|
“About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
― C.G. Jung |
|
Salvaged Faith
|
Wellness: The Best Defense
Those who know me have heard me use an expression when I'm saying good-bye, for a time, to those I love and care about: "Be Well." The use of these words started long ago as an affirmation of what I'd dreamed I might one day achieve. These days, although I continue to wish for wellness in my personal and family life, I use these words as a blessing for others too: When I say to anyone, "Be Well": This is a sincere short-prayer I share for you and I both,as well as for our families. |
As I shared on the home-page: I promote treatment frameworks, modalities, and trauma recovery processes as best served through Bio-Psycho-Social concepts. What this more clearly means is, I've learned that I need to tackle myself in this still after-math of trauma and resulting challenges in ways that addresses the whole-person that is me. This is what the most current treatment providers suggest we must do to have our best-shot at achieving wellness once we're wounded as deeply as many of us are.
I've learned through my own recovery that we are triune-beings made of Mind, Body, and Human Spirit.
In order to recover from any ailments as best we possibly can, for both physical and psychological ills, I've had to learn the hard way that to do that, I must continue to learn to appreciate and care-for those parts of myself that are all three.
To recover from traumatic stress injury demands we address our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, engaging processes that support us at all three levels.
That's the core of bio-psycho-social treatment as a model of care.
Pursuing wellness remains a quest for me. Having spent the past five years or so getting my mind and spirit repaired to a place that I'm now comfortable that these two parts of myself are receiving right attention: My body right now is telling me it needs some attention finally too.
As trauma-treatment pioneers like Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, David Berceli and others share with us, a huge part of being well following trauma is to learn, or relearn, how to stay in touch with our innate felt sense in the body as we work to learn our way back to self-regulating our damaged emotions.
I've come to understand through these treatment pioneers how necessary it is through recovery for us to maintain a very open mind. As I touched on in the section of the site that talks about treatment models: We are each unique; what helps one of us recover may not necessarily help another; recovery too is non-linear, meaning their is no clear path for us that anyone can lay down that hopes to guide us from any point A's towards what seems like the often out-of-reach point Z's.
I personally commit to continuing in my recovery to work with my mind and spirit. I commit as well to learn what's missing to help me start working more closely again with my body. As it is for other pages on this site, my intent in sharing this is to encourage others to commit to the same.
As for my own body right now, I'm not all that proud of myself, sitting here on the sofa still as I write. I've gained too much weight. My blood-pressure is too high. I'm often negligent in dealing with my own daily self-care. I've fallen-down where nutrition is concerned and I've become such an arm-chair, couch-spud, my body is telling me it's time again to get some proper exercise.
I'm planning a shift beginning as soon as I'm done writing and updating this web-site. For now, I'll simply leave it to confess that I've been remiss now over many years in regards to my own physical self-care. There's so much to learn, as I agree to continue moving forwards as best I can. I'm excited to be in a place right now that I'm thinking of my body again at all.
From here, I'll introduce some things that I've picked up along the way that I trust will speak to my understanding of wellness clearly enough for visitors to the site. As I hope to share the importance of wellness goals as part of recovering the whole-people that we are, the focus of my sharing about wellness will be put-upon what I believe our society on the whole isn't understanding all that well:
The focus of the discussion I wish to share about wellness will be structured around those concepts that define for us what's referred to as: The Social Determinants of Health.
I've learned through my own recovery that we are triune-beings made of Mind, Body, and Human Spirit.
In order to recover from any ailments as best we possibly can, for both physical and psychological ills, I've had to learn the hard way that to do that, I must continue to learn to appreciate and care-for those parts of myself that are all three.
To recover from traumatic stress injury demands we address our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, engaging processes that support us at all three levels.
That's the core of bio-psycho-social treatment as a model of care.
Pursuing wellness remains a quest for me. Having spent the past five years or so getting my mind and spirit repaired to a place that I'm now comfortable that these two parts of myself are receiving right attention: My body right now is telling me it needs some attention finally too.
As trauma-treatment pioneers like Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, David Berceli and others share with us, a huge part of being well following trauma is to learn, or relearn, how to stay in touch with our innate felt sense in the body as we work to learn our way back to self-regulating our damaged emotions.
I've come to understand through these treatment pioneers how necessary it is through recovery for us to maintain a very open mind. As I touched on in the section of the site that talks about treatment models: We are each unique; what helps one of us recover may not necessarily help another; recovery too is non-linear, meaning their is no clear path for us that anyone can lay down that hopes to guide us from any point A's towards what seems like the often out-of-reach point Z's.
I personally commit to continuing in my recovery to work with my mind and spirit. I commit as well to learn what's missing to help me start working more closely again with my body. As it is for other pages on this site, my intent in sharing this is to encourage others to commit to the same.
As for my own body right now, I'm not all that proud of myself, sitting here on the sofa still as I write. I've gained too much weight. My blood-pressure is too high. I'm often negligent in dealing with my own daily self-care. I've fallen-down where nutrition is concerned and I've become such an arm-chair, couch-spud, my body is telling me it's time again to get some proper exercise.
I'm planning a shift beginning as soon as I'm done writing and updating this web-site. For now, I'll simply leave it to confess that I've been remiss now over many years in regards to my own physical self-care. There's so much to learn, as I agree to continue moving forwards as best I can. I'm excited to be in a place right now that I'm thinking of my body again at all.
From here, I'll introduce some things that I've picked up along the way that I trust will speak to my understanding of wellness clearly enough for visitors to the site. As I hope to share the importance of wellness goals as part of recovering the whole-people that we are, the focus of my sharing about wellness will be put-upon what I believe our society on the whole isn't understanding all that well:
The focus of the discussion I wish to share about wellness will be structured around those concepts that define for us what's referred to as: The Social Determinants of Health.
Body
|
Mind
|
Spirit
|
Wellness: A Big Picture View
I like to view wellness as a state of balance. Balance in Mind, Body, and Spirit on the inside, for sure. But also balance in how we choose to live our lives in general.
I share just a tad-bit of caution in regards to your own expectations for achieving personal wellness:
To recover as best we can, my own experience suggests, along with lessons from all I've turned to for information, that with trauma, and with PTSD in particular, we're wisest when to understand that there are no quick-fixes. I wish there were. But the reality is, there's no quick-and-easy way out of trauma and PTSD once it's taken root deeply enough.
Thus, why it's so important for us following traumatic experiences to seek right help as close to the time of the event as we can muster. There nothing really that says we can't fully recover, no matter how soon we access trauma-informed clinical care. It took me from 1994 through to 2013 before I accessed what I needed to help me break free from the bondage that trauma left behind in me.
