Meandering Michele’s Mind: The PTSD Conundrum – Who Am I?
Thursday, June 25th, 2009 • Uncategorized •
Those of you who’ve been following this blog for a while may have already guessed that I believe a large part of the PTSD problem is an identity crisis: We are no longer who we used to be Before; we aren’t comfortable with who we’ve become After; we don’t know who the hell we should be Now.
And that’s just a really broad oversimplification of what I see as one of 2 major PTSD problems (the other is a trauma addiction, but I’ll get to that in a later post). In my own healing I made the greatest progress and finally achieved wellness when I attacked the identity problem head on.
About 6 months after my PTSD diagnosis I realized that a large part of what was holding me back was that I could not see myself outside of my trauma. I defined myself as a ‘survivor’ – for so many reasons, including 1) my internal self-talk and recurring thoughts, 2) my memories, 3) the extreme physical symptoms that kept reinforcing that survivor view of whom I was. Tough to heal when all I believed about myself – and the reality of that personhood – was tied to my experience of surviving. I didn’t know who to be except survivor. And if I was no longer a survivor, then geez, who was I supposed to be?
It was frightening and unfamiliar to imagine myself as not leading life from a survivor perspective but ultimately, that’s what I did. I decided to deliberately construct a post-trauma identity as a way to choose who I was and wanted to be, and also, as a way to reconnect to myself. Trauma fractured me into several selves (not personalities, but selves) – the survivor self, the victim self, the hero self, the warrior self, etc. I needed to find a coherent way for them to refuse, to integrate into a single persona so that I was no longer defined by the clash of these selves and their collective survival perspective.
Bringing things down to a less metaphysical plane: I needed to be able to get through each day without seeing everything through a veil of fear, suspicion, worry and trepidation. Once I recognized that I needed to be able to see myself as just a woman - not a survivor, but a generic woman – I set about deciding who it was I wanted that woman to be. What did I want to define myself as?
So often in PTSD we lose our ability to choose; we react to survive and then get stuck in that mode. I decided to begin making choices. I decided to pursue joy. I decided to dance. I decided to change my career. I decided to change my habits and social interactions. I decided, perhaps most importantly, to change my own self-perceptions.
The result? The stronger I got about these choices, the more I acted on them and began to explore who I could be despite my traumatic past, the more a new, untraumatized self began to emerge. The more the fractured selves fused together (so that I retain their knowledge and experience but am not guided by their panic in every moment) the less severe my PTSD symptoms presented. The stronger my Now self became the weaker my After self felt. Bottomline: The more I made choices about myself the more I became myself and that old survivor self began to back down and slip away and eventually steal off into the dark.
Last night I received an email from a philosphy professor with whom I’m corresponding about the interaction of trauma and identity. He writes,
I’ve been thinking about how serious injury, trauma, and pain affect individuals’ sense of self or identity. And depending on what aspect of identity one is interested in each type of event (injury, trauma, pain) has interesting consequences.
For example, one common effect of injury, trauma or chronic pain is that individuals are less able to do what they were able to do before the event; the individual is restricted in his/her possible activities, including future life plans. Consequently, the individual is now faced with severe limits on who or what they want to be and subsequently they suffer from what can be described as an identity crisis. In the literature this is referred to as “self efficacy”.
Other aspects of identity involve a type of internal coherence in the self-concept; coherence between past experience, memory, and future projections of one’s self or actions. In the case of sudden trauma or pain, those memories/experiences may be difficult to integrate into one’s self-concept, especially if that self-concept is now in doubt as a result of the trauma.
In less sudden or less severe pain (e.g., chronic pain) the consequences for integration may be slower but no less profound. Keep in mind, what I have described thus far only accounts for some aspects of self-concept or identity. Other aspects raise more questions, such as how others view the individual and the effects this has on that individual’s self concept; sometimes referred to as the relational self or relational identity.
Such interesting things to consider. The impact of trauma on identity can be enormous and important. Who are we after trauma? Who are you??
How do you feel your identity has changed since your trauma? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.
(Photo: Steffen J)
Tags: heal, Meandering Michele's Mind, ptsd, symptom, treat
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Identity … what a loaded word when one’s previous worldview and self-perception have been wiped off the map of being!
My first thought in response to your post, Michele, is that I have no identity separate from trauma, since I was immersed in trauma from birth, if not before (born six weeks early to a mother who was becoming addicted to alcohol and who had had several miscarriages before and after I was born … First three months of my life passed in a NICU, circa 1959).
On the other hand … now, at age 50, I sometimes marvel at how I’ve not only survived, but managed (with a lifetime of hard work, and many beloved friends and mentors) to keep my sanity intact. Recently, I amassed a whole whack of letters, cards, and other notes from people who have written loving things to and about me … I keep them now in a beautiful box as reminders of how others have perceived me. I’m so much more than the injuries that were done to me …
It’s an ongoing — daily — challenge to bypass the belief that I am a complete failure in every sense … but I’m doing it! One day at a time, as they say …
… and yes, it’s all about choice … I’ve come to call the wiping away of volition that can follow trauma as “volitional paralysis” –> I recall being in therapy about 20 years ago and being asked by my then-therapist: “What do you want?”
