PTSD Self Care Tips | Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Hey everybody, Brad here. And today I want to talk to you about one of the most important things when it comes to PTSD recovery, and that is self-care. Now, when I talk to— I talk to people every day who have PTSD, and one of the most— the biggest problems I see is that they don't think that they're worthy. They don't think that they're lovable, and they don't believe that they can fully recover from PTSD. So they get stuck in this really, really dark place where they're— they're not taking care of themselves because they don't believe that they're worthy of that care. And they don't even think, even if they took care of themselves, that they could get better. So they get stuck in this dark place and just spin in there. And sometimes people unfortunately stay in there for years or decades, sometimes their entire life. And if you don't learn how to break out of that, if you don't learn how to love yourself, how to, you know, believe that you're worthy of all these things that you're deserving of good things, then it's going to be very hard to break out of that cycle. So my hope for this video is that it helps you break out of that cycle. If you're in that cycle, or if you know somebody who's in that cycle, I hope that this video will help you. And I want to say that you do matter. You are worthy. We need you. This world needs you. I've felt that. I felt that pain of, of, you know, just thinking I was this awful person, that I was worthless. That nobody would ever love me. Who would love somebody like me? I was wrong. I was, I was so freaking wrong. But it took somebody in my life who just opened my eyes to, to the real me and to who I really was at my core. And that's what I want to help you do, is, is realize who you are at your core as an amazing freaking person. Amazing freaking human being, and you are amazing. And I know you've so many times we get caught up in these times just focusing on all the negative things that we've done in our life, all the negative things about ourselves, and we're just overall crappy humans, crappy friends to ourselves, right? For a moment, I want you to just explore this with me. I want you to think back to some good things that you've done. Some positive intentions that you've had. What are some of those things? You know, what are the moments where you care about somebody, you love about— you love somebody, you want to help somebody who's in need? What are some of those moments? In those kind moments, in those moments of joy and happiness and giving and love, that's who you really are. And that person, that piece of you, is the true you. And that person is so deserving. And I want you to focus on that, and I want you to highlight that, and I want you to freaking magnify that as big as you possibly can and focus on that with me, at least just for the rest of this video. Just keep your focus on that good part of you, and I know that it's there. If you're telling me— if you're telling me that you cannot think of one good thing about yourself, then you're not trying. I want you to block out the negative just for a second. Just for a second. I want you to block it out. And focus on some good things about yourself. And trust me, you will find a lot. You just need to find one. You just need to find one, and then more will come. So you are worthy. You are worth it. You are lovable. You are needed on this planet. And you are deserving. You are so freaking deserving. Out of all the people on this planet, you are so deserving of love and goodness, right? What have you been through? What have you been through in your life? How much pain have you been through? Doesn't that person deserve some, some love, some peace? I mean, like, if you saw somebody else who went through the same thing that you went through, would you treat them the same way that you treat yourself? Would you tell them that they're not worthy and that nobody will ever love them? That they're not good enough? That they don't deserve the good things that life has to offer? Would you say those things? You wouldn't. No one would. Because you would tell them that they're, they're worthy, right? That they are lovable, that they will find love, that there are good things in this life, that there are good pieces inside of them. And the same goes for you. You just have to shift that perspective on yourself because there are so many good things inside of you. And that's what I want you to focus on, are those good things. Now I want to shift a little bit into actually self-care, how to actually take care of yourself. Now the first step, like I was just saying, is starting to believe. Start to focus on those good things inside of yourself and believe that you are worthy, that you are lovable, that you do deserve all of these things. Because if you don't fully believe that, or if you don't even at least open the door to, hey, maybe I'm not this terrible person, then this self-care thing won't be very— won't last very long, I'll say that. Um, now a lot of people think— another obstacle that people face when it comes to self-care is that they think self-care is selfish, right? They're taught to give and give and give and give, and if you take anything for yourself, that's a bad thing. Don't— do not do that, right? So a lot of us have learned that caring for ourselves is a bad thing, right? So we actually feel guilt We feel guilt when we take care of yourself. But I want you to shift that because it's actually the exact opposite. