Routines

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my younger self. For the past year, healing that child has been my priority. I want to honor that most people around me thought I was a generally happy kid. I think of this as getting the not-fun stuff down, so I can honor it as truth but move on. It's been a bit of a theme for me lately.

One of my PTSD symptoms is a loss of appetite. Meditation and mindfulness around meals have been important for me, but I have a long list of triggers (as many of us these days do, for which I am sorry). I use sound therapy on Spotify or YouTube as a way to set intentions, a silly way of reminding myself that I'm safe.

Dissociation is another unpleasant part of PTSD, which mindfulness and mediation can help with as well. However, it's difficult to be mindful when it feels like your mind is thousands of miles away (I have a piece on spirals). EMDR is a form of therapy that is worth looking into if this is a problem in your life. It requires training, and not every therapist is certified to do it. After you learn how to do it, it may be something to practice on your own.

Chiropractic care can be helpful to the healing process. Trauma impacts the mind-body connection, housed in the spine and nervous system. It is good to be in alignment. Acupuncture and Chinese medicine are based on similar principles, as are many other health systems (just not the American one). There are so many different routes to take, and healing will be different for everyone.

If you start trying to solve every single one of the problems, it may begin to feel like everything you do is for the sake of your healing. This is not something to feel guilty over; you deserve it. You deserve to be healthy. It is okay to want to live a life free of illness. There are patterns in the day, and paying attention to them will help to find the roots of what makes the day go sour. It's all about observation. I don't really know what I'm talking about, though. I don't have a college degree, and it's not like I have a job in this in any professional capacity - I consider myself a trauma researcher, maybe that'll grow into something bigger someday. But helping other people has become a part of my therapy. I've had to make rules to make sure I'm not projecting my issues onto anyone else, not getting codependent, anything like that. I try to make sure I'm helping more than hurting, and if there's one thing we could all benefit from, it's mindfulness. My triggers lately have been all over the place (recent full moon), which is a signal to me that I need to be paying attention to myself right now. But now that I've noticed it, the pattern will likely change. Such is life.

Pet therapy is a large part of my life. Pets offer grounding, which can help with decreasing dissociation episodes. There are grounding methods that don't require pets or service animals, but sometimes the animal is better at knowing when we need it. Part of honoring your body is knowing that it sometimes works against you. If you grew up in a home where you weren't allowed to hurt, your body will work to hide your pain even when you are in a safer place again. Therapy is anything that brings you comfort or healing. Sometimes therapies that work for a while may stop working. It's important to keep checking in with how and what we are doing, and find new and better ways to treat our ailments as we take our time healing.