It's been a rocky road between 2013 and today. But I've made incredible strides, more-so than in all the years I worked with recovery prior to my first EMDR treatments in Vancouver in 2013.
I share the caution simply to suggest we're wise to keep our expectations for recovery realistic.
As it is for all I've learned, it's taken me awhile for this to sink in to a place inside that I too can accept. It took far too long for me to find right help (meaning, the help that fit my unique needs). I remain in recovery-mode still as an outcome of that too-much-time, and actually with a shift now brewing towards more clear focus on being well in the body: I'm open to tackling my over-all health, now including work for my body, as I've done to tackle my mind and spirit.
What I personally need for me to stay on course, is a much bigger-picture view of what achieving wellness actually means as I carry on with my own recovery. Others are satisfied with using information that doesn't go perhaps as deeply as I need to do to support my personal journey. We all need that unique right fit. As I will continue to make progress hopefully, I'm comfortable with what I offer here as I share my take on what wellness, over-all, has come to mean to me.
Wellness is about harmony, both inside and out. Wellness is about achieving a sense of inner-balance. It's about reunification inside of mind, body, and spirit. For me, this hoped-for state of FEELING well, now includes some ideas that grant me a little deeper focus then maybe others have had opportunity to consider.
I'll share again the words I shared above form Carl Jung (he's my go-to, historical analyst/therapist). His work aligned for me with the information I took in long ago about the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell. It's by hearing from Jung that I became willing to go deep with my own therapy, including tackling what turned out to be a slew of false-beliefs that had skewed my perception of reality for a time.
“About a third of my cases are suffering from NO CLINICALLY DEFINABLE NEUROSIS, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
― C.G. Jung
I like to view wellness as a state of balance. Balance in Mind, Body, and Spirit on the inside, for sure. But also balance in how we choose to live our lives in general.
I share just a tad-bit of caution in regards to your own expectations for achieving personal wellness:
To recover as best we can, my own experience suggests, along with lessons from all I've turned to for information, that with trauma, and with PTSD in particular, we're wisest when to understand that there are no quick-fixes. I wish there were. But the reality is, there's no quick-and-easy way out of trauma and PTSD once it's taken root deeply enough.
Thus, why it's so important for us following traumatic experiences to seek right help as close to the time of the event as we can muster. There nothing really that says we can't fully recover, no matter how soon we access trauma-informed clinical care. It took me from 1994 through to 2013 before I accessed what I needed to help me break free from the bondage that trauma left behind in me.
It's been a rocky road between 2013 and today. But I've made incredible strides, more-so than in all the years I worked with recovery prior to my first EMDR treatments in Vancouver in 2013.
I share the caution simply to suggest we're wise to keep our expectations for recovery realistic.
As it is for all I've learned, it's taken me awhile for this to sink in to a place inside that I too can accept. It took far too long for me to find right help (meaning, the help that fit my unique needs). I remain in recovery-mode still as an outcome of that too-much-time, and actually with a shift now brewing towards more clear focus on being well in the body: I'm open to tackling my over-all health, now including work for my body, as I've done to tackle my mind and spirit.
What I personally need for me to stay on course, is a much bigger-picture view of what achieving wellness actually means as I carry on with my own recovery. Others are satisfied with using information that doesn't go perhaps as deeply as I need to do to support my personal journey. We all need that unique right fit. As I will continue to make progress hopefully, I'm comfortable with what I offer here as I share my take on what wellness, over-all, has come to mean to me.
Wellness is about harmony, both inside and out. Wellness is about achieving a sense of inner-balance. It's about reunification inside of mind, body, and spirit. For me, this hoped-for state of FEELING well, now includes some ideas that grant me a little deeper focus then maybe others have had opportunity to consider.
I'll share again the words I shared above form Carl Jung (he's my go-to, historical analyst/therapist). His work aligned for me with the information I took in long ago about the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell. It's by hearing from Jung that I became willing to go deep with my own therapy, including tackling what turned out to be a slew of false-beliefs that had skewed my perception of reality for a time.
“About a third of my cases are suffering from NO CLINICALLY DEFINABLE NEUROSIS, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.”
― C.G. Jung
What's This Got To Do With Me?
As I share my thoughts on wellness-on being well: I do wish for others that in finding that right fit for your own best shot at recovery, that you find yourself as willing as I needed to become to go as deep with your efforts with supportive therapy as you possibly can. To support this wish for you, I'll share again my take on what trauma and PTSD now mean to me.
We've been led, somewhat, down a wrong path with PTSD being listed along with other mental illnesses for physicians to diagnose our condition. This happened long ago, following revelations from those who served in Vietnam. It wasn't until some time in the 1980's that PTSD became the label for the symptoms we deal with. To date, the label sticks. Some wish that we not focus on the 'disorder' word as such words stigmatize. Others, like myself, aren't all that caught up in the label.
Words don't stigmatize in my view. Choices of others in society to dismiss or to discredit, to bully or to remain in denial, this is what stigma is about, and it's therefore true to me that stigmatization of ANYONE struggling with any sort of mental-upset: That's on society and has very little in fact to do with anything else but fear among the masses to accept reality as deeply as we've been tasked to do once we're diagnosed.
In Canada, in this year, 2018, we've only recently started to view the outcomes of poor mental health related to trauma as the result of an actual injury. It's taken so much loss of humankind to wake ourselves and policy-makers up enough to more effectively act on these troubling issues. I've personally seen the most growth in understanding the impact of traumatic stress injury and resulting conditions only over the past 3-5 years.
Seeking information when I was first personally diagnosed in 2005 was an effort of agony, more traumatization (sanctuary trauma) and high-levels of complete frustration. Today, I know I'm at a point of information saturation, because when I look-out today into Google-Land, the information that comes back to me is repeating itself now more and more as time goes by.
As I've shared in other writing here, PTSD is an outcome of traumatic stress induced injury to the brain, in my experience and studied point-of-view. There is little that is neurotic (Jung) about our symptoms, frankly. To the untrained eye, I'm sure we can present ourselves as being as neurotic as hell. But neurosis isn't an apt definition in my world to describe what PTSD is as the outcome of traumatic stress injury.
We're certainly in no-way psychotic as some of the first psychiatric treatments with pharmaceuticals hoped to convince the world.
Here's a link for readers to review the actual signs and symptoms of traumatic stress injury induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Here it's still defined as a mental health disorder, which it is at the level of our experience with the ill-firing anxiety the condition blesses us to live with. PTSD it is a bio-psycho-social caused, and a bio-psycho-social healed condition.
