Adventures of PP, Woofie, and the WAW (10)

[PigPen]

There is an NLP technique that can help. It's called context reframing. In this case you are associating the bad memory with the hospital. A tendency to phobia response, now you have a second association with your client which can want you to avoid the hospital. This probably isn't useful. This isn't to stop you feeling about the miscarriage, it's main aim is to stop your fear about the hospital.

You could try a dissociation technique. I was learning this to dissociate from the PTSD memories. You may need a therapist but you can do this in a mirror or by recording it. The visit to the hospital with your client is the one to try first I think.

I used this technique by Bandler because my flashbacks in the big house were leading me to trigger in certain rooms where I was abused, and in supermarkets in front of the cold shelves. I was beginning to fear breaking down in public and had started to avoid some supermarkets altogether. I still have memories of the apple juice rant and my supermarket breakdown and I don't have to avoid certain aisles in supermarkets and I can go into my linen room. I can sit in my tv lounge and sleep in the MBR. I often have to put borders around the film and I turn WH into a cartoon baby. I turn off the sound in the film and sometimes give WH a sqeaky funny voice, like a helium balloon. If you would like I can find the links in my thread to the abuse event, the supermarket breakdown and the facing the supermarket. Took me three visits before I could go down breakdown aisle.

Anc if you are reading this was one of my crazy town moments. I lost physical control too. When this happens I find a disabled loos very quickly. I get very anxious indeed.
-------------------------------------


Think of the unpleasant memory of the hospital and relive the traumatic feelings just enough so that you can observe yourself and know when it's too much.

Recognizing YOUR reaction to the fear state will enable you to back off if it comes up. It's called calibrating and sometimes the fear is less than at other times, normalise by having a coffee or listening to music for 10 minutes.

Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting in a film theater viewing a large screen with a still black and white snapshot of you making coffee or cutting your toe nails (doing something emotionally neutral).

See yourself leaving your body from your seat in the theatre to float or walk up to the theater projection booth until you are safely behind the glass in the project toon booth. In a very detached manner, you can view you sitting at a distance in the audience looking up at the picture of you on the screen.

Stay in the projection booth to run a black and white film of the events at the hospital just as it actually happened. Run the film from beginning to end while watching you in the audience looking up at the film fully engrossed in the negative event. Turn off the sound, you can't hear it in the booth.

Stop if you feel too afraid. However, you are likely to remain resourceful because you are in the position of a disassociated observer in the project toon room (so called fly on the wall position or third position).

Once you get to the end of the film of the hospital visit and the traumatic event is completely over, stop the film in the projection booth so that there is another still neutral picture on the screen. You making coffee, safely at home.


Floating out of the projection booth and out of the audience up to the screen to enter into the final scene of the movie where everything is safe and the event has ended.

Turn on the color. Then run the film backwards very fast in your mind. Super rewind like a DVD player or sky recording on a disk. Rewind very fast in 2 seconds the whole film.


Think about facing the situation in the future or recall the past event and it doesn't seem to have the same effect or you don't really have any feelings about being in the hospital anymore.. The experience has been reframed and the traumatic emotions neutralized.

I can now go to supermarkets!

V

Thank you Lady V. I read this yesterday and did the exercise. At first I got a lot of anxiety when I was visualizing the ER and couldn't pull myself out of the upset of feeling it all again, but I did.

I'm going to keep repeating this exercise until I can do it without a charge.

Big hug,

PP

[isittoolate]

There is also a technique called : havening

Check out the website or a You tube video.

http://www.havening.org/

[PigPen]

There is also a technique called : havening

Check out the website or a You tube video.

http://www.havening.org/

Thank you very much, that looks like a unique approach to trauma recovery.

I can tell the holidays are start to wear on me, my excitement and gratitude for everything positive in my life is harder to hold onto right now. Going to take a bit more of a push and reaching out to people this week to keep on the right track. I know a lot of us are going to be struggling with our sitch's for the next few days so please make sure you're venting or talking with people close to you.

I'm sending out as much positivity as I can to each and every one of you. We've got this. We can do Christmas with our heads held high, our integrity intact, and our hearts open.

PP

[Vanilla]

Havening is a great delta technique and comes with EMT and it occurs to me could be used with the above, to relax and prepare.

Thank you for the reminder Is

V

Delta= deep brain wave relaxation and EMT is Eye Movement Therapy

Paul Mckenna demonstrates it on utube

[PigPen]

Journal:

The combo of it being my last week at my business and the upcoming holiday is breaking me down. I've been overcome with both sadness and anxiety today, just feel awful in my own skin.

I'm going to list some things I'm grateful for as a way to try to shift my focus:

1) My health - despite this being the most trying year of my life, my health has held up. No major issues (knock on wood), and being sober has made me feel better than I have in years.

2) A new beginning - I've long wanted to be on my own for work and control the way that I do things. Having partners have been great, but now I get to build my own team. This is a huge opportunity.

3) Great friendships - by being honest with people I have grown much closer to my friends and family. There's never been as much support in my life.

4) The education of this board - from the books I've read to everyone sharing their own stories on their threads, I feel like I've gotten an advanced degree in relationship, communication, and emotional intelligence.

Now to stay positive through the next few days.

PP

[dday]

PP, great list! The business venture must be very exciting. Keep on keeping on!

[gs9]

PP,
Great job realizing how listing what we are grateful for can help us shift our focus and help us maintain pma. Keep it up!

[Mona52]

PP
It sounds like you need to take some kind of action. Go do something that makes you laugh, I strongly suggest karaoke, especially if you are a terrible singer. It will help you belly laugh and tell your mind that you wont allow depression.

You seem to be an action kinda guy, what can you do to get up and moving for fun?

[PigPen]

Thanks everyone. Just got a VM from my WAW. I assumed it was to talk about the D, but she led off by saying she wanted to check on Woofie and then said she wanted to see how I was doing as I'd been on her mind lately.

It's stars still, and I'm not really sure what to do. I told myself I wouldn't reach out to her over the holiday as last year at this time she knew she was leaving and didn't say anything. I truthfully still hold resentment around that that needs to be let go of.

At this point with her I don't feel like playing the PMA game for a few reasons:

- it's not authentic
- she'd see right through it

While I don't think I need to dive in how upsetting it is for me to not be celebrating Xmas and our anniversary with her, I'm just going to be real and tell her that I'm experiencing this incredible mix of sadness over my business ending and the holidays coupled with an overwhelming excitement and gratitude for my next chapter.

Just this morning I had a man contact me who knew me when I was 20 and found one of the write ups on my new site. He told me he knew all along that what I was writing about was where he always thought I'd end up. Crazy.

Life post BD is so damn fascinating.

PP

[Fogg]

All those dates PP, I can relate on the breaking down. Glad you were able to look at what you were thankful for. It's difficult when faced with this much sadness but what else can we do. Thinking about you, hope we can all get through these holidays and I hope even more next year will be a much happier time.