This blog hopes to offer a space to build awareness, offering information, tips and strategies to help with challenges you may face in relation to PTSD, trauma, anxiety and depression. I hope this blog can also be a place where I can share your questions, experiences and stories, which in turn may also help and support others.
You may be very aware of your experiences and how they impact you, or you might not be able to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, instead noticing more your feelings and behaviours, finding it difficult to manage relationships and emotional responses.
I speak to so many people suffering in silence, accepting that this is all life has to offer, troubled by their past, putting on a front to others, which itself can be exhausting to maintain. We can be confused about why we feel panicky, anxious or low in mood. We may self-harm to cope or become overwhelmed by thoughts of suicide, and yet when people ask us, we might say ‘I’m fine’.
We feel we should ‘just get on with it’, often feeling things are our fault and asking ourselves, ‘why can’t I just be like everyone else’, thinking to ourselves that ‘everyone else is smiling and happy’.
We often don’t ask for help, feeling too ashamed, guilty, powerless and chained by our ongoing sense of vulnerability, pushing away memories and torments from the past, we compare ourselves to others and shut down our own emotional suffering. Sometimes we feel no emotion at all, unable to feel close to others and happiness is a feeling long forgotten, sometimes never understood at all.
Did you know that experiencing trauma impacts our brain functioning, your brain is still working hard to keep you safe and sometimes even just understanding the impact of our traumas on our brains and development, can help us to answer questions we didn’t know we had in the first place.
Our mental health is so important and shapes every aspect of our lives. Your most powerful asset is you – I know that you might not believe this just now. We need to work through our traumas to get to the other side.
You hold the key to your mind.
See you again soon.
MindKey
Always looking forward to receiving your comments and contributions, email me: [email protected]