Hi I'm Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy, and today I want
to show you some simple strategies that you can use when you're in a bad place,
you know you're dysregulated emotionally or your brain, when you're
angry, depressed, you can like feel it in your body and you're feeling like you
just can't pop out of it. Now sometimes there's no reason for this, if you're
like me you just wake up that way sometimes; it's what Pete Walker calls an
emotional flashback. Or maybe you're feeling bad for a specific reason but
either way it's possible to lift your spirits and put some room in your day to
be yourself, be relatively happy, and set yourself free to share with the world
the work and the love that you were meant to share because that's what we
really want right? So 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 from hurrying and trying to get out of the house wherever we're
going or the total immobilization when we don't have plans for the day or just
kind of lingering in bed. So get up an hour earlier and then get up out of bed
and yeah you're gonna be tired, you're gonna be tired at first but it's okay
it's not an emergency. Then get some coffee if you need to and then get on to
the second thing which is to write your fears and resentments so you can get
them out of your head and onto paper where they can't color your world so
much. There's a whole video and download where I show you how to do this and you
can link to it in the description section below. But basically the fears
and resentments are what is driving that negative hamster wheel in your mind and
with less hamster action you have more mental and emotional fresh air to be
yourself and just do good things today. The third thing is to meditate. Now me I
meditate for 20 minutes twice a day and if you can even do five minutes it makes
a huge difference. So write the fears and resentments and then 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 or
focus on your breath or anything, you just rest with your eyes closed
sitting, maybe with a mantra, there's a video about that in the description
section too I'll give you all of that down below. Now a lot of people I hear
them beat themselves up and say I can't meditate my mind is too active and
that's precisely why we meditate it's because we have an active mind you don't
have to have that completely fixed so that you can begin to meditate. Also
writing fears and resentments on paper will reduce all the mental chatter that
you have that's making meditation difficult. So you do these things
together and it goes pretty well and pretty well is totally great. The fourth
thing for lifting your mood is to go outside and exercise hard. Now there was
a time when I had acute PTSD and if you've read on the blog, there was even a
time when I found someone dead and I tried to give them CPR and I was stuck
in PTSD for months afterwards just reliving it emotionally for like a year
and a half actually and it was awful and when the doctor said you know we are
gonna have to start putting you on some hardcore medications, I didn't want to do
that and so I just went online and I searched what does a person do if
they're in this kind of overload or emotional overload all the time and
Google said exercise hard, just exercise hard. Nobody had told me that but I went
and tried it and it was so effective! I couldn't even believe that this isn't
like the first thing they tell you to do, no doctor a therapist mentioned it but I
figured it out and what I mean by exercising hard, this could be different
for different people depending on what you're used to and whatever it takes to
get your heart rate up, you want your heart rate up for about 20 minutes. If
you're able to run, running is great and if that's a little more than you can do
just a brisk walk for 20 minutes will help, if you can't walk briskly for 20
minutes just anything to get your heart rate up. It's a good thing to do when
you're in the middle of a life crisis. If you can do this exercise outside and in
nature, that's even better and I'm sure you have experience with how good that
feels. Now there's no need to do anything that's physically dangerous for you,
don't get hurt, it's just to get that movement going and the reason I say
outside is, outside where the Sun is on us and even if it's bad weather our
brains like to know what day it is they like to know what time of year it is and
what season it is and so being outside helps us get calibrated and feel normal
in our bodies and then in turn this helps us be able to sleep normally and
feel hungry at the right times. And of course the daylight is really helpful to
move that depression away it just like sweeps it away like yesterday's dust.
