Anxiety and PTSD

Emotions related to PTSD have a weight, an edge, that is primal.  It is primal because the response is triggered by the lymbic system.  It is pre-thought, automatic, and intended to save the cave person from having to remember the appropriate response.  I learned this week that much of my anxiety has this edge.    I can't stop worrying because PTSD is piping the tune.

This is a valuable bit of information because it means that I can do the same back-tracking and unraveling that Babett Rothschild spoke of in her "8 Keys to Save Trauma Recovery" (go to Amazon, "Look Inside" and search for backtracking and see the list of things you can do on page 68).

It turns out that the two PTSD roots of my anxiety are persecution and betrayal.  I still have to find exactly where in the PTSD wagon train those came in so I can begin the backtracking but at least I know what I'm looking for.

One less brick on my heart.

The Monkey and the Coconut

Once again, Mark Nepo's Book of Awakening has given me a valuable visual image: the monkey and the coconut.  In China, they used to catch monkeys using hollowed-out coconuts with rice inside.  The monkey would reach inside to grab the rice, making his hand too large to pull back through the hole.  The monkey wanted the rice so would continue to struggle to remove his hand with the rice and was thereby trapped.

We often cling to things that we THINK are serving us when they are actually holding us back.  It is only when we let go that we can get out of the stuck place. We can only move forward by first accepting where we are. 

What feels essential but is actually a trap that is holding you back?

Important Questions for Growth/Healing

I've recently learned that trying too hard is worse than not trying at all.  When I try too hard, I fail, bruising an already battered self-esteem, sometimes losing ground.  It is sort of like pulling a muscle.  You have to heal before you can train again.  Conversely, when I don't try at all, no progress is made.  The tricky part is figuring out the right pace between not-doing and overdoing.  An important key to the right pace is honesty.  We need to question ourselves to make sure we are starting from a place of truth so we can make progress.  There are two sides to that: lies and truths.  Sometimes the lie is simply a denial of a truth, but sometimes it is much more.  If you have PTSD, it usually is much more.

We spin our wheels because we don't admit we are in a muddy hole.  We keep spinning our wheels because of the lie.  The truth is that because we are in a muddy hole, we're going to have to do more than just press on the gas pedal to get out.

I've found two questions that are helping me towards healthier, organic, non-forced growth and healing.  They are:

1. What lies am I telling myself?
2. What truths am I not seeing?

The Lies:  I wrote about the first question back in September, when a daily reading from Mark Nepo's Book of Awakening suggested that we look at the lies we tell ourselves.  The big ones of these are things like "Everything is fine" when everything ISN'T fine or "Everyone is against me, so I must constantly defend myself" when that is just PTSD trying to protect from a situation long past.  Sometimes the lies are simple denial of a truth, like the first one.  Sometimes they are more complex things, like the second one, triggered by PTSD.  The lies can either be denial of a truth or making up a story we like better than an unlovely part of ourselves.

The Truths: The truths are things like less-than-noble motivations for doing things, fears, or situations we can't deal with.  Recently, I found myself carping about a friend.  While some of what I was saying had validity, it was also sort of petty.  When I asked myself why I was doing that, I realized that it was because I'm jealous of the position she holds, a position that used to be mine.  The truth was I had PTSD-triggered reactions to a situation I didn't even know was there.  That lead to a very fruitful examination of my relationship with this person and helped me to be kinder.  If I had started with "what is the lie?", I would have gotten nowhere because there WAS some truth to what I was saying but it wasn't the REASON I was saying it.  So the truths are often about motivation, an important thing for PTSD'ers to monitor.


By approaching the problem from BOTH sides, we can make more progress.   I don't know if this will make any sense to anyone else, but it sure is helping me.

Digging Out, Spinning Wheels

I was sick over the holidays and am still trying to dig out from the mess that caused, both internally and externally.  It is like I'm stuck and can't get anywhere. 

Part of the problem is I'm not trying very hard.  Part of me is tired of seeing that I screw up left and right and just wants to go back to being numb and hyper alert. 

Another part is horrified at going back and wants to go forward. 

It's a tug of war where neither side can get traction.  So I vegetate between progress and regression, waiting for SOMETHING to tip the scale.  I need more support than I have and am not quite sure how to get it or what it would look like. 

I just know that I need to work harder at this and am not having much luck doing so.

