Hi I'm Anna Runkle also known as the crappy childhood fairy, and today I'm
going to talk about just a really good thing to know and that's how to have a
good day, even when you're not having a good day. When we had a crappy childhood
it's kind of easy to wake up sometimes in what Pete Walker calls an emotional
flashback, it can just be a bad mood or just feeling out of sorts or even to the
point that you don't feel like coordinated in your hands
and you know what we get depressed sometimes so here are just some simple
things to do to turn your day around and start making it a little better. The
first thing to do is to get up an hour earlier than you normally would, this is
a great way to reduce the stress that we often have in the morning of hurrying to
try to get out of the house wherever we're going or the total immobilization
when we don't have plans for the day it's just kind of lingering in bed so
get up an hour earlier then get up out of bed. Yeah you're gonna be tired, you're
gonna be tired at first but it's okay it's not an emergency.
Get some coffee if you need to and then get on to the second thing which is
to take a personal inventory and there's a whole video where I show you how to do
this but it's all about sitting down with a pen and paper and just beginning
to write down what the fears and resentments are that you have right now.
The fears and resentments are basically the hamster wheel and if you have
childhood PTSD it may be something that starts going pretty fast as soon as you
wake up and it may be troubling your sleep and it can really distort your
thinking, so that's what I do is the first thing every morning is sit down
with my coffee and I get my fears and resentments on paper and they are so
boring and repetitive and it doesn't matter, by writing them down and then
writing a little wish that they be removed I can get on with my day and
start having just emotional freedom and mental clarity that I need to start
having a better day than I did yesterday. The third thing is to meditate, I
meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, if you can even do five minutes it makes a
huge difference so you write the inventory, you follow it with meditation
and by meditation I don't necessarily mean anything difficult,
you don't have to sit a special way, you don't have to have an empty mind, a lot
of people I hear they beat themselves up and say "Oh I don't I can't really
meditate my mind is too active" that's right that's why we meditate is because
we have an active mind and you don't have to have that completely fixed so
that you can begin to meditate. Also writing the inventory and getting the
fears and resentments on paper will definitely reduce all the mental chatter
that you have that's making meditation difficult. It's great if you can get
trained to meditate but if you are not trained it's honestly so simple, you just
close your eyes sitting in a comfortable position and you can
give yourself a mantra, a little word that doesn't mean very much you can make
one up or you can use words like "this" or "release" or any word you want to just put
your focus on something and stop trying to resolve problems and work things out.
Now me, my meditations are horrible! Sometimes I'm thinking so much that I
forget that I'm meditating and I get up and I start doing something but you know
what the results are the same I still benefit from meditation even
when I think the whole time, I just put in the time to do it. The fourth thing
for having a better day is to go outside and exercise hard. Now there was a time
when I had acute PTSD, if you've read on the blog there was a time when I found
somebody dead I tried to give them CPR, I was stuck in PTSD and just like reliving
it emotionally for like a year and a half it was terrible. And when the doctor
said "Oh you know we're gonna have to start putting you on some hardcore
medications" I didn't want to do that and so I just went online I'm like what does
a person do if they are in this kind of overload, emotional overload all the time
and it just said like go exercise hard and it was so effective I just can't
even believe everybody isn't... that you don't always get told to do this so
exercising hard means it can be different depending on you know what
you're used to doing but you want to get your heart rate up for at least 20
minutes and in fact if you can take a brisk walk for an hour, you know
that's a good thing to do when you're in the middle of a life crisis let me tell
you but on a regular basis and you can just go get some brisk
walking done for 20 minutes if you already are a runner then you are I
don't even need to tell you this you're gonna feel a lot better when you go have
a run. There's no need to do anything that is physically dangerous for you
it's just to get that movement going, and the reason I say outside, is outside
where the Sun is on us or even if it's bad weather our brains like to know what
day it is, our brains like to know what season it is and it helps us kind of get
calibrated and feel just like normal in our bodies of being able to sleep
normally and feel hungry at the right time and it really helps depression
to just go out there and get the natural daylight going. Also if you're going to
walk or run it can be really nice to do it instead of on a treadmill but to
do it on a natural surface like up and down on the curbs on the sidewalk, on a
dirt road where there's slight unevenness, like our brains like that, our
brains like to sit there and figure that out. So much of what's going on with
childhood PTSD especially when we're struggling in our mood or the you know
just like having our head together, it is like we don't have our head together,
there's a dysregulation going on in the brain and so this is all about getting
your brain regulated again so that you can get unstuck and start moving forward
with constructive actions so that's one of the things I found helpful is the
hard exercise, also I really like classes like kickboxing or Zumba or something
where an instructor is calling stuff out like "To the right to the right to the
left to the left" anything where we're hearing and
responding with our bodies to the left and right cues accelerates your
recalibration and the re-regulation of your brain and brings you
out of that like dissociated PTSD state. Number six is have some coffee. Caffeine
is a pick-me-up, you don't want to have too much obviously but you know
more and more the research seems to show that it is okay to have some coffee and
if you're feeling low it's a great way to just kind of pick up your energy.
