Come on get happy!

In the long term, after trauma, it is easy to lapse into a negative attitude. Recovery is a long process and can certainly be frustrating. To me, everything seemed to be taking too long. After a year, I still felt the impact of the trauma on my ability to focus. I didn't understand why I was still having to deal with stress responses to my triggers. It was and still is frustrating that I feel like I've made huge strides in recovery, but I still feel as though I'm not back to "normal". Studying used to come easily to me; now it is a struggle to not only maintain the concentration needed to finish a paper, but also memorize key facts and vocabulary in the crunch time before tests. For the past several months, one of my main sources of stress was actually my academics. It is hard to feel like you are not yourself.

It took a while for me to come to terms with the ways in which I have been affected by trauma. I'm a different person now, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In coping with my sexual assault, I started to reevaluate my outlook on life. I guess I think of my my mental health and happiness as a scale. It might sound counterintuitive or morose, but I've been to my lowest lows already and I have had to expand my happiness scale. I'm trying to change my attitude. No one wants to go around life being sad and depressed. I want to be happy. I've found that experiencing trauma and a little more of the bad stuff than most people has allowed me to appreciate more everyday experiences that go unnoticed by some of my friends.

Be happy. Or at least pretend to be happy. Who knows? That positive attitude and desire to be happy and healthy could be just what you need to get back into the swing of things.

The link below contains the video of Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, presenting his talk from the TED conference on the state of psychology today. Specifically, he examines healthy states like happiness, strength of character and optimism.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html