Tuesday, July 23, 2013

PTG

  
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My husband called me last night.

He's away at an annual training for drug task forces.  He told me that Sunday night, he stayed up talking with some of his buddies that had come back from doing one or two or three tours overseas.
"I hate PTSD," one of them said, "I hate the way it's diagnosed and treated... to pull a guy away from his unit, isolate him and put him in therapy... it's awful.  It doesn't help.  But if you take the entire group and keep them together after they've gone through something traumatic, THAT is what's needed.  That's what works.  I don't want a disorder.  I want growth.  Post-Traumatic Growth."

When my husband said that, my chest lit on fire.

Despite the day I'd just had wrangling three kids by myself and downing brownies and movies in an attempt to regulate my hormones (I'm no doctor, but I swear it helps)... I felt something tick inside of me, something resonate, something say to my gut, "TRUTH."

Since doing Addorecovery, I've learned a lot about PTSD.  I found many women resonating with the trauma model MORE than the codependent model. 
But there was ONE THING I didn't like about it: the use of the word "disorder."  It made me feel like a Victim.  It made me feel helpless and tired.  It made my skin feel thin.  It opened the door for me to use excuses to not find my own healing. 
Replacing it with the word "growth" immediately conjures up strength, solutions, resiliency, progress...

I hopped online and found multiple articles about it HERE and HERE.
Read this... found on the above-linked wikipedia page:
 In contrast to resilience, hardiness, optimism, and a sense of coherence, post-traumatic growth refers to a change in people that goes beyond an ability to resist and not be damaged by highly stressful circumstances; it involves a movement beyond pre-trauma levels of adaptation.[1] It could be possible that people who are highest on these dimensions of coping ability will report relatively little growth.[1] That is because these people have coping strategies that will allow them to be less challenged by trauma, and the struggle with trauma may be crucial for post-traumatic growth.[1]

It makes me want to leap out of my hormone-induced couch coma.

Finding those articles and tapping into that healing, progressive way of thinking has really lit my fire this morning.  To find those articles and then find Jacy's latest post about her Togetherness Project?  
It's enough to make me pop out of my yoga pants and into my fancy jeans with blingy pockets and give today eternal purpose.

When we are untied, joined, and surrounded with support, trauma can be a great catalyst for healing and change.  Trauma can catapult us into a life we never dreamed of having.  It can take the slums out of us.  It can prove our inner strength, show us the sheer, radiant brightness of our inner light, strip off layers from our being that don't serve us anymore.
It can refine, empower, teach, humble, and strengthen us.

Together, in a group and as a system of sisters, we can grow.
We can hearken to the voice of President Uchtdorf and, "Lift Where You Stand"!  
Thee lift me, and I'll lift thee.  

I hope to see you at Jacy's Togetherness Conference... a place where growth is sure to be cultivated and harvested. 
I'll pack my blingy pocket pants.
 
 

3 comments:

  1. post traumatic growth...I love it!

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  2. I already told you this, but I cried reading this. This is exactly what I was hoping to say... this is exactly what the goal is.... and you have said it SO beautifully and eloquently.

    Thank you Alicia. Thank you.

    I cannot wait to meet you at the conference-- and maybe even sooner in Arizona?!


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  3. Still trying to figure out if I will go to this? Loved this post! And I relate more with the Trauma model, too! Thanks!

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