Post-traumatic Stress: A promise Of Great Things to Come

Post traumatic stress is a syndrome – a complex series of responses to a wide range of traumatic injuries, such as childhood abuse, rape, being buried alive in the ruble following an earth quake, and battle field experiences. Is it possible to address the entire spectrum of a syndrome with a single answer? My new book, The Greatest Escape: Follow the Quantum Path to Personal Freedom, which is based on a new psychology, quantum psychology, explains why the answer to that question is – yes. My book describes how our brains are hard wired with a program that protects our mental health and gives us a simple way to free ourselves from the past, heal our psychological wounds and transform our lives. It also explains how PTS is both a problem and a solution to a problem, how beyond the suffering is a promise of great things to come.

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In a nutshell, here is why PTS is a both a problem and the solution to a problem. Your brain is an information processing unit that is powered by electrical energy. In some significant ways, it operates like any power system, even like the electrical grid that brings electricity into your home. When engineers build these grids, they prepare for the unknown (like fallen trees) by installing relays that sense an impending overload and respond by shutting down parts of the system —otherwise it would burn up. During these emergencies, residual segments of the power grid take over and keep the system functioning, giving the engineers time to go in and fix the problem. Once the immediate problem is fixed, they upgrade the system to prevent future occurrences.

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Your brain is also engineered to prepare for the unknown, for threats to your mental health. When it senses an impeding psychological overload due to experiences that are too traumatic, last too long, and which overwhelm your ability to make sense of what’s going on, your brain acts to prevent a total mental meltdown. It shuts down segments of your psychological system; other segments of your brain take over to help you continue to function, which gives you time to go in and fix the problem at some future date.

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Because you couldn’t interpret these experiences in a way that makes sense to you (too young, too inexperienced), your brain can’t integrate the information associated with those experiences into the mainstream of your consciousness in the usual way. Instead, it stores the data in a separate place, in your unconscious mind. And why do our brains go to the trouble of preserving this unintegrated information? Because our bodies are concerned with our survival and traumatic experiences threaten our survival. Fixing the problem of PTS requires that you retrieve your unintegrated information, which then allows you to learn from your traumatic experiences and complete the past. Like digging up buried treasure, this stored knowledge of trauma will actually turn out to be a gift that will strengthen you.

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It makes no sense that our bodies would store unintegrated information in our unconscious minds and then give us no way to retrieve it. Phase one of the retrieval program consists of becoming aware we have unintegrated information. Our bodies accomplish this goal by causing us to repeat the past. For instance, child abuse is frequently passed on to future generations, and even decades later, for those who have been traumatized by rape and war, those experiences happened – yesterday. Then, like physical pain motivates us to take action to solve physical problems, our bodies generate emotional pain, what we call stress, which motivates us solve our psychological problems. As a result, instead of enjoying life, we have difficulty sleeping, feel anxious, angry and depressed, and sometimes have flashbacks. Also, such a state of mind makes successful relationships and careers nearly impossible.

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Let’s say that you are aware that you have psychological problems, and because you want to stop feeling miserable and enjoy life, you decide you want to solve them. Then what?

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Because our psychological processes evolved long before psychotherapy was invented, it should be no surprise that we have the capacity to be our own counselors, therapists and gurus. The secret is knowing the language our brains prefer. So here’s the secret: our brains prefer pictures! Think about those cave paintings tens of thousands of years ago; the trauma of hunting and being hunted. Work it out by drawing pictures of your fears. We’ve mostly forgotten that knowledge, and moved to the sophistication of talk therapy. We’re talking away for hours and years, recounting our modern versions of predator and prey, perpetrator and victim, abuser and abused, while our brains are hungering for simple pictures.

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Rather than talking about our problems, we can quickly retrieve unintegrated information from our unconscious minds using the language it prefers – symbols. When we begin to communicate with our brains using a purely symbolic language, the brain responds immediately and we experience immediate, positive change. Simultaneously, the brain upgrades our psychological system by stimulating movement to higher levels of consciousness. And so we become psychologically stronger, better able to deal with future traumatic experiences and prevent future occurrences of PTS. And just like those artists in the caves, we will be increasing our chances of winning the ongoing competition for survival of the fittest on this planet.

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I describe two techniques in The Greatest Escape (Quantum Technique 1 and Quantum Technique 2) that tell you, a PTS sufferer, how you can immediately start to use your own internal, personal growth program. Your program knows how to heal your psychological wounds– with a little help from you. In my experience, this program operates like a computer software program: you do 10% of the work; your body does the rest. In my work counseling clients, I have found that the biggest obstacle is resistance to change.

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As you progress, you will acquire new knowledge about yourself, other people, and life in general. You will stop repeating your own version of Groundhog Day and live in present time, have courage and individual power, be comfortable with change, have compassion, and enjoy life. You will also achieve spiritual awareness, what some people call enlightenment. Beyond creating successful, enjoyable lives, solving the problems associated with PTS opens the way to the direct experience of higher, truer realities that exist just underneath the surface of our everyday lives.

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Words cannot communicate the value of becoming free of the past and evolving to higher levels of consciousness. What value would you place on discovering who you truly are, transcending the separation between yourself and other people, and experiencing your connection to the universe that is your home?

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On a personal note, as I evolved to higher levels of consciousness, I reached a point when I would have chosen a much more abusive childhood and endured a worse case of PTS, because of what I learned. I don’t have the courage of Victor Frankel, a Viennese psychiatrist, who survived three years in Nazi concentration camps. He said that he would never have chosen those experiences, but astoundingly, he did not regret having them, because of what he learned.

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PTS can be a life sentence. Or, you can take advantage of the opportunity PTA presents to transform your life. It’s your choice.

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