I'm simply sharing a deeper point of view in my own work that maintains focus on the true culprit, traumatic-stress induced brain injury, as I've come to understand my experience with PTSD, co-morbid depression, and substance-use issues.
Granted, PTSD as an outcome of trauma is about a disorder that presents with hyper-vigilance, with levels of expressed anxiety that's often off-the-scales, with depression and substance/alcohol use issues attached to our PTSD for many of us. But I've personally come to rest on the fact that PTSD is about our brain and nervous system's response to stress.
Our nervous system has been reset. That, to me, is what PTSD actually is.
Our stress-response as a human-being, due to the trauma of our most troubling experiences, is what is actually dysfunctional when we find ourselves in mental health trouble. Our brain has changed dramatically when we've been hit with an over-dose of traumatic stress chemistry and hormones. This over-dose, repeated traumas following any original injury, along with the incessant recall of our trauma-memories themselves, act upon the brain in a way that changes it for us in both structure, and in function.
With PTSD rooted, complicated by co-morbid, other mental health conditions, this shifts our physiology in response to stress moving forward from the time of original injury (until the traumas themselves are resolved). This physiological change in my experience means that for ANY sense of stress coming at me at all, my brain and body now fire-off a 'traumatic stress response; as opposed to a more typical, stress response that I experienced many times prior to the traumatizing experiences.
I took in at least eight traumas working in British Columbia as a rural, part-time (so-called) primary-care paramedic. Across my sixteen year career, I was exposed to perhaps potentially reinforcing additional traumas at perhaps a lower-level in scope and flow of traumatic stress chemistry inside. One survey I completed to assist with research, put a number of potential traumas in my face that numbered over 1500 across my sixteen years of service.
I'm comfortable that this take is completely valid, as I've applied what I've learned to myself. I no longer debate with myself over what is and what isn't correct about the subject anymore. I stick to this position because it's the compassionate explanation, clinically speaking, that aligns best with my personal, lived-experience and study.
What does a reflection like this have to do with those visiting this web-site, looking for answers about where to turn for help in achieving wellness from trauma and PTSD?
I hope to argue that it's the bigger picture view that has everything to do with providing some deeper background information to encourage us all to stick to the program once we've found our way to right help.
I hope to leave an impression in visitors here that encourages folks to put up your hand and seek right help. It's my hope that all who come here looking for answers can agree with yourself to enter into recovery in a way that hopes of experiencing Post Traumatic Growth, rather than the tragedy that might have otherwise been your suicide.
Knowledge is power. The more brilliantly self-aware we can become, in my experience this supports us well as we work to process the impact that traumatic stress injury has had upon our lives. We may not be able to recover all the way. But we WILL. at the very least, entering into a choice we make to recover, find those tools and techniques that will assist us through the rest of our natural lives.
Some of us will recover fully. Others of us will be managing the up-and-down, oft roller-coaster-ride of emotional upset that trauma can leave behind. We need tools to do that once PTSD takes hold of us all the way. Some of us will fully recover, but I need to say gently, and with encouragement, some may need to accept that managing symptoms and achieving remissions, as I've now been able to do now many times, will be the accepted BEST that some will be able to do.
This stigmatizing world of ours, needs to accept this reality as well.
I can't stress strongly enough how precious you are. I can't stress strongly enough how much we all who enter into this mess need right trauma-informed care to support us. I can't stress strongly enough that the sooner one agrees to seek out that help, the greater the potential for a full-recovery is possible.
Why go into this 'thing' we live with, seeking help with a willingness to go as deeply as we can put upon ourselves, even in fits-and-starts if we must, agreeing to enter into recovery as soon as we possibly can, if we're maybe not going to be empowered enough to recover all the way?
Because we all DESERVE to be as well as we can be, number one.
Number two: Reality dictates that when we are NOT well ourselves, we are tragically unable to support wellness in our families, or for that matter, anywhere else.
Which takes us back to one of my original statements on the home-page:
"Heal Trauma-Heal The World".
For those visiting here: I CHALLENGE you, with sincere care, compassion, encouragement and right concern:
To put aside any expectations of failure of what you might achieve as you recover; learn to take each step in your recovery journey with your own head up; with your shoulders back; with an open-mind; and commit to finding your way with right support to be as well moving forward as you personally can possibly be.
As I share my thoughts on wellness-on being well: I do wish for others that in finding that right fit for your own best shot at recovery, that you find yourself as willing as I needed to become to go as deep with your efforts with supportive therapy as you possibly can. To support this wish for you, I'll share again my take on what trauma and PTSD now mean to me.
We've been led, somewhat, down a wrong path with PTSD being listed along with other mental illnesses for physicians to diagnose our condition. This happened long ago, following revelations from those who served in Vietnam. It wasn't until some time in the 1980's that PTSD became the label for the symptoms we deal with. To date, the label sticks. Some wish that we not focus on the 'disorder' word as such words stigmatize. Others, like myself, aren't all that caught up in the label.
Words don't stigmatize in my view. Choices of others in society to dismiss or to discredit, to bully or to remain in denial, this is what stigma is about, and it's therefore true to me that stigmatization of ANYONE struggling with any sort of mental-upset: That's on society and has very little in fact to do with anything else but fear among the masses to accept reality as deeply as we've been tasked to do once we're diagnosed.
In Canada, in this year, 2018, we've only recently started to view the outcomes of poor mental health related to trauma as the result of an actual injury. It's taken so much loss of humankind to wake ourselves and policy-makers up enough to more effectively act on these troubling issues. I've personally seen the most growth in understanding the impact of traumatic stress injury and resulting conditions only over the past 3-5 years.
Seeking information when I was first personally diagnosed in 2005 was an effort of agony, more traumatization (sanctuary trauma) and high-levels of complete frustration. Today, I know I'm at a point of information saturation, because when I look-out today into Google-Land, the information that comes back to me is repeating itself now more and more as time goes by.
As I've shared in other writing here, PTSD is an outcome of traumatic stress induced injury to the brain, in my experience and studied point-of-view. There is little that is neurotic (Jung) about our symptoms, frankly. To the untrained eye, I'm sure we can present ourselves as being as neurotic as hell. But neurosis isn't an apt definition in my world to describe what PTSD is as the outcome of traumatic stress injury.
We're certainly in no-way psychotic as some of the first psychiatric treatments with pharmaceuticals hoped to convince the world.
Here's a link for readers to review the actual signs and symptoms of traumatic stress injury induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Here it's still defined as a mental health disorder, which it is at the level of our experience with the ill-firing anxiety the condition blesses us to live with. PTSD it is a bio-psycho-social caused, and a bio-psycho-social healed condition.
