Meandering Michele’s Mind: Why You Have PTSD
Thursday, November 12th, 2009 • Uncategorized •
Whew, I’m exhausted! Last week I posted my question, “Why did I get PTSD?” in a bunch of professional groups on LinkedIn. I wanted to see what healing professionals, writers, and the general public thought about the answer to that question.
It’s going to take me a while to collate the answers but I’ll tell you this: It’s now a week later and I’m still receiving comments, thoughts, ideas, links and research references. Seems this question is a hot topic!
The bottomline so far: _____________________________________.
There is no bottomline. The theories for why some people end up with post-traumatic stress vary just as much as the causes themselves.
So, I have a new thought meandering my mind today. I’m curious to hear what you think…
My new thought is this: It doesn’t matter.
“Why me?” – while it is an instinctual question, and while we’re so desperately wishing we could find answers, and while we wish there was something we could hold onto in the shifting plates of PTSD symptoms — is really inconsequential.
During my battle to oust PTSD I often wondered why I had succumbed to begin with. Then, once the symptoms were gone I wondered even more why I couldn’t have fought them off when they started, if not before. Today I’m thinking we don’t need to know.
One of my favorite PTSD vets is Jason Ream, founder of OperationPTSD.com. We had a great combat PTSD radio show last night (which included a really terrific discussion about how both civilians and vets alike — and their families — can proactively approach the road to recovery).
Jason said something so simple and so perfect. He said, “You need to know where you’re at, and you need to decide where you’re going.” This is such a positive way to deal with PTSD. We need to focus on where we are, not how we got there. And we need to devise a well-formed idea of where we’d like to go, not mull over what genetic or other previous factors might hold us back. The present and the future are ours for the taking. What we decide today is all that matters.
Understanding why we end up with PTSD while others don’t seems like quicksand to me. We can get sucked into the quest for an answer and then get sucked down and under into more darkness for no reason at all.
“Why me?” I’ll never know. And really, that’s all right with me. Whatever the reason for my getting PTSD it didn’t stop me from healing. At the end of the day, that’s really all that matters, I think. What about you? Agree, or disagree??
(Photo acknowledgement on Flikr.)
Tags: healing, jason ream, Meandering Michele's Mind, operationptsd, post-traumatic stress, ptsd, radio, symptoms, vets
Loading ...
“Why Me?” and “How did I get here?” are ways in which we can stop ourselves moving forward. The questions don’t matter UNLESS you find your life repeating itself.
In contrast the question “Where Am I today?” is often easy to answer without making value judgements. Likewise “Where do I want to be tomorrow?” can also be answered without value judgements.
Questions that are helpful move us forward. Questions that are unhelpful allow us to find excuses for being stuck.
The reality is that the answers to some questions are often going to be nothing more than narratives that may or may not be true.
We know from psychology that ‘understanding’ something often makes no difference to our lives.
Hi Michele,
I do agree with you. It does not matter why! We can waste a lot of time and energy on ‘why’ when the energy, and thought process, can be used in a more productive way. Moving forward is the key.
I also agree that we must know where we are at. It is very helpful to know if you do have PTSD. That is when the healing can truly begin.
I used to think I was crazy when I was dealing with my PTSD. But, now I know that the behavior I was displaying was very normal for such an abnormal event in my life. Knowing that, I was able to help myself and others in the following years.
Thank you Michele, for all that you do.
Elizabeth
My therapist wisely suggested we come back to those questions later. For the same reasons Mike mentioned – its getting in the way of healing. And its also not important to healing.
However, I do think the reason we ask that is due to society and education. Everyone wants a reason, a linear connector for storylines that make them understandable. The trick of course is that PTSD is an abberation and doesn’t play by those rules.
So yeah, I agree. It doesn’t matter. What’s more important is working out ways to stop avoiding/ignoring what PTSD is doing to your life, and make a decision to get better.
Now, I can look back and say maybe it was X or Y reason, or some combination of the two.
Who knows? My mind was susceptible at that point in time. Interestingly, I’ve experienced trauma more than once in my life, but it was only that one time that resulted in me having to deal with PTSD. So, like the way we sometimes get a cold, other times we don’t… perhaps its just a matter of the state of our internal world at the time an incident (or multiple incidents) occurs?
Who knows. I just hold out a wish for everyone who suffers from PTSD that we all get better.
[...] at Michele’s blog, we considered the idea that perhaps the reason doesn’t matter in the end (read the [...]