Brad Schipke breaks down the first phase of PTSD recovery: learning symptom-relief tools like breathing exercises and grounding techniques, then systematically cutting daily triggers like violent media, caffeine, and negative people. Most people skip this step and keep re-traumatizing themselves without realizing it.
A lot of people with PTSD expose themselves to a lot of unnecessary triggers. The first phase of PTSD recovery is a phase called stabilization. What stabilization is, there are 2 key pieces to it. One is learning relief tools to help gain control of your symptoms. And the second one is a reduction of your triggers. Most people don't know how to do the first one. They don't have the right tools. They don't know how to get their symptoms into control. And there's a lot of simple ways to do that. There's breathing exercises, the visualization, there's the butterfly hug, there's grounding exercises. There's so many different ones that you can look and find that work for your specific symptom. The second one is reducing the amount of triggers that you expose yourself on a day-to-day basis. They watch things they shouldn't be watching that trigger, trigger them, whether it's news or violent TV shows. They eat things that spike their blood sugar, which then spikes their anxiety, or they drink a lot of coffee, which then spikes their anxiety. They surround themselves with a lot of people that are negative to them or that trigger them. And if you want to start stabilizing things, you just do those 3 things. You start searching for tools that will help you get relief for your specific symptoms, and you create a plan for reducing the amount of triggers that you expose yourself on a day-to-day basis.
