How to Heal Your C-PTSD from Getting Acquainted with Your Anxiety

Hey folks, welcome to my channel. I'm Brooke Ritchie, your friendly neighborhood trauma survivor, indie rock artist, film composer, and hopefully budding motivational speaker because I really like being on stages. Um, today I want to talk with you about how complex post-traumatic stress disorder causes anxiety, and this is in flow, you know, with— I've kind of, kind of gone On a few little tangents in the last videos, but this is still within the framework of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and reverse engineering, right? So sticking with reverse engineering, anxiety is one of the most common diagnoses that we see with individuals, in individuals that have complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, as we know, it's this feeling of dread, fear. It's all-encompassing, you start to limit your breathing. And that's really what I want to get at in this video, is talking about how to manage this and to ease the anxiety so that we can reverse engineer that CPTSD, right? So anxiety is this fearful, dreadful feeling. And when it comes to CPTSD, as you know, you get triggered by association. You are not triggered by a single event. You're triggered by association to the feelings going on in your body. It could be a smell, it could be a place, it could be a scene, um, you know, it can really be anything, uh, a context of a relationship, a dynamic of a relationship, any— anything. It's kind of a free-for-all, which is why The disorder is so hard to, you know, figure out. It's because it's complex, right? Your triggers are complex. It's not one thing or the other. So the anxiety comes up because all those under-the-radar triggers, right? You— this is where— this is the invitation to really get to know your triggers. To identify what they are when you're feeling anxious, right? Because when you're feeling anxious, you can say, oh, I'm feeling anxious right now. And if you actually do this, you'll, you'll realize that your symptoms will reduce, they'll recede. And that's what I'm about to get to. So when you're triggered and you start to feel anxious, you might actually— this is probably what happens for you. You probably get anxious and then you realize something was triggering you because you weren't aware of what the trigger was. So I want you to ask yourself this, where have I gotten anxious in the last week? And then take it a step further. So this is reverse engineering. Where have I gotten anxious? Where the physical locations? Yes. When you identify what those are, Ask yourself, what in those environments are making me triggered? Try and identify something about the context of that environment that you think is making you triggered. And then you start to verbalize this, right? Because when you verbalize— and this is getting into the holistic voice development, voice work, voice healing— your voice is your body's regulator. So If you're feeling anything right now, if you're feeling anxious, lack of focus, or anything, tension in your body, say the thing. Say, I'm feeling anxious right now, and you'll notice that you'll breathe easier. You'll exhale, you'll take a deep breath in naturally, right? Because anxiety It cuts off your flow of your breath because you're in this heightened state. You are in fight, flight, or freeze mode. You're getting triggered. That's what anxiety is in your body. It's a feeling, but that's what it's doing to you. So you're in this heightened state, and the second that you identify it, you can say, I'm feeling anxious right now. It brings you where? Here into the present. When you say, "I'm feeling anxious," it brings you right into the present moment, and that's what your body needs. That's what your nervous system needs to secure itself. I'm gonna say it one more time: Your nervous system needs you to acknowledge the feeling that is going on as it's going on, and this is why. You have CPTSD is because the things that you experienced long ago or for a prolonged period of time, you didn't say the things, you didn't process the things that were going on as they were going on. It repeats itself. So you, like, if you don't want it to repeat in your life, right? If you don't want to pass this on to people in your life, in your relationship, if you want to stop feeling so isolated, you have to come to your senses. And your senses, when you're anxious, is this heightened state, and you have to acknowledge that. And I think the thing that happens for a lot of us is we— those of us that feel anxious In the moment, we don't give ourselves what we need because that's been downplayed, right? That's been downplayed for you to disregard your needs. So I'm going to challenge you to focus on those needs when they happen, when they— when it comes up, when you're feeling anxious. I'm going to challenge you to acknowledge it. It doesn't matter if you're at work. It doesn't matter if you're driving. If you're driving, pull the car over if you have to. If you're at work in