Keywords: Healing PTSD.
Continuously overwhelming emotions that give rise to a PTSD condition have a specific set of binding factors present that tie emotion to the story of what happened to you.
These binding factors are guilt, blame, shame, self-reproach, embarrassment, pride, regret, self-righteousness, and self-pity. It is these that tie up core emotions of anger, sadness, and fear. It is those thought patterns and emotions that keep regurgitating the hyper and hypo activities of mind and body.
Healing PTSD: The Way Out is the Way In
It is these binding factors that make it so hard to move out of a traumatic state. These binding factors act as a buffer to help you deal with feeling overwhelmed; at the same time, they keep the whole wheel of suffering ongoing. They are the lube that oils the wheel, for better and for worse.
+ Read the Complete Meditation for PTSD Guide here
If you look closely at your thought patterns, these are the intermediary—the glue—between your thoughts, which go over an event, place, person or circumstance and your emotions, which will be some form of anger, fear or sadness.
Continuously overwhelming emotions that give rise to a PTSD condition have a specific set of binding factors present that tie emotion to the story of what happened to you.
Self-righteousness and pride are the toughest ones to work through because of their tendency towards self-indulgence and disconnection from others, though all of these are tough to sit with in their own right.
How Does it Look from the Inside Out
Let us look at healing PTSD and put that in perspective through some examples:
- Gautam's parents split up when he was young. His parents were forever fighting with each other, and he didn't get the attention he needed as a child. As an adult, he has periodic outbursts of anger that get projected onto anything and anybody through his impulsive wish to blame.
- Suzanna was molested as a child by a family member. She has never really talked about it. She knows what happened was wrong, but her shame prevents her from addressing her deep anger and fear of fully acknowledging what happened to her.
- Jim was drafted for several duties and has seen buddies die on the field. He is fed up with the injustice, hyper-stress, and helplessness of it, but pride (you weren’t there; you don't know what it is that I went through) ties up his anger and prevents him from seeking help.
These are straightforward examples of already great inner complexity. It gets more complicated after having been subjected to long-term abuse or neglect; incidents in childhood that were severe issues over several different periods of time and different in nature.
Working Towards PTSD Healing and Resolution Through Negation
My point is that there is always a binding factor present within each Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom, and it has to be negated through awareness without feeding it with more energy; this is what prevents you from being continuously stuck in hyper and hypo-activation.
Negation is being aware, first of all, of what is occurring. Secondly, it is then feeling into the movement underlying the thought process that stimulates your personal story, the emotions within it, and its binding factors.
It is body sensation that helps you to observe non-dualistically; that aids in discouraging further build up and repetition, and thus PTSD healing. It is the refusal of engagement with blame, guilt, self-reproach, shame, etc. that shifts awareness to the core emotions, and when the capacity grows to hold these, they can then be processed.
I just started trauma therapy for my trauma , I have PTSD and severe depression and I was at the end of my rope , I feel the trauma therapy was something my body was screaming for ….
Hi Kristie. Happy to hear you started therapy. The beginning is often the hardest part. The body keeps the score and does not lie. Best.
EMDR Treatment is helping me so much!
Great!
Roland I don’t understand the last couple of sentences – can you expand on them please? Also can you please explain about connecting to the hatred? I am 2 yrs into psychotherapy and am so angry my organs literally feel like they are burning hot all the time. I’ve asked my therapist re how to move this hatred and process forward but I’m not getting any answers?
Hi Una. When you feel overwhelmed by emotion the body isn’t a happy place to be in. What happens is that your energy moves into thoughts which always have some form of judgment to it. This judgment shows as self-reproach, shame or guilt, which is directed towards oneself or shows as blame towards others. When you move the importance away from your thoughts and direct that to what you feel in the body, you will notice the emotional charge, in the body, that gives rise to the persistent and often overly busy thought patterns.
Hatred towards oneself is anger mixed with self-reproach. When hatred is directed towards others it is anger mixed with blame. You will have to move through the “thought” states first (self-reproach or blame) to be able to access anger, and this needs to be done with care. Coming closer to the wound, which in your case is the emotion of anger in the body might quickly feel overwhelming… So you kind of have to go in and out of it and see how much of that uncomfortableness you can hold at a given time. There are other techniques of working with anger but this message would get too long. Hope this helps. Roland
Thank you Roland,
Lifelong I have embodied existing without existing .. so much so that I would avoid using the word ‘ I ‘ where possible.
Slowly am allowing my body to surrender to its ‘pain’.
My normalised state as a child and ‘child adult’ is such that my blood hurts and I feel as though honestly at some cellular level I become the gaps in between my molecules just to avoid connection .. I don’t exist when someone is near me .. they don’t even have to be talking.
Appreciate your insights Roland and when I read your posts, your words make deep sense to me,
thank you.
Hi Joanna. Thank you for your comment and sharing your reality. Keep moving forward.
.. sorry, just to add, it’s not even accurate for me to say .. ‘ I become the gaps’ .. a more accurate state of overwhelm .. is that I and the gaps are one and the same .. I am ok with my process and do not want to name it .. I believe ? that by being no-one , the other person ( originally my mother ) can exist more and that this is correct as I in no way wanted to put myself first. Surely societal values those who are not selfish.
But, to the point of me crying, I am realising that my wanting to be unselfish has made me look selfish and all me, me, me now.
So I feel surrender without a voice.
Am working on loss and overwhelm though, thank you for encouraging hope Roland.
Joanne thank you for expressing so beautifully a condition that I am only recognising now (in my 60s) having shielded behind weed for so long.
I wish you well.
How does severe dissociation fit in with all this? At times when I have gotten overwhelmed I have dissociated. When I was a little girl I even “lost time” altho I don’t do that anymore. How can I be mindful enough to stop this cycle??? It is so automatic. Also, when I don’t dissociate I usually do the shame route. It’s awful and I usually want to hurt myself.
I have Dissociative identity disorder and I pay for a truama specialist in DID psychologist on a sliding g fee scale my case worker wants me to get a local trauma therapist but because of the severe sadistic nature that happened I just dont trust that the new therapist could Handel it correctly I dont plan on talking about my truama at all with this new person because of the danger a part could talk about the wrong thing and the paid specialist is on Skype why would my case worker want me to see someone in person when I told him I’m not going to stop seeing the specialist the second one will be paid by Insurance I think it’s a waste of time but I need help getting my own place
Thank you so much
Welcome.
Perhaps it is the right time to share. Please do not judge me as this is such a strong part of my C-PTSD experience. Multiple vivid recollections are occurring & the rammed down emotions incurred. Fear, terror & distress are so prominent & destasilising.