It Was All About Avoidance

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One of the things about the healing journey that I found to be (hmmph....) not so helpful...was when the focus was on the behaviors that had been my "normal" in and following the trauma experiences...but were now not so helpful.  


Darlene Ouimet of Emerging From Broken had this to say recently about the change that changed her life.... 

The whole key was uncovering and discovering how my belief system about myself and the world, had formed and realizing it was full of lies that I believed about myself. As I replaced the lies with the truth, the coping methods fell away; because I didn’t need them anymore. 

                                                                                                                                 ~ Darlene Ouimet

Very often in the journey the focus becomes the behavior.


Well, why wouldn't it? 


Thats what we see.


But like Darlene - it was when I started looking at the issues underneath the coping methods that in the trauma were helpful - but had become "maladaptive" because these behaviors were affecting my ability to create and live the life that I wanted for myself. 


Listen into one of the archived shows from last year at Empowering Solutions at Heal My PTSD at Blog Talk Radio:


"Its All About Avoidance"

Listen to internet radio with Heal My PTSD on Blog Talk Radio

Find the archives of Empowering Solutions here.

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Truth and Dare

This new life is amazing! I'm so awesomely excited to be making new friends online! And the great people I've met here where I live and work...my life is growing and changing every day! How great is that!

But - the truth is...this is waaaayyyyyy different than the life I grew accustomed to when I struggled each day in an existence where social isolation was my best friend and anxiety ruled my life.

So - this feels scary sometimes to be putting myself out there and with purpose, intention and consciously choosing to make myself *ugh* *gulp*....vulnerable.

"What if no-one reads what I wrote?" Or worse...what if they read it and don't like it?"

What if she doesn't call me back?

What if I bomb at this new job?

"What if....." and you can choose just about any "what if" scenario and I could probably relate to it.

So - "what if"?

Well..."so what"?

You see, I decided some time ago that I wasn't going to live in that state of fear and powerlessness any more. I was going to learn how to live beyond what I was told that was possible.

But that decision doesn't suddenly "fix" the baggage I brought with me from my past, it didn't "cure" my social anxieties or turn me into a social butterfly or charismatic debutante.

It didn't "fix" my distorted sense of self, the paranoid thoughts, the low self esteem or lack of self worth, the fear of abandonment. It didn't stop the racing thoughts, the nightmares or make me immune to "triggers" that could send me into an emotional meltdown or explosive rage if I didn't get the right feedback from a situation. It didn't make me not want to drink and it couldn't teach me how to not "zone out".

I didn't turn into Susie Sunshine overnight, the the negative thoughts and black and white thinking that kept me prisoner to a chronic state of upset and distress didn't just "disappear".

I've had to work at it. Every day.

Each day I "Dare" myself to keep going, to keep growing, learning...changing. To keep putting one foot in front of the other. To not give up...to never, never give up - to remember that "giving up is no longer an option" because...

There is always a solution.

And sometimes that solution is to just do a "Nike" and get on with things and sometimes it's to have a sit down and give it a good cry. Other days its cranking up the music and feeling, really feeling the anger and rage at the injustices that I have survived, the losses I have faced. Maybe even give a shout and vent some of that rage for a moment and shake my fist at the universe for having been shortchanged....

...and sometimes it's turning on the tunes and dancing, feeling the joy of this new life well up inside of me and fill every single molecule of my being, it's staring at the night sky or closing my eyes to feel the warm afternoon breeze brush over my face.

But mostly it's learning new ways of thinking and "being". It's making a conscious choice every day to practice using all the tools and resources available to me to walk this part of my journey. It's being willing to take responsibility for my new life - or lack of it.

And in the end - it's letting go of the life that I should have had where I didn't have to face or deal with the demons that have tormented me....

It's letting go of believing that I have all the answers and can make life give me what I deserve if I can only work hard enough, try long enough and be "good enough".

And then it's accepting what is and that I don't get that "do over"...

...that today is what it is and what I make of it is what I will get in my tomorrow.

And in the end...in time it gets easier to live this new life and it is knowing, just knowing that no matter what message I got from my past, no matter what I have survived or conquered, that today I am in charge and today I can choose to live in my truth - even when I have to dare myself to do it.

Q: How do you go about creating conscious change in your life?

I DON'T Want to Talk About It: Going Through to Get Out of. Honoring the Pain of the Past

Resentments.

For the longest time I held onto resentments. I mean - really - how could I forgive those who had affected my life and changed me forever?

My life had been a nightmare. Trauma does that to a person.

Yet - it didn't have to stay that way.

