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” »

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” »