feel real peace again. We have taken back our lives.