“PTSD”, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is now affecting millions of people in every wsalk of life, not just veterans returning from war. An unprecedented overload of electronic digital stimulation, economic insecurity, deep psychic baggage coming into awareness plus a planet full of seemingly unsolvable problems has made living in a state of chronic stress the new normal.

We can see this epidemic of low-grade PTSD as not just a "problem" but also a necessary part of the mass ascension of consciousness now unfolding on our planet.  It represents the crisis point that usually precedes breakthrough, brought about by increased Light bringing all manner of hidden and repressed energies to the surface for acknowledgement and clearing.

PTSD, and suicides related to it, are 61% higher among military veterans than the general population. This is a major crisis for our military and our society. [ii]

Our brains have evolved to help us thrive and survive. They are designed to protect us and keep us safe. When working properly our brains can be very efficient at helping mobilize our bodies to immediately respond to threats and danger, and then chill out and relax once it gets the all clear signal.

Unfortunately for people who have been through a lot of trauma there can be major software bugs in their brains. These are actual changes in the neurological wiring of the brain that makes it incapable of differentiating between a real threat and many harmless experiences. After being triggered into a stress response it is also much harder for them to go back to the calm “all clear” brain state than normal people.

This has created the agony of PTSD for many war veterans, and also for people who have been through traumatic childhood or adult experiences. PTSD is called post-traumatic stress disorder because it creates traumatic feelings and hyper-arousal that continue long after there is any reason for it.

Sadly, our modern society is full of triggers that stimulate our stress systems much of the time.

A barrage of challenging experiences is overloading our circuits and triggering our brains into some of the same experiences veterans of actual war are going through. With this common kind of PTSD it can be very frustrating trying to heal yourself because of the way the brain is wired. It seems that the more you try to get rid of old pain the more entrenched it gets.

Servicing the devastation caused by chronic stress is extremely profitable to the medical, media, and pharmaceutical industries. Not surprisingly, pharmaceuticals are the most profitable major industry in the USA, leading all others with a 30% profit margin.

Want to know why the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable one in the world? According to the Centers for Disease Control 48.7% of all Americans use at least one prescription drug. Drug companies spend 19 times more on marketing and lobbying politicians than they do on research and development.

Mind-altering drugs are now routinely prescribed by doctors for a vast host of human experiences that people in the past lived with, or received support for from people around them. Drugs are prescribed for aggressive children, smoking, bed wetting, alleged eating disorders, learning challenges, and criminal behavior, to name a few.

From 1996 to 2005 the drug industry increased their marketing of these drugs between 300 – 500%. It is much more profitable for physicians to prescribe antidepressant drugs than to offer psychotherapy, cognitive therapy, EMDR, acupuncture or other alternative methods of treatment that have been shown to be more effective in the long run.
Increasing numbers of research studies are showing that antidepressants are not much more effective than placebo pills (pills with no medical effects). A retrospective analysis of all FDA clinical trials for four antidepressant drugs found that they didn’t perform significantly better than placebos in treating mild or moderate depression, and the benefits of the drugs were “relatively small even for severely depressed patients”.

Not only are these drugs less effective than touted by those who sell them, they are also proven to increase suicide and violent behavior in many people taking them. Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac did a retrospective study of people in Germany taking Prozac who had committed suicide. The study showed that people taking this drug were six times more likely to kill themselves than people taking placebos or older antidepressant drugs. According to investigator Peter Breggin, M.D., Eli Lilly hid these findings from the German agency and the US FDA.

Trying to “opt out” of the stress-based system has been very difficult up to now. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that we are inundated with experiences and messages that tend to reinforce and increase stress.

The other reason is that most healing systems used to try to heal PTSD are created by the human mind. Trying to use the mind to heal the mind rarely works. This often has the effect of making the stress programs even more resistant! Kind of like using fire to fight fire, as the old expression goes.

I’ll tell you right now about one of the fastest and easiest ways to free yourself from negative programing and be in your calm center - turn off your TV! At least avoid TV news programs like the plague.

Remember the basic principle of computers – Garbage In, Garbage Out. The mind works that way too. That which you take in determines a lot about the quality of your experience. Listen to uplifting, high vibrational music. Get out in nature and take in the beauty through all your senses as often as possible.  Commit to regular meditation on the Zero Point of One-ness within yourself.  Choose to spend time with people who love you and support your happiness and awakening. You may have already eliminated or reduced harmful items in your diet such as sugar, gluten, artificial foods and harmful chemicals. Make sure you also do that with your mental diet.  This is a top way to reduce PTSD.   The resources on this Ascension Tools website can be very supportive in healing chronic stress and supporting your Awakening.

A major principle of consciousness is that what you focus on expands. This is based on how the brain works. It is our sacred responsibility to focus our attention on sights, sounds and experiences that are uplifting, beautiful and life-affirming as much as we possibly can. This does not mean hiding from the world in a never never land. Even if you are in the thick of a challenging work assignment or serving in a refugee camp, you can behold beauty and upliftment if you see that loving hearts are at work producing a solution.