the middle of the shift, tell your coworker, I gotta take a few minutes and step outside, go to the employee room, wherever, so you can calm down. Um, Yeah, so the thing about this voice, let me, let me focus on that a little bit. So your voice, why this is such a big deal for your voice, um, about your voice, why this, why your voice matters. Your voice is your body's regulator. It's the instrument you were born with to communicate. It's how babies let their parents know something's wrong. And when you don't use your voice to let your own self know that something's wrong, you are now harboring the disorder. You're creating an environment for a disorder. So there is a way out of this, is what I'm saying. Um, it is possible. You have to believe that your brain is malleable. That you can move ahead. And by move ahead, I mean improve the state of your nervous system, of your mind, the connections going on, right? Because right now, I know it feels— you're— if you're here watching this and you have CPTSD, um, everything feels haywire and it feels, you know, foggy and blurred and all of that. And I just want to encourage you to really just use your voice here, because your voice— you're taking the feelings going on in your body, bringing them out, and you get to listen right back to what you're saying. And when you're doing that, What are you doing? You're breathing. That's a breath. It's cyclical breath with your psyche. Um, and the other thing about this, when you use your voice, your voice activates over 100 muscles in the body when you speak, when you sing. So while the anxiety is cutting your oxygen level down Because you're in this fight, flight, or freeze mode. You're in a hyper-awareness state, in a state of hyper-awareness. While the anxiety's cutting down your oxygen supply, it's also cutting down blood flow to your brain. So what do we do to activate blood flow? We speak. You use your voice. It activates 100 muscles plus in the body. Those muscles need blood flow in order to move. So because you're speaking, you are creating the blood flow and the movement, which is what is reducing the anxiety. Is there anything else I have to talk on this? I think this might be it for this video. A little bit of a shorter video today. But if you want help with this, I would love to invite you to my program, Amplify Your Voice. It is a 40-day reset, and we work together. I work with you on identifying the roadblocks and stepping out in your voice with yourself, developing your voice with yourself and with others. And by the end of the program, Sorry, there's a neighbor. There's this woman that has autism or something, and I used to be— um, she's special needs. She sings. She sings as she walks down the street. And, um, I used to be a— I know that just hijacked this whole thing, but I used to be a caretaker for a non-verbal individual with autism, and Maybe it's, it's great that I'm sharing this because when I worked with this individual, she expanded her vocabulary over the time that I worked with her. It wasn't just my work, but I did play a factor in improving that with her, communicating on an iPad device. And if someone who is nonverbal can learn new language and expand their mind You can overcome your complex post-traumatic stress disorder. You can. It's the reverse engineering and the expansion, right? The reverse engineering of your symptoms and the expansion of your vocabulary around your experience, which is what's going to give you the understanding, the connecting of the dots, letting the jigsaw fall into place, right? It's that. So please join me in Amplify Your Voice. It's my program to help you overcome your complex post-traumatic stress disorder and just get you out of psychological quicksand. If you're feeling stuck, like you just do not have any direction in life and you can't seem to get any momentum to move forward, then join Amplify Your Voice. You can attend the free training. The link for that is below. And I hope to see you there, and I hope to get you on your way because truly it sucks being stuck where you might be right now. I've been there. I've been there. It sucks. Um, you don't have to stay there. You don't. Your, your brain is malleable. Your brain is possible of this. So here's the deal. You can try it for 7 days. And if you don't like it, if you don't jive with it, I give you your money back. Um, I want you to have that amount of time so that you can actually rest in the content and actually start to feel a little bit of a transformation take place, which is why I give you a full week trial. So link for that below. I hope to see you there. And friend, you can do this. You can overcome it. I know it's a lot. I know it's overwhelming. Pace yourself. Identify what you're feeling, when you're feeling it, as it's coming up. And that's going to give you an upper hand on your healing and taking your life back. If you feel like you don't have your life right now, I want you to have it. So thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you in my next video.