Beyond Managing PTSD: What Realistic Recovery Looks Like
Exploring triggers, CBT, and a holistic approach to healing
The system tells us PTSD is for life. That it’s something we learn to live with and manage. But deeper healing is possible when we go beyond the system’s approach. And when we do, it can lead to actual freedom.
With Mental Health Awareness month just around the corner, I felt called to explore what realistic recovery from PTSD looks like because it’s more than what the system leads us to believe.
And when I say realistic recovery, I’m referring to what it actually entails to get to a place where it becomes less about management and more about living symptom free. There is a lot to the recovery process, but my focus today is on triggers, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and why a holistic approach is important.
Realistic Recovery
Recovery from PTSD and trauma isn’t about reaching an end goal. It’s a lifelong journey of growth and self improvement. Many of us tend to think the end goal is getting back to feeling like our “old self” again. But realistic recovery isn’t about going backwards. It’s about knowing and accepting that we will never be our old self again.
It is a lot of work that doesn’t just happen in the therapist’s office. Therapy is there to help you learn, grow and gather some of the tools you will need to continue the recovery path on your own. Your therapist is not there to “fix’ you. They are there to guide you, and help you learn how to heal yourself.
Realistic recovery is being committed to self-improvement and becoming a healthier version of yourself. This happens by slowly learning how to get your body out of survival mode. And it’s about learning what your triggers are and eventually how to manage those triggers. I would also like to add here that it is possible to get to the point where those triggers no longer affect you.
The western world likes to label us and tell us that PTSD is something we will have forever. They tell us we will learn to live with and manage it. But that is so limiting and discouraging to hear, especially when we may already be at our own version of rock bottom.
I want you to know there is hope for more than just managing symptoms. It is not something we are stuck with forever, unless we decide it is.
Triggers
Triggers happen and they can happen unexpectedly just about anywhere. Triggers can be caused by sights, sounds, smells, places, movies, television shows, the news, the dates on the calendar, a season or anything that reminds our nervous system of previous traumatic events.
Learning what my own triggers were and how to manage them was one of the most challenging parts of my journey. I am now at the point where the things that used to trigger me on a regular basis no longer do, and I believe the same can be true for everyone.
This journey has taught me a lot, and one of the most important things I’ve learned is that trauma is not all in our mind. It is also in our nervous system. Our bodies remember traumatic events and how we responded during those moments. When we are triggered, it’s our nervous system reacting to what it feels and remembers as something threatening, and reacts accordingly.
When something would trigger me, I knew it didn’t always make sense for the current situation I was in, but knowing that didn’t stop the anxiety and panic attacks. The moment I was triggered by something, it felt like I had no control over my reaction. It’s like it went from zero to a hundred in a split second. It was an automatic response that left me no time to think about what was really happening. And after the perceived threat had passed and my panic subsided, I usually felt embarrassed and ashamed about how I reacted. It can be a vicious cycle.
Traumatic experiences leave behind energetic imprints that stay with us in our nervous system and cause those responses until we learn how to release them. Learning to manage my trigger responses was difficult but not impossible. And once I was able to release the energetic imprints, or heavy emotions I had been carrying, I no longer had to manage them because those responses completely diminished.
More Than Talk Therapy
The western world has a very limited view on what it takes to actually recover, which is why they tell us PTSD is something we must learn to live with. Realistic recovery takes a lot more than the western world’s approach of talk therapy and pharmaceuticals.
When your recovery plan only includes these two things, you’re only doing a small portion of the work.
And honestly, those antidepressants are meant to get you through a crisis period. They were never meant for long term usage, and they do nothing more than numb the symptoms and emotions you don’t want to feel. And by numbing you, they also numb all the good feelings as well. Nobody really tells you this though. This is why it’s essential to find a therapist who is knowledgeable in all the ways trauma affects the mind and the body.
When the medication and talk therapy alone don’t work a lot of people are deemed to have “treatment resistant” PTSD.
I have a huge problem with this idea because I did not take medication and CBT alone did not work for me, so I suppose the system considered me “treatment resistant.”
CBT is currently the most dominant form of talk therapy. And while it may help us to understand our trauma intellectually, it won’t be what helps us to release the emotions tied to it.
After going through the system’s limited idea of recovery, I don’t believe in “treatment resistant” PTSD. I believe being convinced that talk therapy and medication is what it takes to recover is the problem, and not that people are “treatment resistant.”
I believe that realistic recovery requires a holistic approach.
I believe trying non-conventional methods to treat PTSD can lead to more success. And I believe this to be true because it’s been my lived experience.
