Survivors Speak: Unbreak My Brain, Part 3

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Last year Matthew Black began a fabulous series for us called, “Unbreak My Brain” — a thorough look at PTSD from inside the mind of a survivor who is actively educating himself and working through universal PTSD issues. Today, I am really pleased to post another installment in Matthew’s exploration of PTSD from the inside out. 

Before you get started, you can re-read the first two entries here: Unbreak My Heart, Part 1, Unbreak My Heart, Part 2.

Survival Mode – Symptoms

Our body’s Survival Mode is designed to be used for short periods of time — maybe a few days at most. After that it starts to cause problems as the body starts to break down due to lack of maintenance. When our body is in Survival Mode all the “non-essential” things that give us good health and rest are not done.

With PTSD we can end up living in Survival Mode for long periods every day and sometimes it can be 24×7 so that even during sleep we don’t relax.

Many symptoms of PTSD are actually symptoms not of PTSD but of being in Survival Mode:

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
• Difficulty concentrating [on things other than survival]
• Hyper vigilance (on constant “red alert”)
• Feeling jumpy and easily startled
• Feelings of mistrust and betrayal [threat assessment]
• Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain

The above symptoms would be absolutely normal if there was a Tiger sitting on your doorstep. With PTSD our brains believe that there is still a Tiger on the doorstep even though it’s not true. Our brains cannot tell the difference between a real threat and one that we think is real — it’s the same thing.  So even thinking about the trauma can make it all real and put us right back into Survival Mode. The following are common:

• Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma
• Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating)
• Feeling alienated and alone – no-one else sees the threat that you see.
• Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb – I WILL SURVIVE emotions don’t matter.

There have been plenty of times when in the middle of the night I’ve woken up suddenly and leapt out of bed ready to stave off some imaginary attack. When I realize I’m doing this I consciously choose to relax and go back to bed. I have to practice this.

The only way to get rid of the symptoms is to switch ourselves out of Survival Mode by deliberately choosing to relax. You may need to do this several times a day every day for weeks or months or years.

When you are in a place that you know is safe (even if you don’t feel safe) you can choose to slow your breathing down and pay attention to the sense of your breath moving in and out of your nostrils. When you can do this you can then start to pay attention to the sensation of your body from the air temperature through to what your clothes feel like on you, body tension and so on and so on.

Paying attention to these things will drop your body out of Survival Mode and help you to relax. Even if you can only manage to relax for a few minutes a day it is valuable. Even today I know that I tend to want to keep my body in Survival Mode because it now feels normal to me. I have to keep choosing to relax. The last week or so I’ve not done so well at it. I have to keep reminding myself that being relaxed and feeling safe are NORMAL. It takes a lot of getting used to after PTSD.

A key way of managing PTSD and creating the space fore healing is learning to switch out of Survival Mode. When you can do this (and it does take practice) then life can become a whole lot easier. I quite like watching Sunsets as a way of relaxing.

In Survival Mode it’s often the case that emotions are not important.  Not a lot is more important than NOT DYING and so emotions can become suppressed; they are on the non-essential list. I know that my personal response to a life-threatening event tends towards emotional shutdown. It helps me to do whatever needs to be done regardless. “Survival of the Fittest” is not “Survival of the Nicest”.

A hard part for me of PTSD recovery is reclaiming all my emotions. I’ve spent so much time living in Survival Mode that I’ve forgotten what some normal emotions feel like and how to handle them.

The ideas contained in this post solely represent the perspective of the author. To contribute to ‘Survivors Speak’ contact Michele.

Tags: ptsd, Survival Mode, symptoms