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. It is selfless to take care of yourself. And I'll tell you why. Because even if you wanted to help the world, which I believe everybody does, I believe deep down everybody wants to help people. I believe everybody is a good person. If you are that person, which I believe you are, you cannot help a single soul on this planet if you are not taking care of yourself, because you cannot pour from an empty cup. That is something we say all the time. You cannot be the best parent, you cannot be the best child, you cannot, you know, work on your career, you can't have good health, you can't give back to your community, you can't help somebody else in need if you are pouring from an empty cup. If you have just been drawn down to zero, if you have PTSD and you're not taking care of yourself, you're not going to be able to help anybody. And the key, the key to all of that, to be able to help people, to be able to give and give and give and give and give, is not ignoring yourself, but it's focusing on yourself and caring about yourself and healing yourself and working on yourself. Because if you're not working on yourself, you're gonna be pouring from that— you're gonna be trying to pour from this empty cup, and then you're gonna feel guilty because you're gonna be like, I can't even help people. How good am I? I'm not even a good person. I'm not even a good person because I can't help anybody. I can't even help myself. So if you don't help yourself, you're gonna be stuck down into that— sucked down into that dark, dark place. And I do not want you guys to be down there. And that's because so many of us have been lied to, have like bought this belief that it's selfish to take care of ourselves. And it's not. It's not at all. It is selfless. This is one of the most selfless things you can do. To build yourself up to this point where you your your glass is literally overflowing, and then you just get to freaking unleash all of that love and care onto the world. Because if you don't care and love yourself, you're not going to be able to care and love for other people. And I'm not sure if I said this before, but you know if a lot of the times what happens is our inner world is projected outside. So if we feel hate and judgment towards ourselves, that is what we will give to other people. So If we really want the best, not only for ourselves, but for other people in the entire world, our family, you know, our community, our friends, people around us, we need to start taking care of ourselves. We need to start loving ourselves, 'cause the way that we treat ourselves is the way that we treat other people. And it starts with yourself. It's not selfish. It is selfless to care about yourself. And you cannot pour from an empty cup. Now, the last thing I wanna say, is I have a few things on how we actually implement this into your life. How do you actually bring self-care into your life? And if you look on blogs, if you look on other YouTube videos, people will give you a list of 8 things for self-care or whatever, right? Like go take a walk, go, um, go for a hot tub, um, whatever. Now those are all good and great. I'm not saying those things are bad, but really at the core of that, you need to figure out what you want. You need to figure out what you want to do and what makes you feel good. Because I can tell you, maybe a hot tub feels great to me, but maybe it doesn't feel great to you. So at the end of the day, you need to start asking yourself on a daily basis, and it's a good thing to ask yourself this in the morning or the night before, what do I want out of this day? What do I want? What do I want in this moment? Down to the tiniest of moments. When someone asks you, what do you want to eat tonight? Ask yourself, what do I want? Don't say I don't know, or whatever you want, or, you know, whatever's easiest. Make a decision. Ask yourself, because we've been training ourselves just to ignore what we want, right? We're like, oh, I don't care, or, you know, let's just do whatever, or, you know, I'll just do whatever you want to do, right? And you don't actually think. You don't even allow yourself to think or ask yourself, what do I want? So you need to ask yourself, what do I want? And then act on that. And that's an ongoing process. You want to constantly ask yourself, what do I want? What will make me feel good right now? And then do it, and then trust that. And also, I want you to know that, you know, you are not responsible for other people. You are not responsible for anybody else but yourself, right? Because a lot of times in this moment, it'll be like, you know, sometimes we're surrounded with people where we're just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and then everybody just expects you to to be this person or to give or to just take care of everybody, right? And in those cases, if you're one of those people who takes care of other people but not yourself, you have to realize that it's not your responsibility to take care of other people. And actually, you cannot control other people, and that they are responsible for their life and you are responsible for your life. And that is one of the most healthy— that is one of the healthiest things that you can do, is help people realize that they are responsible for their lives and that you are responsible for your lives. Because when you focus on you, this is what I was saying before, when you focus on You are gonna be your best self. You're going to fill your cup so it's overflowing so you can then give to all these people, right? So it's not about giving, giving, giving until you have nothing left. That's the thing that gets you down in the first place. It's about giving to yourself, making yourself whole, healing, getting better, and then allowing yourself to feel good and overflow so you can give to the world, right? So you are only responsible for yourself. And again, I believe everybody's a good person. So when people are responsible