Firstly, please ensure you have read the information contained within this forum first, as it outlines many of the details surrounding exposure therapy and related treatments. It is important.

Secondly, if you are dependent upon alcohol or drugs, then you first need get those suppressant issues under control, otherwise you are wasting your time and mine.

Forums

There are four forums in which for you to choose to keep your running dialogue. You can use several if you desire, ie. more personal aspects within the private sections, other non-personal aspects in the public sections to help others learn, entirely your choice. If you post the same information across two or more of the forums, it will be removed into the most private forum. It is private, PTSD group or public. For example, if you post a trauma in the private forum, gain feedback, then post the exact same information in a public or PTSD group forum, it will be removed to only one version, however; if you post one part of your trauma that you want kept private in the private sections, then another different part of your trauma in the PTSD group or public forums, that is acceptable.

1. Trauma Private - The permissions for the forum allow you, me and Dr Roerich to view and post to your thread. Whilst others are running their own threads and posts within that forum, nobody can see them except the posters themselves.
2. Trauma PTSD - The permissions for the forum allows everyone within the PTSD group only (access to the private PTSD forum), to view and post to the threads in this section to offer support and experience. Posting here is the same as posting within the private PTSD forum.
3. Trauma Public - The permissions for this forum allow all readers to view your posts, and allow all members to post comments and support to your trauma diary.
4. Trauma Mental Imagery - The permissions for this forum allow all readers to view your posts, and allow all members to post comments and support to your diary.

Where To Start?

Generally before you actually start to write about one traumatic incident, you write a point form of all your traumas, which becomes a reference point for you to begin writing about each trauma. For example, a partial list of one of my own deployments could look like this:

• Locals attempted to run us off the road and kill us
• Watched man kill another man with shotgun within 10 metres
• Had man kill another man with machete
• Found dismembered male in wheelie bin, arms, legs, head and torso
• Handling burnt dieing woman who fell in fire
• Watched children starve to death and die, and from disease
• Had local threaten to kill me over beating them in a game of pool
• Had locals threaten to kill me over not giving them supplies
• Was shot at when unarmed providing humanitarian aid
• etc etc etc

The above is a point form example list that you would want to create first, as the start of your thread.

Writing

From your point form list, pick the worst trauma you have, and that is the one you write about first. Now your getting scared, however; if you attempt to write about a lesser one first, you can often talk yourself out of writing about the worst one, as the lesser one's will affect you enough to scare you from worst events. Go with the worst first, then all the rest are pushovers compared to that one. It is factual, it does work.

When to Write

When writing you need to write in short bursts, ie. the more you break a trauma down, the easier it becomes that you can write in smaller components, thus you can give yourself daily breaks between them. You can write for a few minutes of recollections, you can write for half an hour if you desire, ie. one full trauma. You know how much you can take. You will feel uncomfortable, don't stop at that point.

When To Stop

Using the Subjective Units of Disturbance (SUDS) scale, which is viewed as a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the worst), you want to be distressed around the level of 7 - 8 from your one writing episode. DO NOT stop until you have that much distress or you have finished one entire trauma (whichever comes first), though also be mindful to not over extend yourself into a 9 or 10 region, as that area is often critical breakdown.

Finished Writing For The Day

Once your SUDS level is around the 7 - 8 mark, you now stop writing. This does not end your self session though, as now you must read what you have written, as you reread you edit and fill in any points you have missed, or had forgotten, and you must read it to the point until your SUDS level has reduced to around a 3 - 4 range, which generally all of the information has also been recollected and edited into the trauma writing. You’re not going to get worse from reading it, as the majority of that has just overwhelmed you from remembering the trauma and writing it. Reading the specific writing is now going to lessen your fear of that trauma, to the point of the acceptable SUDS level at which point you should no longer fear what you have written, atleast not to the level you had when writing it. Read it, read it and read it, until you are sick of reading it, have a low SUDS level and have remembered all the parts of the trauma and entered them through editing.

Now you walk away from this until such time as you have calmed completely, usually about a few days to a week, sometimes more. You come back and start again when ready.

Generally during the time you are resting from writing, this is the point of analysing what you have written. Points are discussed, suggestions made, you map out your plans into actions, you continue.

Conclusion

Remember what I mentioned as the first must of this thread. You must read the other threads within this trauma diaries forum as they contain vital and specific information to help you, before you begin writing.