Mind-Body Workbook for PTSD (7 page)

Today, start using your mind-body bridging practices in your daily life.

1. What happened?
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

2. What requirements did you recognize?
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

3. How did mind-body bridging practices help?
   

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

MBB Weekly Evaluation Scale Improve Everyday Life by Melting Away Your Tension

Date: __________

During the past week, how did you do with these practices? Check the description that best matches your practice: hardly ever, occasionally, usually, or almost always.

1. How do things look when your I-System is overactive?
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

2. How do things look when you are bridging and your I-System is at rest?
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

3. What’s the most important benefit of doing mind-body bridging maps?
   

   ______________________________
   

   ______________________________
   

3.
Break the Tyranny of Negative Thoughts

PTSD is full of recurring, disturbing, and intrusive thoughts, many of which become negative
self-beliefs
, beliefs you have about yourself. Did you know that from the neuroscience viewpoint, a thought is just a secretion, a droplet of a chemical where two brain cells connect (synapse)? Did you know that psychologists and others studying the mind sometimes call thoughts
mind
facts
? These mind facts are organized, stored, and used as needed to fulfill adapt to any situation. The I-System captures certain thoughts and gets stuck on them. This keeps the I-System “on” and the true self “off.” Because the true self is in charge of healing, you can’t heal while this is happening, leaving you feeling discouraged and damaged. Mind-body bridging practices quiet the I-System, letting your ability to heal yourself resume on its own.

Now, what do we do about those recurring, disturbing, and intrusive negative thoughts? You already know that pushing them away only gives them more energy. For example, try not to think of a red balloon. What are you thinking of? A red balloon! Many books are available that support using positive affirmations to deal with negative thoughts. We have all tried to fix ourselves with positive affirmations, but when we stop, the negative thoughts come back with a vengeance. So the question remains: what do we do with the negative, troubling thoughts?

Let’s begin by looking at how the mind works. If we have the thought
high
, there must be a
low
; if we think
good
, there must be a
bad,
and the same follows for
happy
and
sad
,
sick
and
well
,and
young
and
old
. We see that the mind works with both positive and negative thoughts. The only time we will get rid of our negative thoughts is when we’re brain dead. This means that if you were in a terminal condition and your EEG suddenly flatlined, your physician might say to herself,
Wow! He finally got rid of his negative thoughts.
With this information, let’s see if we can find the right answer to our question.

Our naturally functioning true self creates harmony and balance with both sides of opposite thoughts. For instance, being sick and being well are both conditions of the mind-body. Your true self deals appropriately with each. But the I-System has a totally different approach. The I-System has a part (subsystem) called the
depressor
.The depressor works by taking your negative thoughts and self-talk (things you say to yourself), and creating body tension and mind clutter. It takes a negative thought like
I’m a loser
,
I can’t do it
,
I’ll never be the same
,
I’m no good
, or
I’m stained
,and weaves a story about that thought, embedding the negativity into every cell of your body. You are left seeing yourself as incomplete, damaged, or broken and you have a story to prove it! This state is known as the
damaged self
.

The original question,
What do I do about my negative thought?
now becomes
What do I do about my depressor?
That’s what this chapter is all about.

Day One     Date:____________

The depressor is the doom and gloom of your I-System, using negative self-talk to reinforce the damaged self. Today you’ll begin to recognize your negative self-talk.

1. Throughout the day, notice and log your negative self-talk. Note the nature (such as sharp, cramping, painful, heavy, or tense), location, and intensity of any body tension that comes with it.

2. Do a Depressor map. Around the following oval, scatter your negative self-talk and any thoughts you have when you’re bummed out. (See the sample map on the next page.) Write as much as you can for a couple of minutes. List your body tensions at the bottom of the map.

Body Tension:

______________________________

______________________________

What’s your behavior like when your depressor is active?

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

The thoughts on your map are natural thoughts that happen to be negative. The depressor works by grabbing a negative thought and embedding the negativity in your body. The resulting distress you feel starts the vicious cycle as more negative thoughts follow. This creates a heavy burden that affects how you live your life. Seeing how the depressor works breaks this vicious cycle.

Sample Depressor Map

Body Tension:

“clenched jaw, tight shoulders, rumbling stomach, painful neck, heavy body”

3. Let’s see how your depressor works. From the map you made in step 2, take the thought that creates a lot of body tension and disturbs you the most (for example,
My life is useless
or
I can’t do anything right
), and write it in the following oval. Now, scatter around the oval any thoughts that come to mind. Use phrases or complete sentences like
I can’t keep a job
or
I was fine before.
List your body tensions at the bottom of the map.

Troubling thought from my depressor map

Body Tension:

______________________________

______________________________

The map you just did holds the key to controlling your depressor. All the thoughts on your map are spun into stories (true or not) by your I-System. Just think about the stories that come to mind about your negative thoughts. These are called
storylines.
It’s very important to recognize and become aware of their power. Storylines are the link between any negative thought that pops into your mind and the mind-body distress you experienced on the last two maps. The I-System’s spinning storyline takes a natural negative thought and embeds the negativity into every cell of your body, thereby making a mind-body connection. Storylines keep the I-System going, taking you away from the present moment and keeping you from living your life at its best. Without the depressor’s storylines, negative thoughts can not cause any distress.

Frank lost his left leg in Iraq. He has a relatively well-functioning prosthesis. Often when he woke up in the morning, he thought,
I’m an amputee
, and then wove negative stories about what he couldn’t do, his discomfort, the problem, and so on. By the time he got up to go to the bathroom, his mind and body were already distressed. He blamed his distress on his combat injury and created more storylines about being unable to live his life as he had before the war. Several weeks after starting a mind-body bridging group, he reported, “I sometimes still wake up with the thought
I’m an amputee
, but now I say to myself,
I am having the thought “I’m an amputee,” so what else is new?
I then make my way to the bathroom, and if I start to weave a storyline, I just become aware of it while listening to the fan’s humming, feeling the pressure on my right foot, and sensing my body’s movement. By the time I get to the bathroom, I’m no longer filled with tension and resentment. I don’t even need to tell myself positive stories about how I’m a survivor. What I found for myself, by myself, was that it wasn’t my war trauma that disabled me in the morning; it was my storylines. My depressor used to make me feel damaged by filling my mind and body with negatives. Now even though I still have only one leg, I’m no longer damaged!”

Another powerful tool is
storyline awareness
. You don’t need to push the story away; you just need to be aware of it. Your awareness melts the storyline. Do this exercise: Start mulling over one of your most powerful storylines and try to keep it going. Now, be aware of the background sounds and observe how your storyline unfolds. Is it running out of gas? Do you see how powerful your awareness is? What do you notice?