Meandering Michele’s Mind: My PTSD Confession
Monday, April 5th, 2010 • Uncategorized •
Beautiful stigma: "the apical end of the style where deposited pollen enters the pistil"
I have to tell you all something I’ve been keeping secret for a very long time. I understand you may immediately want to leave this page. I accept I may never have the pleasure of your company again. I take full responsibility if I am about to really let you down.
However, in light of conversations last week (both on this blog and other social media sites) about the idea of the stigma related to mental illness I feel forced to reveal:
I am one of those people with a big stigma about mental illness. PTSD in particular. I don’t want to be around it, affected by it, impacted by it or in any way enclosed in its grip. I have disdain for its very existence. Even the smallest idea of it makes me sick, suspicious, and immediately wanting to run in the other direction.
Which is, of couse, why I’m working so hard to raise issues of PTSD awareness, education, treatment and self-empowered healing. I want everyone with the PTSD label to get away from it, to be released from it and move on to living lives that are labeled with things like joy, happiness, excitement, freedom, fulfillment, peace and serenity.
When the issue of my own PTSD was raised I flat out rejected it. I told my therapist I would NOT be labeled with this psychotic thing. The idea that I would have something so ‘mental illness’ wrong with me was frightening. It made me feel out of control, terrified, creepy and on the verge of insane. I didn’t understand what it meant to be traumatized, or to dissociate, or to have issues of hyperarousal, hypervigilance or avoidance.
Alas, we don’t always get to choose our labels. We do, however, get to choose how we wear them. I pulled mine on full force so that I could proceed to rip it to shreds. My PTSD stigma became a sort of rocket at my back fueling my own recovery. Get it away from me! Get it off!
The stigma against us from the outside world is uncalled for, unfair and unjust, but in our own community here, maybe a little stigma is not a bad thing. And let me make sure I’m clear about this: not a stigma against ourselves, but against this PTSD thing that has invaded us. We have to accept the label, the existence of symptoms, our history and our experience. But PTSD is not who we are. It is something that happens to us. And then we are faced with the task of unhappening it.
I think, in fact, we should all have a healthy stigma to help us achieve that. Let’s start a PTSD stigma revolution! Let’s all have a PTSD stigma and vow to rid ourselves of this blight on our otherwise unblemished, authentic selves.
Who’s with me?
(Photo acknowledgement on Flickr.)
Tags: Meandering Michele's Mind, ptsd, symptoms
Count me in, Michele! I firmly believe and agree that we can USE the labels to write our own story, draw our own map and create the life of our choosing outside of the stigma of mental health issues.
While some of us may have been led down the path that we “are” the labels to the point that our identity is enmeshed with a diagnosis or symptom – we do not have to accept this or stay there.
I agree – if we can attack the labels and stigma as something to be overcome, we can find our own power and fierce determination to take back our lives and reclaim our futures.
I agree I would like to rid this.. but with me anyway.. its been with me for a very long time and just by saying I want to rid it doesnt make it go away. I use to be adventurious, not anymore. Ive become the bitter person that I wish I hadnt. If I let my guard down to be happy, then that allows for more trama or control by someone else creep in. I just cant allow anyone or anything to break me down.
Lori
Lori – I soooo agree with you! I struggled with undiagnosed PTSD for 25 years — by then it had really taken over who I was! And you’re so right: letting myguard down to be happy (gasp!) only made me feel anxious and always led to trauma. But that doesn’t have to be the case. On my own journey to freedom I found that I had to be careful and deliberate and relearn some things– and, as you said, not allow anyone or anything to break me down. We’re survivors, so we do have a reserve of courage and strenght. Once I tapped into that I was able to make progress. You sound very conscious of what you want to change. To me, that’s the most important first step!
