Bearable experiences become unbearable if you feel helpless and alone.
Traumatic experiences can produce feelings of anxiety, depression, despair, hopelessness, re-occurring anger, self-blame, guilt, and shame, as well as sexual dysfunction, compulsive or aggressive behaviours, sleep disorders, concentration problems, disconnection from others, loss of interest in outside activities, and psychosomatic complaints. The severity of the symptoms depends on the perceived severity of the traumatic event, your trauma history, the level of stress in your life, and the quality of support available to you from family, friends, and professionals. Jeanne Segal
The Guardian's most useful websites on Mental Health - links to mental health directories, law-related links and links to mental health charities and journals.
Without good sleep everything else is so much more overwhelming. More than 1.2 million Australians (6% of the population) experience some form of sleep disorder.
2. Get information and validation
Validation is that felt sense 'I'm understood, I'm okay, I have a right to feel, to exist, to be this way in the world'. It comes from being truly heard and having that reflected back to you congruently by another. It is a small miracle that someone else, even a stranger or your self, can make sense of a crazy time in you life and can locate its implicit meaning. Here are some useful resources toward this making the latent, manifest.
'We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.' Some thoughts about Buddhist psychotherapy. Try this self-help book on line. Write it down for 15 minutes a day for four or five days.
4. Release yourself from your mistakes with forgiving
My old friend Sanyas, an Aikido teacher, does this with the simplicity and authority of an elder. Take three long, slow deep breaths in your abdomen, with each out breath sigh deeply and let it all go, let it all out , let it sing and then, breathing gently, just smile and smile and smile to your belly as it moves up and down with the breath. Then, smile to your hands, to your arms and shoulders. Take the smile further and further into your neck, head, face, down into your body, legs and feet. Smile and smile and smile to the cells and tissues and body fluids. Smile and smile to your breath and heart beat and to the air caressing your skin. Smile to all those around you, near and far.
It might help to do the exercise I've developed here to get a sense of the aikido smile he's talking about. Once you have learned this, with practice you can do it very quickly when you need it. Better than frowning to yourself.
Becoming an activist against harm and exploitation
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