Follow up...PTSD and Essential Oils

A little while ago I shared how I have been dealing with my PTSD and how I've grown through struggling with it. What I would like to share is how I have found a great way to help manage those days where it seems super overwhelming. 

In case you didn't get to read the blog where I talked about what struggles I have due to PTSD, here's a recap:

1) I deal with depression.

2) I have nightmares at night more often than I'd like. 

3) A recent development, I have panic attacks occasionally. 

Combine all these together and it makes some days seem insurmountable and demotivates me from getting off the couch in front of Dr. Who on Netflix. Thankfully, I have the mental strength to not stay there but...as promised!...I have found something that really helps me deal with these issues. It's essential oils!

Now, when I say that, most people switch off because they think I'm just trying to advertise and build a buisness. Well, the small little lawyer in me (albeit, she's very, very small) wants you to know I don't share this just to advertise essential oils. Yes, I am a rep and very happy about it. But I'm already building a small business with my husband (LoveLifeDesignCo on Etsy...go check it out!) and I don't need to start another one right now. But I'm sharing this because it really has worked for me. Since I got a ton of response from the last post on PTSD, I really wanted to share a solution that I feel could help a ton of people. 

I'm also not advocating essential oils as cures or substitutes for counselors or doctors.  

Now that we got motives and legal-eze out of the way...essential oils have really helped me and here's what works...

Valor II: This is my #1 go to oil when dealing with PTSD. I put it on my wrists and on the back of my neck and the smell alone helps me start feeling normal again. It's a great blend of several things including Idaho Blue Spruce, Ylang Ylang, Frankensence and German Chamomile. When I diffuse it at night with Cedarwood and Lavender it helps me fall asleep faster and more often than not, I don't have nightmares. On weeks where I'm having consecutive bad nights of sleep, I put it on the bottom of my feet and it does helps me sleep really well.

Cedarwood: Many times I sit in bed struggling to fall asleep. Diffusing this helps me fall asleep and sleep without nightmares. 

Lavender: We joke at our house that this is a cure all oil, but diffusing this or applying it topically helps me calm down when I get tense or fearful. It's much cheaper than Valor so I use it on days where I'm not full blown crazy. 😉

Orange and Frankensense: I love to diffuse a couple drops each of these oils when I'm working during the day. It helps me feel happy and excited about work and I find when I'm already diffusing this, it helps stave off any negative emotions or tension and then I don't have to go to any of the other oils. Days where I don't have to deal with PTSD are the best!

So, like I mentioned, I am a rep and if you wanted a blend like Valor II you would have to buy it through a rep. But for the rest of them, you can find essential oils at your local health store. They aren't as pure so they aren't as strong and you have to use more to get the same effect. So make sure you do your cost analysis there. 

I hope this helps many of you who are dealing with PTSD. On top of everything else in life it's a huge burden to deal with on some days. I hope you can find some relief in oils like I have!

Living with PTSD

Many times on this blog, I've mentioned one of two things: my struggle with my depression and my PTSD. I am not a war vet, so many people don't even know I have it. Plus, I would never compare myself to any of them when it comes to bravery and honor. These people make life altering decisions to protect my freedom. No, my PTSD came from what happened to me at 15. I, along with my family, were victims of a home invasion. And it has fundamentally changed my life.

Initially, I wanted to just forget that it happened. As a teenager, I didn't want to go to a counselor or admit that anything was wrong. I wanted to be normal. I remember I missed that morning at school after being up until 2:00 AM with police as they investigated my house. When I arrived at lunch time, all my friends were asking where I had been. Many reacted with total shock when they heard and treated me weird afterwards. I had flashbacks walking down the stairs from classes, in the halls. I constantly felt paranoid and couldn't calm myself. I didn't understand why it happened or why I couldn't just shake it off. I remember wondering if there was ever going to be a day where I didn't think about it. If these men had stolen my ability to think about anything else. 