I'm simply sharing a deeper point of view in my own work that maintains focus on the true culprit, traumatic-stress induced brain injury, as I've come to understand my experience with PTSD, co-morbid depression, and substance-use issues.
Granted, PTSD as an outcome of trauma is about a disorder that presents with hyper-vigilance, with levels of expressed anxiety that's often off-the-scales, with depression and substance/alcohol use issues attached to our PTSD for many of us. But I've personally come to rest on the fact that PTSD is about our brain and nervous system's response to stress.
Our nervous system has been reset. That, to me, is what PTSD actually is.
Our stress-response as a human-being, due to the trauma of our most troubling experiences, is what is actually dysfunctional when we find ourselves in mental health trouble. Our brain has changed dramatically when we've been hit with an over-dose of traumatic stress chemistry and hormones. This over-dose, repeated traumas following any original injury, along with the incessant recall of our trauma-memories themselves, act upon the brain in a way that changes it for us in both structure, and in function.
With PTSD rooted, complicated by co-morbid, other mental health conditions, this shifts our physiology in response to stress moving forward from the time of original injury (until the traumas themselves are resolved). This physiological change in my experience means that for ANY sense of stress coming at me at all, my brain and body now fire-off a 'traumatic stress response; as opposed to a more typical, stress response that I experienced many times prior to the traumatizing experiences.
I took in at least eight traumas working in British Columbia as a rural, part-time (so-called) primary-care paramedic. Across my sixteen year career, I was exposed to perhaps potentially reinforcing additional traumas at perhaps a lower-level in scope and flow of traumatic stress chemistry inside. One survey I completed to assist with research, put a number of potential traumas in my face that numbered over 1500 across my sixteen years of service.
I'm comfortable that this take is completely valid, as I've applied what I've learned to myself. I no longer debate with myself over what is and what isn't correct about the subject anymore. I stick to this position because it's the compassionate explanation, clinically speaking, that aligns best with my personal, lived-experience and study.
What does a reflection like this have to do with those visiting this web-site, looking for answers about where to turn for help in achieving wellness from trauma and PTSD?
I hope to argue that it's the bigger picture view that has everything to do with providing some deeper background information to encourage us all to stick to the program once we've found our way to right help.
I hope to leave an impression in visitors here that encourages folks to put up your hand and seek right help. It's my hope that all who come here looking for answers can agree with yourself to enter into recovery in a way that hopes of experiencing Post Traumatic Growth, rather than the tragedy that might have otherwise been your suicide.
Knowledge is power. The more brilliantly self-aware we can become, in my experience this supports us well as we work to process the impact that traumatic stress injury has had upon our lives. We may not be able to recover all the way. But we WILL. at the very least, entering into a choice we make to recover, find those tools and techniques that will assist us through the rest of our natural lives.
Some of us will recover fully. Others of us will be managing the up-and-down, oft roller-coaster-ride of emotional upset that trauma can leave behind. We need tools to do that once PTSD takes hold of us all the way. Some of us will fully recover, but I need to say gently, and with encouragement, some may need to accept that managing symptoms and achieving remissions, as I've now been able to do now many times, will be the accepted BEST that some will be able to do.
This stigmatizing world of ours, needs to accept this reality as well.
I can't stress strongly enough how precious you are. I can't stress strongly enough how much we all who enter into this mess need right trauma-informed care to support us. I can't stress strongly enough that the sooner one agrees to seek out that help, the greater the potential for a full-recovery is possible.
Why go into this 'thing' we live with, seeking help with a willingness to go as deeply as we can put upon ourselves, even in fits-and-starts if we must, agreeing to enter into recovery as soon as we possibly can, if we're maybe not going to be empowered enough to recover all the way?
Because we all DESERVE to be as well as we can be, number one.
Number two: Reality dictates that when we are NOT well ourselves, we are tragically unable to support wellness in our families, or for that matter, anywhere else.
Which takes us back to one of my original statements on the home-page:
"Heal Trauma-Heal The World".
For those visiting here: I CHALLENGE you, with sincere care, compassion, encouragement and right concern:
To put aside any expectations of failure of what you might achieve as you recover; learn to take each step in your recovery journey with your own head up; with your shoulders back; with an open-mind; and commit to finding your way with right support to be as well moving forward as you personally can possibly be.
Wellness: The Best Defense/Wellness: The Best Offense
If there's anything that focus on being well can perhaps protect: It is our vulnerability as humans when traumatized (remember, we'll all at least once have to face this in our life-times) to having that experience of trauma take us out all the way to PTSD, Depression, Substance Use Disorder, and in the worst case scenarios, to our death by our own hand.
A key lesson I held onto from my first therapist is this: What we agree to focus on in our lives, that thing we focus on will expand. This means that when we focus on our illnesses, we're more aware of being sick. When we agree with ourselves to focus on being well, being well is what expands and paths to wellness start to make themselves visible to our consciousness.
It's like it is should we tell ourselves, "What ever you do, don't look at red cars!"
Tell yourself that and see what happens. If you're like me, and I suspect you will be, RED CARS for a time will be ALL that you're able to see.
When we shift our focus away from illness (which takes time and right therapy): Agreeing to be well will provide via expansion those bits-and-pieces of information, people, time, energy, and willingness to keep moving towards wellness as that focus expands in increments with every effort we agree to make.
Wellness practices, learned prior to trauma or after-the-fact, as we apply 'being well' to our recovery: They will come our way, and they'll come to us individually in a way that fits us uniquely like a favorite hat.
This is what we can hear from our trauma experiences in the beginning. The experience is asking us to do something when they hit us so unexpectedly. These events hit us as only traumatizing experiences can do. This is what I wish I'd heard when the alarms inside started wailing as though the sirens I heard all day in my paramedic role would never again go silent:
"Hey, buddy? Yeah. This is me, traumatic stress calling. I've called you before. A couple of times now. You keep refusing to hear me. So I'll say it again, as clearly as I can. Unless you wish to frankly die by your own hand? I think it's time to wake up and smell that coffee you drink too much of. It's time to get VERY real. It's time you started to focus on wellness. And maybe while you're at it, focus on your family, and how important it is now for you to learn some things about how to balance all that is your life!"
I didn't listen. Thus, it's my hope that those reading here will seriously consider what I now have to say.
There are many of us out here in the world today, sharing our lived experiences with you, having made already ALL the mistakes, so that perhaps, should you hear from us, you won't end up doing the same.
What I'd like all to consider: Our traumas in life will, or have, taken a toll on our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. Chronic stress alone exacts a heavy toll on our well-being. We've not been educated well generally in this society how to practice, first-and-foremost in our lives, consistent self-care. We've not been taught well how to go-about dealing with and managing chronic distress and traumatic stress.
