PTSD Healing, Part 2: Getting Over Self Doubt

Continuing from the idea of yesterday’s post that we cannot just lie down and accept PTSD…

It’s June, 2006. I've been trying to self-recover PTSD for about 8 months. Before that, I’ve been trying to recover (from some undiagnosed, how-is-it-possible-no-one-noticed-the-PTSD-signs mental ailment) with therapeutic help for about 5 years. Anyway, the point is, I thought I was moving in the right direction. I thought I was dealing with things head on and making progress and seeing what was wrong, working to understand the source and untangling the crossed wires. I thought I was on the road to wellness.

And then all of a sudden I wasn’t.

It happened just like that. I was in the side yard of my parents’ house throwing a ball for Baylee. He raced up and down the yard, diving in and out of the bushes, having a high old time and loving life. June is beautiful in Florida; my mood should have been as sunny and vibrant as the weather and as elated as Baylee pouncing on the ball. But the nightmares were getting more and more violent and the insomnia getting more and more gripping and there, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon all of a sudden my mother comes out to chat and I am sobbing and wailing, “I can’t do this! It’s too hard! I’ll never be free!!”

To which my mother replies, in her calm, sage voice, “Yes, you can. And yes, you will.”

I hate when she says that. It leaves all the burden on me. It doesn’t allow me to melt into a pool of butter and just accept what’s come down. And what does she know, anyway? How can my mother possibly understand what it’s like to live with PTSD? How can she even begin to fathom the struggle – to cope and/or to heal? How can she know the hell that is my foggy head?

She can’t, but it turns out, she didn’t have to. I think it’s probably almost better that she didn’t/couldn’t because the last thing we needed was two people agreeing on my breakdown. It was important we still had at least one person who believed I could recover.

That day I didn’t appreciate her support in any meaningful way. I just kept saying over and over, “What am I going to do if this is what my life always is?”

And she said the appropriate things and tried to comfort and soothe me and that’s just the way that day went. And the next day. And the next day. And the day after that because sometimes the road to healing takes a detour and you end up driving around and around the same geographic area desperately looking for the turn that gets you back to the main road.

It took me a couple of months. I thought about it all the time, but I flat out quit trying to heal. I allowed myself to get lost in my own confusion and despair and I sat in it like a child who won’t get out of the tub – the water is dirty but that’s still where I wanted to splash around.

Let me just say, I think those times are necessary. Out of confusion comes clarity. Out of misunderstanding comes education. When we question, when we feel we fail is when we’re close to making a giant step forward.

This push me/pull me aspect of healing is all a normal part of the wellness process. If healing was handed to us it would not be ours; we would not own it in the end. The struggle to heal is part of us owning ourselves, of overcoming the trauma and the out of control nature of the subconscious, and finally in that victory knowing we have won.

There seems to be a rash of the “I can’t do it!” virus going around these days. I don’t know, maybe it’s the holiday season just gets us down and interrupts the fragile wiring. Yesterday a woman wrote to me, “the C-PTSD seems to have taken over and be robbing me of myself…. the C-PTSD is beating me.” And over the weekend a man responded to my idea that we can focus our angry energy toward healing by saying, “You're lucky you can do that… A person can only fight for so long and you get tired and want to give up.”

With those thoughts how can we heal? And the sad part is: those thoughts make us believe we are right, healing is not an option, and then we don’t realize it is our own perspective that closes the door on wellness.

Our thoughts affect our emotions, but our behavior can affect our thoughts. If we allow ourselves to completely give up we will begin to believe we cannot heal. If we allow ourselves to think we are defeated we will feel that to be so and -- that will become our truth. But the real truth is: PTSD is not some foreign entity; it is ours. We provide a home for it, we are the genesis of it. PTSD is nothing more than the subconscious mind out of control. Which means, there are methods of reigning it in, even on the days this does not seem possible.

The trick is to keep trying. If one therapy does not work, we must try another. We cannot expect things to change over night. Once I began my PTSD healing it took 3 years for me to work out all the kinks. There were several times I was confused and overwhelmed and despondent, but that's the way this goes!

It would be nice if healing came of its own accord and all we had to do was initiate and then sit back and wait. Unfortunately, the ultimate healing is hard fought for and a little skittish, but it can be done. We cannot lose hope and we can’t ever stop reaching toward freedom. We must continue to believe and make the effort until….




(photo: Mind Meld)

PTSD & Anger, Part 2: Why Are We So Angry?

( First off, let me say for those of you who have not scrolled down and found the picture of me, this picture here is NOT me!)