Thankfully high school kept me stressed out enough I could focus all my energy on that rather than why I couldn't get past my brush with death. Unfortunately, that caused my college years to be chaotic. Emotions always ran high. I frequently had insomnia or just always wanted to sleep. I would shut down if something became too overwhelming and many times, I barely had the motivation to continue with my studies. Living with my best friends helped immensely. Meeting Jared got me through many of my rough patches, especially when I went to live on my own at the end of my schooling. But I couldn't deny my bouts of depression, frequent nightmares and outbursts of anger any longer. I struggled with God, wondering why I couldn't overcome my issues. I experienced his deep love at the bottom of my pit my junior year of college. But it wasn't until graduation and getting married that I realized my issues were much deeper and I really needed help. 

Thankfully, when I moved to Dallas I was referred to a really great counselor. At the beginning, I was really frustrated because I was diagnosed with PTSD. I resented feeling labeled. Yet, as I met with her and she explained some of the symptoms and ways to manage them, I realized it wasn't a label, it was a method of getting better. My nightmares were normal. My insomnia, flashbacks, anger, paranoia, all were explained and methods to deal with them were then introduced to me. I had an unrealistic expectation that I could "cure myself" where I never had to deal with it again. But God actually used my work with trafficking survivors to help me see that I was going to have good and bad days. That the symptoms would diminish, but not necessarily always go away forever. I would ask God why he wouldn't just take it away. But I realize he has taken something terrible that has happened to me and made it a way to remind me to always trust in God. Paul mentioned he had a thorn in his side that God never took away. Mine seems to be PTSD. 

So what does it look like to live with PTSD? For starters, you have to realize that your brain has been structurally transformed due to the prolonged stress. Fight or flight responses are great for survival. However, if constantly turned on, they actually form additional channels of neurons to help deal with the stress. Post-trauma, if any of these neurons fire due to just a little amount of stress, it can trigger the same emotions that you felt when the trauma was occurring. Some of these things can be big. A kid pointed a stick at me while I was jogging in the park the other day. He was playing pretend and was an army dude "protecting the bridge." The kid didn't know doing that was going to cause me to have a flash back. But I did. Thankfully, I knew how to deal with it using a grounding technique my counselor taught me. A mile down the trail. I was feeling shaken, but relatively confident no one was pointing a gun at me.

Yet, small things can do it too. Just the other day, Jared and I were geocaching. We couldn't find the darn thing. We were bushwacking and getting frustrated and I got so overwhelmed I began to cry. Obvious to any other person, a geocache isn't worth crying for. But the constant weaving in and out of bushes and getting poked by thorns set me off where I just broke. But, thankfully, I knew it was normal for someone with my brain to get upset by that. I reassured myself that we weren't in any real danger. Then two minutes later, I was fine. Plus we found the geocache haha. So, it's just a good thing for others to know, I might get overwhelmed for a couple of minutes, and I just need to cry it out sometimes. My brain is bringing all the emotions of my past and crashing them into my present. It takes me a bit to regain control, but I'm learning how to do it better and better these days.

Secondly, for me, I need to feel accepted by those that I love. It's hard to let your guard down and be vulnerable to a person when you have been assaulted. I tell Jared all the time to show me he loves me. I desire recent evidence to allow me to feel safe in our marriage, that I am accepted with my crazy brain and all. I know he's not perfect and thankfully, forgiveness runs rampant in our household, because we both need it. But when he does show me how much he loves me, it helps me immensely to be able to feel secure. Husbands and wives...show your spouse you love them. They often feel like weirdos and outcasts even without PTSD. Showing them they are VALUED helps the healing go a long way. 

And thirdly, know that because of what has happened to me, God has implanted a deep empathy in my heart for those that go through traumatic experiences. Dr. Tomi Grover said it best that God uses the gloriously ruined to rescue those whom God wants to gloriously rescue. I understand on a deep level the shame and insecurities that come with constantly battling the past and trying to not let it affect your future. He has given me a deep love for people. That love has since transcended into my calling. 

While everyone is different in how they deal with it, I hope me being raw and real helps you, the reader, understand a little bit more about how complex stress and emotions can become when living with PTSD. Sometimes, I don't know how to explain myself and my crazy habits sometimes. Lord bless Jared when he married me! Yet, honestly, if I could go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't change anything. While I know I might not ever be "cured," I also know that living with PTSD causes me to rely on God more than ever and to reach out to people who need him all the more. And I can say I am truly thankful for that. 