Michele,
I’m almost proud to wear the label of PTSD! Why? because I have survived Trauma after Trauma throughout my life! I know not all traumas are a result of abuse. However in my particular case that’s exactly what it’s from. And perhaps society might want to take a more firm stance against pedophiles and child beaters rendering their understanding to those with PTSD. I was in denial like you when my therapist told me what I was suffering from. My first thought was “this is exactly why I didn’t come to a therapist sooner!” And after 13 years of therapy it did nothing but take me full circle back to where I began. It wasn’t until I was hit with another trauma (one I caused) this time, that things began to really come to me and make sense. I have much more of an understanding of myself now…but the road ahead is a long one. Getting rid of the parasites in my physical life, friends family etc. was difficult but now I have to rid the parasites in my mind and it’s a struggle. Catching your thoughts and changing them is so difficult especially when we’re in a world where there are so many people who are more than happy to crap on someones day so that they have company! There are more people labeled sane than those with PTSD and I’ll tell you one thing…as a person with PTSD…I don’t invite company to share my misery!!! Yet many whom are considered sane would do so in a heartbeat! We’re not bad…
I don’t see a stigma in PTSD any more than I do with cancer or tennis elbow. Parts of us don’t always work the way we want them to, either because of our genetics, our lifestyle, or events beyond our control. This is true for everyone. That said, our society does have biases against different kinds of illnesses. Some people are afraid of those with cancer, as if they could catch it, or that they might end up with ‘bad luck’. And mental illnesses have the ‘crazy’ label attached. I don’t happen to feel I need to demonize my PTSD to heal from it. In a way, it was being able to see it as just another piece of my life that has taken the teeth out of it; helped it lose some of its power. Not so for you, I see, and no doubt many others will benefit from turning their anger directly towards the PTSD. But for me it has been more effective to see it from so many sides and angles that it just isn’t as scary anymore. The power is in my hands.
http://www.anxietyland.blogspot.com
Maybe I misunderstand what you are trying to say and I appreciate you sharing with us. When I wake up in the mornings I dont see the words PTSD stinciled on my shirts. I don’t even think of myself as being mentally ill. I don’t have a label except “dad” or “friend”. I have issues and I am making the best of it trying to be a better person each day. I will come out the other end a healed person. I can’t help thinking of men in combat and under fire. Once cleared of the kill zone and the threat of our own death eased we find that some did not make it to safty. There would be no hesitation to run back into quite possably certain death to try and take the hand of a comrad and take them to safty. I have been told for many years that I suffer from PTSD. I know something hasn’t been the way I want it but I’m ok with that. I think you are an amazing person Michele and I have learned much from your blog and I thank you for that. This post was probably good for you but maybe not so good for some hanging from by a thread.
Isn’t it interesting how we all have such varying perspectives! Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and proving once again that there are many ways to see something, which also means many ways to reach healing.
I am sorry that you feel that because you have PTSD, you are mentally ill. After my diagnosis, I was very lucky to find a therapist who is an expert in trauma and she explained to me that PTSD is NOT a mental illness, just a mental health issue. Some professionals go so far as to say that PTSD is a psychiatric injury, not even a disorder. There is an excellent chart here (scroll down the page to reach it): http://www.bullyonline.org/stress/ptsd.htm#Differences
that compares the differences between mental illness and psychiatric injury.
All of this is very important to me because my mother IS mentally ill. I was so frightened that I might be as well that I got tested and although that’s when I was diagnosed as having PTSD (as a result of my mother’s mental illness and, er, parenting skills), I was also emphatically told that I am NOT mentally ill myself. I think that sometimes “mental illness” becomes an umbrella term for a whole host of mental health issues and because we tend to automatically think of psychotic disorders; things like schizophrenia, when someone says “mentally ill”, a stigma is then attached to mental health issues such as PTSD.
Those of us who suffer from PTSD have quite enough on our plates to deal with, without the added worry that we are “mentally ill”! So banish that thought from your mind and continue on your healing journey.
Nicely put, Marie!
What a wonderful discussion! So many varied views, opinions and perspectives! It is so wonderful to know that many, like you Marie, are finding therapists who know how to diagnose and treat PTSd as what it is – a psychological injury to be healed rather than an “illness” that has no cure.
And I totally agree that there are as many views and perspectives on PTSd and “mental illness” as there are people who wear that badge of honor.
Truth is though – that while PTSd is beginning to finally be recognized as that “injury” vs organic or biological “illness” – the stigma found in society regarding mental health issues in general is, as we all know, very real and extremely limiting and painful to those who face this discrimination every day by family, friends, neighbors, employers and yes – physicians and therapists as we are told that it is not possible to heal this “injury” and must learn to “manage” this “illness” instead of being guided in how to “live” beyond it….and in spite of it.
Personally – I believe that the “symptoms” of however you want to label this thing – can be used to begin to create a path – a map – out of the jungle. “This is where I’m at and THIS is where I want to be; now how am I going to get there?”
I also believe that we as “survivors of horrible things” need to be honored. Our experiences need to be validated. To do less is demeaning and disrespectful.