Getting to today's topic: This idea of anger has captivated my attention. Mostly, because I lived with it for so long and never thought twice about it. In my world… well, that’s the state I was so often in; it seemed normal to be frustrated and angry -- when I couldn’t control my environment, when others got in my head space, when someone would say, for example, “Can’t you just let go of the past?” To which I would reply (often inside my head but sometimes very outloud), "Um… NO!"


Feeling isolated in my symptoms and experience only made me more irritable. Anger became a general daily sensation.

And now I’m no longer angry and I’m amazed by what a different world it is when I’m not feeling like a combination of The Grinch, The Wicked Witch of the West and Darth Vader every day.

This morning I started looking around for anger info to better understand why it’s such a common PTSD symptom. You might find the reasons, and how anger functions on our behalf, pretty interesting:

What is Anger?

Well, we have to begin somewhere; may as well start with the source. In this great article by Harry Mills, Ph.D. he explains that

Anger is a basic human emotion that is experienced by all people. Typically triggered by an emotional hurt, anger is usually experienced as an unpleasant feeling that occurs when we think we have been injured, mistreated, opposed in our long-held views, or when we are faced with obstacles that keep us from attaining personal goals…. At its roots, anger is a signal to you that something in your environment isn’t right. It captures your attention and motivates you to take action to correct that wrong thing.

So this can potentially be a good thing! After trauma we are sensing something’s wrong and we should be motivated to take a corrective action. Unfortunately, the psychological unraveling after trauma gets in the way. We are overwhelmed, and so we don’t immediately take positive steps. But I mean, really, how could we when you consider the role of anger in trauma…:

Anger & Trauma

Initially, anger is a really useful tool for us. Theories suggest that high levels of anger are actually related to a natural survival instinct. Take heart, depending on how we use it and how we perceive it anger could be viewed as a healthy emotion: We survive and are bolstered in our efforts by this driving internal force. (Remember this for later: We have a healthy, instinctive driving internal source for survival.)

This great @health.com 'Anger and Trauma' article offers this explanation of the role of anger in trauma:

Anger is usually a central feature of a survivor's response to trauma because it is a core component of the survival response in humans. Anger helps people cope with life's adversities by providing us with increased energy to persist in the face of obstacles. However, uncontrolled anger can lead to a continued sense of being out of control of oneself and can create multiple problems in the personal lives of those who suffer from PTSD.

(This article also offers a guide to finding relief, so you may want to take some time reading through the entire page.)

Adding to the mix in explaining the post-trauma emotional environment, take a look at this article about ‘Common Reactions to Trauma’ on the National Center for PTSD web site.

As in everything with PTSD, anger is another one of those coping/survival mechanisms that gets out of control. What began as something to help us cope and keep us safe outlives its usefulness, but we’re so far gone emotionally we don’t stop to consider what’s happening or how we can stop it.

Or, as I did, the aberration of who we are becomes so familiar and recognizable – and who we were before trauma becomes so far away and unfamiliar – we don’t even realize we’re living in an altered state. We accept this is who we are now. After my trauma I knew I had been changed and I accepted that. But that was wrong! Yes, of course, we are changed, but those effects do not have to mean negatively and dysfunctionally forever. We can be changed in good ways: we can have experienced something that taught us things about ourselves those who don’t suffer never know. Things like 1) our large capacity for inner strength, 2) our survival tools, 3) our deep reserve of will, 4) our incredible amount of courage, 5) our ability to face fear and transcend.

When we get lost in anger we fail to appreciate our survival. We see only the bad that happened to us, and we lose sight of the fact that WE ARE SURVIVORS, and surviving means more than just struggling through the trauma and the aftermath. Literally, surviving means we ‘outlive’ an event. But in feeding our anger what part of us lives? Not all the good, the possible, the amazing. In feeding anger we keep the trauma alive, which means the trauma wins. Now that’s something to be angry about!

(Photo: Jeneyepher)

PTSD & Anger, Part 1: When We Hate Happy People

There’s been a big debate in one of the PTSD online support groups in which I participate. It all started around the Thanksgiving holiday. It began like this: S. asked,

Has anyone been through this? I mean, seeing everyone happier than ever (of course, it doesn't mean they are) while you are struggling at ground zero.
I've been through minor but several traumatic life events which accumulated to a greater sum and my coping mechanisms failed after the last event. It's been now more than a year and my soul is still not at rest.

It just seems to me like everyone around me is achieving everything they want and ask for contrary to me who lost almost everything. Is this jealousy normal? It is extremely painful and instead of concentrating on myself I examine other's lives and can't take myself out of it. And seeing people happy makes me misarable and leaves me with the unanswerable question, "Why?" I believe maybe it is a way of keeping myself out of the original problems, I don't know.