More of the Same, Less of the Same

It sort of feels like I'm talking to an empty room so there isn't much impetus to write here.  I had hoped -- naively -- that people would find the site, resonate with my past and a dialogue would begin.  Hasn't happened.  I still want to write here, but it sort of feels like talking to myself....

Things are slowly getting better.  I have more success but still struggle with automatic defenses.  Questioning everything you do can be exhausting, so I only question my behavior when I have the energy to do something about it.

What I struggle with the most is that I'm just not good at developing relationships; never learned as a child and it is something that isn't easy to learn as an adult.  Am slowly getting better but it, as all the rest of this, will take time.

Fifty Years vs. Four Months

Hardly seems like a fair fight:

In this corner, we have fifty years of PTDS-generated habit, ways of acting and doing things that are meant to protect against the things that I never got the message were long past.  Don't even have to think about it, just do what comes "naturally."

In the other corner, we have four months of starting to see things differently, of realizing that everyone isn't out to get me, of occasionally being able to keep my mouth SHUT (not often), and consider how my reflexive actions have hurt others (more often), and seeing how wonderful it would be to be free of all this (constantly), yet getting tripped up yet again by the huge weight advantage that 50 years has over four months.

Not an easy fight....

Three steps forward, two steps back

I don't know why I expected -- or hoped -- that PTSD recovery would be different, but I did.

All the habits of years haven't gone away.  The pull is lessened, but they've been there a long time.  I don't see malign intent everywhere but I still am more guarded than I'd like.

All the triggers have not been disarmed.  I keep finding new ones.  Each time, I have to go back and try to figure where it started so I can start disarming it.

And I'm still just me, as much as I'd like to be a better version of me.

Part of the problem is I've always been a rusher, trying to get things done too quickly.  I need to slow down, do less, and do things mindfully.  I need to move from last on the list of my priorities.

In some ways, it is worse to be able to see that I'm messing up and why I'm messing up.  It is harder to make excuses but no easier to change.

A Bit Lighter

My hippocampus is finally getting the message.  The decrease in hyper-vigilance has helped me to relax and not get my undies in a bunch over any whisper of encroachment, exclusion, etc.

I figured out that the fits and starts related to really not wanting to have to go to all the people I've hurt and say I'm sorry.  I've been not getting internal (and housekeeping) work done so I didn't have to move to the next step.  But I've realized that I don't have to move to the next step until I'm ready, so the logjam has broken and I'm making progress.

It is amazing how much more I notice when I'm not waiting for someone to be mean to me.  And how much less "weight" there is to simple occurrences.

Like this past Sunday in church.  During the Passing of the Peace, a person shook the hands of those right next to me and then turned away.  In the past, I would have been deeply wounded.  This time I thought, "He probably didn't see me."  Then he turned around and shook my hand too.

I'm realizing that I make myself suffer often by beating up on myself for not being perfect and for being angry at people for being mean or thoughtless.  Need to work on that.

Fits and Starts

This healing business can be slow going.  Sometimes, motivation is lacking.  There are all these questions swirling around and I just don't know the answers. 

I've always needed to know the answers.  I don't need that so much now but I find myself curiously stuck, for no apparent reason.  Something is going on somewhere inside me and I find it hard to do everyday things.  So I do what I can, until I can do more.

One question asked by my therapist keeps haunting me: am I an extrovert or an introvert?  Somehow, just the permission to possibly not be what I've always been has been both scary and freeing.

I don't have to be anything I'm not.

But how do you stop being what you aren't when that is all you have been?

No answers right now, just questions. 

More Than Flashbacks

When I first had the aha! moment about PTSD, I thought it was simple: the bullying caused the flashback and that was it.  But PTSD causes more than flashbacks; there are many ramifications to the syndrome and to having been bullied.

For me, the PTSD caused constant, low-grade vigilance.  I  wouldn't go so far as to call it paranoia; it was milder than that.  I just always expected people to hurt me, so I tried to watch out and make sure they didn't.

For much of my life, I swung between two extremes:

1. being the super friend that no one could fault until I felt used, and
2. keeping to myself so I didn't get hurt.

The thing that actually drove me to therapy was when I realized that I was re-living that first awful vignette again and again, with me as the protagonist: when things got difficult in a relationship, I would kick that person out of my life.  I finally looked around and realized that there weren't many friends left and if I didn't change, I'd be alone.

Even though no one seems to be reading my stuff, it feels good to write it.  Maybe someday it will help someone.