Meandering Michele’s Mind: Do You Believe PTSD Can Be Healed?
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 • Uncategorized •
I’ll be blunt. I get very discouraged and a tad frustrated with the attitude I frequently see about healing PTSD.
It’s a big question in the PTSD world: Can this condition be healed?
Who has the answer?
All too often I meet or hear from survivors who definitively say, “PTSD can’t be healed.”
Too many times I’ve heard professionals say that, too.
Even worse, I hear survivors say PTSD can’t be healed and when I ask how they know that, the answer is, “My psychiatrist says so.”
Who’s really running the show here? Do the professionals — who’ve never had post-traumatic stress – know more than we do about strength, determination, commitment and intention? Do they know for sure any single person doesn’t have it in him or her to find the courage and desire to turn things around?
Do those survivors who are so sure PTSD can’t be healed know something those of us struggling to and recovering don’t know?? Is healing only an illusion???
Just last night I read an article by a Combat vet who reiterated, “PTSD can’t be healed. The most we can hope to do is manage the symptoms.” And I thought, “Really? Is that the most we can hope to do?”
In the healing game what you think and believe plays as important a role in your progress as anything or anyone. Actually, it plays MORE.
So, I’m wondering today: What do all of you think and believe about healing PTSD?
(Photo: Kudaker)
Tags: combat vet, healing, Meandering Michele's Mind, post-traumatic stress, ptsd
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It’s a bit like rolling a boulder downhill. It may take a while to get started but once that sucka starts to move you kinda want it to keep moving. If it stumbles on a small stone you remove the stone and get it rolling again.
I think we all have a natural tendency to want health and vitality but getting healthy often means those around you become aware of their own lack of health.
PTSD can often involve dealing with heavy shit and the people around you who see you deal can start to sweat over their own shit that is being ignored.
As for professionals. Well….. “It cannot be healed” is easier than “I don’t have a clue how to help you” but it’s hardly honest or helpful.
Michele you are living proof that PTSD can be healed. Is it at all possible that maybe some of these “professionals” don’t want us to be truly healed? Wouldnt it be better for us to go week after week to therapy.. with little to no progress?
Thank you for being a positive and truly healing voice out there in the world. Your website is inspiring to us all.
PTSD is a mental disease, yes? Can a mental disease be healed, cured, made to totally vanish from one’s soul? I don’t believe this. I am not healed. I am a wounded person, like a tree who has a scare. Still I am a happy person, with kind friends, wonderful interests and an ability to enjoy this wonderful planet. I always know that I have a scar and I am thankful for this knowledge, it allows me to take this into account when I reflect on my behaviour, actions and feelings. I don’t feel a tree with a scar to be less “healthy” than a tree without a scar. It is just that they differ. Who is to say, which tree is “better”?:-)
igasho:
The science says the brain is very flexible – forever changing even if we don’t see it. PTSD changes some of the wiring in the brain. We can use our brains to change the wiring to be something else.
I’m not the same person I was. There are some things I will not forget. But I no longer consider myself scarred or wounded. I consider myself to be someone is mocing towards more and more healthiness.
Today there are things that I cannot do but they are fewer than yesterday. Today there are things that I can do that I never could do pre-trauma.
The healthy life I have today only exists because of the trauma and the motivation it gave me to just recreate all of my life.
The big thing I’ve learnt is that there is no perfect life and there is no perfect me. There is no life that would be perfect if it wasn’t just for…..
There was a long time when I wished that the Trauma and the PTSD had never happenned but now I can see that out of it has grown something really interesting and good and is still ongoing.
Hi Michele,
I go round and round with your question about healing PTSD. In fact it seems to me that PTSD goes round and round – cyclical. When I am doing well I think, “this is it. It’s behind me now.” And THEN…it comes back. I’m in a good place right now. I am truly appreciating the relief I feel. The clear head, the desire to do things, and hope. Honestly though, I do think it will come back. It’s never left forever. In the meantime, I DO my stuff. I believe I am better because I DO my stuff (exercise, meditation, boundaries, etc). This is something my body will always tell me that I need. For me, if “IT” never comes back, I will believe PTSD is healed-able. I can’t afford to be lax about the DO part, though. You are living proof and I am not living proof – not yet anyway.
This is such an important post, and not just for those suffering from PTSD.
For anyone who deals with depression, anxiety and many other forms of mental illness too – the key to our healing is how we approach it.
I know what its like to feel like it will never go away. I used to be one of those people.
Luckily for me, I had therapists who DID believe in healing, not just coping.
Absolutely, what some people have to deal with is more complex than some. Which just means they have more work to do to get better and it might take longer. But who knows really? Healing is so incredibly individual…
I will reiterate (I’ve said it here before I think), there’s a very definitive turning point that I reached, where I got absolutely sick and tired of my life being messed up by PTSD. And I think that’s when I was ready to believe it was possible to heal.
