Affirmation

I’m _______________and I’m ____years old. I am home from the war. I can feel safe here. I live in ________________. I live with___________________, and ____________cares about me. I can feel sadness and despair and fear and anger and guilt. I can cry and those who love me will still care for me. I need to have these feelings so I can let them go. Each time they come up, I can use them as evidence that I need to do whatever it takes to take care of myself. I can ask for and receive help.

Prayer for Veterans with PTSD

Creator (Higher Power or whatever term you identify with), I know that it’s not within the harmony of the universe that I be healed from the trauma of my experiences in the war without pain. Help me through the pain. Surround me with the golden light of healing; fill me with the white light of peace and love. Help me to bear that pain as I go through these memories. Help me to cry. Help me to remember. Help me to love myself no matter what happen to me or what I did to survive.
Amen.

Serenity Prayer for PTSD Veterans

Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change: the war; what happened to me; what I did or didn’t do; and that what happened was traumatic no matter how effectively I have stuffed it.
Grant me the courage to change the things I can: my attitude towards my symptoms-help me to accept them as normal responses to war and evidence that I need to take care of myself by talking about what happened to me with a safe person and getting whatever help I need; my actions-I no longer have to blow up, drug up, deny or repress my symptoms. I can accept them as evidence of how much I have been through; my reactions-instead of freaking out, blowing up, or trying to repress what I feel, I can focus on the symptom, whether it is numbness, anger, a painful emotion or memory, dream of flashback, or a physical reaction, feel what I feel, go through and have the pain and learn whatever it is that you want me to learn. Then I can share about the effects of trauma on people. Finally I can change how I see these symptoms-as normal responses to trauma which helped me survive and will help me recover even if they are painful.
And grant me the wisdom to know the difference. Help me to be willing to accept that I survived something terrible, and that I can learn from it and heal if I look outside my own head for help, and that I deserve to heal.