Life Beyond PTSD

Here is a story (5-minute video) of a woman who suffered with PTSD for over 20 years before coming across the 3 Principles. Despite years of conventional therapy, once she opened her mind to the 3 Principles, all of her fears drifted away.

PTSD to Confidence and Calm with The 3 Principles Understanding Mary Schiller tells her personal story of 7 years in a very abusive marriage resulting in a diagnosis of PTSD in her late 20s. Despite spending years in ther...

Beyond PTSD - Part 2: The Great Misunderstanding
By Rolf Evenson June 2018

Before I came across the work of Sydney Banks, I believed the following three things to be true about my PTSD:
That my PTSD symptoms were caused by a traumatic event that happened in the past.
That the traumatic experience had left me broken, and that I might never fully recover.
That changing a person’s psychology is complex and difficult at best, often requiring a great deal of patience, time and effort.

Belief #1: My PTSD symptoms were caused by trauma that occured in the past.
Here’s what made sense to me back then.

I had suffered a serious traumatic event at a young age. Somehow that traumatic experience had taken root in my psyche. And given the mind-body connection, it had also taken up residence in my body as well in some mysterious way.

Sometimes I thought of it as something broken in me. Sometimes I thought of it as a monster lying dormant. Either way, something was definitely wrong with me.

The sound of a train a whistle would awaken the monster of my brokenness, and my mind/body would be off to the races reliving the horror in vivid three-dimensional color.

When I heard a train engine whistle, or encountered a train at a railroad crossing, I assumed that whatever symptoms of anxiety I experienced were generated, at least indirectly, by the trauma that had occured years earlier.

In other words, I believed that there was a logical cause and effect relationship between what had happened to me at age six and the feelings of anxiety I was having in my twenties and thirties.

It’s not hard to see the logic of this line of thinking.

Something bad happens to you.

Then you suffer the traumatic effects of what happened (nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety attacks, depression, etc.)

You must have some condition right? And if the symptoms are still plaguing you years later, you must still have that condition.

Then somewhere along the way, you realize that LOTS of people have traumatic experiences, but they seem to get over them at some point. The fact that you are STILL suffering symptoms is clear proof that something is wrong with you.

You can’t help but think, “I’m clearly broken! Somehow the trauma damaged me more than most people. The evidence proves it!”

And all the experts seem to agree.

So you believe that you ARE damaged goods.

Joseph Bailey was a the first person to tell me this was not true.

He told me about the work of a man named Sydney Banks. Joe told me that my beliefs about my PTSD and the beliefs of all the professionals that had in good faith tried to help me were based on a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding of how the mind actually works.

Essentially it’s a misunderstanding about where our human experience comes from.

Most of the world believes our feelings are caused by external circumstances, events and the people around us.

In this understanding life happens to us and then we feel what just happened.

Our boss yells at us and we react.

We see a beautiful child come into the world and we feel love and infinite possibility.

We are late for a meeting and we feel guilty.

This is an outside-in understanding. Stuff happens around us and that stuff explains how and why we feel what we feel.

We are literally feeling the people, circumstances and events (or trauma) happening to us.

At first glance, this seems perfectly logical. And mass popular opinion worldwide would agree.

However, this logic starts to fall apart when we look a little closer.

If there was a cause-and-effect relationship between what happens to us and our psychological experience, anyone going through the same circumstances would have the same experience.

But we know this isn’t true.

Take, for example, 10 people caught in a huge traffic jam on their way home from work. They are all caught in the same traffic jamb, right? They should all be having the same experience.

But check this out…

One person notices the traffic and decides to take it as an opportunity for listening to some music so they can relax on the way home. They smile when they think about how much more present they’ll be with their kids after this unexpected opportunity to ‘chill’. They feel thankful and blessed.

The person in the next car is moderately upset, but decides to make the best of it by listening to a work-related podcast. They feel agitated but relieved that at least they won’t be wasting their time.

