For Anyone Touched by Combat-Related Stress:
Some Basic Facts & Audio Tools

If you want to skip over the explanation and go straight to the audio tools, click here. For those who want to know why they work, read on:

Typical Reactions to Combat Stress
Even very resilient, emotionally healthy people can experience severe reactions to traumatic events - flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, panic attacks, concentration problems, emotional numbness, isolation, insomnia, impaired memory, irritability, temper and startling from sudden noise and touch.

It's All About Natural, Survival Biochemistry
We used to think this was all "psychological", but now we know better. With traumatic events, there's a biophysical reaction, related to the massive release of survival hormones that flood the body during life-threatening events - or even from watching these events happen to somebody else.

These biochemicals in the bloodstream don't dissipate quickly, but instead they swing back and forth like a pendulum, between releasing alarm and sedation neurohormones, in an automatic recalibration to get the body back into balance. People can be furious or terrified one minute - that's the alarm biochemicals - and numb and disconnected the next - that's the natural opioids.

It Takes Time
We know from studies of typhoons and bombings that for many people, these swings can last for months. For others, it's only a matter of weeks. Some people don't get them at all.

A lot depends on your built-in neurological wiring; also how directly affected you were by the traumatic events, how many you experienced, what losses accompanied them, and whether you had earlier traumatic experiences growing up. The more accumulated trauma, the more likely you are to have an irritated nervous system that reacts more intensely with the next one.

Atypical Memory Storage
And because traumatic memories are not stored in the language and thinking centers of the brain, the way normal memories are, but instead get stashed as images, perceptions, emotions, sensations and muscular reactions in the primitive, survival-based parts of the brain, they can be hard or even impossible to reach through talking or thinking.

Nor do they fade and distort over time the way normal memories do. Instead they stay in these survival centers, as flashbacks, nightmares, physical sensations and raw feelings, experienced with great immediacy, as if the whole thing were happening all over again.

This catalyzes a new blast of alarm biochemicals, followed by the alternating tide of natural opioids, back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes these swings can actually gain in intensity for a time, or disappear and re-emerge months or even years later. But most people's biochemistry eventually gets back to normal, even when they do nothing to make that happen.

Talking About It Not Always Such a Great Place to Start
So getting someone to talk about their traumatic experiences, right off the bat, is not always such a great idea. When traumatized survivors are pressed to talk too early about what happened to them, either they won't be able to access it in spoken words; or they'll tell it in a rote, emotionless, disconnected way, which doesn't help; or when they try to talk, a flashback gets activated, turning loose another cascade of alarm biochemicals, followed by sedating ones, getting the cycle going all over again. For many trauma survivors, journaling or expression through art or music is an easier and more effective way to communicate than talking, at least at first.

Self-Regulate First
What is really helpful is learning and practicing simple self-regulation skills that help settle a disrupted biochemistry back down. Once there is a reliable practice in place, the body and the mind can get back into balance, more and more quickly easily, each time an alarm state spikes. After a while, if the person still wants to or needs to, he or she can discuss the trauma and integrate it in the idea-processing parts of the brain. Some do and some don't.

Three new studies at Duke/Durham V.A. indicate that this may be one of the most important keys to speeding up recovery from acute stress and posttraumatic stress - becoming skilled at these simple relaxation and self-regulation practices. It may even be true that learning these tools as a pre-deployment measure could mitigate the stress of future up-tempo events - that's very possible but remains to be tested.

Simple Practices
There are many relaxation tools, and they're easy to learn - guided imagery, conscious breathing (counting to three with each, slow, deep in-breath and again with each slow out-breath, for instance), progressive muscle relaxation, key word repetition, mindfulness meditation, yoga, qigong, self-acupressure. these are all are good self-regulatory skills. Of course, for some, prayer works best.

Other methods such as therapeutic massage, energy work, such as Reiki or Therapeutic Touch, aerobic exercise, listening to music, mindful walking in the woods, working with art or gardening are very effective, too...

Imagery: Arguably the Best Tool in the Kit
Guided imagery - a kind of deliberate, directed daydreaming, narrated by a soothing voice over calming music - is now considered a "best practice" and treatment of choice for traumatic stress and lesser varieties of stress. It's especially easy to use, because it demands so little - people just relax into an immersive, receptive, dreamy mind-state (surprisingly easy for most traumatized people to do, thanks to those endogenous opioids) and listen or, more likely, half-listen.

There are many other reasons why imagery is ideal for this kind of stress - it acts on the same part of the brain that's been most affected by trauma, countering horrendous images with healing ones. It's also simple, portable and self-administered by way of an iPod or MP3 player. The person has complete control over when and how he/she uses it. And often there are immediate results. Certainly there are cumulative results over time. One study showed 80% improvement over posttraumatic stress symptoms after 8 weeks. To some of us old school therapists who were trained to go about this in exactly the wrong way, that's downright amazing. (It's particularly good for help with sleeping.)

Free Audio Tools

So we want you to give these tools a try, whether you're suffering from combat stress or family stress. Just listen, once or twice a day (or more if you like), 5 days a week (or more if you like) and you'll get very good at reminding your body that it knows how to relax at will.

Here are three kinds of audio tools for you to sample. The first is conscious breathing, for one of the simplest forms of relaxation. The second is guided imagery to help generate feelings of well-being and support, as well as relaxation. And the third is a set of affirmations from the Healing Trauma CD.

Once the audio starts, just close your eyes (or keep your lids at half-mast if you don't want to shut them completely) and let yourself experience the voice, music and images. You don't have to pay perfect attention for it to work. Repeated listening has a cumulatively beneficial effect, so try to stay with it - most people do, because it feels good and the improvements become obvious. Maybe one person in 12 will just not like this, and if that's the case, don't force it. Try something like biofeedback or Tai Chi to get many of the same benefits.

You may get a little sleepy, heavy limbed, teary-eyed, runny-nosed - that's normal, so don't let that throw you. And these audio tools are pretty relaxing, so please don't listen while you're driving, or you could have a whole 'nother set of stresses!

Help Yourself and We Wish You Well!
We hope this gift from us at Health Journeys shows you a sliver of our appreciation for your generosity, patriotism and sacrifices on our behalf. We wholeheartedly wish you the very best - active military, transitioning warriors, veterans and, of course, all family members. If you have any questions or want to explore these techniques in more depth, you are welcome to visit us at www.healthjourneys.com, call us at 800.800.8661, or email us at info@healthjourneys.com.

Belleruth Naparstek, LISW, Cindy Stalnaker, CEO, and the whole Health Journeys Team

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