Meandering Michele’s Mind: Our own crowd of believers
Monday, March 29th, 2010 • Uncategorized •
I am on a quest to put together a network of people who believe in us and our power to heal. It’s occurred to me recently that for all those who believe we are broken and cannot be fixed there must be an entire mass of professionals, practitioners and caregives who believe the opposite.
As you know, I firmly believe we can find freedom. If you know someone who believes we can heal, please send him or her my way. I want to hear their points of view, ideas, suggestions and philosophies. I want to hear other voices that believe we are not destined to suffer forever.
In my own world I’ve been meeting local psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists who are on our side. And they know people, too. For example, my therapist friend Teresa (who so very firmly believes in our healing capacity) sent me this note paraphrasing the overall message of a trauma training session she attended last Friday:
The training I went to on trauma and neurobiology was fabulous! The best part being (and the part I know you will love) the lecturer (professor at FSU, researcher, trauma expert, and lecturer around Florida) stated,
“Because you had a traumatic experience does not mean you have PTSD, and if you had PTSD and you were able to regulate the experience then, if down the road you have a flashback or a nightmare it does not mean you still have PTSD. You can integrate the experience and normalize it enough to live with it in your memory. You never erase it and, from time to time, it can trigger, but that does not mean you have PTSD forever. It just means you had a triggering moment. If the rest of your life is asymptomatic then your PTSD is gone. “
Pretty much she affirmed that the myth of eternal PTSD is a myth and that you can have a moment where the recall is flared up but that does not mean you have not gotten rid of your PTSD…it was just a moment that triggered — without the cluster of symptoms that make up the whole of PTSD it is not still PTSD!
I read these words and I get excited. They mean there is hope for each and every one of us. It means if we can find a way to regulate our trauma reactions, if we can integrate the experience into who we are, then we can expect we have the chance to be released from the PTSD grip.
Half way down my own long road to healing, I read about the idea of integration. I set myself on a path to do that and it helped me enormously. I wrote out my story so that I — in my own words — could frame the past and make it a part not the whole of me. I worked on seeing more of who I am than just my survivor self. I worked on building, constructing and choosing who I wanted to be outside of, despite and beyond my horror. I found a practitioner who believed in me. Eventually, I got the job done.
We can only heal if we and the people around us believe we can and will. We each have to assess our own beliefs, and also those of our friends, families and professionals. If any of those areas weakens our strength they must be changed, ousted and replaced.
We must build a community of believers. Together we can change the path of PTSD recovery from one where we battle against our own and others’ disbelief, to where we draw our courage from the knowledge we are not alone and healing is eminently possible. We must stand together, shoulder to shoulder, each of us on our own path and yet traveling together to conquer the past and create a future where we each take back our power and live again.
(Photo acknowledgement on Flickr.)
Tags: Meandering Michele's Mind, ptsd, symptoms, trauma
YES!
on so many levels. I consider myself PTSD-free when it no longer has any impact on a day-2-day basis. I think it’s unrealistic to never expect to trigger again but I do expect to be able to handle any triggering that occurs and for it not to have a big impact.
Yes, I not only believe we can overcome PTSD I do know it myself. I endured flasbbacks and nightmares of the sexual abuse for years. All of that is gone since I had CBT 15 years ago. Now where I work through the major emotional abuse executed by my mother I figure every day again that my pain and my PTSD is restricted to this topic and teh aftermath and PTSD of the sexual abuse is gone. GONE:
Yes, Michele, it is possible. It works if we worked through.
Great article, Michele, loved every thing you said
i also liked what teresa said, there is hope for us all and we are in this together it does work, if we ourselves are willing, to work through it, and have the support. like i’ve said many times before,- i didn’t know healing from ptsd is possible until i met you. That to me was Hope<3
There are conditions for which there is no cure. Schizophrenia, AIDS, and Cancer are among them. PTSD and all Anxiety disorders show no hereditary link; they are a product of our experience and I say emphatically that there is no experience that cannot be overcome. If your healer sees your prognosis as poor, ask them what it would take to make your prognosis good. If they can’t tell you, fire them and find someone who believes – not simply that your condition can be overcome but that YOU can overcome it. I couldn’t possibly agree more, Michelle – we need people who believe in us and in our ability to experience transformation.
Jim
Michele.. I do believe I am on the road of total healing. I have lived a long life believing there was no cure. I was actually told by a PTSD theripist that we had to learn to deal with the symptoms for they would be with us for the rest of our lives. I’m on the doorstep of old and am just now finding these things out and finding you and your organization. With all that I am and the time I have left, I am going to be HEALED!
Count me in! I’m not only a believer, I know from experience that it is possible to emerge from the murky world of PTSD and live a happy and healthy life.
Yes and yes, Michele! What you are discussing in this article describes this part of my process so well – learning to self regulate and integrating my past experiences and pain. I also love the way this doctor is able to describe being ptsd “free”.
One thought I would like to add to this is that we can learn to use trigger situations to identify another step in the process of integrating our past into our “now” v continuing to manage and trying to avoid trigger situations, thoughts, feelings etc. In other words, triggers are indicators of some additional grief work to be done.
What do you think?
Yes, healing can happen but it would really help if it was not so hard to be believed, if people were not so uncomfortable about discussing it. If only we could openly discuss, bemoan, be angry, complain, shout, cry, understand and then be done with it. Instead it is colored with shame and hidden so well that victims have difficulty believing themselves, it is so awful a possiblity to consider. For example, my son was bit by a dog and fears dogs, no one disbelieves that, no one makes him question his experience and he rapidly healed from the event. When a child is not believed, that disbelief, that lack of support, lack of explaination is possibly more damaging than the original event (s). If we could some how make society listen and believe a child, make it something the child feels free to disclose, that would go a long way to healing even before adulthood.
@Everyone — Now, that’s what I like to hear — the din of POSITIVE voices, plus thoughts, ideas, and experiences proving the naysayers wrong. What would the world be like if healing was the normal, expected outcome? We can only work together toward shifting the present debate more favorably toward belief, with a big dash of hope.
“What would the world be like if healing was the normal, expected outcome?”
Give it five years and at this rate you might just find out!!!!
What an inspiring post… just the thought and words I needed today. Working on my own recovery but struggling with getting support from family or sharing with friends. Going to hold these words close. Thank you!