Stories From Trauma and PTSD
“I had been told that I would have PTSD for the rest of my life. How wrong that statement would be, because for the last two and a half years … I have lived WITHOUT PTSD and my world is a much happier place. … The Three Principles have taken me to a whole new level of human experience. Without question, The Three Principles have improved not only the quality of my life and that of my wife, family, and friends around me, but has also given me a wealth of happiness that I hadn’t up until this point experienced, and most importantly for me, a ‘quiet mind.’”
Paul Dean, British Army veteran
Quote courtesy of the Center for Sustainable Change
“For me, the road to recovery began after I learned the Three Principles. Being able to understand, on a deeper level, the nature of my thinking, and that I create my emotions and my reality through my thinking, enabled me to see life in a different perspective. It gave me a new way to handle all the anxiety and depression episodes that were inseparable from my PTSD experience. I found that the more my understanding went deeper, I had fewer flashbacks, fewer panic episodes, and my overall condition became better.”
Ofer Hai Meyer, former IDF first class sergeant and combat medic.
Quote courtesy of the Center for Sustainable Change
“I work with women who have suffered rape and abuse, as well as veterans with traumatic memories of war. They are two populations who have difficulty getting long-term treatment, which most helping professionals think is necessary, and they often avoid treatment to avoid the stigma of being weak or troubled. What they know about trauma and the diagnosis of PTSD is that it means long-term suffering, and they feel they are ‘damaged’ and ‘different’ from people who have not had their life experiences.
“Traumatic memories ARE painful and overwhelming. When they come to mind, because of the way the mind works, they bring with them a rush of all the horrible feelings of the actual event.”
“We do not discount the power of thought to generate strong feelings. But we do explain that everything that is not happening right now is happening only in your mind, like a movie being replayed, and you re-experience it as it moves across the screen of your mind. If someone has survived a trauma to move forward with life, the mere understanding that memory is a thought brought to mind, and it will pass very quickly if we do not get frightened by it, resolves their suffering.
“As one person told me, ‘I haven’t forgotten the war and I never will. But now I am grateful that the only place it can still happen is in my mind, and I can decide how long to keep it there. It’s no different from any other thought and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.’”