Eustress (the good stress-the stress that motivates us to remain engaged in life): This part of ourselves never dies once the other two demons launch any assault upon the psyche. They simply take-over-which is part of what confuses the brain.
For me even the 'good-stress' of stage-fright kinds of stressful experiences, without applying the tools I've learned about, can be too-much for me to take.
You too?
Thought so.
Protecting ourselves from developing the after-math-of-trauma conditions (PTSD and the like) we've found ourselves struggling with finding meaning in what was then, at the time of traumatizing experience, and as future traumas will be, unexpected, out-of-the-blue, confusing, often horrific, horrible events: I will not minimize how painful this is for us all.
What I know for certain though, is that my own accepted ignorance on the importance of self-care, prior to and after trauma, played a huge part in what made these unexpected events of trauma I faced in the work, traumatic, and this played a huge role in how PTSD developed in my personal case.
Traumatic experiences are ALWAYS unexpected. That's what makes them in huge part 'traumatizing' in the first place. In my own choice of work, and in your own lives, these unavoidable events that ended up being so damaging. to us all, I doubt any one of us could have avoided them if we tried.
What was missing is: We didn't have the education, information, and memories PRIOR TO these traumatizing experiences to help us get through them in healthy ways to resolution.
That's what keeps trauma stuck within us. Until we learn what we need to learn, we do ourselves a huge discredit hoping to continue believing things that might paint a picture of ourselves as somehow we were stupid, character-flawed, or in some way compared to others, weak in responding to our own unspeakable traumas in life.
Key word here: Unspeakable. We were FORCED to accept that we'd been traumatized and we are FORCED into dealing with it all if we wish to survive.
Never forget: For every one of us who's had to admit to such things, tell our stories to others, and expose the reality of our own traumas in life-many are out here in the world suffering as much as we are, or were, who are stuck with the silence still that these often unspeakable things force us into accepting.
When we are traumatized?
We can actually EXPECT that these experiences will come with a LOAD of psychic, physical, and emotional pain. We are HUMAN, not invincible. We are mere MORTALS, not Gods. Pain comes with trauma and that pain is frankly NORMAL.
Forgive the language, but for heaven's sake, when SHIT HAPPENS in this life, often that shit that pours upon our beings (mind-body-spirit) HURTS like ever-loving-hell. It'supposed to hurt that much in the beginning. It's like losing a loved one and feeling the sudden-onset of intense grief with the loss.
Do we wish to HALT any grief process working inside of ourselves when a serious loss in our lives comes along that we weren't expecting?
Unfortunately, for all of us, yes, in fact, we do, where our sometimes secret trauma are concerned (toxically so).
It's as though we expected NOT to ever feel our pain.
"Big boys don't cry". Men don't DARE show any SPECK that could be interpreted by others as weak. Gals, as well, grew up in this culture of ours that's intent upon teaching us all, through frank, misguided indoctrination, that to feel negative emotions is somehow a sin.
Good-God!
It's really no wonder we're all in a state in this society called Canada today as we hope to ignore the reality of our own traumas until the day comes when that stops working for us.
Trauma hurts. As such things SHOULD, frankly. Traumatic shit happening HURTS deeply. There's no denying that reality.
The greatest damage to myself I personally ever allowed, was to BELIEVE this nonsense that when shit happens, traumatizing, unexpected shit, I was expected to just brush it off, forget about it, and then go on my merry-own-way as though nothing horrific had happened to me, or around me at all.
I DENIED as much of the pain as I could, and I did that successfully for a very long time.
Right up until the final blow of another in a chain of traumas in my work broke-me into a babbling mess finally, lying in a fetal-position on the floor. Out of options. Out of ideas. Out of hope by the time all of the damage I'd resisted feeling had ultimately been done.
Sad thing too: Not finding right help in time, took out my family-life, entirely.
We can't control that which may traumatize us. It's impossible to predict such things.
We can learn, however, to change our response. What that response needs for all of us in the future to be is:
Good God! FEEL IT. Feel it-to-heal-it. Denying our true emotions, negative as they are, as painful as it is in response to loss or traumas in life, will, in the end, be your complete undoing, as it was my own.
I get it. I really do.
However: We need to feel our pain, and we need help in safe places to feel that depth of suffering. That is why I encourage establishing for all of us a relationship with therapy that is about trauma-and-violence informed care as soon as we possibly can.
What we can LEARN TO DO, with right help and education is: We can learn how to better respond to such things, having already been wounded in life by trauma or not. We can learn about how important self-care, balance (work/life/all-of-it), moderation, and right choices for life-style actually are in maintenance of ourselves as humans.
We can learn practices like mindfulness to help us with our thinking. We can reeducate ourselves if our belief system is running sub-conscious programming that is less-than-helpful in regards to our perceptions. There is MUCH we can do for ourselves, yet traumatized or otherwise; to protect our mental health; or to recover once said health is accepted as damaged.
We've been taught unfortunately all-too-well, that issues with mental health and mental illnesses are the absolute WORST thing any human can ever face-down.
That word again I love: BOLLOCKS.
We do ourselves a huge injustice when we expect ourselves to be anything at all above being ALL that being human actually means.
These conditions are everywhere. They exist. They impact the lives of millions among us. We might be able to go-along-to-get-along continuing to stigmatize mental health issues and mental illnesses, even within ourselves for a very long time. When these conditions, however, come knocking on our own door: If we choose in response to SELF-STIGMATIZE?
Trust me when I tell you: That, my friends, is the recipe I'd personally concocted that led me down the slippery-slope of attempting suicide myself.
Here's some reality, I'll put it now as gently as I can. Please accept the more direct words above as coming from a sincere place inside of me that cares:
We are mortal, living, breathing, trial-and-error-living bits of sand and dust at our core. Inside we all are the same. There is no race. There is no religion inside. There is no right religion or wrong religion. There is no politics. There is no status in there.
Most of all, inside, there is no money getting in our out of our own way.
There is only the personal power inside if we're willing to learn to grant ourselves that KNOWLEDGE about ourselves that agreeing to enter into a recovery process can grant.
There is no lasting wealth attached to money alive inside the human being. There are no awards in heaven for those who lost everything else in life that we should, by now, expect is most important to us, as we hoped to keep toxic-secrets hidden-away across this wild, wonderful, and precious existence called life.
Life. Freedom to remain curious. Love of family, friends, and of all that is our own and other's human condition:
To accept all that human life is, 'the love, the pain, and the whole damageable thing', is something in terms of achieving wellness and being well in this life that I'd like to gently suggest we all find way to radically accept.