I also have the understanding of having hung on to my “diagnosis” and other labels related to mental health issues was perhaps a way for me to find that validation in some form, to have those life events, my experiences, my feelings, thoughts validated. To let go of “diagnosis” and “symptoms” and “managing” was scary. It was that place where I stepped to the edge of the cliff and kept going, believing I would find my way regardless of what the professionals said.
I think it is possible to both have our experiences validated and become a whole person. In other words, I have had cancer but I don’t define myself as a cancer survivor. I am a person who had cancer, did the treatment, had the surgery.
I still do rehabilitation exercises for the many surgeries even 10 years later and live with chronic pain from those surgeries and reconstructions – but this is not what my focus or conversation is each day. I don’t define myself as a “cancer survivor” nor do I join support groups that years later ruminate and focus on how horrible it is to have had and survived cancer. To do so steals my energy and limits my ability to live a full life because my focus would be on what “was” (the past) vs. what “is” (my potential).
So yes – I believe that we can have our experiences validated AND I believe that we can use whatever diagnosis we have been given to begin to find our way out of instead of living in the nightmare of past traumas. And then – we can model this to the world and say “it is possible to heal”…follow me.
I discovered in the recent past and through credible information that “PTSD” has been found to be a physiological injury. Experiencing traumatic events has caused the brain to make changes in our neuropathways specifically in the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for regulating emotion and fear responses. My views of PTSD have changed dramatically in the last months. When you say PTSD can be healed, you were correct. With the right kind of therapy we can re-program our brain maybe in the same way combat veterans are treated with brain injuries received in battle. They have to re-program their brains. I have discovered by contacting the Veterans Administration PTSD division that they are starting to (on a voluntary basis) MRI’s of those having been diagnosed with PTSD to try and identify changes in the brain that they might find a way to treat this injury. I know there is a light at the end of my tunnel even though I have suffered from this affliction for over 30 years. I will get there. Michele, you have been instrumental in getting me started in the right direction.
I have placed the label “PTSD” along with cracked skull or broke leg. All healable.
Wayne:
“physiological injury” is probably the best, most helpful and most accurate description. Recovery from PTSD is so much like physio for the brain that it’s not funny.
I agree…totally. I view PTSD as a psychiatric injury. Once diagnosed..I was quite skeptical–there was no way I had been living with all of this for this many years! I refused to validate those that said I was ‘crazy’ ……well they were right. I was behaving ‘crazy’..my thoughts were ‘crazy’..my choices were ‘crazy. Once I went through the meds and the therapy and the other means of healing that didn’t work….I was ready. This was NOT going to be my life. I have progressed positively and authentically — so much that I feel only a handhold away from my PTSD self. I wish to let go completely..let her be gone. My surviving self will go on….I will continue my journey with my teachers, surviving friends and—-my ability and absolute commitment to be free. I got pissed off–and knew it was up to me. The symptoms-physical and mental were going to have a fight on their hands. I survived for a reason…because I’m worth it and I have a purpose to fulfill. : ). All of us do.
Michele, thank you for engaging us in such a provocative conversation … You write with great courage and honesty. I so understand what I read as the rage you’ve felt to be free of the aftermaths of trauma. They’re bloody exhausting … and any freedom from them is a gift beyond measure.
This post evoked so much thought and feeling in me … and I instinctively understand your urge to be away from anything and anyone that could remind you of, or trigger, your own PTSD. I worked in the psychotherapeutic and social work fields for 18 years and had to get the hell out — all of it was too close to home — constantly triggering my own untended injuries. It got to the point where I could not *stand* to be anywhere near a person whose mind was disordered, whether by injury, illness, addiction … I still feel that sensitivity … and it is very painful at times, because some people I deeply love also live with disorders of the brain and mind … and at times, I can’t stand to be near them because of what’s triggered.
Author and physician Richard Mollica writes in his book *Healing Invisible Wounds* that trauma is an *existential* injury. When I read that, everything in me shouted, YES! The threat to one’s existence is the primary wound of trauma and it affects the entire person. I also understand PTSD as a brain injury and a metabolic disorder.
I’ve given up “fighting” PTSD. This does not mean that I have chosen to lie down and die; it means that I have lived with this condition my whole life (I experienced grave medical trauma at and after my birth), and it is not something to be gotten rid of. I’m learning to live with what is not likely to change … rationally and mercifully. I am changing what I can … and my current experience of over two years of illness has given me a priceless gift: a conscious slowing-down that my central nervous system has needed for years, if not decades.
