First and foremost Thank you. Thank you for science, thank you for giving me my life back, thank you for opening up a world for me that I had no knowledge of ever experiencing.
When I was searching for a therapy that would help me with my PTSD, depression and anxiety I expected something like what I had experienced over the last 10 years. Talk therapy and even a stay in a treatment facility that I felt might help me. Though I took some small steps forward I was still so far away from my goal of feeling whole and at peace. Being 64, all I wanted was to live life with some joy and happiness. What I wanted and what I had achieved fell very short of these hopes and wishes.
What I found was you Laney and you Vickie and ART. When I first watched your TED talk and saw the parent store it struck such a deep emotion in me that I teared up. It’s imperative to know that I learned from earliest childhood that crying had deep consequences and I almost never even felt that urge. I wanted a new parent more than anything I could imagine.
So I read the ART website completely, twice over! I heard you say, Laney, that science was the key and as Vickie will confirm, I am all about the science. I watched every video, TED talk and read every study done on ART, and found a ray of hope. Vickie, your videos spoke to me and I made plans to do the 5-day retreat. I almost didn’t go because I was afraid that if this failed my lifeline would be dashed and my future dark.
What I found was astonishing and beyond anything I could have hoped for. All of my deepest and darkest traumas, physical, psychological and sexual could be reframed and put in their place. As I saw in the TED talk, I know the facts but I don’t have the trauma that I had been carrying my whole life and even more amazing I realized how much I have accomplished and would never had made these choices without the trauma. As I told Vickie. I am the strongest person I know. Both of you gave me this. The knowledge and understanding that I am not just the sum of my PTSD, I AM PTG (post traumatic growth).
The physical and psychological gifts that I have in my toolbox leave me breathless. I am still walking around above the ground. When I finally realized a new emotion that I had never felt and named it peace, I could for the first time in my life be truly happy and whole.
I will be shouting ART’s praises as often and as loud as I can to anyone who will hear and listen. If there is anything I can do as a successful recipient of this amazing science, all you need to do is ask.
So I don’t go on and write my own soliloquy, let me just say again thank you for developing ART and sharing it with me and Vickie thank you for your compassion and caring and I will always remember, neurons that fire together wire together!