When it comes to what it takes to heal PTSD, forgiveness is a topic that requires a lot of thought. On the surface, it’s easy to believe that when we forgive we condone (of course, that’s not the case!). Even if, intellectually, we know that forgiving does not excuse, it can feel that way and so we shy away from the forgiveness process.

PTSD research can be seriously misunderstood, or even incomprehensible (yes! it's true!). Yet there are some simple tactics one can use to avoid this: know what "controlled research" is trying to do; be aware of the necessarily distorted view such research tends to offer us; know the single most important statistic you need in such research to make sense of things; know the kind of research we really need (so you can recognize it when you see it); know the limitations of each of the two sorts of language research uses; and, finally, appreciate the difference between belief and knowledge.

Finding the right help in overcoming PTSD can be challenging. From a financial aspect it can consume your savings. I actually had to turn to family to help me shoulder the cost of years of treatment. But what if you don’t have the financial resources for a full-on approach? Or, what if you do and still find it tough to get through the days between sessions?

No matter who you are, healing PTSD can be difficult. While we can pump ourselves up (and get friends and family to give us pep talks) sometimes in those moments you're all alone you just need a go-to list of places to give yourself an infusion of calm, hope, inspiration, motivation and even, a little bit of love. In everything I've written about here over the past year, I've never done a post that gives you a list of resources, so this will be the first one!

My client, Selena, was raped at knifepoint in Los Angeles at the age of the twenty-three. “I stayed quiet,” she recalls. “I did what he said. I didn’t struggle; I didn’t scream. I think it’s because I did those things that I’m still alive.” While, rationally, Selena can imagine that giving up her response kept her safe, she’s plagued now by a persistent doubt in her ability to keep herself safe. “Faced with any kind of threat in the future,” she tearfully explains, “I can’t trust myself to protect me.”

Back in 2009, I went to the annual trauma conference in Boston hosted by Bessel van der Kolk. It was a fantastic conference with a slew of professionals presenting on various aspects of and treatments for PTSD. One of the stars of the conference was Neurofeedback (NFB), a process that I didn't know very much about. Many of the presenters shared facts, statistics and applications for NFB and spoke about how effective it was in helping to reduce symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Do you know what NFB is and how it works? Here's a quick overview...

Right off the bat I'll say this: It's incredibly important in treating posttraumatic stress to have a completely strategized mind/body approach. In order to really heal both aspects of who you are need time, attention, focus and respect. And yet, there's also great value in separating them out.

Last week, one of the Heal My PTSD support group members heaved a big sigh and asked, “Is it normal to fluctuate between seeing progress and going back to square one? Is that part of PTSD recovery?”

If you've ever been depressed, anxious or angry you know how emotions can impact your appetite. Any one of those experiences can make you eat more or less depending on the day and the intensity of what you're feeling. And then what happens? If you skip some meals or binge on junk food, do you feel better or worse?

For the past few years there's been a lot of talk about how the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), the Bible of mental health diagnoses, would be changing the criteria for PTSD. Well, on May 27th the new DSM-V was released and now we know what the changes are!