I have no more energy or interest for fighting anything or anyone (I fought for years). Even the use of words / phrases like fight, attack, blight, invade, rip to shreds leave me feeling sickened. There is far, far too much warlike thinking across every profession — including the medical and therapeutic ones.
If there’s a stigma to delete from our experience, it’s the one that demands we wage war on whatever afflicts us. If PTSD is an existential injury — if our capacity to be fully alive has been wounded, what sense does it make to further injure ourselves with what we choose to perceive as an attack? Are we not then attacking our own injury by calling it a “blight” and vowing to “rid ourselves” of it?
Okay, now I’m really wishing we could all sit down around a big table and hash out the best way to express these ideas! I love all of the different ways of looking at this and I think finding new language is key to changing perspectives and discovering new ways to move forward.
I knew when I wrote this post there was the possibility that in the silent translation off the page there would be room for misunderstanding. Quickly, before I run into a meeting: I thought of this post as a rallying call — how we each define that has to do with our individual perspective. For myself, I had to approach overcoming PTSD as a battle. In fact, I told my therapist it felt like there was a battle going on inside me between my survivor self, and the self that wanted to be free. One had to back down, and one finally did.
For each of us, though, the imagery that motivates us to move toward healing is different. In the end, my point here — and the only point I was trying to make that was truly universal — was this: we can gain energy from rallying for healing. We gain strength from finding a positive way to perceive what we are trying to do: free ourselves from this PTSD state of being so that we can live joyful lives that are not grounded in reliving the past. Each of you has commented here and stood up for what you believe. That’s the kind of energy necessary for healing.
Saying that I have a stigma against PTSD was a way of saying I don’t want any of us to live defined by that label. I believe we each deserve better. I hope we each find freedom. No matter how we all approach this topic we are all on the same page: we’re survivors doing the work to heal. Two thumbs up for that!
Let me know where the meetings at and I’ll be there.. ;o)
You’re not alone. Everyone has issues, whether it’s mental illness, addiction, or anything of the sort. I’ve found that Silver Hill, a substance abuse and psychiatric hospital, has some really good information and resources. Talking/blogging about these things can be extremely helpful not just for yourself, but for others in need. Keep up the good work.
Sheesh. Where to start…? Okay, I’ll start with honesty. And please know that I mean no personal offense to you, do not dislike you, would never wish you any ill and I am VERY GLAD that you are happy. I would NEVER want to take that away from anyone. That said, I hate your blog. I hate it because I have PTSD and a whopping dissociative disorder from a lifetime of severe trauma at the hands of people who were supposed to love and help me and I feel discounted and belittled when I read here. When I read here, I hear what I have always heard. I hear, “Just stop it, you’re making too much of this, you have to choose to be happy, THIS IS YOUR OWN FAULT.” It was these messages which contributed to my current condition because no one cared about what had happened to me and that only made me more afraid and pushed me into a desperate little corner where dissociation was the only ‘choice’ left. And I can’t just ‘choose’ to not have nightmares and no matter what I do, something insdie me won’t let me ‘choose’ to sleep at night instead of in the day. The only real choices I have are about my conscious behavior and making good choices there has not healed me. ‘Medicine’ is off the table because it only made me sicker. When someone tells me to ‘let go’ of things I don’t even fully remember, they are asking me to dissociate. Period. Because it is the only comfort I ever had and I can’t learn a new way of functioning because everyone I find who professes to want to help me is like you. They need me to ‘choose’ to ‘let go’ (dissociate). They (and I quote you from your post) “don’t want to be around it, affected by it, impacted by it or in any way enclosed in its grip.” And I just now figured out why I read this blog. It is a form of rumination. It recreates the secondary trauma of ‘just get over it’, ‘move on’, and ‘just go away and blend into the wall because you don’t belong here and the rest of us need to be rid of you’.