There ensued a lot of agreement from the group that, yes, they do feel jealous of people who do not have PTSD, and they are angry at others for not suffering, and angry for the things others have achieved and angry for… the list went on and on and on. The discussion became heated as people vented their frustration in increasingly vehement @$&%! terms.

And it got me thinking, what if everyone took that angry energy and used it for something positive? What if, instead of railing against those ‘happy’ people (or, as I used to do, the unfairness of fate), we harnassed that energy and used it for our own good? When we manifest pure anger all we do is drain ourselves of good energy, literally.

I started researching this whole idea of anger and found an interesting article by Kathy Wilson. Entitled, ‘Anger: The Greatest Motivator of All’ she talks about ways to channel angry energy. Actually, what she says is,

When you experience the emotion of anger, you create one of the most extremely powerful energies that we humans have been given to work with.

Although powerful, the energy of anger isn't bad or good. It simply exists as energy. What you choose to do with it determines if it's bad or good. As with any energy, you can choose to use it in harmful ways or in beneficial ways.

This idea perfectly illustrates the point I made in the group, which was this:

What about looking at the whole topic another way? Instead of being angry, how about thinking about how much we deserve to be as happy as they are? How about getting angry that we aren't happy and deciding to fight as hard as we need to in order to achieve a happier, healthier life?

I used to be angry at my own PTSD suffering. I used to be angry my trauma happened in the first place; no one shielded me from harm; no one could stop the horrific event from continuing over a period of weeks.

On a bad day, I could add to my already deep depression with a powerful dose of anger and then -- watch out! I was really a sight to behold. That depressive anger I usually turned inward came out with a ferocity that flayed anyone around me. I feel sorry for the people I directed it at, particularly my family.

But two years ago this new year's eve I decided to take that angry energy and use it in a positive way: I decided to pursue joy and ... it worked! All of that antsy angry energy spilled onto the dance floor and out of me. I became more peaceful, more tolerant; less angry, more... well... happy.

Being jealous of others is useless. Being angry at them is a total waste of time and energy - time and energy that we really need to be channeling toward healing. Using that energy on ourselves can bring relief, so we shouldn't so easily give it away. Don't you agree?

(Photo: Amir el Mayordomo)

PTSD & Instinct: Coaxing Back That Buried Self

A friend and I have a long-running PTSD discussion going. This week, we hit on the topic of instinct and inner voice. She’s working hard to trust her instincts again, and to develop her inner voice. These were major topics for me, too. After my trauma I didn’t trust my instincts at all, and my inner voice….. what inner voice?? All I ever heard inside was, I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid!

I think with trauma we're so stunned that we automatically revert to a sort of autopilot. We no longer trust our perceptions of the world and ourselves, and so we trust someone else's above our own because we are looking for something to believe in.

I think also the inner voice, in its reaction to shock, hibernates and so we lose that part of ourselves. It takes deliberate choice and focus to coax it back and to regain the trust we should and deserve to have in our own selves. We are not responsible for the traumas or PTSD we experience. However, we are responsible for healing the effects. Not that this is simple, but it can be done.

For example, in order to begin establishing a trust of my instincts I had to practice deferring to them. I did this in silly, non-threatening ways. I started like this: I used to walk to work every day, from the Upper West Side of Manhattan down to the Fashion Institute of Technology where I taught, which was in the garment district; about a 30 minute walk. Instead of analyzing the route, deciding which was the most efficient, most calculated, controlled path to get from one door to the next, I gave up control. I left my apartment building and allowed my feet (aka, my instincts) to decide. Instead of reigning myself in I allowed myself the freedom to move forward by impulse, that ‘instinctual urge’ that wanted to go left or right.

A ridiculous exercise, yes? Silly and elementary for sure. But it has the advantage of being a simple way to retrain the brain. It was an easy way to develop a new habit, which was the suspension of thought and a deference to feeling.

Which way did I feel like going? Down Broadway, or West End Avenue? Over on 57th Street, or on 42nd? Through Times Square, or around it? For those 30 minutes every day I suspended my thinking self and allowed another self (a self outside my fears and need to control every minute and everything) to take… well… control. This was very liberating. It didn’t take long for this daily practice to begin creeping into other situations as well until there were several times a day I would feel the urge toward an instinct and then follow it.