Also if you're going to walk or run, it can be really nice to do it, instead of
on a treadmill, to do it on a natural surface like up and down on the curb, on
a sidewalk, on a dirt road where there's a slight unevenness because our brains
like that too, our brains like to sense those changes and they just figure it
out they get us balanced and that helps them too. So much of what's going on with
childhood PTSD especially when we're struggling in our mood or feeling
physically dead-end it's that...it's like we don't have our head together, there's
a dysregulation going on in the brain and in the nervous system and also in
the emotions.. And we all instinctively know how to reregulate, you get kind of
freaked out, you pull yourself back together. These are the techniques that
will help you do that faster and more often, a movement together with other
people especially when we're following verbal instructions like you would be in
kickboxing or Zumba or something where an instructor is calling stuff out like
to the right to the right or to the left or left kick, anything where we're
hearing and responding with our bodies to the left and right cues accelerates
your recalibration and the reregulation of your brain and it brings you out of that
PTSD fog. Number six is to have some coffee.
Caffeine is a pick-me-up, you don't want to have too much obviously but more and
more the research seems to show that it's okay to have some coffee and if
you're feeling low, it's a great way to just kind of pick up your energy. And
personally, I drink a lot of coffee I stopped drinking at about 3:00 in the
afternoon because after that it will start to keep me up at night. I love
coffee! I'm addicted to it, I'm not worried about that, if I don't drink it I
get a headache but again I just don't worry about it.
Number seven is to eat some protein with every meal. Overeating and
particularly sugar and carb addiction are very strongly connected to childhood
PTSD and 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 you up
and then they'll make you tired and anything that's making your endocrine
system spike and go 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 that you might
have some I don't know eggs on toast, peanut butter sandwich, it just helps to
keep you a little more balanced and keep you a little less triggered with
childhood PTSD. It's good for you eating protein too. Also with childhood PTSD
it's really easy to start the day with a sense of overwhelm. A sense of overwhelm
is familiar 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. So every morning after I meditate I make a list of things of the
most important things that 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 and then I try to zero in on what are the three or so most
important things for me to get done that day. Now still those things might be
things I can't get done today 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 I
do that first. So sometimes when I'm choosing what's gonna be the first thing
to do, I take the hardest thing and make that first. I just take the hardest thing
out of the way so that I can eliminate that sense of dread that bugs me down
and then I can get on with stuff that's easier for me. Maybe it's I don't know a
phone call that I'm not looking forward to making because it's embarrassing or
I'm gonna hurt somebody's feelings. Number nine, this one is 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 and people
go "Hey how are you doing?" It's like "Oh well this thing
is 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 sometimes it's purposeful to talk to
somebody about something that's bothering you of course and 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 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 for work, it's often that for me, 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 I'm avoiding and then I put it on the to-do list for the day and
I get back to work. So finally, this is like the cherry on the sundae, if you
really want to have a good day and lift your mood, find something that you can do
for somebody where they won't find out who did it for them or you're not going
to get any credit. And the reason I say that is because if there's any chance
that we're gonna be thought of as a great person, sometimes you know, it can
kind of pollute the beneficial effects of doing kindnesses for other people. So
you can call somebody who you know is having a hard time and when you're at
the grocery store you could take your cart back to the cart area and then I
don't know go get a couple more carts. Now most grocery stores they have
somebody whose job that is and 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 other people and you're
picking up something to eat when go out, just see if somebody else would
like a sandwich too and bring it to them and if you can pay for it for them,
you'll feel good! 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 way that you just explained that
to somebody was so clear and so genuine. Now don't make stuff up when you
compliment people but pay attention to what other people have done that's
deserving of a compliment and just give it to them and when you do that 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 kind of model that and inspire other people we've really really
become an agent of good and that is where we like to be good and useful in
serving the world. So those are my tips for turning your day around and having a
good day no matter what is going on. I have done these things under some truly
terrible circumstances, these things are meant to work no matter what is
happening in your life, it could be serious, we all know about that right? But
if you like this video, please click the button and definitely if you haven't yet
subscribe, you'll find those free tools that I talked about in the description
section below along with links to my online course: Healing Childhood PTSD, so
go be happy you guys be yourselves and bring the good that's in you out into
the world and I'll see in a few days.