Stepping Stones to Recovery

rnIn no particular order of priority here are some stepping stones where you may begin developing your path toward effective and positive survival of abuse. Whether you were victimized as a child or as an adult any or all of the following could be a place to start. 1. Choose and visit a Psychiatrist for assessment to determine if you would benefit from medication. 2. Choose and start working with a good therapist: a Psychologist, or Licensed Clinical Social Worker, on the issues you are dealing with as result of the abuse you have suffered. 3. Start using and studying effective journaling techniques. Create journals for all facets of your life, and the individual people you have known. There are lots of resources for journaling on the internet. 4. Focus on what is positive; that makes you feel good by using affirmations, inspirational reading, and meditation/prayer, get a massage, etc. Treat yourself well. Stop the toxic thinking and negative self-characterizations. 5. Buy, adopt, and acquire a pet. A dog or a cat is fine, but choose a breed that is nurturing. Remember that some animal breeds are not really touchy-feely creatures. A Shih-Tzu is excellent, but I'm biased. 6. Choose an active physical training regimen. Walk, use weight resistance, jog, run, swim, do yoga, stretch, bicycle, move something. The heart pumps clean oxygenated arterial blood out to the ends of your body to feed the tissues and organs. Your pulmonary circulatory system has the job of returning the dirty blood to your heart and lungs so that it can be cleaned up again. But the return trip does not have the force of a pumping heart to make the blood move. It is instead forced along by the compression and dilatation of the veins as result of muscle and organ movement. This means if you don't move your muscles you will have a sluggish blood system and how will that make you feel; tired and sluggish right? Choose a physical activity and make it a habit. Do it every day that you can. 7. Choose a healthy diet that controls or eliminates refined sugar and caffeine. Control your intake of animal-fat and salt. These big food items, when reduced to cellular food, can and will play havoc on your moods and emotions. 8. Increase your intake of DHA or fish oil. Preliminary research is showing this item can better facilitate synaptic nerve function and lessen the experience of anxiety or mania. Even so, fish oil does not replace any medicines prescribed by your physician or Psychiatrist. 9. Seek and develop a network of friends. Try and fail as many times as is necessary to succeed. If you grow tired of failing at this, stop and do some study on the subject. Talk with a professional. 10. Involve yourself in the arts. Sketch, paint, sculpt, play music, dance, or perform. 11. If you are prescribed medications for depression, mood swings, etc. take them, and only those prescribed, according to how they are prescribed religiously every day. Psychotropic meds are not like aspirin for a headache. You cannot wait "until you get a headache" or develop a mood swing and then take a pill like you would Tylenol. These meds only work when you have taken them as prescribed for a period of time needed to build them up to a therapeutic level in your blood. Depending on what medicine you have prescribed for you it might take up to two or three weeks of regular dosage before you get to where it starts working for you. Talk to your Psychiatrist and listen carefully to what they say about your meds. 12. Record your dreams. 13. When you are strong enough help others. Volunteer in places that will nurture your capacity for compassion. Meditate on this: “A dream fueled by imagination and driven by need, will sooner or later find a way to succeed.”