In the beginning, these were all in the area of inconsequential things. But the more comfortable I became with my instincts - and the act of trusting them - the more often they arose; I experimented with trusting them in new ways; was rewarded; found myself developing new coping skills, ones that did not harm me with exaggerated and distorted behavior but instead supported me and made me feel calmer because I began to see that in all the crazy world I could, at least, trust myself. This was a huge progress milestone.

We all own an inner wisdom. PTSD healing includes more than just getting rid of symptoms. It includes reopening the functioning flow of a dialogue with an inner self. It includes rediscovering who we are behind, beneath, beyond trauma and PTSD.

Your assignment for today (should you choose to accept it!): Find one instance, one situation, in which you defer to your instincts. Pause. Become aware of your internal urge. Act on it.

Begin today to develop your instincts and then, your deep trust in them.

Bad News for PTSDers

Oh, yes, very bad news indeed. I’ve been conducting a rather informal poll in all of the PTSD forums and groups in which I participate and with all of the practitioners with whom I'm friends, and hands down, from those others who have achieved healing (because it is possible), the answers are all coming back with the unfortunate fact that regardless of the various therapeutic components, HEALING BEGINS WITH US. It is not bestowed upon us and it is not doled out to the most deserving souls. Healing is won, fought, struggled for, demanded, coaxed, wooed, summoned, begged, prayed and hoped for – and then rained down upon those who want it most.

It begs the question this morning, How badly do you want it?? For a long time I would have said that I did (and I sort of, halfheatedly, would have meant it), but it wasn’t true. I didn’t really feel a burning desire for wellness. I wanted relief from the pain, but I didn’t really care if I was PTSD-free. Largely this was because I didn’t even know I had PTSD. And also, because in the state of my mind at that time, I really didn’t believe I could feel completely better.

But what I’m discovering from all of these other sources is that I’m not so unique (as much as my ego hates to admit this) – none of us are. I am not the only one who is healed, and I am not the only one who believes healing must have a source within. The cat’s out of the bag, my friends. There are other PTSD soldiers who have come off the battlefield knowing it’s their own strength that got them there.

So there’s the secret, underpublicized fact about healing. You can’t solely purchase it through therapy or medication. We can talk about our traumas forever. We can wail about the unfairness of it all. We can demand validation, remuneration, and exaltation for our suffering. We can cry for someone to do something to deliver us from all this pain (and for a time we should, we absolutely should!!). We can pop a mixed cocktail of pills, but in the end no one and no thing can provide the final relief if we don’t do something first. Before there can be the ultimate healing, we must develop desire. A burning desire to be well is the first step toward finding freedom. Desire is our battered soul striving toward the light of a joyful day. It is the powerful strength that fuels our progress toward the ultimate PTSD liberation.

Do you feel that desire? Today you must consider this question.

Sit very still. Listen for that small voice that says, I do! If you don’t hear it, sit still longer. Listen harder. Speak to it and don’t move until it answers. Ask yourself, Do I like the way I feel? If there is no answer, or if the answer is (gasp!), Yes… then go back and read my October 27 post, ‘Are You Ready to Let Go of Your Trauma/PTSD Identity?’

Consider whether or not you feel that burning desire to be well. If you do, decide what you can do to give it breath. What action can you take to honor, develop, support and entertain it?

If you don’t feel that desire, then spend a long time taking a good look at yourself in the mirror and demanding to know why it is that you do not want to be well, healthy, joyful, happy and free. What is PTSD giving you that you don’t want to let go? How are you benefitting from it? How good is it making your life? How much is it enhancing your experience on earth?

If you can really come up with some good answers to this - ones that have true, substantial merit - please email me! I would love to hear them.

If you cannot honestly say that PTSD is making your life so much better than it could be without it, then you need to take stock and decide: Am I going to live this way forever? Am I going to let the trauma win? Am I going to remain a prisoner of experience? Or am I a hero? Am I, by myself and/or with the help of others, going to pull myself up out of this rotten, dark hole and get out into the light? Am I going to wallow in this post-trauma trauma forever, or can I today begin to define a new way of living? What one thing can I do today toward a new, PTSD-free self?

In order to heal we must ACT. Thought follows behavior; emotion follows thought. We must act in a way that fosters the right thoughts to foster more positive emotions to foster courage that fosters healing. It’s a simple equation. And it’s not that tough to do. I do it through the pursuit of joy, which I find in dance (See the posts labeled ‘Dance’.), but there are other ways. Find your way.

What can you do today? What one action can you take to honor and develop, support and maintain your desire to be healed, your wish to escape PTSD?

Go do it! And report back, you soldiers of freedom!

Something Strange is Happening; Or, Groovy PTSD Healing

I woke up this morning and the temperature was in the 50s! Clearly, when I moved from Manhattan to Florida I didn’t go far enough south.