But I didn't understand that by holding on to the quite justifiable anger that I was drawing out the pain, I was actually causing some of my own misery. I had slipped into the conundrum of post trauma stress as over time I struggled to avoid triggers and control my environment and those in it in an impotent effort to continue to avoid the emotional pain and feelings of helplessness that had become my "norm".

What changed that? What helped me to let go of the resentments that my life could have been different, that I could have been different had I not had the life experiences that I did?

First - it was learning to do the "hard work" of emotional healing - learning to recognize, and connect my emotions and start talking about how I felt about what happened to me instead of my past focus on what the perpetrators had done that had left me feeling helpless, hopeless.

To trust the process - the emotional healing process.

To stop focussing and thinking about what "they", "he", "she", "it" had done to me or on what had otherwise happened to me that I had no control over.

Doing this "instant replay" really served only one purpose and that was to support that "perpetual victimhood" I was experiencing by reliving the nightmare over and over; not just in my head, but in my conversations and relationships. In the beginning it was noticable that this was what I was doing but in time it unconsciouly permeated my life and who I had become.

This focus on external events perpetuated that feeling of helplessness that often comes with a trauma experience and circumvented the natural emotional process of healing.

Then to start talking about how I felt about what happened to me.

That I felt shamed, lost, lonely, confused. That I thought, as I had been told, that "it" was my fault, that I was bad, that I had feared for my life and well being.

But I didn't share this part of my journey with just anyone. Only a select few whom I knew would be able to sit with my pain and not try to "fix" it by offering suggestions that would serve only to once again place the focus on external "fixes" rather than the internal insight and awareness that brings change.

This part of the journey is not one to be openly shared with all the world but to be honored and respected amongst close and compassionate relationships. A trusted friend who is not doing their own trauma work, a qualified therapist that knows how to validate instead of dismiss this part of the healing process.

This is where the knowledge of the emotional healing process came into play. As I gradually moved from talking "story" and on to "processing" emotion - the darkness began to lift. The pain began to subside inside me.

Things that had been horrible triggers for me began to be things I could experience with intention. I began to see how events and situations that in the past would send me off the deep end were identifying opportunities for healing, grieving - that here I could go through to get out of the connected avoidance and pain.

I no longer had to hide from the world because I could now become a part of the world.

I began to use my words as an indicator, a marker of sorts, that there was more grief to be had. That there was more to be let go of in order to set myself free. When I found myself again focussing on, talking about, complaining or feeling angry at something that had been done "to" me...this resentment was telling me there was more work to be done - and that I was ready to go through this healing process in order to get out of the pain of the past that had stolen my life from me.

And as I noted in my poem of recent "A Walk in Compassion" - letting go of my anger, resentments and deep inner wounds does not give those who harmed me a free pass in life for what they did that harmed me - but finding this place brings me closer to peace.

****

Related posts: Know and Face Thine Enemy

The Keys to the Magic Kingdom

You Don't Have to be an Einstien: Knowledge is Empowerment (there is no "worse" than or comparing of trauma experiences...)

Blog Talk Radio: Michele and Cori share their personal stories of triumph

I can't think of a better way to start the week than sharing an interview on Blog Talk Radio with Michele Rosenthal and her call in guest Cori as they discuss their personal stories and the path they have followed to find freedom from past pain and are now creating and living their own best life today. Click here to listen to this amazing testimony of the struggle and triumph as Cori and Michele share their personal testimonies.

Like the little engine that could...

It began with the idea that I could.

The very first lesson that I received on the idea of self empowered healing from "mental illness" was during that week in the hospital in September of 2007. (You can listen to this part of my story here on Blog Talk Radio with Michele Rosenthall of Heal My PTSD)

A Note: keep in mind, I had continued to read and study mental health issues for years but had been dismissed by my previous providers when I asked if I could ever live and function on my own, without "meds" and lifelong "talk therapy".

So while I had believed and hoped all the years in this system that I could find my way out of this dark place, like many others, I trusted and believed it when my doctor and therapist told me that this was something to be managed for the rest of my life.

Hint: if anyone is telling you "you can't"...this does 3 things. 1. it puts them in control and 2. it re-enforces that I am incapable and re enforces that false belief of helplessness to change or better my situation and 3. it creates an unhealthy dependency and re enforces that state of perpetual victimhood and hopelessness as we continue to believe that the power to heal lies with someone or something outside of myself. (more on this another time...)

For more information see Michele Rosenthal's post of March 8th 2010 on Knowing when to seek a different kind of help.

