Anxiety and PTSD

Emotions related to PTSD have a weight, an edge, that is primal.  It is primal because the response is triggered by the lymbic system.  It is pre-thought, automatic, and intended to save the cave person from having to remember the appropriate response.  I learned this week that much of my anxiety has this edge.    I can't stop worrying because PTSD is piping the tune.

This is a valuable bit of information because it means that I can do the same back-tracking and unraveling that Babett Rothschild spoke of in her "8 Keys to Save Trauma Recovery" (go to Amazon, "Look Inside" and search for backtracking and see the list of things you can do on page 68).

It turns out that the two PTSD roots of my anxiety are persecution and betrayal.  I still have to find exactly where in the PTSD wagon train those came in so I can begin the backtracking but at least I know what I'm looking for.

One less brick on my heart.


UPDATE: When caught in PTSD anxiety, it is hard to escape.  I had heard of tapping and decided to explore it at tapping.com when I found myself triggered about something I had done and excessively worrying about the fallout from what I had done.  It helped.  There are a series of videos that guide you through how to do it.  I'm a bit dubious about the cure-all attitude but it did help me with anxiety overwhelm, enabling me to get to sleep and that situation lost some of its edge.