Anon;
I have to agree on several points and believe me, I have felt like you do now. I was a big advocate of isolation. The only place I could let my breath out. My experiences were combat related in Vietnam but no less or more than the traumatic experience than you suffered. I put up with my PTSD for almost 30 years and all those years in therapy with the VA PTSD programs and clinics. I have searched every avenue for a means to feel better and more “normal”. On my first contact with this blog, I wrote a statement that all the treatment I received made me have NO confidence in typical therapies. I actually had a physiologist say to me “You have a nice place to live and a nice family, you shouldn’t be depressed with PTSD”. my comment to that was ” since when did depression and PTSD respond to environment”. Like NEVER!. It makes us angry when we can’t find someone who can help us. I have been looking for 26 years. I have corresponded with Michele quite often and we don’t always see eye to eye on what works best. Her followers are of many backgrounds with different PTSD symptoms. Some respond well to her posts which most are written by others both professionally or sufferer. Her quest is to help as many as she can. I think for difficult cases like yours and mine need more specialized treatment. I have investigated some of the more recent treatments like neuro stimulator implants which were used to treat Parkinson disease was found to eliminate depression immediately. I have come to the conclusion that PTSD has been classified as a brain injury and we should seek treatment as such. Read my entry several reply’s above on this page. If the blog is not helping , then I wouldn’t read it.. Good luck
Anon — Thank you for your so honest reply. I hope you don’t mind continuing the discussion because what you heard in my post was not at all what I was intending — which is, as I said in an earlier comment, the risk of writing vs. being able to speak live and clarify.
I would be the last person to say, ‘just get over it’. Everything I write here has to do with creating a mindset I believe is very helpful in healing. That is, finding our own power despite what others think, believe or try to impress upon us.
For over 25 years I struggled with physical and emotional distortions and complications brought on by PTSD. I know firsthand we cannot just simply wake up one day and choose for it to be gone. I know firsthand, too, making what I felt were good healing decisions only to crash and burn again.
My passion here is for reminding each of us never to stop trying to heal, and also, to keep seeking and developing our own power. We don’t know where healing will come from, or how or when. We can only be conscious, alert and trying our best, which, it sounds like, you are.
Fundamentally I think that what we call PTSD is not a thing. It’s a broad categorizaiton of how many brains respond to severe trauma that is also impacted by preconditions and life history.
My own approach has been based on the reasonable scientific basis that my brain no longer works how it once did. Trauma has changed it’s default settings. Regardless of what I wish, my brain is now stuck in one mode of operation – survival. The physiology has changed to force that to be the default.
My own healing apporach has been basically about retraining my brain to move away from this survival mode and move back to a more normal mode.
I’m not trying to heal something; I’m trying to move my brain from one mode of operation to another. It’s taken years but I am getting there.
For me there were lots of contributory preconditions and since the trauma also went on for years it has been a messy job; but it is getting done. Every year is better than the last. Month by month things get better.
There is a huge stigma around PTSD. Sometimes I see people flinch If I mention it. I choose who my friends are. I choose who my enemies are.
My life is dedicated to improving my own life and dealing with the symptoms. Part of that involves finding ways to help other people because that of itself moves me away from survival mode thinking.
Things are complicated but slowly but surely I am showing people how PTSD does not say anything about personal strengths or weaknesses. PTSD does not show that you are weak. How you deal with it; how you choose to live your life; how you choose to deal with pain; those things show character or lack of it, not PTSD.
Anon,
Good for you for being so honest and speaking up and standing up for your feelings! I am sorry that you have not gotten the support and understanding you deserve. PTSD is an extremely lonely path. It seems that society is (hopefully) beginning to accept the idea of combat-related PTSD or after horrific disasters, but PTSD caused by your family creates so much discomfort and disbelief in the general population. I told no one after my diagnosis and basically became a hermit as much as I could while still holding down a job (which wasn’t easy, as I’m sure everyone here knows). I felt so different, very much the outsider looking in. I felt shame, both for my mother’s diagnosis and mine, as if somehow it was our fault and made us less than human. And I’ve suffered at the hands of people who have told me to “get over it” and thought I had a choice in the matter. I didn’t choose to get PTSD but I do have a damn good reason for having PTSD (and it sounds like your PTSD has similar roots to mine) and I hate that I can’t talk about it and get support the way other people can talk about having cancer or something and get support. I cannot put into words how much I hope you find peace with your PTSD and dissociative disorder.
Thank you, Marie.
I swore to myself that I would not respond here further (yes, it’s because I’m bitter), but I’m doing it anyway. I agree very much with something Wayne said – “My experiences were combat related in Vietnam but no less or more than the traumatic experience than you suffered.” I believe this is true and it does not pay to compare. Suffering is suffering and it HURTS and it can make a mess of a person’s life. (And Wayne, I hope it does not conflict you for me to say this, but I want to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU. Thank you SO MUCH. I have no idea how you feel about your service, but I just want you to know that I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart. We would be lost and defenseless without soldiers and I think this nation should be MUCH more grateful than it is. To me, the soldier is KING. That means YOU, King Wayne. That means you. Damn it – if you were in reach I would totally hug you and probably bawl like a great big baby. Yes, even a bitter witch like me can be grateful to those who deserve my gratitude.)