@igasho, @Erin and anyone else who isn’t sure: Michele is not the only one. I am another. So is Mike. I’m sure there’s more. We’ve each worked like the blazes to regain our mental health.
Its possible and you can do it too!
You’re all making such fabulous points; this has become a very interesting conversation!
@Mike & @Rebecca – I agree, I think there is a fundamental problem in the way many (not all) professionals approach PTSD recovery. For sure, Mike you’re right – they would never admit they don’t have a clue! And Rebecca, certainly there are some who profit from our believing we can’t overcome. This all brings up another point for me: The reliance we have on the medical profession, and our belief they are always right and more informed than we are.
@Igasho – Technically, PTSD is a “psychiatric condition” not a disease, in which case the door for healing is definitely open. To me, it’s not a matter of which tree is better but which is happier, freer, able to grow more amply. You may not be healed…. yet. I believe the possibility exists for you to progress to whatever healed state you wish.
@Erin – The DO part is not only about healing, those things you mention create ongoing positive, anabolic, creative energy in your life — why would you give them up??! They may bridge the gap of your healing but there’s no reason why you’d give up something that brings peace. Dancing was my bridge; I still dance 4 nights a week. You ARE living proof that progress can be made — that’s HUGE! Don’t discount where you are and how far you’ve come in the cycle.
@Svasti – Such an important point, that we all reach a turning point. That was an enormous moment for me, too, and I’m glad you brought up how much power that moment has to convince us to believe there can be something else.
I think the cycle of PTSD is interesting: we don’t believe, we do, we achieve. Or, we lose ourselves, we seek ourselves, we find ourselves. Not a journey we might have chosen to take, but look what we know about ourselves, our strength and our courage when we soldier on.
Great points.
To the question of professionals who tell us we can’t heal PTSD – my experience with psychiatry was that the belief is that a great many of the conditions that psychiatrists see, they have no expectation of curing. They are conditions to be ‘managed’ with medication and support. They seem to be following the medical model of someone with diabetes, a heart condition, etc…My psychiatrist certainly never suggested that I could ‘heal’. He just kept handing out more meds.
Coincidentally or not, this approach is great for the drug companies – they get to sell drugs for a patient’s lifetime.
Luckily I went elsewhere and feel I’m now on a healing path. You’re really right about this Michelle I think – you need a belief that you can heal in order to begin to do so.
Whew! — what a post. I want to jump into the fray and argue this; argue that … and then I remind myself of two things:
1. What does healing mean — both in a universal sense and to each individual person? The linguistic root of our English word “heal” is in the Old English “haelen” — “to make whole, sound, and well.” What does it mean to each of us to be whole, sound, and well?
2. There are definite and measurable physiological injuries that occur with severe shock and life-threatening events … and there are so many variables in each individual experience. One person’s experience of healing may be impossible for another person; some injuries *do* leave permanent, altering effects. At the same time, I believe that it’s possible to be “strong at the broken places.” There’s such a paradox about it all … As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
No person has any one, or “the” answer to whether PTSD (or any injury/illness) can be healed according to one uniform definition … we have only our own experience, choices, understanding, and relations to go by. It is hard, hard work … I’ve been at this work for 27 years now, and I have salved and truly healed — made whole, come to rest and resolution with — some injuries. Others, no; not yet. I do know my intentions, though. Sometimes they work at cross purposes, and there, then, is the work to be done … at that particular moment.
A wise man named Matthew Fox once wrote, “We do not enter the world as blotches on existence, as sinful creatures. We burst into the world as original blessings.”
The original blessing — Life — is already, always within us. In that respect, I believe we are all healing and healed …
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@Ellen – Isn’t it sad that the machine that’s supposed to heal can be driven by *gasp* not such altruistic beliefs & goals! It’s a good thing we’re all conscious enough to question so we can see when something may be working at cross purposes with us.
@Jaliya – You just added an entirely new dimension to this discussion! You’re right, it’s very important to respect and remember that we each do have our own definition of healing. Very true. Very wise and sage.
I would, however, point out that within those definitions we can each have limiting beliefs that corral us into a space where we believe less is possible instead of more. In which case our ‘definition’ becomes something that can hold us back.
The workings of the mind and healing are so tricky! Good thing we all have each other to bounce ideas off of.
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My only question is regarding diagnosis. I have been diagnosed with Chronic PTSD and have been told I will have better times and times when I relapse. I feel a bit frustrated by the focus on healing because I work tirelessly to “get better” and then have a trigger and the cycle begins again.
What is your assessment of the different types of PTSD in the DSM?
Thanks
Emily
In the long run … no. I think that it can be held at bay. I don’t believe that this will ever leave you, per se. It can be minimized but for me, can flare up with another violent act. It just did as someone inflicted violence on me recently. I thought I was in a safe place. I was out-of-my-mind for a lil’ while. Then I regained composure, dealt with the pain, and decided to stay away… far, far away. I was able to let it go.