HSP is really PTSD

by Amber DeAnn

My life is about discovering Who I am? Why do I act like I do? What needs to change?

What did I want to be? And How do I get there?

The answers were beyond my expectations-- both better and worse than I could have imagined. It meant going through my rough patches to get to gold at the end of the rainbow--finding me.

I stared out my apartment window one day. All day. I was middle 20’s and feeling dull, numb, alone, abandoned by the world. Watching people and cars coming and going definitely enhanced the feelings.

How did I get here?

Kept going through my mind. Then I heard a click and went to the kitchen, opened a drawer and found a mouse caught in a trap I had set. I looked at the poor dead thing and felt as dead as that mouse. I asked the neighbor to take the mouse out and put it into the trash, he did, but his wife glared at me like I was a sick human being. What was with that?

I was not functioning.

More unfulfilling jobs, alcoholic relationships, family discord followed, all adding to the stress of living here and my feeling of not belonging. I felt like a alien in a strange land.

Later I learned that my feelings that day were depression, caused by PTSD, arising from a dysfunctional family childhood, a culture of angry, unempowered women, and job discrimination, and victim of other people’s frustrated lives.

PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) has a devastating affect on the nervous system, our reactions to events in the world, our self esteem, our memories, our ability to cope with noise, crowds, etc.

Trauma has been defined as a “stressful occurrence outside the range of usual human experience that would be distressing to almost anyone.” It is much more.

According to TRE, (Trauma Release Exercises) it is an activated neuropsychological deactivation of defense response. Physical overstimulation that causes emotional and mental unpleasant responses. It causes sleeplessness, irritability, disturbed memories, hyperarousal, overwhelm, fatigue and thousands of other symptoms.

When confronted with a traumatic experience, most of us freeze, especially when we are children and can’t escape our overwhelmed, traumatized, frantic parents. This frozen response to a stressful situation can adversely affects our lives. It becomes frozen energy in our nervous system.

Life’s stressful events and our own yearning for the “natural high” accumulate in our nervous system until we are so overwhelmed we can’t function--mentally, emotionally, or socially.

Solution

Clearing out the resentful, old, habitual ways of living our lives.

Clearing out the old stuck energy from the nervous system.

Monitoring our physical sensations to calm our habitual response patterns.

Retraining the brain to function normally.

There are many tools, books and CD’s on the market that really work to clear and calm trauma and habitual traumatic responses. I have used many. And the results are amazing. You can learn to speak in public, be in a crowd, be honored and respected. You can function more normally and life can be fun again. It just takes a different mindset.

Amber DeAnn has been a counselor, hypnotherapist, speaker, author, workshop leader, and energy worker for several years. She has studied psychology, many healing modalities including mind-emotion-body-Inner Child-spiritual practices and gets amazing results. She is organizer of Personal Improvement Mentoring Meetup in South Bay, Ca.

Her website is MindEmotionHarmony.com Check out her blogs. She can be reached at amberdeann@mindemotionharmony.com

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Highly Sensitive People

HSP is really PTSD

by Amber DeAnn