And you know what? I understand how some think of PTSD as a brain injury or a mental illness. I can’t speak for anyone else because we are all individuals and no label can change that, but for me PTSD is a SOUL INJURY. I would not say that it’s MORE of an injury when the trauma began from birth, but I think for some it is DIFFERENT and that this is not properly addressed. I have a SOUL injury and a therapy that cannot touch my soul cannot help me. I trudged along for as long as I could, trying to ‘act normal’ and then it all fell apart and I just couldn’t keep going any more the way that I did before. I made it to age 38 with trauma that was never recognized and treated before I finally fell down one too many times and couldn’t get up anymore. The dissociation was crumbling. The truth was coming for me and I was too terrified to handle it alone and I didn’t want it hijacking the family I busted my butt to create with my husband.
Then I found a therapist who touched my soul. I fought my way through all kinds of garbage to get to a place where I could *see* him and trust him. I thought he was different from all the others who came before him. It was safe to know things then. For that little period of time – I was safe. And I was able to integrate a fairly big chunk of stuff, but then he turned on me later when more things came up for me and he retraumatized me with his cruelty and abandonment. I guess there is a ‘limit’ to how much trauma a person is allowed to have before they become annoying. One per customer or something, I dunno. I resent this. I did not DO THIS thing to myself. I have done EVERYTHING I can to keep things going. I am not some helpless person who languishes in some label. I fought against it for my entire life just to make something. I am a wife, a mother, a writer and a business person, I am NOT some ‘disease’. And yet it is so hard to find any therapy that understands that as constricted as I am, I can somehow manage to hang on to my life (by a thin thread) and still be constantly tortured and fighting through hell on earth just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I NEED HELP. I struggle just to keep my head above water only to be met with stupid things like ‘choose to think positive thoughts’ when the going gets tough. It makes me ANGRY. It makes me want to cram fake and stupid positive thoughts right down someone’s throat. Thinking positive thoughts does not help me when a dissociated trauma comes for me and I have a flashback and wake up in my bedroom closet. As a matter of fact, I think being forced to pretend is CAUSING a lot of this crap. Compassion and real listening are in short supply and I can’t heal if I don’t have a safe person to listen and help me sort things out as they come up. A therapist who runs away or gets upset when things get ugly cannot help me, but they have so MANY ways of running. And now *I* have some new ways, too. I’m just tired. I’m only 43 years old and I pretty much live like a retired old person now. I have to do things this way just to stay alive. I’m tired and it makes me really angry when I hear or see ANYTHING that sounds like the freakin’ happy police. For me, obeying the happy police only delayed the inevitable. All I wanted was for someone to care, listen to me, and not run away. I just wanted someone to HELP ME.
p.s. It disturbs me when I hear someone say they want to leave their ‘PTSD self’ behind. See, I want something that can help ME (my ‘PTSD self’ and all of myself) EVOLVE from *WHERE I AM* without having to leave me behind just for a freakin’ change. I don’t want to leave myself behind EVER AGAIN because the need to do that is what started this whole mess to begin with. Maybe nobody else really loves me, but *I* do, and my ‘inner soldier’ WILL NOT leave me behind with the enemy. Never again. And I don’t care who likes it. I don’t even care if it kills me. And it might. I know that. But there is no other way out for me than to try my best to be true to ALL of myself. Even death would be worth it to me if it served my own sense of justice. I won’t leave me behind anymore. The lying and the nonsense stops here, even if I have to go it alone and even if it kills me.
And yes, I have a new therapist, but I have more trouble trusting now than I ever have before. I can’t imagine why that would be (insert sarcasm here), but I’m starting to think that might not be all bad. It has been my experience that there are VERY many people who are not worthy of my trust and confidence. That’s why I’m ‘Anon’. My new therapist doesn’t even know my real name (yes, I LIED). Because I am NOT a disorder and I’m not going to let him or anyone else record me as one. The people who abused and betrayed me are disorders. And I am not.
Anon;
You are a REAL and good person and you do matter.
Anon,
I hear your pain and frustration. And I don’t blame you for not giving your real name here or to your new therapist. I’m sure a lot of people don’t give their real name.
