Meandering Michele’s Mind: My PTSD Confession

All right, let’s just kill the fantasy. It seems some of you have developed the illusion I’m pretty special, radically unique and a little out of your healing league. This week I’ve received more than one email and post comment suggesting I’m “a special case with special powers to overcome PTSD” and that my ability to heal marks me out as “exceptional”.

While I really love the idea of myself as larger than life and special and some sort of PTSD healing goddess the truth is, I am not unique — I’m just further down the path.

That’s it. That’s all. On the yellow brick road to healing I’ve already passed the field of poppies. Doesn’t make me special, just puts me in a different geography. And let’s be serious, don’t sell yourself short, if you had struggled with extreme PTSD symptoms for over 25 years you probably would have done the same thing because the truth is everyone is capable of doing what I did. I didn’t do anything except make a good decision. You can do that, can’t you? You’ve made many good decisions in your life.

As a matter of fact, think back to a good decision you made to change some circumstance you didn’t like. I know you can think of one — some situation in which you could not and would not accept things as they were another moment. It doesn’t have to be a big decision, it can be as simple as you were in a restuarant and didn’t like the dish you were served. It wasn’t cooked right. Eating it would make you feel sick. You decided to send it back. You were put in a situation that wasn’t good for you and you acted on it, plain and simple.

That’s what I did, only I sat at the table for 25 years dithering about it, saying I couldn’t possibly send back the dish, saying I had to eat it because it was served to me and I had no other choice.

And then one day I looked at the dish and felt my pain and anguish and hunger and said, “Dammit, take it away!”

I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I snapped. Anyone can do that. I’ll bet if you think about it you’ve got a time in your past you have done that, which means you know how the process works.

I don’t write this blog to say, “Look what I did!” We are all individual; our healing paths are unique. I write this blog to say, “It’s possible to heal. For example…”  It’s up to each of you to decide when to change your mind, when to push back from the table. My only goal is to let you know – through my voice and the others who write on this blog - healing can be achieved. You do not have to have special powers or be extraordinary or have any other trait that marks you as godly. You just have to have a tremendous desire to heal.

So, now the curtain has been pulled back on Oz…. To further underscore my point and show you I am not the only one who has experienced complete healing or used my mind to get there, I’ll leave you with this excerpt from an email I received this week from a woman in South Africa:

I have been totally healed from PTSD… I learnt to go against my own body and mind and speak into existence my own healing. I realized that my own body and mind was working against me and was actually killing me. I decided to totally ignore any feelings and emotions as they had become completely unreliable – they were misleading me and leading me in the opposite direction to my inner deep cry and desire to live again. They were stealing precious time from me and my life was racing by and slipping away from me.

This was the hardest thing I have ever done but it was the road to healing for me… as I travelled this road and the chains holding my mind were broken I gained momentum and the healing came quickly. I have been fully free since June 2008… I now experience joy and purpose in life. I have a future and a hope… two things I thought were gone forever.

I have been set free to live and love once more and it’s simply wonderful. I have a new and wonderful life and I will forever live in gratitude for the breath I can so freely take now. I am free!!  

(Photo: Kris Kros)

Tags: heal, posttraumatic stress, ptsd, treat