Meandering Michele’s Mind: To Speak or Not to Speak about PTSD
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 • Uncategorized •
Those of you who have been following this blog for a while know that after my trauma I refused to speak about it — for 16 years. And then another trauma occurred and I had to start talking because I just didn’t know what else to do with myself.
I needed help, so I talked in order for people to know why I was struggling. I hoped telling the fragments would bring release. I thought talking would allow people to better know how to help me. I thought talking would get the thoughts out of my head.
Talking did help in some ways. Putting language to my experience made it less mysterious and more contained. Finding the words made me feel less alone and safer because I could communicate what was wrong and someone could understand me. It gave me some power over the past because I brought it out of my head and into the world according to the words I chose.
Only problem was, it was all still there inside my head. While talking brought me out of my isolation it wasn’t a miracle cure.
There was also the fact that putting words to it made the trauma more real for a while, more present tense and right beside me all the time. It made it seem bigger, closer, more colorful, more overwhelming and downright overbearing. Talking released the trauma from me, but didn’t release me from the trauma.
I’m wondering today what you all think about the value of talking. Is it helpful, at least in the beginning? Or, since there are PTSD healing techniques that don’t require you to speak about the past, can we make a case for never breathing a word about it?
(Photo: Sgoralnick)
Tags: healing, Meandering Michele's Mind, ptsd, techniques
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In principle I’ve found that not speaking about it makes it all feel more shameful and more like a personal failure that shows how inadequate I am as a person for having PTSD. Wheras talking about it normalizes it all and allows me to see that it doesn’t really say anything at all about me.
I’ve also found that talking about it helped to stop me obsessing and helped me very slowly to move away from “a horrible little secret that no-one can ever know about”.
It’s taken several years to be open about it and it’s taken several years to move it into my past. My blog is no longer anonymous and my facebook profile points to my blog and so anyone who knows me or googles me can to some extent find out about what I’ve been through.
Moving things out into the open like this for me meant moving my attitude towards “I have nothing to be ashamed of” and allowed me to let go of all sorts of unhealthy emotions.
Talking about it has mostly been extremely difficult and often would require me to take some sort of mental or actual time-out afterwards. Talking about it made me for a while feel vulnerable until it turned into strength.
In my experience, when talking about PTSD you have to pick your audience. There’s no point telling some people, like my family for instance. Well, okay… it was okay to tell my parents in the broadest terms (anything else they weren’t interested to hear), and my sister in a little more detail.
But they didn’t and don’t want it broken down for them. And there are others in my life for whom that’s true also.
There are some friends I could tell and certainly therapists. These people were cool with the details, the horror and terror. But for most people, no.
That said, now I make a point of explaining that yes, I suffered PTSD and I’m still on the tail end of the healing. I will talk about flashbacks and panic attacks and I will explain briefly how these things can rob a person of their life.
But I never feel like it will be a truly open story to everyone in my life, simply because many people don’t want to know…
Talking about it & getting it off your chest to set a baseline with your therapist, I could see as a good thing. There are things I could never reveal due to my military experience, and I never will.
If my PTSD could be healed without talking about my experiences, outside of what I’m willing to give, then, that’s therapy to me.
Svasti:
I tend to think of it in terms of Film Ratings. For those who want or need to know often Cert U. is enough. Very few people need to be aware of the Cert X. version and probably no-one for the Cert. R.
In my case some of the things I write about elsewhere are impacted by PTSD and in many ways it was important to bring attention to this so that people could be aware of how life varies from abstract ideas.
Hey Mike, good one. I like the idea of film ratings version, with a different director’s cut for each one! Nice…
Svasti’s thought — that we “pick our audience” has been crucial for me … I’ve always had a few cherished friends who instinctively *get* it, because they’ve been there too in their own ways. It is both heartbreaking and refreshing to have such companions …
Other folks in my life, I find, can veer from “Tell me everything” to “Don’t want to know!”
Speaking up and speaking out are crucial for dissipating the isolation and the shame that often coat a survivor’s soul …
Richard Mollica is a physician who’s written a marvelous book — Healing Invisible Wounds. His basic thesis is that only through sharing our stories, with other survivors and with people who can and *will* listen, will we begin to make space in the psyche for a more spacious life … Here’s a link to his site … http://www.hprt-cambridge.org/Layer3.asp?page_id=68
@Everyone – An interesting dilemma, to be sure and another example of how we each have to find our own way.
I just finished working with a client who flat out would not talk about her PTSD or what caused her trauma. Then, when she completed treatment with me she wrote me a letter explaining it all.
For so long I believed healing had to include telling the story in the beginning. Now, I’m changing my mind about that. As each of our healing journeys are individual so are our decisions. Tapping into our own internal voice, hearing what we need and acting on it become as critical in healing as in surviving and coping.
I think you do need to talk about it. I also think you need to carefully choose who you talk to. I have been greated by a myriad of reactions and unfortunately most of them were at best not helpful, at worst damaging. Talking it out is a very important element of processing the trauma through your brain’s reasoning centers. There are many more processing centers that have to be worked through as well. Talking about it forces us to put the trauma into oder in our minds. The very act of trying to put words to your raw emotions gives you power over them. It’s a little like Michele’s wild animal analogy for PTS. The raw emotion is that wild animal. Your words are are like taming tools, collars and leashes if you will. It isn’t enough on its own but it definitely is one of the necessary tools. And finding the right listener is the difference between using a weak leash or a strong one.
Ok, now it’s just starting to sound like we need the PTS Whisperer.