There is no single cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
There are lots of way to get better, and even more ways to get worse.
PTSD is not a single disorder with a single cause, and what helps one person may not work for another.
How you deal with PTSD depends to a significant degree on the resources you bring to bear on the problem.
If your inner resources are extensive and strong, the road to recovery may be short and straightforward.
If you lack inner resources, recovery may never be complete, and the journey will be arduous and long.
Winning the battle for a positive mind may be the hardest thing you ever do, but you need to understand it is possible to win the battle. Make no mistake about it, you can win this battle, but you have to do some things right to push the odds in your favor.
If you think you can develop a positive mind while focusing on inner pain, you are sadly mistaken. A negative mental focus never produces a positive mind. A destructive focus never results in a constructive outcome.
Some people require medication to get over the hump of despair, depression, anxiety, and agitation. Others need therapy by trained professionals to get on the right track. Support groups may be just what the doctor ordered. Talking with your pastor, family, and friends may make a huge difference in how quickly you feel better.
There is no single stop you must make on the road to recovery. The important thing is to continually move forward in a positive direction..
This is a journey that never ends because there is no limit to how good your life can become when you keep moving forward.
You may not be much now, but that's not what is important. It's not where you have been that's important; it's where you are going and what you will become that really counts.
The name of the road to recovery is called "Outward Focus".
Inward focus makes you sick, and an outward focus starts the healing.
The hardest thing for a wounded warrior to do is to stop focusing on his own wounds and to start helping other people heal their wounds.
When you focus on your own inward pain, your life becomes a living hell full of despair, resentment, and limitations.
The instant you focus on other people's pain and start helping them, your own healing begins.
The circle of healing and love works best with an outward focus.
When you open your heart and mind to love and pass that love on to hurting people, two persons get healed. You get healed, and the other person gets healed as well. The more love you let into your heart, and the more you pass on to others, the faster you are healed.
The more you focus on your inner pain, the worse you become. It's almost as if your healing resources evaporate in front of your eyes.
If you want sink into the pit of depression and despair, all you need to do is focus relentlessly on your own problems. What you focus on expands, and there is a 100% chance that misery will expand into your life.
Conversely, the more you focus on helping and healing others, the quicker you are healed.
Wounded warriors become positive warriors when they forget about their own pain and switch their focus to helping others.
I would be lying to you if I told you it easy to look past your pain and develop an outward focus.
I vividly remember when I was run over by the Mac Truck of Life in a car accident and nearly died. When my body screamed in pain, it was hard to focus on anything else. But eventually the pain subsided, and I developed an outward focus that made recovery possible.
People who have PTSD are uniquely qualified to help other people who suffer from PTSD.
When I had two broken legs, a broken shoulder, a punctured lung, and a chest tube in place, I wanted to punch anyone in the face who came to my bedside and said, "I know how you feel."
If they did not have two broken legs, a broken shoulder, and a chest tube, they clearly did not know how I felt. If their body was not screaming at them in pain, they definitely did not know how I felt. I have been down that road, and whenever I meet someone in the ICU with a broken body, I can honestly say, "I know how you feel." My prior injuries make me uniquely qualified to talk to other people with massive traumatic injuries.
If you have PTSD, you are an authority on PTSD because you have been there and done that. The important thing is to move forward with an outward focus so your PTSD becomes an asset you use to help other people.
It's time to become a Positive Warrior that fights the good fight.
It's time to marshal your resources, stand on your unique qualifications and move to a higher level.
It's time to do what Sitting Bull said. It's time to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, and those who cannot provide for themselves. It's time to take care of the children. It's time to help other people with PTSD.
Many times I felt like I had taken things to the limit, but on further examination, it was clear I simply had enough. I was done and was unwilling to do whatever it takes to continue. Hitting the wall of absolute limits has never been a problem. The envelope of possibility is infintely large, and the likelihood of encountering absolute limits is infinitesimally small. There are no limits. There are only limiting beliefs.
In the grand scheme of things, my grand schemes seem fairly insignificant. In a global sense it's easy to feel as if my life counts for nothing, or at most, counts for little. When someone tells me that I shouldn't be doing things that are important to me, and that I'm wasting my life, they are really saying that my dreams don't count in their scheme of things.
I am a daktari without borders. I am not sure when and where borders disappeared from my mind, but sometime in the last quarter century, I became a citizen of the world. Wherever I am on planet earth, I feel at home in my borderless world. Find out what it's like to live without borders.
When my life is over and on judgment day I stand in the final line up with all the rest, I hope millions of people can point their finger at me, pick me out of the line up, and say, "He's the one. That's definitely him. He's different from the rest. He didn't conform, and he is guilty of living his dreams.
You are never safe from negation. Unchecked negativity can rapidly flush the achievements of a lifetime down the drain. If you ever reach your dreams, it will be because you stopped listening to the voice of fear and negation. You stopped looking at your limitations and stopped constructing barriers that exist only in your mind.
Faith isn’t something that must be present before you move in the direction of your dreams. Rather it’s something that develops after you start moving. When you start out, you don’t see how your dreams are possible. Nevertheless, the moment you take the first step, faith instantly comes into your life. Never look at faith as the path to a life of leisure. God gave you faith so you could see things other people can’t see and do things other people can’t do.
I could write an entire book called, "Things I Feared That Never Happened," and follow that up with a second book entitled, "I Feared The Wrong Things." Almost always, fear is a waste of time. Most of the things you fear will never happen, and you fear the wrong things. When the hobglobins of fear start dancing in your mind, it's time to refocus on other things. Learn how to squelch the voice of fear with a positive focus!
For me, the dream is all about adventure, freedom, and being really alive. Although I like seeing the sights wherever we go, I think it's the sense of adventure coupled with the freedom to do what I want to do with my life, seasoned with a pinch of adrenalin that makes it all worthwhile.
The first step in moving toward your dreams is to doubt your limits. Once you doubt your limits, it's almost as if you are born again. You get an entirely new life with radically different rules of engagement. You enter the Promised Land of Imagine, Believe, and Receive. I know this to be true because I have been there.
WHO IS DR. DAVE AND WHY IS HE BLOGGING?
More than two decades ago, Captain Dave (aka Dr. Dave) started writing and creating websites as he sailed around the world on his sailboat, SV Exit Only. Those early websites and books evolved into the Positive Thinking Network you see today.
Captain Dave lived overseas for twenty-eight years in his globe trotting lifestyle until he became a Flying Doctor with the Indian Health Service working for ten years in the American Southwest flying out to deliver health care to the Apache, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai, and Colorado River Tribes.
Dr. Dave completed his work with the Indian Health Service in Arizona, and now runs the Positive Thinking Network full time either from his catamaran or his Land Rover Defenders as he travels around the world
The Positive Thinking Network has a global outreach sending a positive message to 196 countries, and it is your definitive source of positive thinking on the World Wide Web.
With hundreds of positive websites, and more than a million pages and podcasts downloaded each month, it's where you come to learn everything you want to know about positive thinking. The Positive Thinking Network focuses on positive self-talk, positive spirituality, winning the battle against depression, PTSD, and positive adventure.
Hundreds of family safe websites stand ready to fill your mind with positive things.
Dr. Dave and the Positive Thinking Network work around the clock to change the world, one person at a time, one web page at a time, and one podcast at a time.