There is no expectation of perfection living inside of us that demands us to be anything else BUT human beings.
What is that 'thing'inside of us that gives us life? What is that 'thing' inside that allows us to grow with courage? What is that 'thing' inside that will support us when we've run out of all psycho-dynamic, egocentric other options?
Some call that 'thing' the life-force. Some call it, the Universe. I still call it God still for sake of simplicity.
It's there-inside-that the kingdom DOES, in fact, exist. Like a garden that needs care and tending, we're wise to at the very least accept that inside of ourselves, whether we know it or not, our spirit is already protected.
Why?
Because I've come to accept that the spirit of life is what, deep down inside, where we can't make sense of it all the time, this is what we really are.
We Are The Energy of Life-Connected To All That Is Life With Us On This Planet.
Being well then, for me, remains a process of continuing to hope that I can consistently accept this concept as what I truly am below the suffering and pain we all live together as flesh-and-blood-humans, walking gingerly across the landscape, desperately at time wishing we'd not made so many mistakes.
On the outside of us? Reality is what it is. Reality will not lie to us once we accept it.
We've common-ground together. We're human. You cut me, I bleed. I cut you, you bleed as well. The same tissues get cut. The same colour flows with the bleeding.
What's so different about traumatic stress injury, as opposed to a knife cutting into our fragile skin?
Not a thing, frankly. Not a thing at all. Other than the fact that others aren't able to see us sometimes bleeding.
I'll share again what it all looks like with this link for you to review the symptoms of the outcome of traumatic stress injury:
"Been traumatized in life? Not had opportunity to resolve that? Have a family-member that you're having some difficulty understanding? Could it be trauma for that family-member that's confusing you? This is what it looks like."
I'd like to suggest, these traumatic events in life that we've experienced WERE a signal to us. If we wish to look at them as only tragedy, we're all perfectly blessed to continue-on, viewing these horrible things that way. Our illnesses, however, if nothing else now demand that we make a shift towards considering wellness as a central focus of our present life.
A focus that will protect us much better for the future that lies ahead.
"What we focus on-Expands."
In the end of it all, that's what I've finally accepted must be done: I must accept the need to live differently if I hope to undo any of the damage at all. I need to accept 'being well' as the answer to the prayer I often share with myself in saying, "So long, for today", to those I know and love:
"BE WELL."
What I'd like us all to do, now that we're here, in the trauma-boat anyway: Let's accept together that from this point forward, the goal will forever be to become, and to remain, as healthy in mind, body, and human spirit as we can be.
The purpose of recovery from PTSD is about restoring our own human-stress-response to a state that is more typical and functional in the face of human life.
Therefore, getting our minds, bodies, and spirits back to a place of neutrality, emotionally speaking, is about restoring the harmony inside. If we're still suffering with our symptoms, learning to be well is really the only rational choice we have left.
Focusing on wellness has the potential to create harmony inside. Focusing on wellness has the POWER to make us more-whole in relationship with our families. Focusing on wellness will expand for us in any number of positive ways.
Focusing on wellness will carry us through this life in a far more stable, constructive, and functional way, as we engage in relationship with others in our workplaces, our communities, and in our society on the whole.
That's how powerful making a choice to heal our trauma in life can be.
As I asked on your behalf earlier in this writing, "What does all this have to do with me?"
It has everything to do with all of us.
Heal Trauma? Potentially, in choosing to do so, we are participating, ourselves, in healing the world:
One healed-from-trauma, living-and-breathing, human-soul at a time.
I'd like us all to consider just how powerful in this world we can potentially be, simply by making a decision to no longer allow trauma and our conditions to continue to rule the roost inside of ourselves. In that garden. A garden I still comfortably refer to as:
The TRUE kingdom of God that the Christians wish to build as another temple in the Middle-East right now on the outside.
There's NOTHING out there that can't wait while we take our time learning to tend the inner-garden that is this kingdom. There's nothing out there that has power over us, except for the power we may choose, unconsciously or otherwise, to grant towards anyone, or anything, that hopes to steal our personal-power away.
Our pain? That's on the inside. It's with that pain that trauma-informed, clinical care can help us work through our traumatizing experiences.
How? How Can I Be Well?
To achieve harmony of mind, of body, and of the human-spirit, we can't ignore what I've shared above, and we can't ignore the reality that the environments in which we live, our income levels, our social status, our ancestry etc: These all are part of what determines our own health-and-well-being across our personal lives.
As I shared elsewhere on the site, and as I shared recently with a leader in public safety I've been working with:
"If you wish to continue to see our First Responders taking ourselves out? Then, by all means, continue to fight us to protect your budgets. Taking our access to income away? If you wish us death, that's a good way to go about it."
Straight-Up. It's really as simple as that.
As it is for the individual, so it is for the collective that is our families, communities, and the over-all societies in which we share space with one-another. There is so much I could ramble about here. I'll be mindful to simply lay down some crumbs for others to follow. It's my goal with this site really to show others WHERE to look. It's not my role to tell anyone EXACTLY what to see with the looking.
With this in mind, however, for me, learning about the social determinants of health helped me see below the surface of my own symptoms. It's below the surface symptoms where I found the deeper, societal influences that cause us all, traumatized or not, to live somewhat in an unconscious state of chronic, life-imposed stress. An imposed stress for now that none of us can avoid really.
I've grown to think that on-the-whole in Canadian Society we place far too much emphasis on success as meaning power, wealth, and status acquisition. I really don't think that the competitiveness among us that this focus generates is doing any Canadian walking really a lick of good. Add trauma upon our souls, living in an already highly stressful, money-motivated and competitive society, the injuries of trauma can take that daily chronic stress we're already living under:
And it (the trauma) can then literally destroy neurons in the brain in a way that this world we reside in together no-longer makes any sense to us at all.
Dr. Gabor Mate argues towards me successfully that capitalism, as we live it together, is not only crazy-making: According to Dr. Mate, capitalism is eroding planetary human, plant, and animal life, making all of this world right now dramatically and unnecessarily sick.
Otto Scharmer, my virtual leadership mentor, says the same. He supports Dr. Mate in suggesting that for us to be well in North America, perhaps it's time to take a serious look at how we do capitalism today. His life's work is sharing eloquently how important it is for the future of the planet, animal, and humankind to shift how we practice living the capitalist life.
This is supported as well by two of my other virtual mentors, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, and Sir Michael Marmot.
Dr. Sapolsky's life's work was in research studying stress and the impact that stress imposed upon primates living competitively in social hierarchy has in determining outcomes of disease.
Sir Michael is my go-to source for education about the social determinants of health.
