PART ONE

YOU CAN HEAL

It's a generally accepted fact that the key to achieving anything is being able to visualize it. The reason for this has a lot to do with how the brain works: The more it knows, understands, and "sees" what you want, the more efficiently, effectively, and effortlessly it helps you create what you want. This is exactly why having a healing vision — both for how healing happens and how you can begin to create it — becomes so important in the PTSD recovery process.

Approach the following pages as your introduction to ideas that make recovery eminently possible, plus ways you can create, embody, and engage with a healing vision of your very own. The more you clarify and then learn to step into the world you want, the more success you will achieve in reducing PTSD symptoms and reclaiming a self and life you love.

How Healing Begins

Healing begins with hope.

At this moment you may question how possible it is to reach your healing objectives. There will (often) be moments of doubt — that's all right. There's still room for hope.

The good news is you don't have to know exactly how you're going to succeed in your quest. Having hope just means putting out there that you desire to achieve the outcome you seek.

In moments of doubt you can hold onto hope by saying to yourself, "I'm open to the idea it's possible for me to ..."

Having hope gains strength when you're clear about what you hope for. Today, outline what you hope for in terms of:

* your life

* who you are

* your recovery

* your relationships with others

* your experience in the world

* [your future

In your notebook, journal, or computer, complete this statement: "I hope ..."

* * *

If you're wondering whether or not it's possible to feel better, the answer is emphatically, Yes!

While friends and family may have advised you to "just get over it," you've probably encountered difficulty in doing so. There's a very scientific reason for why the "just get over it" recovery method doesn't work: Your behaviors are embedded in neural pathways in your brain, in the very biology of your nervous system. Literally, the traumatic experience has become a part of you, which means you can "just get over it" about as easily as you can get over infected tonsils.

Like your tonsils, healing after trauma means tending to what's wrong. In this case, that involves rewiring and retraining your brain. Since your brain rewires and retrains itself all the time, it's very adept at utilizing these skills. Your role in recovery is to specifically apply these skills in areas related to trauma. Essentially, you are your brain's guide through the maze of trauma recovery. Your mission is to (1) identify what your brain needs in order to rewire the trauma pathways and then (2) develop a protocol for creating the retraining that will achieve the desired results.

If you were going to teach your brain something new about post-trauma life, what would it be? What kind of repetitive experience could you develop that would offer your brain opportunities to learn that idea?

* * *

Bringing yourself to a place of peaceful healing means repairing the bridges that were blown up in yourself and your world when trauma occurred.

In his song "In Repair," John Mayer croons, "So much to do to set my heart right. ..." (If you don't know that song, go listen to it or watch the video; it's a great recovery anthem.) This sentiment so aptly describes where a great deal of the pain comes from in the PTSD experience.

In the post-trauma identity crisis that accompanies PTSD, you question how to define yourself, wonder what's true and what's false, and lack a sense of what's right for you — these are heart and/or soul wounds. One way to answer the questions and refill that sense of rightfulness is to engage in repair of the things that feel most devastated.

What are those things for you? Take some time to sit in a quiet space, peer into your heart, and see what's most damaged — what most needs to be repaired. Fixing those things will bridge you to the next phase of healing.

Then choose a recovery anthem and play it daily. Tweet the song title and/or lyrics to @ChangeYouChoose, #healmyptsd.

* * *

Healing requires recalibration, which is the careful process of bringing things back into scale, a place of neutrality.

PTSD living happens in a place of extreme: anxiety, panic, depression, loneliness, grief, loss, sadness, despair, and [insert your ideas here]. It's a little like living on the edge of an abyss feeling that any moment you'll teeter into open space.

Successful coping and healing bring you back from the edge of the abyss and get your feet onto more firm ground from where you can see into the chasm but have removed the danger of falling into it.

The success of recalibration relies on getting things back into a state of equilibrium. If you were going to feel more neutral in one area of your life or coping today, what would you have to do?

* * *

Healing is about re-creating who you are and rebuilding your life.

The modus operandi (M.O.) of every survivor is to create an environment and sensation of being safe and in control. You're working very hard at doing that — which is why you're feeling such an enormous amount of stress.

Here's the big secret: Focusing on staying safe and being in control through rigid coping mechanisms doesn't create recovery. Healing is all about reversing the process in which you've come to live: learning to feel safe even when you don't have the ultimate control, and learning to be in control even when you don't feel safe.

Consider this new M.O.: You have choices to make. Decide what changes you want to experience. Then take an action to attempt achieving it. After that, let loose all of your planning. Stay in the moment and respond to what you experience.

In the avoidance perspective of post-trauma life, your motivation is to move away. You avoid threat by skirting it. However, you can't go into your future by stepping back or to the side. The future, since it exists in front of you, can be fully entered only by moving straight toward it. What is right in front of you on the road to recovery? What does that require you to do? Record your responses in your notebook, journal, or computer.

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Healing means making better choices and taking...