Chelsey Fielding struggled with PTSD for two years through failed therapy and self-help attempts until Dr. John A. King's book Deal With It gave her a science-based framework that actually worked. The mantra "PTSD does not define you, it refines you" helped her stop harsh self-criticism and regain confidence at work.
Hiya, my name's Chelsea Fielding and I'm giving a review for the book Deal With It by Dr. John A. King. And I just wanted to say how much I loved it and how much it's helped me in my life so far. I've just started a new job and I found it really stressful and luckily I had this book to read to get me through it. So I was diagnosed with PTSD sort of I think last year now, so like a year and a half, almost 2 years now. And I found it really difficult to deal with. I didn't quite understand what it was. I had therapy. I've read loads and loads of books. I have driven people mad talking about it. Felt like I was probably never gonna get over it. Felt like it was— my life was over. That I didn't want to be a victim, but that I was. And that was it. That's all I had. And Tried various meditation techniques, sort of, well, just anything. Yoga, just, yeah, pretty much anything that I could. And I still found things really, really difficult. I think that all of them have helped me, but this book that I've been reading by John just completely made sense to me. It was like everything had been debunked, everything had been de-jargoned, and I understood Far more now than I have in the last year, and it has helped me so, so much. Obviously I've still got a long way to go, but the way that John explains it, the experiences he shares, how he sort of correlates it to scientific examples— he's created tables and the happiness report— and just the way that he's measured everything and sort of put it in this bite-sized really easy to understand way to sort of learn that you're actually normal. There's nothing wrong with people that have PTSD. You just have different ways of looking at things now and you have different skills. Like he says, PTSD doesn't refine you— sorry, it doesn't define you, it refines you. Which for me made me feel really good. It made me feel like a human being again. Um, so I just want to say thank you for taking the time to dedicate yourself to helping others. You've made me feel like I've got a voice again, like I can talk about it or not talk about it, or, you know, how I can deal with things. I'm still struggling and still other people are, you know, get fed up with me and things like that, but now I'm not— I don't beat myself up as so much anymore. I think the, the thing that I realized was that I was, um, I did something a bit silly. I left, I left my laptop somewhere and immediately I started to beat myself up about it. I started to shout at myself internally and criticize myself and tell me, you know, tell myself how I was and everything. And I stopped myself. Stopped myself immediately almost and was just like, no, that's wrong. I made a mistake. It's okay to make mistakes. And that was after reading this book. And I don't think I would have felt like that if I hadn't have read this book because it explores everything. It explains it in a way that I don't feel like such a freak, which I'm sure plenty of people who suffer mentally do. And Yeah, I think it's helped me a lot with this new job and with defining who I am, and it's going to probably hopefully start helping me in my relationship as well because I know that my partner finds it quite hard, and other people as well. So yeah, it's been a real eye-opener and lifesaver. I would recommend that anybody suffering with PTSD reads this book. It's just— it's incredible. It's like nothing I've ever come across. So thank you again, John, and I look forward to reading more when you decide to write some more. Okay, thanks. Bye.
