Postby Vesca » Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:12 pm
The professional and group support is what's going to do the most healing in the long run, but alternate methods may help ease him through the harsher moments and keep him from "drowning" in his own memories/feelings/etc...
Have you considered making a talisman? An object he can carry with him whose job it is to remind him of better/happier things that are worth fighting for? It's best to make them during a time when he's happy, grateful, and positive (basically, feeling the emotions that you want to have the reminder be of).
Alternatively, you could make something like a talisman that stays in a special place in the home and is placed in a spot where he would look at it often. Particularly if he is having a tough moment (i.e. if he tends to sit on a certain couch/chair, place it on a table near that chair or on a wall where it's hard to be missed from that position).
The idea of using scent is a good idea. What scent you use may depend on your father's preferences, and what he associates each scent with. You want something that he won't associate with negativity and that is either associated mildly with positivity or has no former associations but is either relaxing or grounding. Sometimes even something stimulating can help break the mental cycle (lemongrass).
Making a habit of going outside (in a safe place that won't trigger any memories) on a regular basis can really help keep one's mind on the immediate reality. Especially if we're prone to watching nature regularly and it provides a sense of calm and stability - that we are all a part of the universe and we have a place within it, but we don't control it in the slightest. Just that sense of belonging, of observing, of being able to observe, can sometimes be a very helpfully grounding factor.
Routines are a biggie. Not just routines of how to come down from an episode, but weekly or bi-weekly routines to keep your mind moving forward in the present reality instead of the past or the "what if" mentality. This is where actively celebrating the new and full moons can be extremely healing. Because they happen no matter what, and it only takes a little bit of awareness and some planning to maintain that routine. Since it's not under your control at all, you're forced to celebrate it on certain days and your normal routines for those events can develop as time goes forward (which also gives you something else to focus on). Plus if you're already oriented in a more lunar-focused paganesque way, it's a good familiar to ground to get some personal control and bearing in.
Other routines can include things like what to do after you get home from work/events/whatever, waking up routines, pre-sleep routines, "every Tuesday I visit x" routines, etc... The mind is the limit.
But really, what's going to be the longest and most critical factor of his healing is going to be the professional help. We can't fix it if we can't face it and work through it in a safe way, and it changes a person's understanding and world view forever. There's never a cure in that sense, just a shifting of perception and understanding and reinstating a form of control where it can be found. Anxiety issues are complicated like that, and the biggest thing with PTSD and other anxiety issues is that they're a body's natural reaction to an abnormal situation and there's no way to rationally tell someone who's lived through that traumatic event(s) that it's not a rational understanding or world view. Because it happened, it was real, and there's no law (natural or man-made) that will ever keep it from happening again.
But it can get better. It's a process, and it takes time as Snow said, and it will make one work for that sense of grounding again, but it can get better.
