Survivors Speak: Introducing a Guest Post Series

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I first began reading Matthew Black’s blog, when I stumbled upon it through a Google Alert for PTSD. That was sometime in the autumn of 2008 and I liked Matthew’s blog immediately for the interesting way he wove together an exploration of Zen practice and its relation to healing PTSD. Innovative, I thought. Hmmmm.

In my quest to find other PTSD bloggers I could relate to – meaning, survivors writing about positive, proactive, empowering things we can do to heal – I hadn’t come across many, and none that used as a central theme such a personal practice as Zen philosophy. I was intrigued. I kept reading. I left comments on posts and Matthew answered them and we began a correspondence that proved, to use an appropriate word, enlightening in how Zen could be applied as a self-empowering healing tool.

While I admired Matthew’s intellect, thought process and impressive knowledge and understanding of Zen texts and principles – and while our correspondence was something I looked forward to – there was something cold about Matthew. He seemed so intellectual that he’d cut off from all emotion. He seemed so bent on principle that he’d divorced from the human element, and especially the human survivor element. As if intellectualism could tame trauma completely, he seemed intent on forcing fate into a Zen-shaped box.

And then an interesting thing happened: Matthew guest posted on Making the Shift about his self-driven and motivated process of desensitization. He wrote about how he personally designed the method he used to get himself over fears related to his trauma. One of these activities included dance, and Matt outlined in the guest post his gradual evolution from trauma to health.

I loved the post. I thought it was great in that it married Matthew’s intellectual side with his emotional/expieriential self. In addition to the smartness of Matthew’s thoughts came through the rawness of his emotions; the struggle of PTSD and his awareness of it in the moment, without straining it through a sieve of intellectuality.

To me, this guest post signals a turning point in Matt’s approach to his blog and writing. Suddenly, his own posts became more infused with an emotional presence. Suddenly, he began to remove the layers of intellectualism that had held him, and PTSD, and his audience at arm’s length and he allowed us and himself to get closer to whom he truly is: an intensely thoughtful man with lofty ideas grounded in real experience.

The marriage of these two elements has deepened his exploration of PTSD healing, the role of Zen in the mix, and the necessity of becoming who we truly are. Matthew has gone from heartily guarding his identity and writing under a pseudonym, to reaching out more in his personal life and writing here under his full name. Currently on his blog he is documenting his use of a PTSD workbook. This is true PTSD healing at work.

In relation to his transformation, Matthew recently remarked, “I realized I had more work to do.” That’s honesty. That’s somoeone who knows and understands the PTSD experience and the nature of healing. That’s someone who respects the process and does what needs to be done. Today is the beginning of a series of sporadic ‘Survivors Speak’ guest posts by Matthew called ‘Unbreak My Brain’. In these posts he’s doing for us what really needs to be done: presenting an overview of PTSD in all of its various elements and then suggesting, from an in-process survivor’s point of view, how we can approach taming the beast.

(Photo: Debra Peters)

Tags: heal, posttraumatic, ptsd, symptoms, treat