"Free to face the life that's ahead of me!" Dennis De Young wrote those words in the song by Styx, Come Sail Away. What a powerful thing to say! We are all free to face the life that is ahead of you.
You have the power to heal from what tried to kill you and has been trying to take over your life everyday since it hit you. You had no power over what happened but you have all the power now to recover from it.
You can choose to be miserable, but like most people, you are more likely to want to be happier. That is in your control. The question is, what are you planning on doing about it?
There is a hell of a lot of things going on in this country right now. The pandemic, mass shootings, people acting like their have gone insane and the rest of the people are stunned by all of it. Add all of that into the other causes of PTSD and you understand why there will be far more cases of PTSD than the 8 million we already had. You will try to work through surviving if it happened recently but if 30 days goes by and your symptoms of shock have not worn down or are gone, then you may need professional help to recover.
Think of it this way. When something serious happens to us, we have no problem going to a doctor to mend our bones, or stitch our wounds, or give us antibiotics for infections. Needing a professional to help us recover from surviving is no different. The sooner you get evaluated and start to take control back, the better your healing will be. Remember, it is never too late to take action, because you can be happier no matter how long it was, treatment may take longer. You will see the difference.
Remember, it is your life...get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
Come Sail Away
Styx
I'm sailing away
Set an open course for the Virgin Sea
'Cause I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me
On board I'm the captain
So climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow
On every shore and I'll try
Oh Lord I'll try
To carry on
I look to the sea
Reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy some sad
I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had
Today the featured video is Queen, We Are The Champions. Want to meet a champion? Then look in the mirror. If you survived whatever caused PTSD in you, then you are a champion. You defeated what tried to kill you and now it is time to defeat what is trying to destroy you now.
In any conflict, the enemy is not totally obliterated. With PTSD your enemy is confusion and doubt. You get confused about what it is doing to you and you doubt there is anything you can do to keep fighting for a better life.
You may be tired of feeling bad things, so you decide to get numb enough to stop feeling. You may try to get drunk enough to do that but then you regret it in the morning. If you think that only bad feelings are in your future, then you won't try to push them out of your life so you can feel good feelings again.
Living that way sucks! It is like taking that bandage on your soul and ripping it off over and over again.
It is so much better to learn how to defeat the enemy inside of you to be able to know what it feels like to be "you" again.
Remember, it is you life...get in and drive it!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
I haven't felt much like a champion the last few days. My ego has been taking a beating. I've done a lot of things that no one will ever know about, and I was feeling really depressed about that until last night. It finally dawned on me that God does a lot of things too no one will ever know about.
The thing is, God tries to get through to people but will not try to control anyone. That is why He gave all of us freewill. How many times has He tired to get people to listen to Him, but they didn't? With so many problems in the world, we always ask why God isn't taking care of it for us. Did we ever wonder why people are not listening to Him about what they can do to fix it?
God tries to get through to me and I know I'm listening if I have peace in my soul. I know I'm only doing what I want if my gut is churning. A lot of times, we do good things but people take advantage of it and we end up regretting it. Don't! You have no power over what they do with what you do for them. The only thing you can do is do it because you know it is the right thing to do and you are being true to yourself. That is another way to be a champion too.
Today I am going to let one of the first videos I did on PTSD replace the daily video from me. Wounded Minds was a labor of love back in 2006. It had over 10,000 views but after a couple of years, I moved the videos from YouTube. (Big mistake) Anyway, my confidence was taking beating lately because of all the reports about people suffering instead of healing. Whenever I get this way, I usually go through old emails to remind me of why I do this work.
One of the old emails I came across was from the ex-wife of a Vietnam veteran. She never stopped loving him but they didn't know what PTSD was before they ended a long marriage. Her kids were suffering, she was suffering and so was the veteran. She said she wished she knew what was in this video before they decided to get divorced.
I told her it was not too late to still have a relationship with him, or at least try to reconnect. She promised to learn more and then, try to talk to him so he would get help to heal. This is why I do this work. And this is why I will never stop doing it.
Today the featured videos are about relationships ending, but love still existing. The Carpenters, Hurting Each Other and Rose Royce Wishing On A Star.
If you still care about someone you had to walk away from, because you did not know what you needed to know, I hope this comforts you. Keep in mind that you did the best you could with what you knew at the time, and now you know more than you did back then. It is up to you what you do with that knowledge. If nothing else, I hope it helps you heal your heart by knowing it really didn't have anything to do with you, but the wounds that were carried back home to you.
In 2006 I created this video on Wounded Minds. Long before PTSD was in the news, families like mine were doing the best we could to make our veterans lives better. Sometimes we failed but after three decades, I'm still married. I still have no idea how other families do it when they know hardly nothing about PTSD. I knew almost everything and there were times when it was almost impossible to find hope. The key is to learn as much as you can, love as an active partner in their healing and find what works to make your lives better!