Love Wins: Part 2

Almost a year and a half ago, I wrote this blog post called Love Wins. I was going through a very tough summer in my personal life where I moved, changed jobs, and attended more funerals that I wanted. It was a season in my life where pretty much everything that I was looking forward to either marred or didn't happen due to unforeseen circumstances.

Even though I ended that blog post with faith knowing that God would come through for us, the following year has been rough as well. Due to all the ups and downs of the year, I have been struggling with the depression the whole way. The ups were fantastic with wonderful family vacations and little victories. However, the downs seemed to plague us. Jared and I never seemed to get time together. When we did, I had something at work come up that he had to come help me with if he wanted to see me. I had a period in the fall where I was having nightmares pretty much every night and caused me to have low sleep and a higher sensitivity to stress. Christmas was brutal for me at church. So when January came around me and God has a serious amount of time to discuss and talk about what had been going on and how I was going to process through it all.

It seemed really scary to me when God called me to do Redeemed full time. It was one of those things where I was going to have to step out on faith again, and hope that everything would be alright. However, after the beating my hopes had taken last year, I was really second-guessing every decision I was making. But, I knew the end of the story. I know that love wins. And so, in obedience, I stepped out in faith again and God has seriously opened the floodgates of favor and provision.

Ever since stepping out in obedience, God has just shown me over and over that he has my back. While little things may come up that I begin to fret over, I just remind myself that God has this under control and he comes through every time. When all my donor checks got lost in the mail, God provided. When my dog has gotten a serious infection, God provided a cure and the funds to pay for it. When Jared is home, I actually get to see him. When I prayed for volunteers to come fill the positions I needed, he brought them out in droves. For the first time in a while, I feel like I now have the tangible evidence that I can point to that didn't happen years ago whenever things get hairy or scary. While I still have my PTSD moments and we still have to deal with the things life throws at us, we have a summer ahead of us full of exciting things for Redeemed, time with family and friends, travel, weddings and just an overall celebration of life. Things are finally looking up.

So to you who may be going through where I was a year and a half ago, I would encourage you standing this far down the road of the race that it does get better. Don't ever lose faith in God. Because...

"We have seasons where things seem dark and dry. We don’t feel God close to us. We feel isolated from those around us as we think, “Who could possibly understand what we are going through?” We are tempted to give up, because we wonder who cares about our seemingly wasted efforts to bring life and love into such a broken world. 

But we must remember that just because we can’t feel God close doesn’t mean he’s not there. Just because things are dark doesn’t mean they will be dark forever. You are not alone! God is with you and has placed people around you to go through this season with you. Our efforts are not wasted. They are seeds to bring glory to God in the perfect moment. Hold onto that as you go through whatever you have going on right now. You are loved by the one who created love.

And I read the end of the book. Love wins!"

New Directions

Gorgeous sunshine at the park!

Hi everyone! Last post I was pretty down. Struggling with post marathon blues and the eternal winter going on. But recently, the sun has come out! The air is warmer and as I've been getting my usual doses of Vitamin D now, my mood has warmed up considerably as well! There is nothing like the hope of spring and great weather to lift anyone's spirits!

What has also helped, is that I am also realizing where and what I am supposed to be doing next. The last two years have been marked by my steady pursuit of my first marathon. From not being able to run for more than 30 seconds, I conquered health problems and mental blocks to overcome my fear of pain from running. In the meantime, I overcame many other fears, literally anything from guns to gardening. So as I am sitting here post marathon, I don't think I'm done overcoming fears yet. However, a new idea has been forming in my head, and let's just say I have a ton of growing up to do.

Ever since I can remember, I haven't given a whole ton of thought to other people's perception of me. All I knew, was I wanted to be different from everyone else. I recognized a culture deficit going on and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I liked doing my own thing, regardless of what people thought of me.

Now that I'm older and I have great people speaking into my life, I'm recognizing that sometimes, this desire to be different comes off different than I intend. People have said to me that sometimes I seem stand-off-ish, and until they got to know me, they thought I didn't like them. While I brushed off these comments a few years ago, they are coming back up in my head.