Personally I stop drinking coffee at 3:00 in the afternoon because after that
it'll start to keep me up at night. I love coffee, I'm addicted to it I'm not
worried about it, if I don't drink it I get a headache
but again I don't worry about it. Number seven is to eat some protein with every
meal. I'm gonna talk about weight loss and childhood PTSD pretty soon, I
had a really significant weight loss and I'm gonna show you how to do it too, but
overeating and obesity are very strongly connected to childhood PTSD. A lot of
breakfast foods like I don't know toast, donuts, cereal, that kind of thing,
it's pure carbs and carbs will kind of take your energy and lift them up and
then they'll make you tired and anything that's making your endocrine system
spike it can go down up down up down, it tends to be a little triggering for the
PTSD too. So a little quick piece of advice is make sure you're eating
protein with your meals even if you're eating it with carbs, so you might have
some eggs on toast, and it just helps to keep it a little more balanced and less
triggering for the childhood PTSD and it's just good for you, eating protein.
Then with childhood PTSD it's really easy to start the day with a sense of
overwhelm, a sense of overwhelm is a pretty familiar old friend for a lot of
us and so to start breaking that down and to start experiencing the happiness
of doing something useful every day, it's good to make a list and so every morning
I sit down and I make a list of things I'd like...the most important things
I'd like to get done that day. Now I know that there's a lot of stuff on my list
that I'm not going to get to but I go ahead and I list them, then I try to zero
in on what are the three most important things for me to get done that day.
Now those might be things I can get done today or not, so then I go in and I look
at the one most important thing that I get done today and I make that the top
priority and sometimes when I'm choosing what's gonna be the first thing I do, I
take the one that's hardest I just get the hardest thing out of the way so that
I can eliminate the sense of dread that comes with having a hard thing ahead of
me during the day maybe it's a I don't know a phone call I'm not looking
forward to making because it's embarrassing or I'm gonna hurt
somebody's feelings. Number nine, this one's kind of special, but if you just
want to get your spirits up, fight the urge to talk about anything negative. Now
we've been conditioned if we're feeling bad about something to talk to as many
people as possible especially if you're a woman,
people go "hey how you doing? It's like "oh gosh this things going on and
it's so hard," if you want to change your mood I just encourage you to experiment
with, don't talk about it. Don't talk about the thing that's bothering you,
keep your focus on where you're trying to go on the stuff that's positive for
you. Now I don't mean categorically never talk about what's bothering you but you
know sometimes it's purposeful to talk to somebody about something that's
bothering you so of course you should do that but just generally try
experimenting with not talking about the thing that's bothering you and you will
be surprised how easy it is to have your moods start going in a completely new
direction when you're not constantly reminding yourself how upset you are
about something. Number 10, there's a question to ask
yourself. What am I avoiding? And a lot of times a depressed mood for me is really
just a sense of dread about something I'm avoiding and it could be something
like, I'm avoiding learning about something that I know that I need to
know about, I'm avoiding a person that I really ought to be paying attention to,
I'm avoiding a task that I need to do and it's bothering me it's kind of
ruining all my free time thinking I ought to be doing it and I'm not doing
it, so I write what am I avoiding and I get
that and then take that back into the to-do list for the day. And finally, this
is like the cherry on the sundae if you really want to have a good day, find
something kind you can do for somebody where they won't find out who did it for
them or you're not gonna get any credit. The reason I say that is because if
there's any chance that we're gonna be thought of as a great person sometimes
it can sort of pollute the beneficial effects of doing kindnesses for people.
You can call somebody who you know is having a hard time, you could, when you're
at the grocery store, you could take your cart back to the cart area and then go
take a few more carts. Now most grocery stores they have somebody whose job that
is and you know I don't know if that's gonna make a difference for their job
but for you it's gonna make you feel better to just go do that little extra
thing for somebody. If you work with others and you are picking up something
to eat when you go out just see if somebody else
would like a sandwich too and bring it to them pay for it for them. If you can't
afford to give people sandwiches you can give them a kind word you can put a hand
on their shoulder and just say you're doing a great job or you can compliment
them and say the the way that you just explained that to somebody was so clear.
And be genuine, you know don't make stuff up but
pay attention to what other people have done that is deserving of a compliment
and just give that to them and when you do that you kind of become, you become an
agent of good. So the best thing for other people is that they begin to
realize that they're capable and good and they can do more of it and when we
can carry that message to them we become the agent of good and that's where we
like to be as useful and doing good for other people. So those are my tips for
turning your day around and having a great day no matter what's going on and
I've done them under some truly terrible circumstances so they're meant to work
no matter what's going on even really serious stuff.
Enjoy!