This is from my old website, NamGuardianAngel. Go to Combat PTSD Wounded Times to learn more.
Today I picked a fun video, Carley Simon Let The River Run. If you saw the movie Working Girl, then you know it is a story about an average woman with big dreams. Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) was really smart but didn't have many chances to prove it and change her life...until her boss broke her leg. Even her friends thought she was nuts to try it, but she did and in the end she won.
The song is about dreamers. People dreaming about making something better too. Making their lives different than they are because they believe they can be. What do you believe? Do you believe your life can be different than it is? Do you have chances to prove you are right?
When you have a dream that's great. It sucks if you do not think you have a chance in hell of making it happen. If you have PTSD, it sucks wanting to be happier but believing there is no way it can happen because that was what you heard. If you know it can happen, then you find a way to make that dream come true.
You get a roadmap to get you from where you are to where you want to be. You believe in yourself because you know in your heart it is possible and one mile at a time, you learn how to get there. When you do, you discover that you can win first place in a better life for yourself too.
If you know how to heal because you did it, then wake the rest of the people up in the nation so they can dream about doing it too!
"And I've been down there on the floor" when my ex-husband decided I needed to die. It wasn't bad enough he came home from work, started another argument like always, but this time, he decided to hit me. I hit back. Ten minutes later, after grabbing whatever I could to hit him with, being chased from room to room and screaming for help, he got me on the floor, got on top of me with his hands on my neck and tried to strangle me. It was the first time he hit me...and the last.
He stalked me for about a year, as far as I was aware. He drove muscle cars, so as soon as I heard the sound of an engine like that, it all came back. Nightmares, flashbacks, mood swings, paranoia and panic. About 2 years after it happened, I met my current husband. We dated about a year and a half when we decided to get married. I had to get in touch with my ex-husband for the annulment because I wanted to get married in the church again. The next day, he walked over to my husband to be and introduced himself.
That was even worse for me because then I knew for sure, when I thought I was free of him and safe from him, I really wasn't. There is no way he would have know who I was marrying if he hadn't been following us all that time.
Years later, we moved from Massachusetts to Florida. Even down there, the sound would cause instant panic and all that came with it. It wasn't until my cousin sent me his obituary notice from the newspaper letting me know I was finally free of him, that I knew he would never hurt me again.
It wasn't until last year when my daughter and I were talking about this and she said, "You never told me you had PTSD." I said, "I didn't." Then she let me know that was exactly what I said I had. All those years I was in a sort of denial, even though I had become and expert on PTSD and dedicated almost 40 years to helping others heal. The thing was, all the research I did, never once had what I was dealing with. I saw two therapists and they didn't see it in me. Maybe researchers need to start looking at that too.
Anyway, I am telling you all this because the Violence Against Women Act has passed the House. It is up to the Senate to pass it now. If you don't think it is important because you do not know anyone it happened to, you do now. If you are reading this, then it means you know what I do and why I do it, but now you cannot ignore the price paid by women like me when the laws were much different. There was nothing there for me and very few resources.
This Act will provide justice but there are some in the Senate saying they will not support it. I am asking you to contact your Senator and ask them if they will support this and if not, ask them why they are defending the abusers, because that is exactly what they are doing.
Now you know too much to go back and pretend, so please don't let us go down that road again. Let the Senate hear you roar in numbers too big to ignore~
House Renews Violence Against Women Act, But Senate Hurdles Remain
NPR
Susan Davis
March 17, 2021
The House approved with bipartisan support a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a popular 1994 law that protects and provides resources for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. The measure passed 244-172.
As a senator, President Biden played a lead role in passing the landmark law, which he recently called "one of my proudest legislative achievements."
The law was last reauthorized in 2013, but it lapsed at the end of 2018 after Congress failed to act due to partisan disputes over guns and transgender issues. The lapse has had little practical effect because Congress continues to fund related programs despite the lack of authorization.
The core legislation has broad support, but certain provisions added to the bill in the previous Congress exposed divisions among Republicans. In 2019, the House passed the measure with 33 Republicans voting with Democrats, but it was never brought up in the then-GOP-led Senate. read more here
Rep. Debbie Dingell also knows what it is like. (Detriot News)
Dingell has openly discussed growing up in a household where she lived with domestic violence, noting statistics that 1 in 15 children also witness domestic violence.
"We don't forget about hiding in closets. Or our father taking locks off of doors. Or my grabbing a gun from my father, so he wouldn't kill my mother, and being convinced that we would die," Dingell said of her early life with her siblings.