I've always said that I'm basically 8 years old at heart (Jared is 5 haha). I say that because I remember that age where everything seemed wonderful and enjoyable and new, and I want that spirit to be with me as an adult. But I recently heard someone say that you need to be 2/3 adult and 1/3 kid, and you have to be careful not to flip it around. So I'm realizing, that my 8 year old self that just wants to be different and satisfy my craving to explore the world is getting in the way of my authentic relationships. And while I won't get to know everyone that I meet "deeply," I never want them to look at me and say, "She doesn't like me." The old me would say, "Well, they should just stick around and find out the truth." But the newer, questioning me says, "But why would they if someone else seems so much more inviting?"

So to sum up what I've been learning, is that maturity is knowing the fine line of being aware of how people perceive you, without letting everyone's opinions determine your personality. If I look at someone and judge whether or not I want to try to be friends with them, I would be naive to think that they don't do the same to me. The truth is, I love making new friends. But the other truth is, I tend to not show that on the outside. The truth is, I want people to know Jesus. But how can they get to know that if I seem selfish or self absorbed?

So I'm going to work on maturing myself, making sure the way people perceive me matches what is actually going on inside. I have no idea how to do this yet, but thank goodness I have a ton of training miles to sort it all out!

Post Marathon Life

So a few days ago, I talked about my marathon experience briefly. I loved the vacation and the time with my family. I was certainly not ready to come back! But while I think there are a ton of people who like to add their two cents about the marathon weekend, like if it was run smoothly or as spectacular as last year or if they had any corral issues, there are not a ton of people that talk about the days after the marathon. People don't talk about the "Post Marathon Blues." Which, I have experienced, full force.

I had heard it was common to have some post marathon blues. Any time you have a big anticipated event, there's some sadness when it's over. But for me, it was a marked difference pre-marathon and post marathon. Coming back to work was difficult. No one seemed to notice that something big had just happened in my life (that acknowledgment wouldn't come for a few days). My sleep schedule was all crazy (and still is. I haven't gotten back to my sleep schedule and it's been a month!). I didn't have any big things to look to anymore. Combine that with the cold, cold winter and dreary weather it was a recipe for disaster.

The best way I can describe what I've been feeling was this undercurrent of sadness in my chest that seemed to be always present. It is like a river, always flowing. I tried to keep busy by working on some projects or hanging out with friends. This would help keep my mind off of it and the river "small." But any time I didn't have something to distract me, this undercurrent of sadness blossomed into a gigantic river, overflowing the banks and overcoming my feelings. Worse, I couldn't run to cope since I was letting my marathon injuries rest.

I don't think I've beat it yet. But I'm getting better. My best friend and I got a chance to talk as she deals with the same thing. And what I've come up with is that what I learned to get me through the marathon is what I can use to get past the marathon blues! When you get to that point in the race where your body just gives out and you are running on fumes, you have to fight to keep going. Things that used to keep you going in training may or may not work. You have to dig deep inside to keep up the will to keep going.

I've gotten to the point where things I used to enjoy weren't fun anymore. Things that kept me motivated didn't exist anymore and clinically, that's depression. What I've had to do is realize that things that are important haven't changed. Spending time with family. My work. My friends. And most importantly, my relationship with Christ. Sometimes, the good and pleasant feelings come naturally when we think about the things we love. And sometimes, we have to fight for those feelings to come, especially when negativity seems to be coursing through your soul.

I've had to fight for my feelings post marathon. I've had to be dedicated to my Bible studies. I had to choose to believe the best in people and situations when I felt the worst. And more importantly, I had to give myself permission to be ok with not being ok. It's a bit like paddling upstream with only your hands. Many times I wonder why God is allowing this to happen. And yet slowly and inexplicably God is starting to bless my efforts and my prayers and turn the river in my favor, where I'm now gaining speed and going towards where I want to be faster and faster.

As I've been consistently choosing to do all these things (and setting up my new race schedule) I'm starting to get back to what I call "normal me." The negativity is ebbing away and I'm starting to laugh more often, smile more and feel so much happier. To anyone who might deal with the same thing, I'd say a couple of things.

1) Keep doing what you know is right. Choose to be kind. Choose to love others no matter what you feel. Choose to love God even if he seems far away. Choose to be ok with the season you are in no matter how un-content you feel. Dig deep. Yes, if feels futile against the current you are in. But then:

2) Pray for God to change the current. Pray that he bless your efforts to enjoy what you have been given and allow you to see the fruit of what you have been faithful with.

I'll let you know how things are going on my side soon!