As we are learning more and more, a lot of approved drugs get overused and abused (the biopic series Dopesick comes to mind).
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for pharmaceuticals!
Personally, I know that if I needed pain medication for an acute fracture to my femur, let’s say, I’d probably opt-in for the medication.
However, if that pain continued after the bone healed, knowing what I know now, I’d work with natural remedies, bodywork, hydrotherapy, somatic trauma work, and other circulation enhancing methods, to help ease the pain and regain proper function.
Now, for some traumas that don’t create serious physical injury (or a need for surgical intervention), the post-traumatic stress is best relieved via connection, releasing stored survival stress, and regaining self-agency and power.
Which comes to the topic of this week’s re-release…
This is an interview I did with one of my online SmartBody SmartMind (SBSM) students Holly, back in 2021.
She went on a class of drugs called benzodiazepines (aka: Xanax) to help relieve severe PTSD, agorophobia, and panic attacks after a sexual assault.
What she soon discovered is that the pharmaceutical treatment created more trauma than the sexual trauma itself!
Her message is powerful so I wanted to share it again.
For those who might want a quick overview of her story, here are a few excerpts:
“I had been prescribed benzodiazepine in my 20s. Then (~20 years later) when I was taken off of it, I started to have some horrific PTSD like symptoms: panic attacks, agoraphobia. When I found SmartBody SmartMind™ , I couldn’t even leave my house and walk more than a block away without having a visceral reaction.”
“At the time that I found SmartBody SmartMind™, it was one of those last resorts. It was like: ‘Something has got to help me!’ I knew my medication was making me sick, and I knew that I needed to come off and that I had to find a better way.”
“Being in the healing field as a massage therapist, I knew the body was the way. I had done Somatic Experiencing with a private therapist for about three years and had a lot of help, but I knew I needed more. I knew I wanted to learn more and understand it better.”
Her story is a similar story to so many of our online students, and it goes something like this: They are doing a lot of great healing work, their intentions are clear, but they need deeper education and practices to fully restore regulation back to their nervous system.
As many of you know, this is exactly what happens in my online courses.
If you have yet to begin my structured courses, I hope you give them a strong consideration in 2025. You can learn more about them here.
To your nervous system health!