I like your description of PTSD being a “soul injury”. I think that is very appropriate. For what it is worth, I want to share this website with you (and anyone else who is interested, of course): http://www.pete-walker.com/index.htm
He is a psychotherapist who experienced childhood trauma at the hands of his family and has PTSD as a result. He sells a book and stuff on his site, but he also has a number of free articles that talk about things like the inner critic, how to deal with a flashback, abandonment depression, etc. When I read his articles, it was the first time I had read anything that made me feel like I was reading about my own experiences and it gave my experiences validity. It began my journey out of shame and into self-compassion and self-care. I don’t know if the articles will speak to you as they did to me, but I wanted to share them in the hopes that they will be helpful to you.
Thanks, Marie, for the link to Pete Walker’s site! — I’ve just perused some of his articles … he writes with great empathy for the *experience* of PTSD and offers solid and clear options for healing … and I understand “healing” as making whole, as whole as possible, what *is*.
Anon, I share your frustration at relentless positivity … the ‘happy police’ attitude you write of comes across as a particular expression of ignorance that does not (yet?) comprehend the very real and ongoing difficulties — especially the exhaustion! — of severe and chronic PTSD. Like you, I feel older than my years. It’s as if my fuel tank is low … it’s sprung a tiny but influential leak, and no one’s found or repaired it yet. I honestly wonder in the last two years if because of prolonged and grave medical trauma in my infancy, something essential in me is simply *depleted*. I don’t feel like I’m dying; I just feel perennially and essentially exhausted. I work long and hard with my mind to catch myself going into “freeze” mode … Some days, simply *being* is a challenge (I hope someone here understands what I mean … it’s very difficult to put into words). All the same, I adore being alive. That sentiment isn’t said lightly … The peace in sitting here with one of my beloved cats asleep in my lap is the pearl beyond price … as a wise Hebrew elder once said, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Despite all I’ve lived through and despite all the agony we humans inflict on one another and on ourselves, I believe with all my heart in that blessing. Some parts of me are scarred for life, and I’m coming to accept that, and to live with the scars in peace. The soul-injury that trauma is (author Richard Mollica calls it an “existential injury”) may not be something we can “recover” from. Great injury requires intimate, mindful tending, and boundless patience …
Mike, your practical approach of working with your brain really resonates … I’ve become so practical in my focus lately, too … I did years of deep, soma- and soul-based therapeutic work … I’m dealing more now with very foundational disorders like metabolic mayhem, depleted blood counts, and chronic weight loss. I’m doing medical research and reading books like Peter C. Whybrow’s *A Mood Apart*, which has a chapter on major depression that’s fantastic — he writes so sensically about the metabolics and physical erosion that can occur over time … It’s actually a relief to read. The primary focus is on the brain and the body …
For all of us, a thought about mis/understandings … The written word is drenched with personal meaning, and a computer screen is a one-dimensional medium … We miss a lot of the natural cues to intent and meaning when we’re not in face-to-face or verbal communication … thus we can infer a meaning that may not be there … I always try to be mindful of this when I converse with others online.
Anon; I completely hear you and understand what you are saying. I am so sorry you have not found the support and help to find your way out of that dark place. I don’t think there is anything I could say at this point other than please keep searching, coming back, learning.
Personally, I did not find the term “recovery” helpful because I didn’t have anything to “recover” or to go back to. So I changed the term and began a journey of self discovery.
Healing from the long term trauma of child abuse issues is different and more complicated than healing from a single trauma experience or an adult trauma experience.
And it is difficult to find the resources that can shine the light on the path and feel as though we have someone to walk beside us in this journey. But it is not impossible to find our way and I want to applaud and commend the hard work and the difficult path you describe here, Anon.
This is the hardest work I have ever done but it is not impossible to integrate our past into our present and become a whole and happy being.
Thank you for sharing your truth here and I would like to share a new resource I have recently discovered; another who like us has conquered the nightmare of child abuse issues. Her name is Darlene her blogsite is http://www.emergingfrombroken.com
I also attempt to address these issues in my own writing at my blog site if you choose to drop by sometime. I make an attempt to look at both the gravity and pain of this issue while at the same time painting a picture of the path I have followed to find freedom from this nightmare.
No question – you are not a label or a diagnosis and there is nothing “disordered” about you. Thank you for sharing your honesty here. I have complete respect for the path you are on.