J Lawrence Nieters

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Those, haunted by unshakable living memories, suffering countless sleepless nights, or experiencing unexplainable panic reactions that no one understands, need not just exist and simply survive in a distorted reality where the past is still present. Too many times those who just don’t get it urge you to “just get over it.” Puzzled friends and family can become exhausted when all of their efforts to help fail to make enough of a difference. Frustration can grow into blaming anger, which just adds more layers of misery and self-recrimination. In 1989 the first professional journal article described an unlikely sounding PTSD therapy which freed VN Vets from the combat horrors that lived on in their memory. Since then countless PTSD sufferers have actually stepped out of their self-contained hellish prisons and into lives worth living. Properly administered EMDR can make this kind of difference, “Just get over it” is simply a disguised way of saying, “I don’t understand.” No one wants to get “over it” any more than you do; and the most surprising truth is that you hold the key to your own release. Your mind has the ability to heal itself when it’s allowed to and it’s far wiser than any therapist to know what is keeping you stuck and what you need.