If you haven’t read Part 1 – go here

We stayed stranded in the mountains for days with no money or clothes. »»]]>

It was the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami....

If you haven’t read Part 1 – go here

We stayed stranded in the mountains for days with no money or clothes. We walked between people digging out dead bodies in the rubble. Ute loads of corpses drove past us. We had survived, unlike the many we saw that had lost their lives. We had an option to go home or to stay on. My husband and I felt if we stayed on for the rest of our planned time it may give our children time to absorb what they had witnessed before they were to be bombarded  by hundreds of questions at home.

We were given a house to live in by the Thai people in the village and stayed on for a further nine days. We did everything to protect our family from the destruction the Tsunami had caused and still managed to enjoy our holiday away from the death. The children,  my husband and I relaxed a little and tried to put the images we had witnessed out of our heads, for a short while anyway.

After arriving home, although feeling very sad, I felt like I was coping okay. I felt I had to be the strong one for my family.

After a few weeks the nightmares started.  I would relive the Tsunami. This time in my dream we weren’t so lucky. Each night I would have the same dream and a different member of my family would be taken by the wave. I started to hear constant screams in my head. I had a feeling of guilt, asking myself how we had all survived. If only’s… were constantly going through my head, if we hadn’t rang our friend that morning we would have been down the busy street when the Tsunami hit and not all survived. If we had stayed in the breakfast room only ten minutes longer, where all the people we had eaten with that morning, we would have also lost our lives. Different scenarios were going through my head. I had gotten to the stage where if anyone spoke to me I would burst into tears. Although I didn’t realise I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. It got to the stage I couldn’t go to work as if anybody so much as looked at me or spoke to me I would burst into tears.

My work insisted that I talk to a counselor, so I did. He told me that I had to get my feelings out of my head.  If I couldn’t talk about it, to put all my thoughts and feelings down on paper. At first it was very hard as I wrote I had to relive every scene I had witnessed. It took me six months to finally write my thoughts down. It did help but I was still unable to talk about that day. If people were to ask me questions I would burst into tears. It took me around two years before I could talk about that day without shedding a tear. It has been nearly six years now, but I can still remember everything as if it was yesterday, and it will still bring a tear to my eyes.

Post Traumatic Stress seems to sneak up on you. It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are overcoming any tragic event in your life, it will have some effect on you. The best thing I feel is to try and talk about the event as much as you can to someone who will listen and for them not to ask you questions.

Crying I feel is good, it does release emotions; just don’t try to be too strong like I did. I felt like I had to keep my emotions to myself for my family. I was more concerned about how they were coping and neglected how I was feeling.

It will take some time to heal.Maybe you will never completely heal, but as long as you have love, understanding and support from your friends and family you will overcome these confusing feelings you feel deep inside your heart and your head.

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Thank you Fran for sharing your story.

Stay tuned for Fran’s upcoming book – due out in early 2011.

Please leave your comments below.  Fran is also checking in and her comments will be published.

James’ vehicle after being hit by road side bomb

In 2007 I was »»]]>

Guest Post by James Greenshields, Personal Development Consultant. For more about James, scroll down…

James’ vehicle after being hit by road side bomb

In 2007 I was serving in Iraq when my armoured vehicle was hit by a road side bomb. I received shrapnel wounds to my head and arm, and they found my helmet 80m from the vehicle. When I returned to Australia at the end of my tour I was hypersensitive, couldn’t hold a conversation and had increased levels of anger. I was bathing my then 2 year old daughter a couple of months after returning and found myself getting increasingly angry at her two year old shenanigans. One night I had enough and looked at myself in the mirror: “James! You can take bullets and bombs, but you can’t bath your own daughter”. That night I vowed to fix whatever was wrong inside me – and I have.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD; an anxiety disorder that an estimated 700,000 Australians suffer. PTSD is a result of the protective measures within the brain engaging during an incident, or period of experience, where an individual feels their life, or sense of being, is threatened. These protective measures don’t reset by themselves and so leave that individual with PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD are:

• Re-experiencing intrusive memories or flashbacks of the event
• Avoidance of things that remind a person of the event, and emotional numbing
• Hyperarousal coming across in things like difficulty sleeping, hyperviligance and irritability

Anyone with PTSD will know the emotional roller coaster that you can go on. At times you may feel that you are not in control. The start of my recovery process was to understand the consequences for me remaining like that – a lonely life that taxed those people I loved. It took me to make a commitment to my loved ones to change and regain a choice of how I feel and act. Now this commitment has become to myself.

The next step was to understand emotions and how they work within us. We are not our emotions, just as we aren’t our thoughts, or this body that we see in the mirror. There is something deep inside of each one of us that is the real person. Think about someone you really love, do you love them for their body, or how smart they are, or how they feel at any moment in time? My guess is that there is something deeper. Understanding this means you can now observe yourself when you get angry, sad or fearful, and realize that it is not who you are, but an emotion you are feeling at that moment.

Emotions need expressing. Anger is a big one. Find a way to express anger and get it out of your system. A couple of things about expressing it:

• No one is allowed to get hurt – otherwise your inner justice mechanism will kick in and load you with guilt.
• Get a punching bag and start to hit it.
• You need to go until you are exhausted.
• Vocalise what is going on for you – and don’t judge!
• Once won’t cut it, you need to do this until you feel you are back in control of when you get angry and to what degree.

The big thing is to understand that admitting you have PTSD is not a sign of weakness. Actually you will have more courage by putting your hand up and asking for help. And watch the dramatic effect of your courageous action on those you love the most.

If you would like any more information or want to get in touch with me, email: info@livebeyondsuccess.com.au

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My website is www.livebeyondsuccess.com.au , have a look and subscribe to our free monthly newsletter.

James Greenshields is a former Australian Army officer who has seen active service in both East Timor and Iraq. He is now a personal development consultant, specializing in leadership and PTSD recovery. He also presents at one of Australia’s largest personal development workshops, the Mental Toolbox. For more information visit: www.thementaltoolbox.com

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