Managing PTSD symptoms can be like trying to keep a candle alight in a hurricane. Each gust of wind might snuff it out at any moment. You are sure all your matches are wet, so you are doing everything you can to not let that happen. But it’s exhausting! And you have no idea how long you are going to be able to keep it up. All you know is, if you fail, and the candle blows out, the consequences will be dire.
Imagine now, that candle is you. In normal circumstances, a candle has a predictable life span until it is all used up. Like you! When everything is going well in your life, that candle burns easily. It’s warming; comforting. But when things go wrong, the worry, the fear, the pain, hits you as effectively as that wind hits that candle, like a wave of negative energy, which you just want to stop. Sometimes you are convinced the entire universe is against you, buffeting you, conspiring to finish you off.
If that analogy resonates with you, understand that there is a way to insulate your flame – and you – and fast. That is clinical hypnotherapy. Even amid the worst of the storm, hypnotherapy can relax you to such an extent that you leave the troubles of the physical world behind. During sessions you will feel like you are floating, suspended, as if a screen has been erected between you and what is happening in your life, and you are protected behind it. Insulated. CatchPTSD clients call it “a legal high”.
While you are completely relaxed, you can ask your body to tell you the very first time you ever felt that destabilizing storm of emotion, because the first time will always have been the most shocking, especially if you were very young. It will be the first time you thought you might not survive whatever was happening. The first time your flame threatened to go out.
By now, after so much has happened, difficulty and heartbreak might seem common place in your life, but every time it happens it is triggering the same emotion as the very first time – and then some! You probably will not remember all the details of the first time – if any – but your body does, and in hypnosis you may see, sense, feel, hear anything that explains it for you – like in a dream – and gives you enough information to rationalize it. As soon as you understand it, the power it has over you disperses – like going from a hurricane to a dead calm day in an instant. All the sensations and reactions simply fall away. The flame is stable again. Sounds impossible? You would think so wouldn’t you? But CatchPTSD hypnotherapists watch that happen every single day. If you need help keeping your candle alight contact one of us through CatchPTSD.com. We are keen to help!
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