I was very literally going through withdrawals from all the medications that I had been dependent on to make it through each day. There had been a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant or two, the pain killers, muscle relaxers...etc).

Over time the medications were changed and dosages increased as my body developed a tolerance to them. I believe it was this tolerance that saved my life but that's another story...

I had become used to not sleeping years before as the racing thoughts and nightmares took their toll on my mind and ultimately my body as it began to break down from lving in the stress response for so many years without relief.

The doctor was asking me how I was sleeping. I told him I wasn't sleeping but that I would stare at something - a light through the crack in the door, a spot in the wallpaper, the frame of the door to make it through the long nights. I said that I was wishing for sleep...but sleep would not come. In other words, I was using dissociation to cope with my insomnia.

In one sentence he said something that changed my life, altered the course of my journey.

"You know that you don't have to go there, you don't have to follow those thoughts."

I was stunned. That had never occured to me before. That I could choose to not follow the racing thoughts?

My mind went back to the first time I told a "mental health professional" that I wasn't sleeping, that I was pacing my house like a caged lion, waiting for an attack from my abusive husband who had been stalking me for the past year. You can read more about my journey into the mental health system here.

The solution I was given was the beginning of my dependence on things outside myself to "fix" me; I was given an antidepressant.

I was told and I believed, trusted blindly the word of the "professionals"; that my brain was now broken and irreparable. That I would need "meds", psychiatrists and a therapist for the rest of my life to "manage" this "illness" that had cropped up out of nowhere.

That night in the hospital I still did not sleep. I knew that in stopping the meds it would take some time for my body and brain to adjust to functioning without drugs in my system. So I was patient.

But I practiced "not following" the racing thoughts, instead creating a picture in my mind where I felt safe and at peace. This is where I would direct my thoughts as I learned to become aware of and redirect the movies, pictures and voices that played out in my mind.

Just as in the beginning I was willing to do anything to get better, to make the nightmares and voices in my head stop, to not be so overreactive to normal everyday life stressors that could send me over the edge - I now had a new hope that I could truly "get better".

I took this one little idea - that I could choose where my thoughts went - and this became the foundation for this new path that I would follow in my journey to find myself and create the life of my choosing that I am living today.

For the rest of my stay in the hospital I did not sleep more that an hour here or there before the nightmares and racing thoughts would wake me and cause me to walk the halls of the psych ward as my body began to adjust to it's new drug free state. In fact it took nearly a year before I slept for more than a few hours at a time without waking.

It has now been 2 years and 6 months since that fateful turn in my life when this doctor told me those words that changed the power structure in my mind and provided me with a new hope that I had the power within myself to calm my mind and find peace.

Today - most nights I can sleep a full 8 or 9 hours uninterrupted. But this doesn't just "happen". It takes a conscious effort to live this new life each day. This doesn't happen just because I "wished" it or wanted it or someone told me to do it, but rather because I make a conscious effort each day to be aware of my whole self; what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling and making a choice as to what I will do with that information in my chosen actions.

"I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can."
— Little Engine That Could

DO NOT STOP YOUR MEDICATIONS ABRUPTLY. There are some serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms when psychiatric medications are discontinued even with tapering off over an extended period of time that can lead to an increase in both emotional instability and cognitive distress. Do your own research; talk to your doctor. Make a plan. But it is very dangerous to attempt to discontinue psychiatric medications abruptly. If you need more information on this topic please visit: www.bipolarblast.wordpress.com for a really great library of info and resources. 

Each of us has our own path to walk. This is my journey. That does not mean it should be yours. My hope is that this blog will provide you some information that will help you to begin to ask your own questions, find your own answers and encourage you to live the life you choose for yourself each day.

Michele and Susan at Blog Talk Radio

Last evening Michele Rosenthal and I had a great conversation about how in finding acceptance we can find freedom from the emotional and psychological pain of trauma. You can listen to the broadcast here: Why don't survivors want to do the work to heal from PTSD?

This was a great conversation and opportunity for me to share just a bit of what my journey has been like; how I had been misdiagnosed for over 15 years and how I began to find my way out of the darkness and despair of trauma.

This discussion was a spin off from a post that Michele had done in September of 2009 in her column Meandering Micheles Mind. You can read that original post here.

As Michele often has said at her blog site about the healing journey; while everyones trauma is unique, the trauma experience...the result or outcome of a traumatic experience....is universal.

We - you and I - are not alone in this journey and all we have to do is take that next step that is in front of us today to continue on the path of self discovery.

You too, can fly.

Stay tuned; more good things to come!