Psychology and Spirituality
Two other very helpful points that Dr. Levine underscores about PTS-I are as follows. Number one: when you as a sufferer feel a marked degree of agitation in your body–especially along the lines of severe anxiety if not outright panic–instead of judging it as a sign of (again) “something still wrong” with you, practice telling yourself it’s simply your circumstantially normal biophysiology, all churned up again, a la (in essence) “been there, done that, survived that!” Which is exactly what you must expect can happen–distressingly, but again normally–when your anxiety or panic suddenly kicks in.
Then, once you “normalize” your agitation and stop judging yourself for having it (even transforming it into toxic shame for having it, for goodness sakes), you might become more capable with practice of shifting right into doing something to try to reduce its intensity, be it, e.g., meditating (religiously or spiritually), exercising, calling someone you trust, or journaling. And Number two: Dr. Levine emphasizes–again, with much compassion–that an important ingredient in dealing with and healing from the ongoing injuries of PTS-I is to cultivate strategies for self-comforting (also can be referred to as self-nurturing). A whole section on self-comforting comes later.
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