With Thanksgiving around the corner, November appears to be the month where gratitude makes a comeback into our lives. I don’t know about your social media feeds, but mine is filled with gratitude challenges, quotes about gratitude and tips for practicing gratitude. It seems as though gratitude and pumpkin spice are competing in a popularity contest. Perhaps gratitude is becoming cliche this time of year, but I can tell you emphatically that gratitude is one of the most important tools that helped me regain my life after I developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
Twenty years ago, after I witnessed a tree fall on my father during a fast moving thunderstorm and then watched him fight for his life until he lost his battle thirty-eight hours afterwards, my life became consumed by that trauma. Everything I did was dictated by PTSD symptoms that grew in the weeks and months following. Anger was constantly below the surface, and it took a lot of my energy to prevent the littlest of things from allowing that anger to burst out. Storms and other triggers related to my traumatic experience gave me flashbacks and those sometimes came without the presence of triggers. I was anxious most of the time. I felt like I had to relearn how to sleep. I preferred the comfort of my bed over spending time with my friends….mind you I turned twenty-one only six weeks after my trauma.
Back in 1997 when my PTSD developed, the disorder existed but people didn’t talk about it like we do today. Although therapy was available to me, I didn’t seek it out until 2011 and up to that point I was navigating my own way out of my symptoms thanks to discovering the power of yoga, massage therapy and acupuncture. I was never searching for help when I came upon these activities and modalities, but rather each of these things came to me as opportunities, and it was my own self awareness that helped me realize how much these tools made me feel better. Thankfully, I got to a place where my symptoms became minimal. Then I discovered the power of gratitude.
I’d heard people talk about gratitude before and I never really understood what they were talking about. To me, gratitude seemed like a given. Why wouldn’t one be grateful for the good things in their life. What I didn’t understand at the time is that gratitude is a practice, and up to that point, even though I’d almost always said “thank you” when it was appropriate and believed I lived a life of appreciation, I hadn’t ever practiced gratitude. I wanted to give it a try.
I started simply and was inspired by Oprah Winfrey. I was lucky to see her live during her The Life You Want tour and she walked us through her daily gratitude practice. Every day, she writes down five things for which she is grateful. As an example, she shared her list. I expected her to list big things, because after all Oprah does have a lot of abundance in her life. However, when I saw that her first one was about the water pressure in her shower I immediately realized this practice is easier than I thought it would be. I began practicing the next morning. What I didn’t expect was that gratitude would become another tool for helping me live a peaceful life with PTSD. Here are three ways gratitude helped me.
1. I fell in love with the little things. Oprah made me think about my own shower pressure, and that became the first thing I wrote down when I started my practice. Then I thought about my Belgian linen sheets. Then the taste of my water. Every morning I would try to think of five news things, and that practice opened my mind to the many small gifts that grace my life. Doing this set a tone for gratitude throughout my day, and over time my attitude was consistently positive and the anger that was the undercurrent to my emotions faded away.
2. I began to attract wonderful things into my life. The law of attraction is incredibly powerful. Numerous books have been written about it, but it comes down to one simple truth—what you feel comes to you. Back when my anger was at its worst, I attracted more problems into my life. As I saw things more positively, that positivity spread to nearly every aspect of my life. The more I practiced gratitude, my life felt brighter, lighter and more fulfilling. This feeling and way of seeing my world was light years away from when my PTSD was at its worst.
3. I got to a place of gratitude for my traumatic experience. I appreciate that for many this is hard to understand. My trauma involved the loss of my father. Without a doubt, I’d rather he were here and that this never happened. While writing my memoir, it dawned on me that the lessons that I had to learn in order to regain my life after my trauma are what shaped me into who I am today. Last August, I got to see Tony Robbins live and he briefly mentioned that he was so grateful for the abuse he suffered during his childhood because those experience made him the man he is today. I completely resonated with his sentiment. Today, I live an awesome life. I am a self employed acupuncturist, writer and entrepreneur. I get to travel to places I love and generally the moving pieces of my life are running smoothly. Most importantly, I wake up every morning excited and happy. I’m not sure I’d be in this place had I not gone through my traumatic experience and found my way through PTSD.