It's their life's work studying the impact of competitive stress in regards to hierarchy in what can be toxic-living-environments that opened my eyes WIDE towards learning to respect how negatively powerful stress imposed upon us can be.
Sir Micheal found this out in the environment that is the British Civil Service. He has graciously discussed what he found in the Whitehall studies, put together over many years to validate his own findings. Dr. Saplosky's studies effectively mirror the findings in the Whitehall Studies. It's my sincere view that we've much can learn from these researchers.
'We're living in a time of massive institutional failure, collectively creating results that nobody wants', Otto Scharmer, his students, and his colleagues suggest. Studying via Edx alongside these fellow-humans, along with the others I mention, has left me with now some time for some intellectual rest:
I'm personally persuaded, as an outcome of my studies through all these fine, generous fellow-humans I found to mentor my own recovery, to now agree with the work of Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Drs. Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky; Sir Michael Marmot and others as well:
We've allowed ourselves to become somewhat disconnected from this life of ours, having allowed ourselves to believe that who we are and what we become, is NOT influenced, in any way, by the surroundings and life-styles we, as a society, have created for ourselves to live by.
Scharmer and his team go on to say, that we're suffering, all of us, through three, tragic disconnects from reality as an outcome of how we've engaged in being human in North America now over decades. Scharmer and his fellows suggest, and I sincerely believe now and agree with them fully, as Indigenous Understanding of Wellness too suggests:
- We are disconnected from reality at the level of our relationship with Nature.
- We are disconnected from reality at the level of our relationships with one-another.
- Most tragically of all, I agree with Scharmer, his team, and with Indigenous Understanding: We are most tragically disconnected from reality in relationship with ourselves.
Nowhere are these disconnects more apparent than in the 'ego-minded' leadership style that invaded our societies in North America as our baby-boomers came into and took too-strong a corporate hold over all reigns of current, existing power:
“We collectively create results that nobody wants because decision-makers are increasingly disconnected from the people affected by their decisions. As a consequence, we are hitting the limits to leadership—that is, the limits to traditional top-down leadership that works through the mechanisms of institutional silos.”
“We need to articulate a different view of economic, political, and spiritual affairs—a view that is not primarily Left or Right, that is not wrapped around the primacy of this mechanism or that one, that doesn’t believe that the solution to our problems lies with Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Money, or Big Ideology.”
― C. Otto Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies
What is the point, you ask?
The point I wish to make is: As it is for the collective, so it is for ourselves.
As it is for ourselves, so it is for the collective.
When we agree to heal our trauma: The impact is to potentially heal this entire world over time. One of us at a time learning to be well, as well as we possibly can be, given our own personal limitations:
As trauma hoped to destroy, so-too will a shift in focus towards wellness ripple across the pond that is our well-being in this shared-society. As we agree to drop the pebble that is wellness into that same pond that once accepted the stone of traumatic experience, so-to will our healing spread to others like a benevolent virus, leading us all, in our own uniquely chosen way, to get to a place in the future that on-the-whole proposes to be more healthy than perhaps humankind has had opportunity to experience consistently in the past.
"You're a dreamer", some might say.
Well, to quote John Lennon: I'm not the only one.
We need to accept that it's time in this world for a shift. To recover ourselves, we must accept that we don't know everything we need to know. We need the courage, humility, self-compassion, and granted grace, to proceed towards wellness by first raising up our own hand and asking for help. Particularly when traumatic stress injuries lies at the root of our own un-well-ness:
- BC Association of Clinical Counselors
- BC Psychological Association
- First Nations Health Authority
- Badge of Life Canada (Therapists).
- North American Fire-Fighter Veterans Network
- BC First Responder Mental Health
I can't tell anyone else precisely what to do. But for me, in response to my own traumas in life, I've come to agree:
That shift must now fully begin with me.
What is it that we need to be well when traumatic stress injuries and resulting conditions, PTSD, Depression, Compassion Fatigue, and/or Substance/Alcohol Use Disorders come along in this life hoping to steal well-being away?
First, as out-lined in the tri-phasic model of trauma treatment that I've adopted from Drs. Baranowsky and Judith Herman, we need to find 'safety and security' of our very person.
Secondly, we must be in relationship with right, trauma-and-violence informed helpers with modalities under-their-belt to assist us safely in working through our trauma memories.
Thirdly, from there, we're in a much better place to reconnect, or, perhaps for the first time in our lives to AUTHENTICALLY connect to full reality that is the core of healthy living through this often-wild-yet-incredibly-wonderful, human life.
This model for recovery not only supports itself in terms of validity. This model is supported by the concepts shared a long-time-ago by Abraham Maslow in his theory of learning, Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs.
Maslow's model, for me, in turn, supports a model we can adapt and apply to what human-growth in life, and through recovery from any physical or psychological damage we take-in across the life-span, looks like. What Maslow's ladder offers is a reference to what wellness looks like, as is expressed in the concept he shares called, 'self-actualization' (another word for 'enlightenment' or for 'growing up all the way' as humans).
There's a course, here at Future Learn that speaks to living the good live, regardless of level of disability, a course that includes reference to the value in turning back to Maslow for some right guidance for ourselves. It's yet to be announced, so today I simply mention it, as I just today added this course to my own Future Learn wish-list.
A bit of gold I've found in reviewing from psychology Maslow's principles, lies in the fact that what he's expressing here as a theory is all about how we learn. What Maslow offers, as well, is a way to reflect on the steps we must take if we are supporting ourselves best in a way that promotes and promises our own human growth.
He shows us the value and importance of understanding ourselves as living this life on a continuum. The model lays out clearly what it is we are to learn and achieve along life's way. Maslow shares this in a form that grants for reference purposes the goals we must be willing to put before ourselves in order to progress all the way to the top of Maslow's expressed hierarchy:
Self-Actualization. Enlightenment, if you like. Or, more aptly stated: Growing up all the way.
This translates to meaning that if there is a meaning to life (which I agree with my friend, Pat Solomon is a horrible question to ask ourselves): Then becoming across our life-span our most authentic self as a human being:
If this is not the meaning of life itself. Such a focus certainly grants us something to attach to. Maslow's model grants us a view of 'all-that' which we can choose to be focused on in order to BRING MEANING into our lives, which is the bit of advice I took-away from my podcast interview, available here on the site, with Finding Joe, Producer & Director, Mr. Patrick Takaya Solomon.