Such a simple question, yes? … Yet I instantly regressed, felt myself being sucked into a horrific void of panic. I couldn’t answer the question; all I could do was cower and wail like a very young child.
I understand now what that reaction was about. If trauma is severe enough, it can negate a person’s sense of “I am” … and so will also negate “I want.” Being comes before wanting … so if one’s sense of being is threatened — and trauma does that — there is no way that a traumatized person can will, or want, anything. Yes, life is about sheer, existential survival … until and unless a person can feel safe enough in the world to even *imagine* wanting something. I didn’t start to actively want anything until I was about 36 years old … I still find it challenging to want, or to express need … or to make a choice.
“I want to live” is now one of my mantras … Everything else, I find, comes from that …
Blessings xo
Jaliya
Jaliya has actually hit upon something that I’ve been thinking a lot about since I first stumbled across this blog six months ago. The idea of a “pre-trauma identity” gets tossed around with a lot of different concepts here.
The idea that one can compare oneself to an identity one had before the trauma, and thus construct a new life based on the old one, or using the old one as a guide to where you want or could go is a good one. But it’s also impossible for those of us who never had a “pre” to our trauma.
The easy, off the cuff answer that I’ve been trying to convince myself of is “I can be whoever I want to be.” And I think I may slowly be moving toward that end. But for most of my life I was defined by my survival response to abuse, and then after I escaped, my PTSD. I’m now focused on becoming something other than just the survivor or “PTSD Girl”. Now I’m working to become a thriver.
But it’s still hard, because so much of my identity for the vast majority of my life was reactive. As Jaliya wrote above, I never really got the chance to develop anything outside of the hell I was living.
And Jaliya, thank you for sharing the story of being confronted with the idea of “What do I want?”. It’s something I’ve been wrestling with myself for the last few months. Because honestly, I don’t know what I want. I’ve achieved all the survival goals I had (escape, finish a degree, get a job, find a home of my own) but now I’m stuck. I don’t know where to go from here, I don’t know how to want something for myself that isn’t related to my immediate survival. And frankly, it’s been keeping me up at night.
@Amazing Graceless – You bring up a good point: for some of us (and I include myself in this group b/c I have little memory of myself or sense of my identity pre-trauma) we don’t have anything to fall back on. We have no choice but to look forward and decide and construct who we wish to be TODAY because who we were yesterday is not an available resource.
I don’t, actually, write about a pre-trauma identity — mainly this is because I don’t feel I had one. What I do write a lot about is a POST-trauma identity — that person we’ve become since our traumas, and that person we can choose to become rather than letting our traumas define us. How exciting that you feel yourself moving toward being whoever you want. I deeply believe we have that choice, even though our scars make the process difficult.
For so long we are in survival mode — we never consider what we want. We exist from one moment to the next. I had a really tough, tough time developing my ability to make choices. But I think that’s a necessary part of healing. And to make choices about who we are, well, I think that’s the most necesary part of all!
Hi Michele…just saw your tweet on this article and wanted to stop by and read it…yes…it is that when we live in a traumatic environment we are in survival and reactive mode and it can get to the point where our bodies and minds get stuck in the hypervigilant mode and in this mode it’s all about looking out for the next big hit/event/crisis/abuse,/etc…we can get so identified with this way of living that it becomes our identity…It’s such a coincidence as a few moments ago I posted on Facebook about the topic on trauma and it’s effect on us as children…here’s the post “Sometimes we grow up in homes where trauma, chaos and unpredictability happens on a regular basis…when this happens to us as a child it’s terrifying and sad and often has long term consequences…we (the child) do the best we can to survive in this environment without the maturity to understand that what’s happening to us is in no way a reflection of us of our innate goodness…sometimes this is where the story of a defective self begins and unraveling the story can take years…the most healing path to healing trauma is the one where we’re able to be compassionate towards ourselves…where we respond to our own pain with understanding instead of judgment and love instead of self-hatred…and let go of the resentment and hurt because that just keeps us chained to those past traumatic experiences and it is no longer bad experiences that happened to us..it becomes that bad things happened because of something we did/didn’t do or because we were in some way defective…so healing is essential for your soul..the other choice is to harbor resentment and live in the past…so free yourself from those things that happened to you and that are not a reflection of how you were as a child or who you are today…peace
I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I was before the trauma. I was eight. I kind of remember being social and not scared. I do remember being very curious and getting into trouble a lot for that. I always wanted to know what would happen if…so experiments often went wrong. Some of my problems come from my mom who started me down the road to anxiety very early on so by the time I was six or seven my life was already headed in an unhealthy direction with no one sane to balance that out. I am trying now to figure out who I want to be. I’m a little (little, very little but still..) more social. But people are my biggest fear as I was attacked by strangers, so the person I became after the truama was/is scared of people.
Intersting topic. Now my mind is really going. Lots to ponder.
@Cindy — Thanks for your so wonderful comment. The process you describe is perfect, and what I believe in, too.
Feel free to post a link to your piece on the Heal My PTSD Facebook fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/healmyptsd
@Cate — I think we really begin to make progress in recovery when we’re willing to ponder, so …… I’m glad your mind is really going! I don’t think it’s necessary to know, definitively who you were before. It’s nice when we do (I didn’t really) but I think we can become equally strong by decided who we want to be NOW and deliberately choosing to develop those traits in the present and use them toward the future.