Helen, Thank you for joining. I think with PTSD comes anxiety, but I think the most important thing for you with your PTSD is processing through that event and reframing it and your synaptic sites to not have that responsive set anymore. anxiety can be extremely debilitating, but you do have the ability in your own neuron network to change the way you respond to situations that I have to understand the core level response where you really responding to what is it really mean to you and the same thing that medication is doing, which is changing the synoptic interaction in your brain you can do yourself processing of your core figuring out what it is. That is the underlying response and once you understand that you then have the ability to modulate and change that neuronal firing so that you reduce your symptomology. Dr. Michelle

Karen, There are a lot of things that you can do for your anxiety, but part of it is with 1 oh1 psychotherapy. You have the ability to figure out with the core level responses and understand the reason behind your anxiety. Anxiety didn’t come out of nowhere so it came out of something in your life that caused you to be anxious and have that response to things that happen in your life so getting to that core of understanding of what it is that triggers are anxiety what the underlying dynamic is behind it is really the key to living without an anxiety if you don’t understand the core event that caused it then there’s no way you can push it through. and then the best part of that is once you push that through you’re no longer a victim to that anxious response because you understand it and you know the dynamics of it you have your tools that help you modulated on a daily basis, and then it doesn’t become your first line of defense. Dr. Michelle

Robyn, Sometimes when you already have a long-term depressive disorder, and then you have a significant life event like your husband‘s passing, and then exacerbate your depression, so however, you were dealing with your depression before you really have to take time to grieve the loss of your husband, that being said it’s hard to do when you’re depressed so I think a combination of obviously psychotherapy and understanding your loss processing through the grief of losing your husband. I mean, that significant that is something that you know is a life altering circumstance, and if you have a underlying depression that you don’t have handled, and you don’t have coping skills for then somebody that passes away that significant to you you don’t have a skill set then or any real resources to deal with that event so there are a lot of things that you can do but the most important thing is to process it to look at it to talk about it and to work it through and then you can develop a set of coping skills that will keep you on that path. Dr. Michelle

Joy, this is one of the hardest things for us to deal with as mothers, and I think the hardest part of this is having to process it and look at it and feel the things you need to feel so that you can push forward to some semblance of normalcy and the ability to try to make some understanding of your life now without having your son in it and refocusing on the beauty that you do have with your grandsons from him we never know the wise that that has to happen to us, but we do know that your husband and your grandson need you and they need all of you and your grieving and that state gets you so it’s important to process. It’s important to do one on one psychotherapy and get all of the tools that you need in order to keep yourself on the daily to pull yourself out of that grief cycle. Dr. Michelle

Ginger, the reason you’re still dreaming about him is because it’s playing heavy on your heart and heavy on your mind even if it’s subconscious which then manifest itself in our dream state so once we are sleeping, that’s where a lot of us actually push through whatever is on our mind that we think cognitively we have kind of dealt with her that somehow we shouldn’t be affected by people that we loved very much at sometime, no matter how it ends or no matter what happened you still love that person so that doesn’t just go away magically because you’re not together anymore so I would try to work through that by journaling your thoughts and understanding the dynamics of the relationship and understanding the role that both of you played in your relationship, taking from your relationship the parts that you’re supposed to take with you and move forward, there are people that come in for a season and are not meant to stay, but we are meant to learn something from it so try refocus your energies especially before you go to bed. Try meditation where you’re putting your brain into it different state of processing. Dr Michelle