Meandering Michele’s Mind: Patience for PTSD Healing

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a patient person. Was I patient before my trauma? Before the PTSD set in? I don’t know. My trauma occurred when I was 13 and my PTSD set in right away; I don’t really have any memory of who I was before then, so…. maybe I was the world’s most patient person and then — I wasn’t.

Not that it matters. Who we are before PTSD becomes irrelevant in healing insomuch as we can’t get back to that person. Thinking about who that person was, trying to regain that particular self is a useless pursuit. The present moment is all that counts and is all that’s real. It’s the present moment we can shape and redirect.

Looking at things in this way I completely overhauled my healing by working in the present to become more of who I could be in the future. A simple reframing of perspective; an easy shift in course. Didn’t really bring the overnight results I thought it would. The results came eventually and I had to learn to be patient. 

First, I had to get used to the idea of the perceptual shift. I had to practice (re)focusing my mind in the present facing the future. I had to notice when it slipped backward and I had to rough it up a little to get it to bow to my will.

Second, I had to accept I didn’t really know what the future was. I had to accept I would need to recognize I had choices, make a stab at what I thought I wanted, and then regroup if it turned out I was wrong – which I was more than once.

In relearning who we are and deciding who we want to be there’s a bit of a grey area. That’s to be expected. We go from the black and white starkness of fear, anxiety and rage to the mixed shade of rediscovery and self-creation. It’s a lot of change all at once; would be nice if it happened quickly but not realistic. We want these post-trauma identity changes to be permanent; it takes time to get it right.

While the brain learns quickly by patterning the self takes its sweet time trying on a whole wardrobe of options before finally settling on an outfit. Meanwhile, we sit outside the fitting room watching clothes fly, checking our watches and wondering how much longer this will take.

And then we get annoyed at how long we’re waiting and we lose our tempers and yell at that self behind the curtain who is, justifiably, only trying to find the perfect ensemble. And then what happens? The self slows down. The process takes longer.

A by-product of my PTSD healing was the redevelopment of patience. The more angry I became with the slowness of my progress the more despondent I felt the more futile the process seemed the less I worked at it, forged forward or healed. Impatience stalled my healing more than once. I pushed my self too hard too fast and like any respectable entity, my self pushed back.

I had no choice; I learned to trust it and wait it out. I learned to sit quietly, to suggest options, try new things, let an experience settle, assess the results, make a new plan, move forward, try again until little by little I did make progress. I discovered and chose bits and pieces of the new person I could become. As I did, the nightmares stopped. The insomnia gradually ended. With patience came a lessening of rage and anxiety. Hmmm.

My father always told us not to force things. He meant mechanical things, like, ‘Don’t force that latch open.’ To him, if it had to be forced something wasn’t right and you needed to step back, reassess, jiggle it a little and try again. Things should move smoothly. It was our job to be patient enough to make the mechanics work properly without breaking.

PTSD healing is like this. Our job is to slow down, redirect and move forward at a speed comfortable for evolution. In scientific terms evolutions takes years. In PTSD it can take weeks or months. We can’t force it but if we have the patience to let it move at a gentle speed we can jiggle it a little and keep it going.

(Photo: Tina Manthorpe)

Tags: healing, Meandering Michele's Mind, ptsd, trauma