There’s something enjoyable about hearing what your old friends are up to. One of my old therapist friends is doing a workshop on ‘PTSD and Hurricane Harvey’.
On hearing about his workshop, I thought to myself “It’s about that time“. My friend knows about anniversary reactions and how they remind you what happened.
He knows that every year about the time that life impacting events occur, people struggle with anniversary reactions.
I had already felt some of those reactions creeping up on me. Although I live a couple hundred miles from the Texas coast, the county I live in was under a hurricane watch for Hurricane Harvey due to its size and intensity.
Just hearing the name of the storm triggers memories and emotional reactions inside of me. Hearing the warnings of Hurricane Florence brings those memories back.
Having lost a home to hurricane Ike and being part of the massive evacuation during Hurricane Rita, the storms bring back memories.
Like clockwork, those reactions return in your life, reminding you of what you’ve been through. Some are body memories and others are memories in your head.
There are times you may feel as if you’re reliving the nightmare you endured. When that happens your whole body re-experiences the fears, worries and pains.
I find myself recalling details such as the smells, and the feeling in that air that comes with those storms.
Having grown up on the gulf coast and survived several hurricanes, I know what those anniversary reactions are like. Whether it be storms, deaths or disasters, when the anniversary comes, it’s like you receive a personalized greeting card sent out by the life changing event.
Although you can’t change the anniversaries of unpleasant events, you can change your reaction to them. You can change how your brain and body react to those events.
Just because the bad thing happened doesn’t mean you have to stay under its power for years. You don’t have to live with the dread of anniversary reactions for the rest of your life. There are things you can do that remove the dread from your life.
Some of the things you can do are contained in the special September report for members of the Restored Lifestyle site entitled “Using Brain Hacks for Healing”. In it you’ll find ways of changing your patterns in your brain that make anniversary reactions worse than they have to be.
The report goes out the 15th, so you still have time to join and start making changes in how your brain reacts to the affair and its reminders.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
