Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

For me, one of the toughest things about recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety has been learning how to manage triggers.

If you’ve got PTSD or you have panic attacks, you know what I mean by triggers; those little things that, once your “anxiety brain” gets hold of them, send you into a downward spiral of fear, panic, and sometimes, even depression.

My worst trigger is child abuse. If I see a news story about an abused child, or even if I overhear someone talking about an abused child, my pulse rate just shoots up. If the abuse is sexual, then all bets are off and I have to take action to manage the trigger before I get anxious.

I do a couple of little things to manage triggers and minimize the effects that they have on me. They may work for you.

Continue reading “What To Do When You Are Triggered” »

I used to be terrible at crisis management. When anything bad happened that was outside my control, I would always come apart at the seams. I would start to panic, and I would end up making a huge mess of things and getting myself more depressed and anxious.

At an old job I had, one of my projects was to write up a crisis management plan. When I was finished this project, I began to wonder if I could apply the same skills and techniques that I used at work to my personal life to see if I could do a better job at crisis management. After some experiments and fine tuning, I developed a five-part personal crisis management system. By applying this system, I was eventually able to manage my anxiety during a crisis. I wasn’t as unprepared when things went wrong, and I was able to quickly calm myself down and get the crisis under control.

Continue reading “How To Manage a Crisis” »

In Part 2 of this series: “Your First Therapy Appointment,” I talked about how to prepare for your first therapy session, and what to expect from therapy and your therapist. In this article, I will discuss what you can do after each therapy session to make your therapy more effective, and to help you survive the most difficult parts.

One day I was talking to a friend of mine who was going through some particularly difficult therapy sessions for anxiety. We were talking about how we both felt after our sessions were over. My friend described the “after-therapy” feeling to a T. He said, “It’s the feeling that you get after you have been to the gym or after you just spent all day working hard. You are exhausted, sore, and at the end of your strength, but there is a little voice inside you saying “Hooray, I did it!”"

Continue reading “Therapy Series Part 3: What to do After Each Therapy Session” »

In Article 1 of this series, Choosing a Therapist, we talked about how to find and choose a therapist. In this segment, I will talk about making your first therapy appointment, how to prepare, and what to expect when you get there. Finally, I will talk about the evolution and growth of the relationship between you and your therapist.

Continue reading “Therapy Series Part 2: Your First Therapy Appointment” »

In Part 1 of this article, I talked about using the Square Breathing technique to manage a panic attack. In this article, I will talk about a second technique, Grounding.

What is Grounding?

I learned how to use grounding (also sometimes called “situational awareness”) back when I was suffering from PTSD and I was getting flashbacks. By using grounding techniques, I was able to control my flashbacks and get myself calmed down. Later on, I also found that grounding worked for panic attacks. It’s a good skill to have.

The idea behind grounding is that it helps you manage your panic attacks or flashbacks by teaching you to concentrate on the “real” world around you, instead of the false fears and images that your brain is creating. It takes some practice, but it is a very useful trick to know, especially when a flashback or panic attack catches you off guard. (which, for me, was “always”)

Continue reading “How To Survive a Panic Attack Part 2” »

Panic attacks suck.

I can remember my worst one like it was yesterday. A friend of ours had given us a pet snake as a gift (long story), and one day, the snake somehow got out of his cage.

And disappeared.

We started looking for him, but we couldn’t find him anywhere and I began to panic. Thoughts were rushing through my head; “What if he got into the ductwork?” (we lived in a condo at the time), “what if he dies somewhere where we can’t reach him?” I completely lost it. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was pounding and I got dizzy. All I could think about was all the horrible things that could happen if we couldn’t find that snake.

Continue reading “How To Survive a Panic Attack Part 1” »