[Issue #32 | Part 2] How PTSD Makes Behavior Change More Difficult
A short essay on the affects PTSD has on our ability to change
“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
-Carl Jung
Mmmm, the salty, sour taste of acceptance! Acceptance, sour and coarse, like the skin of limestone rockfaces or a batch of vomit after eating bad fish. Gross.
Who wants to accept all the shitty shit in our lives? Who wants to turn to look and see the string of what-could-have-been's and missed opportunities? To know that, in a lot of ways, where we find ourselves is likely because we put ourselves there. Maybe that wasn’t our intention, and yet, here we are.
What a conundrum. A hogwash of try again and good enough. An internal banter of can I accomplish this? and I’m never going to accomplish that.
We know that behavior change is hard, even for neuro-typical and non-traumatized (yes, I’m told these unicorns exist) folks, so when you’re struggling with PTSD as well as a regular Monday’s chaos and want to throw behavior change on top of that, the Universe laughs hysterically.
Having PTSD makes behavior modification difficult because PTSD changes a lot of who we believe and think and perceive ourselves to be without alerting us to that very fact. PTSD changes how we see the world and ourselves. PTSD makes it difficult to see the light beyond the shadows lying in wait. Our world view is shortsighted and terrifying, until we’re able to challenge a lot of our own beliefs and see how our reality may not be what the stories in our head claim reality is.
Why does PTSD make behavior change more difficult?
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