Life Lessons from PTSD Recovery

Here are some of the things I've learned in my journey to overcome PTSD:

1. Goals are fine but progress is what really matters.
2. Life is a journey, not a judgement.
3. Baby steps are better than no steps.  
4. Trying and not succeeding is far superior to not trying at all: you learn more from failure than success.
5. Celebrate victories, but learn from failure: it may be the stepping stone to a future victory.
6. The bigger the challenge, the sweeter the success.
7. Assuming the negative is a sure-fire way to be unhappy.
8. Don't assume: if you are unsure about intentions, meanings, ask.
9. It is much easier to get help if you ask for it.
10. Be grateful, inside and out.
11. Breathe deeply.
12. Enjoy people.
13. It takes time for people to believe you have changed, grant them that grace.
14. The neurons that fire together wire together (Dr. Rick Hanson): strive to welcome people, not doubt them (me).
15. Savor the positive, learn from the negative.

I'd love to hear lessons others have learned in their journey!

Hope and Healing

The time between my posts is getting longer because I'm healing.  Although my PTSD triggers may always have some pull on me, I've moved from the survival mode hell of assuming the worst into a more considered life that has the possibility -- trending to the likelihood -- that everyone doesn't hate me and want to embarrass me or hurt me.  On good days, I even manage to appreciate others and enjoy their company without being on edge, waiting for the cruelty. There were two experiences that were key to the progress I've made a news article and a positive role model. 

The Article
 
The news piece was about a new book  Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.  The article was an interview with the author.  The part that touched me  profoundly was a discussion of how our brains evolved to focus on the negative for purposes of survival.  Our ancestors HAD to focus on the negative because identifying threats -- predators, hazards, etc. -- and reacting to them was critical to survival.  While food, shelter, and procreating were essential in the long term, there was always tomorrow for those things.  If they missed a threat, there might not be a tomorrow.

While this may seem obvious to you, it touched me deeply.  My PTSD had simply amped up the volume on a tendency that came naturally.  EVERYONE has a tendency to do this, it was just that my instincts were in overdrive.  Somehow, that gave me peace: it wasn't my fault; everyone dealt with this to a lesser degree.  I was finally able to let myself off the hook a bit more.  There was a part of me that was blaming myself that just let go of the blame.

The Role Model

The second experience was meeting a person who seems to view every encounter with others as a treat.  The person seems SO GLAD to see each person and genuinely interested in the person in front of them.  I saw how people reacted to that welcome, coupled it with the article and it was revelatory: people felt SAFE.  There was nothing to get their instincts riled up.  They relaxed, opened up, and enjoyed their interaction.

This experience made me realize that my hyper-vigilence wasn't just exhausting for me, but also for those around me.  How much more pleasant life is when you truly enjoy those around you. 

Life is SO much better enjoying those around you.

Painful Truths and Avoidance

In some ways, PTSD can be like the blister that never goes away, always getting rubbed raw just as it was about to heal.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that I see things I wouldn't have seen before because I was too much into protect-myself-and-survive mode.  Slowly "new" truths begin to emerge from the depths, helping me to understand some of the reasons I do the things I do.  These truths are often like layers of an onion; you come across them again and again but on deeper levels.  When the truths first bubble up, they are raw, bringing fresh tears.  Tears outside of movies are rare for me, so I know I've touched something deep when I makes me cry.

I'm a bit of a recluse at times and now realize I withdraw to protect myself.  The painful truth I realized this past week was a new facet of my seclusion: I don't reach out to others because folk rarely reach out to me.  No one in my family has called me in almost a year.  To be fair, I haven't called them either but it leaves me feeling sort of alone in the world.  I've got God, but sometimes you just need a shoulder to cry on or a friend with whom to laugh.

How I came to realize this was interesting.  I was talking to my therapist about how I had a hard time finding a way to help a friend going through a rough patch.  We talked about different ways and one of the things I realized was that I could send her a card.  I wondered why I hadn't thought of that before; I know she loves cards. 

Then I realized why:  I don't reach out just because I fear rejection but because it reminds me how seldom others reach out to me.  While I do enjoy being alone, there are many times that I'm lonely and I rarely do anything about it.

So I've resolved to at least try to send those I love little cards from time to time and not expect anything in return.  It is okay to give and it not be returned.  I can be okay with that now.

Bricks and Balloons

I find that looking at the same thing from a different perspective can help deepen my understanding, whatever the topic might be.  This is especially useful with PTSD since the condition can cause you to miss certain aspects and exaggerate others.  A favorite set of questions returned to me recently:

1. What are the bricks I'm weighing me down? Bricks are things that impede growth/progress, making both more difficult.


• Hidden compulsions of PTSD:  I catch myself doing/saying/thinking something inappropriate because of past events that have nothing substantive to do with today, other than the fact that my limbic system thinks they do.
• Truths that I'm hiding: Things that are uncomfortable to see.
• Lies that I'm telling myself: The window dressing I put up to hide the truths.
• Inertia/Resistance: There is a part of me that doesn't want to change.


2. What are the balloons that are lifting me up? Balloons are the things that improve the likelihood of change/growth and are often catalysts or comforts along the way.


• Knowing it isn't my fault.  While I still struggle with self-recrimination for things, I no longer blame myself for not being able to "get over" what happened to me as a child.
• The ability to see what I'm doing.  The puppeteer is no longer invisible. It is known and a known enemy can be defeated.


3. How has this changed? This has three components: timeframe, what changed, and the impact of the change.


•  A year ago, I was just beginning to realize that something was wrong and get a glimpse that it might not be my fault.
• Now I am getting help and at least see what I'm doing wrong, even if I can't always do what is right.
• There is hope for the future.  Having made some steps forward, I've courage to keep trying.

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....