Trauma in our lives or otherwise, we are fully-permitted to create a meaningful life that is uniquely our own. A life of our own, fates-circumstances, and other's influence, granted. But, as the mystics might suggest, we bring meaning to the life we perhaps CHOSE to live, when, perhaps, we were but still unseen energy, mapping out this journey with perhaps God herself, when we learn to ultimately agree with our best-selves inside, part of all-that-is-the-kingdom's garden, that we not only are 'permitted' to live such a meaningful life:
As we are granted life in the first place, a best-self directed, meaningful human-life, is precisely what each and every one of us still deserve.
There's an expression that Otto Scharmer and his team shared with us during the course referenced above, "Leading From The Emerging Future" on Edx that is apparently, though not proven so, attributed to Albert Einstein:
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy taught me that it is our thinking that gets us into more trouble inside than does anything else. Many philosophers and ancients of wisdom suggest, "What a human thinks, said human becomes."
I've learned across my recovery, with the help of Joseph Campbell, that we are, in fact, story-telling creatures. We dictate stories of life to ourselves every millisecond of our day. Our inner-story is in fact what we're thinking through all the time. Our inner-story, ultimately, becomes the outer story that we live.
We are, each one, writing a story that unfortunately ends up with a rather pissy-title if you ask me:
Obituary. So, all I'm actually suggesting is . . .
If the story we're each living is going to end up with such a title anyway, we may as well agree to make the story the best one the story can possibly be.
What is it that we 'think' with? That maybe in our past didn't help us all that much?
The brain, of course. But we use the MEMORIES and the INFORMATION we've taken in across our lives, consciously, sub-consciously, and as Jung suggests, unconsciously when we are engaged, consciously or not, in a thinking, story-telling process inside.
Some call this our inner-dialogue. I accept that take too.
My experience and recovery process validates this as fact now for me. Because I now KNOW that I'm talking to myself inside all the time these days. I'm talking to myself now as I share my writing with you. Talking to oneself, contrary to perhaps some shrinks opinion, is EXACTLY what we must learn to do if we wish inside to be and to remain well.
For all others visiting here, this is a crumb I'll leave behind. Something I hope that you'll valiantly question on way to perhaps courageously validating this take on things for yourselves.
Given what I propose thus far:
Doesn't it make sense that perhaps what we learned prior to our traumatizing experiences; with all the beliefs and information we'd accumulated as memories up to the point; with traumatization acting to create our inner-story-telling (thinking) in a way that was askew because of all the meaning our faulty information and beliefs told us that traumatizing experience meant, whatever that meaning is for any one of us:
Doesn't it make sense that we may have been, in fact, unsupported inside in terms of helping ourselves out of the story that our trauma and resulting conditions had become?
Doesn't it make sense that to get out of the mess we may have to agree to put some time in reeducating ourselves?
I KNOW I self-destructed in the face of my own traumatic experiences, simply because at the time of the traumatic stress injuries that hit me upside the brain during those events: I didn't have the memories and information, the story I needed to help make RATIONAL sense of what the traumatic experiences themselves actually meant.
At the time those horrible things I witnessed came along to wound me so deeply, I simply didn't know then what I now know well today.
I wish I did. It would have saved me much time. It would have perhaps saved me from losing my family. It might have saved all I'd hoped for and built as a man over the years I'd lived in marriage with my partner and kids.
I didn't know then what I know now. Part of my own healing has come with a now RADICAL acceptance of all evident and facts-based reality.
I hope this makes sense to you at least at some level.
This is what I've learned. The idea of 'wellness' goes much deeper than any marketing gimmicks might hope to use against us to sell stuff to us that in the end we may find out we didn't even need.
So, for me, this take on things, and this deeper message about what it is to be well, is making now the most sense in terms of the story I will continue to share with myself inside. Moving forward towards a deeper sense of wellness. That remains the goal.
It remains my personal hope for myself, that I can continue to build a wellness than I've been able to achieve in my life before trauma, or with those past remissions, like the one I'm in now, It remains my hope that I will continue to be able to achieve remissions as many times as is necessary now along the way.
I hold this same wish inside for any-and-all who've found this site. It's on this foundation and understanding of the bigger-picture things that I wish to help guide others towards understanding what wellness is more fully all about.
Beyond the quick fixes. Beyond the promises of new-age, self-help tidd-bits. Beyond all the barriers that still stand in our way, living in this society of ours that still can't wrap it's own head around what constitutes normalcy in regards to the human condition on-the whole . . . . .
When it comes to supporting the recovery of our physical and mental health after-the-fact with any injury, achieving wellness is really the only rational choice we have to make once the damage is already done.
My own understanding of wellness has morphed into acceptance, radical acceptance of all that is the reality of life as life happened for me. I've worked through education, applying principles I picked up from CBT, from my virtual and physical mentors, and by testing what I was learning with application to my personal experience.
I was able to tackle change to my entire belief system in order to change the troubled 'thinking' that I believe was THE problem that took me off the rails for a time, and hauled me around so far astray from where I wanted in life by now to be.
As an outcome of this education my world-view has radically changed. With that change in world-view, the traumas I've suffered simply now, for me, make a whole bunch better sense.
I'm now achieving remission more often than in my past efforts to recover. I no longer hope to run back into the world when any remission comes along to bless me with some peace. I'm no longer as naive as I once was. Remissions don't mean, "I'm cured. Hallelujah!"
Not anymore.
I've had to learn the hard way not to fly back at the world as though a miracle has happened when I'm simply experiencing some respite with an achieved remission of my symptoms.
"We can't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them."
To fully appreciate all that being well personally, for others, and in the society means, it's helpful for us to understand that it is the social influences put upon us in the form of stress (chronic and traumatic distress) that can paint a much clearer picture for us as we hope to bring meaning to this one wild-and-wonderful life. This supports us well, in my studied experience, empowering us to then make sense of the stories of the traumatic experiences we've suffered in life themselves.
I'll leave you with this adopted bit from new testament scripture. Please don't let that make you roll-your-eyes now and run the other way. It's simply reality that I still hold dear to myself certain lessons from my own Christian upbringing:
"In this world, there will be trouble. Take heart. For I have overcome the world."
~ Yeshua
What I believe Yeshua, the man, wished us to hear in these words is:
"I have overcome the stress imposed upon me in this wild-and-wonderful life of mine. If I can overcome such things, being human myself, then, quite possibly, so , in fact, can you."
For The Next Bits I Wish To Share About Wellness: Please follow this link to a discussion, in brief, of the social determinants that influence the well-being of us all.
Disclaimer: These materials and resources are presented for educational purposes only. They are not a substitute for informed medical advice or training. Do not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem without consulting a qualified health or mental health care provider. If you have concerns, contact your health care provider, mental health professional, or your community health centre.
Darren Gregory © 2018. All Rights Reserved
