The best way to deal with long-term symptoms of post-traumatic stress is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Obviously, one never knows when something traumatic might occur or where, however, there are ways of handling the situation once it has happened that can significantly reduce a person’s susceptibility to long-term feelings of hopelessness and alienation.

If you or someone you know has just been through a traumatic event, the best time to take steps to prevent PTSD is as soon as possible.

1. Combine encouragement with time to process the event.

The importance of combining positive input while realistically processing what has happened is an interesting balance. The key here is to “talk about it, but don’t dwell on it.” That way the patterns of shock, fear and hopelessness are dispelled before they get a chance to become habitual.

Formula # 2 in Soul Oriented Solutions offers one way to help those who have been overwhelmed by recent events by going through a process that will help to calm them down and focus in on what would genuinely help them.

This e-book is free of charge and can be downloaded right now by going to:

http://www.intuitivelearningcircle.com/soul-oriented-solutions/

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The purpose of Soul Oriented Solutions is to give you additional resources to turn to when you are going through difficult times. Please feel free to share this information with others whom you feel might benefit from it.

Consider it a gift from someone that has been there and wants to share the little wisdom she has gained from her own experiences. Each formula has the potential to give some hope, inner guidance and clarity of mind if you are willing to try something new and different.

The Intuitive Learning Circles and Graphs used in this e-book have been extensively tested in clinical and educational settings.

If you would like to know more about them, go to http://www.intuitivelearningcircle.com/

Share your experiences. We want to hear from you about your stories of hope and inspiration.

For those affected by the bridge collapse in Minneapolis who may be suffering from shock…we are sending our love and prayers.

Soul Oriented Solutions - A Handbook of Quick Formulas to Use in Times of Emotional Crisis

This self-help book is free and can be downloaded anytime.

Go to http://intuitivelearningcircle.com/soul-oriented-solutions/

Day 21 of 30 Days to Creating a Change in Direction

There are many good reasons why people have difficulty changing direction and some of them have to do with our Sacred Cows. The majority of these unconscious agreements are held in place by trauma. By far, the biggest cause of trauma is war and the cows that perpetuate it.

That’s why today’s Sacred Cow is:

“Treat people like commodities; use them up and then throw them away.”

Personally, I have suffered from many of the symptoms of post traumatic stress for most of my life:

• Feeling fear about the future
• Diffficulty concentrating
• Frequent boughts of insomnia or nightmares
• Feelings of guilt or helplessness
• Uncontrollable crying
• Flashbacks
• Shock and overwhelm.

As a child, I had a horrible time getting along with others and school was a major struggle. I grew up with constant panic attacks and seemed to get myself in trouble no matter what I did.

It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I realized my behavior was not due to just being a bad person. I had reasons for my apparent lack of control, and they were good ones. My father was a navigator in the Army Air Corps during World War II and the Korean War and had participated in countless bombing missions. When he came home, the U. S. Military gave him a couple of weeks R&R in the Carribean - no counseling and no opportunity to decompress from the horrors of war.

Needless to say, he was not ready to return and take up the role of “Father Knows Best”, the popular TV show of the time. He was moody, given to rages, migraines and had no patience for small children. I lived my preschool years in absolute fear of him and as a young adult, I rebelled and went out of my way to hurt him. It wasn’t until he was dying of cancer that I understood where the violence had come from; what had happened to our family and who was really responsible for it.

Before he passed away, my father shared his deep regret and guilt about killing so many people. The pain and remorse that he had been holding in was eating up his body and palpable on his face as he recounted wartime experiences that both humbled and horrified me at the same time.

I literally watched him go yellow and break out into a cold sweat while he detoxed a drug the military had given him in place of quinine as a “treatment” for malaria. Evidently the drug did nothing whatsoever to protect him or the thousands of other soldiers who took it from malaria, it was only intended to keep them on their feet no matter what. No wonder he turned into a workaholic and could never relax. The mass use of that drug may explain a lot about the health problems of many men of his generation – heart attacks, stoicism, emotional inaccessability, workaholism, alcolholism, not to mention cancer.

In his death, my father taught me something very important about post traumatic stress. He had spent his whole life running away from it, yet when he realized his time was running out, he began to accept what had happened and how frightened he had been. By providing him with a safe and loving place to talk, he was able to let it go emotionally, spiritually and physically. I know that by the time he passed away, he had made his peace with me and more importantly, with himself.

With him as an inspiration, I sought after a form of treatment that might be instrumental in breaking the cycle of war, abuse, learning disabilities and chronic health problems, and that is how the circles we use in our Tipping game came to be.

This set of Sacred Cows will not tip on their own. Please join me in playing this game.

Also, if you or someone you know if suffering from loss or post traumatic stress, you can download a copy of Soul Oriented Solutions.