for themselves, that will naturally come out and help the world. So that's the first thing you want to do. You want to ask yourself, what do I want? What will make me feel good right now? And then do it, and then do it, and then stick to your guns. And then the second thing— so the first one is, what do I want? And the second one is, what don't I want to do, right? So learn how to say no. We, we like, we just allow ourselves to fall into these patterns or do things that other people want us to do, but we don't really want to do, and we don't want to say no because we feel guilty. But in those moments, that's when we're not really believing in ourselves. We don't think we're worthy of, you know, saying no. We don't think— we don't think our ideas are good enough. We don't think we're worthy of, you know, doing what we want to do over what somebody else wants to do, right? So in those moments, you have to ask yourself, do I really want to do this? And if you don't want to do it, say no. People, people might get upset, right? But you are worth it. People might push back. You know, sometimes that happens. It's like maybe you're in a relationship, like again, that you're giving, giving, giving, that you always say yes, that you always go with the flow, that you never express what you want and you just give. And we just, we always do what you want to do. And it doesn't, it doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I want to do. My feelings don't matter. My judgments don't matter. My desires don't matter. Nothing that I want matters, right? Only what you want matters. And sometimes when you're in that position, that person is so used to doing everything— you doing everything for them and what they want to do— that it can be a little frustrating for them. But I want you guys to expect that and know that that's kind of normal, that it's a change of habit. And sometimes change is uncomfortable for people. It doesn't mean that people are going to get mad at you or anything, but In those moments, you have to stick to your guns because you have to know that you're worth it. And also you're doing a great thing for them because now they are going to be focusing on themselves and making themselves whole, right? Because a lot of times we pick up the slack, we take the responsibility for other people's lives and basically prevent them from the biggest growing opportunities of their entire life, right? So it's like we are solved if we're focused solving, um, this other person's problem, then they do not have to solve the problem themselves, right? So we're then robbing them the experience of getting better, of growing. So then they stagnate, and then they believe, you know, I need this other person in my life to, you know, make me feel better. So it's all about just being responsible for ourselves. If you are responsible for yourself, if other people are responsible for themselves, and we stop focusing on all these other things that we can't control, we start focusing on the one thing we can control, which is ourselves, we will start to feel so much better. You will start to heal your PTSD, and everything in your entire life will get better because everything stems from you. Everything. in life stems from you. The quality of your relationship, the quality of your health, the quality of your finances, your job, your career, your dream, your happiness— all those things stem from you. And if you're not good, if you're not solid, then none of those things are going to be good. That's just the way it is. And that is why self-care is so freaking important and why you matter so much, is because this whole, whole world would be lifted up if we all cared about ourselves, if we all took ourselves seriously, if we did what we wanted to do and we said no to the things we don't want to do. And, you know, we just felt good about ourselves. And I promise you, if you start doing those things, if you start doing, um, things that you want to do, you start making up those— making up your decisions and saying no to things you don't want to do, you're going to be so much more confident with yourself. You're going to be so much— you're going to feel so much better. You're going to be, I am worthy. You're going to start having those thoughts instead of being like, I'm worthless. Because when you start, you know, taking your focus off of other people and all these other things you can't control and you start focusing on yourself, you you start to improve, and then you're like, wow, this does work, and wow, I can help other people, and wow, I am a really great person, because you start seeing those changes in yourself. But it all starts with focusing on you, and if you're not focusing on you, you will not get better. You need to stop focusing on all these other people and start focusing that energy on you. And again, it's not selfish, it's selfless, because you are a good person, I'm a good person. I believe everybody's a good person at their core. It's just that we do not allow ourselves to Heal and get better and move past the things that have hurt us in the past. And once we get past those things, we our true self shines, and we are the most we are the most amazing people in the world, honestly. And I truly truly believe that. So I hope that this video has helped you. If you've enjoyed this, you know, make sure to give me a little thumbs up on the like and hit that subscribe button for future videos. I do a video like this every week, and my girlfriend does one once a week as well, Kayleen. But I hope you enjoyed this. I hope this, you know, helps you bring more love and acceptance and worthiness to you because you are so freaking worthy. So I hope this enjoyed you. Please subscribe, please like, and I will see you in the next video.