Thinking we are treatment resistant can make us feel like we will never recover. Like something is wrong with us when therapy doesn’t feel like it’s working. This label can be highly damaging to people. It might make us feel like a failure, leave us feeling frustrated, or like giving up.
I want to emphasize this:
You are not a failure. You just may not have discovered what works for you…yet.
I’m not saying that CBT is bad. It’s definitely a good type of therapy for some things, but it’s not a trauma informed approach. Those heavy emotions, or energetic imprints left behind by traumatic experiences need to be released. This cannot be done through the use of CBT because we cannot think our way out of trauma. And we cannot think our nervous system into a regulated state.
How Does CBT Work?
The goal of CBT is to help people understand how their thoughts impact their actions. There are three main pillars to it which are identification, recognition and management.
The first pillar is identification. This is when you identify your thoughts, behaviour and emotions. You cannot change what you are not able to identify. And people who have experienced trauma can have a great deal of trouble trying to identify emotions, especially in the beginning.
A simple example of identification would be noticing that you have a lot of negative thoughts around a specific thing, event or person. Once you are able to identify your negative thoughts, the next step is learning to recognize when those thoughts pop up.
The second pillar is recognition and it seems pretty similar to identification. But recognition also includes noticing the thoughts while they’re happening. The idea is that once you’re able to recognize that you’re thinking or behaving in a negative way, you’re able to stop it. But this is almost impossible to do with a condition like PTSD because triggers are caused by a nervous system response.
Management is the third pillar. It involves using skills and activities you’ve learned to help ease your mind of the negative thoughts. Management can be done in the moments of recognition and also outside of those moments. Management involves practicing the skills you’ve learned during all the moments in your life, both the good and the bad, to ensure that you’ll be able to use them when the negativity returns.
Sounds pretty simple right? This type of therapy can be wonderful but it does nothing to help release trauma, and trauma informed therapists will know this. When this therapy doesn’t work (and it won’t) for processing and releasing the emotions tied to your traumatic experiences, you may be deemed “treatment resistant.”
Let’s take a look at why this therapy alone doesn’t work for post traumatic injuries.
PTSD Affects Our Entire Being
Trauma is not just about our thoughts. Trauma affects our entire being…mind, body, and soul. CBT focuses on the mind, as I mentioned, we cannot think our way out of trauma.
This is why when we are triggered by something, we have a hard time controlling our reactions with our thoughts. All the CBT in the world cannot fix this because the reaction comes from a nervous system response, not our thoughts.
Learning to control trigger responses starts by regulating the nervous system. It happens by exploring the energetic imprints that traumatic events left behind and learning how to release that energy so we are no longer carrying it.
Combining that work with CBT can be beneficial and definitely useful on the healing journey. But it’s so important to understand that we’re not going to gain control over our trigger responses by thought alone. Once we are able to get our nervous system into a more regulated state and start releasing some of the heavy emotions we’ve been carrying, CBT can be helpful with learning to recognize and control our reactions as they arise.
Most people are not “treatment resistant.” We’ve been led to believe that PTSD is a condition of the mind, and treating it as such is a disservice to those affected by it because it affects our entire being, which is why realistic recovery requires a holistic approach.
This is all based on what I’ve learned while going through my healing journey. And I want to be clear that I’m not telling anyone else what to do. I’m simply providing some information that I wish had been available to me at the beginning of my journey. What works for one may not work for another, so please take what resonates, and leave the rest.
Lighting the Way
Have you been labelled “treatment resistant?”
What modalities have you tried for processing and releasing the heavy emotions of trauma?
What’s worked for you and what hasn’t?
If you feel called to share your thoughts and experiences, please do so in the comments or the chat👇
We never know who we may be inspiring when we speak openly and honestly about our experiences. Sharing our stories can help others feel less alone and helps to light the way for those who may be lost in the darkness.
Because when one of us heals and shines our light, we all rise.
As always, I’m so grateful to have you here, walking alongside me on this healing journey. If this post resonated, clicking the little heart below helps others in our Collective find it too. And if you feel called to support my work further, you can buy me a coffee through the link below 👇🙏
I really enjoyed your article, very informative and thanks for sharing it!
- Allen Kanerva
Interesting to read, thank you. I’m someone who is in the healing phase after a traumatic decade and have used a variety of means to both help myself and seek and receive help from others. I am 76 and have been taking prescribed medication for various conditions after cancer. I did not learn much about the nervous system and its role in recovery until last August after I stopped CBT therapy. I know now much more about the ‘body knowing more than my mind’ I guess. However, after a series of other therapy using EMDR my trauma memories worsened and the resultant inner stress left me feeling I was back on my own. And in some ways, this has been helpful too. My view is of course, that we never go back to how we were and in my case, I am glad. But it is a journey of recovery we choose as we go.