I just picked up the T-shirts from Hittin Skins an they did a fabulous job!
Friends on Facebook donated to help me out so that when veterans do the videos they receive a free T-shirt to say thank you for helping clear the way for other veterans to heal. It takes a lot of courage to be able to even go on camera, but it takes a great deal more to be able to talk about some of the things they went through. This is all about empowerment and getting rid of the stigma of PTSD once and for ALL VETERANS and anyone else who survived trauma.
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If you want a T-shirt email me woundedtimes@aol.com or go to Facebook PTSD Patrol and let me know.
I cannot think of a better day to explain why I do what I do. I am a survivor! Not once, twice or even five times, but this will give you an idea of why I work as hard as I do, devoted so much research and get so pissed off! It is the reason for this site, Combat PTSD Wounded Times, all the books, videos and articles, training, research and yes, my marriage that has lasted over 3 decades! If you have PTSD, no matter what caused it, you need to hear this. If nothing else, this is the one message you need to get today of all days, because all the bullshit out there has been blocking what could change your next day.
Got your headlights on? PTSD Patrol Kathie Costos June 24, 2108 When most people are still sleeping, I am on the road at 5 am, heading into work. Most of the time I am thinking of what it is going to take to get you guys to turn on your own headlights and see more clearly. Friday, I decided to take my camera and show what it is like on the road before most people wake up!
Considering how my life has been that way, wake before most people on PTSD, the road was basically mine. There were people on the road before me, but we had a better chance of getting people to follow us than we do now. Back then, they could see us easily. We had our high beams on to show the way out of darkness. Now it is like there are way too many people congesting the road and leaving us trapped behind them. It is too hard to see where you are going, depending on the lights in your rearview mirror to show you the way. It is too hard to see when you have someone driving toward you with their high beams on and blinding you from seeing what is in front of you. Anyway, you have control over your own headlights. Not the ones on your dashboard, but the ones in your own head. Why drive in darkness? If you do not know what PTSD is, then that is exactly what you are doing. Sure you can move from one place to another, but do you ever find where you want to be? You can drink or do drugs, but that only gets you numb. You can stop talking, stay in the house and keep to yourself, but that leaves you alone. This is your battle now but just like in combat, you do not have to face this enemy by yourself. Really strange thing happened with this video. I had the radio on and the Eagle "Take It Easy" was playing. Sure enough, right where "flatbed Ford" came in, so did a flatbed pulling off the on ramp.
Time to change gears PTSD Patrol Kathie Costos June 17, 2018 This morning on Combat PTSD Wounded Times, I wrote about how some people want to change the term of PTSD by eliminating the "D" as if that would make all the difference. While I do agree that the conversation needs to change, they are in the wrong lane! You changed after as a survivor from the disruption of what was "normal" for you.
Basically it means things were changed. That means you can change them again. Just like you change gears in your vehicle depending on where you want to go, the only way to go forward is to put it into D.
There was nothing "normal" about what almost killed you. There is nothing normal for humans about war, or any other traumatic event. If it was part of "normal" life, then we'd all be in trouble.
Humans need help in life all the time, but after traumatic events, they need even more help to survive. They need people trained to come and help them do that.
For those who do the responding, you need even more help to do that because the assumption is, you are trained to "deal with it" no matter how many times you respond, no matter what you have to respond to, and, no matter how much your hearts get broken. Think about what made you want to risk your life as a living, or even a deeper love of volunteering to do it. That took a great deal of compassion mixed with a supercharged courage. If people think that one little letter is keeping you from asking for help, then they are not thinking at all.
Is Your Power Source Changed or Charged PTSD Patrol Kathie Costos June 10, 2018
Last week I had to bring my car into KIA for maintenance. Since the only way I could get shots of under my car for PTSD Patrol, I bought my camera. Standing under it, seeing everything that is hidden, but always there, I started to think about how the same thing goes on with all of us. We can see a lot on the surface. There are things we see but there is so much more going on than what we can see within us. We have histories in our lives. Bad times when it all turned to crap and times when things were so good, we ended up thinking we did not deserve it. Funny how that works. Bad shit happens and we tend to think we didn't deserve it, then good stuff happens and we don't think we deserve that either. We are charged by both. Negative things happen, as well as positive just like our car batteries. The battery feeds the rest of the vehicle through cables. Sometimes those cables get corroded and the energy cannot feed the power.
Corrosion on battery terminals Another symptom of a bad or failing cable is the presence of corrosion on the terminals. Corrosion develops as a result of the acidic vapor produced by the battery when it becomes hot from exposure to the heat of engine operation. Over time, the vapor can begin to corrode the terminal and cause corrosion to build up. Corrosion will cause increased resistance along the contact surface of the terminal, and in more severe cases, can even completely block the flow of electricity. Corrosion can also seep into the insides of the cable and corrode the insides of the cable. Usually a cable corroded to this degree must be replaced.
That is the part that all of us need to remember. When it seems as if you are getting bombarded by bad stuff hitting you, it is all you focus on. That is negatively charging your life. Yet when you plug into memories of times in your life before, when it all seemed hopeless, remember that you did overcome it, then you focus on being able to do it again. That is charging your life with a positive power cable. If you put your life on the line and ended up with PTSD, there are things you need to focus on to help you feed the power within you. First thing to think about is why you wanted to serve in the first place. Let that be your positive cable and everything good within you belongs there. Next take everything bad that happened, all your suffering, all the times you felt as if you were being punished, and let that travel through the positive energy that was the outcome. You survived all of it!