A few cars back a woman is losing it. Why now? Why me, she thinks. This is the last thing I needed right now! She feels angry thinking about the personal time she is giving up for a stupid traffic jam.

The last example is a young man who isn’t losing it. He’s already lost it. He’s screaming at the cars around him, desperate to move up a spot or two in the endless line of traffic. He feels rage at the unfairness of it all and the stupidity of all the people around him.

Four people caught in the same traffic jam. Four very different experiences.

Clearly their experiences are NOT coming from the circumstances - in this case the traffic jam.

In his book, The Missing Link, Sydney Banks points out that the missing link in our logic is thought.

The reason the four people stuck in the same traffic jam are having completely different experiences is because their experiences are not coming from the situation, they are coming from what they are thinking in the moment.

It turns out that we don’t feel our circumstances. We feel our thinking. Period.

As I was trying to get my head around this, Joe Bailey asked me an interesting question.

“So you believe there’s a cause and effect relationship between the train crash and the anxiety you feel at train crossing today, right?” Joe asked.

“Yes, that’s right.” I answered.

“So, if that’s true then you should always experience anxiety whenever you are in that situation, right?”

“Yea, that makes sense,” I said.

“Can you think of a time when this wasn’t the case,” he asked?

I thought about it and then remembered something that hadn’t previously occurred to me.

“Yes, actually, now I remember a situation that happened just last week. I was sitting in my car first in line at railroad crossing and I felt no reaction at all!”

“Really,” Joe said. “What was going on?”

“Well, I was having a wonderful conversation with a beautiful woman. Someone I was attracted to. All I was thinking about was her.”

Smiling, Joe asked, “And what were you feeling?”

“Nothing but the joy of being with this new friend,” I said.

“And what was going on outside the car?” Joe asked.

Smiling with my own realization, I said, “The crossing lights were flashing and the train, with air horn blaring, was roaring by some 30 feet away.”

And then it hit me. I had a life-changing insight.

If I wasn’t thinking about the trauma, my PTSD literally didn’t exist because I wasn’t creating.

It didn’t exist unless I brought it life by thinking about it.

Whatever I was experiencing at any given railroad crossing, was NOT coming from the past, traumatic or otherwise. It was being created fresh in that moment from my thinking in that moment.

Sydney Banks was right. Thought IS the missing link.

Human feeling and experience is NOT created from the outside-in. In fact, it’s created from the inside-out via thought in the moment.

Life doesn’t happen to us. It happens through us.

Belief #2: Something in me was broken
When we have a powerful insight that changes how we see the world, the insight often carries with it powerful implications.

When I realized where my experience was coming from, when I realized that I no longer had to be a victim of something that happened years earlier, I also realized something equally profound.

I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t damaged goods.

I thought back to when I was sitting in the car with my new friend, the train roaring by a few feet away, I was not having to work at being with her. I wasn’t having to work at enjoying myself.

I wasn’t having to work at anything.

Because I wasn’t thinking about painful memories, or about how screwed up or broken I was, all I was experiencing was her.

And the joy of being me with her.

In that moment, there was nothing to work on, nothing to fix, nothing to overcome.

I realized that Sydney Banks was right. The ONLY thing that could separate me from my own natural wellbeing and happiness was my personal thinking.

Once that dropped away, what was left was the real me.

Wholehearted, healthy, happy, confident and capable of love and connection.

Me, unbroken.

I was not damaged goods. And I was not the victim of painful circumstances. I was finally free to change. To create something new.

Free to build a wonderful life.

To find out how, please read Beyond PTSD - Part 3: Freedom is Possible

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If you're ready to discover a revolutionary approach for moving beyond PTSD so you can stop 'managing symptoms' and start living free again, go to http://www.rolfevenson.com

Most of who have struggled with PTSD have wondered, 'What's wrong with me?" If this is you, I encourage you to read this article for a completely new take!

What's Wrong With Me - Judy Sedgman - 3PGC Blog What's Wrong With Me? - Judy Sedgman