Michele’s Trauma History & Mission
People are always asking me to talk about my trauma. I don’t usually. I feel we’ve talked about our traumas enough. To me, the point is to stop talking about it and move forward. Deliberately then, I rarely reference my experience.
I do appreciate though, that you would want to know what happened, what qualifies to me to speak about trauma, post-traumatic stress and healing. Here’s the short version of my twenty-five years of undiagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, plus the three years I spent healing after my diagnosis.
In 1981 I was thirteen years old. Life was good. I had a great family - loving parents, terrific younger brother. At the end of an idyllic summer I took a routine sulfa-based antiobiotic to clear up a routine bladder infection. As it turns out, I’m one of the .5 people per million who are allergic to medications and react by developing a case of Stephens-Johnson Syndrome, which in my case turned into its most extreme, life-threatening form: Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Syndrome (TENS).
To put it in plain English: I turned into a full-body burn patient almost overnight while an impotent medical community stood by and watched. There is no way to stop the progression of TENS. Treatment protocol is sketchy at best. The most that can be done is to put patients in a burn unit and let the illness wreak its havoc.
When I was finally released from the hospital I returned home and was determined to resume life as if nothing unusual had happened. I refused to speak about my trauma or the feelings of terror, anxiety, fear and pain. I threatened anyone who tried to bring it up. After going through a stage of Acute Stress I slipped into full-blown PTSD symptoms, including flashbacks, insomnia, emotional numbing, dissociation, hyperarousal, hypervigilance, rage, intrusive thoughts, depression and complete avoidance of memories and situations that reminded me of my experience.
Over the next twenty-five years my PTSD symptoms increased in intensity. I developed full-blown anorexia. I triggered more and more often. I became chronically ill. My body developed strange maladies no one could diagnose or explain. My hair fell out. My stomach, liver, intestines and entire GI tract broke down and dysfunctioned. I had meltdowns, quit jobs, left relationships and bounced around unable to concentrate, relax or focus.
After seventeen years of this my body completely shut down. I had the mother of all emotional meltdowns and finally wound up in therapy. It would be another eight years before I discovered I had PTSD. It would be another three hard years of healing before I reached where I am today: 100% PTSD-free.
The bulk of my healing was accomplished by: 1) deliberately constructing a post-trauma identity, 2) ending my trauma addiction. I achieved a large part of this by taking my joy - dance - and using it to lift me out of the past, into the present and headlong into the future. When we connect to joy we transcend pain and reconnect to our purest, strongest selves. From there, we can heal anything. From there we learn to live in the present and begin dreaming about the future. From there we move toward peace and away from the past.
My mission now is to help others learn about PTSD and get on the road to healing. If I’d been aware, educated and encouraged to reconnect with my untraumatized self I would not have lost so much of my life to this wholly treatable and beatable condition.
I’ve been a writer since I was seven. My B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania contains writing elements, plus I hold an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College. I’m published and produced in non-fiction, poetry, and theater.
My professional career includes advertising, publishing, public relations, finance, university teaching and healing coach. I use words to communicate ideas, thoughts and possibilities. I use my own personal trauma background to help other survivors find their words, and then find the acts that begin healing.
I am now trained and certified as a Neuro-Linguistic Programmer, Life Coach and Hypnotist.
How can I help you or your loved one struggling with PTSD?