But that’s not the strange thing that’s happening. The strange thing is this: During my second decade of PTSD my physical symptoms became so severe that at times I was completely bedridden. My body was wracked with pain. My organs malfunctioned. I was weak and weary. The brain fog was almost impenetrable. The depression almost insurmountable. Hope completely unfathomable.

Whenever it was plausible, I forced myself to carry on despite the extreme physical and mental pain I was in daily. I pushed and pushed and pushed myself until I collapsed. Summers were the easiest season to muddle through. The heat, the humidity, the warmth of New York City crept into my bones and subtly energized me.

And then the fall would hit and the humidity would evaporate and immediately, my body curled inward upon itself. It always began in September: the leaves would begin to turn and the days would develop a slight chill and right on cue the aches and pains would increase and I could feel my body cowering as if from a physical blow. The muscles contracted and tensed. I was incredibly fatigued and everything ached as if I’d just completed a triatholon without training. My head hurt, my eyes hurt. Beyond insomnia I looked like I hadn’t slept in 20 years. I stayed in this state throughout the fall into the winter and until the first few days of spring when my body seemed to begin thawing at the same time as the earth.

I guess I should divulge that my trauma happened in September. I guess I should say that I’d had a really wonderful summer before it occurred. I guess I should mention the fact that I had no pre-existing physical ailments that would be worsened by weather.

I’m embarassed to tell you, it never occurred to me that my reaction to the cold weather (more accurately: the season of my trauma) was part of PTSD. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like the cold, but now we get to the strange thing that’s happening:

I went for my first hypno a little over a year ago on October 10, 2007. Right away that night a slew of my PTSD symptoms ceased – insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, etc. (For more on the effects see the post ‘After Hypno, Part 2’). It took five more sessions before I felt PTSD-free. The interesting thing is that I didn’t know how free that could be. I thought that the relief of immediate symptoms was all it would be; a lifting of depression, an absence of flashbacks, an elimination of triggers – you know, that sort of thing. But here I am all this time later and I’m still discovering new nuances of freedom.

For example: it is 50 degrees and windy today (and has been for the past few days) and I am not, at this late hour of the day, still in the bed. I am not dragging around a pain-riddled body. I am not deep into a head fog. In fact, I feel terrific. My thinking is clear and I am full of energy and while the cold is annoying and I miss wearing my flip-flops, that’s all the cold is: annoying. A simple atmospheric fact. It is not translated into my own physical or mental condition.

Interestingly, my hypnotherapist, Laura, and I never discussed the cold or my physical symptoms because of it. I took it for granted that my body was weak. That’s it, end of story. But that was not it. My body is not weak. My body was not betraying me, it was speaking to me, and I didn’t understand the language.

So, here’s the beauty I’m finding about healing: When we get to the bottom of our PTSD, when we root it out at the core, other suprising healings spontaneously take place because our bodies and minds want to be free. They want to be healthy and they will, with the proper support and guidance, do the work.They will strive toward joy. All we need to be free is the right attitude on our part – the full commitment to wellness even when we don’t believe it can be achieved – combined with guidance from some hand who’s either been there or knows how to do that.

Trauma & PTSD -- Fiction Style

As you all know from yesterday’s post, I spent Saturday at the Miami Book Fair International 2008. What I did not tell you was that one of the panels I attended included Patrick McGrath, the writer of Asylum and Spiders to name two of his most celebrated novels. In what has been called a Gothic style, McGrath has made a career about writing about the dark side of the psyche.

On Saturday morning, in a medium sized auditorium at the Book Fair, McGrath unassumingly assumed the podium. He is tall and sort of soft spoken with a slight English-sounding accent. Wearing a jacket and slacks with his silver hair slicked back he made a joke and then proceeded to read Chapter 5 from his latest work, Trauma. Narrated by Charlie Weir, a psychiatrist living in New York City in the 70s, Trauma is the story of Weir’s own family related drama, plus his work with patients, including those suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That’s all I can tell you for now because I haven’t yet read the novel. I picked it up Saturday and am savoring the idea of it for my holiday trip across the country next week. However, I can tell you this from the chapter I heard: McGrath gets us. He gets trauma and the insidious nature of it. He gets the cyclical vortex of PTSD and its way of consuming a soul. He gets the heaviness of the past and the drive-you-crazy activity of memory in the present. He gets how an event can happen and virtually stop time. Most of all, he’s sensitive enough to get the nuances of how traumatic memory can entirely refocus an identity.

The interesting thing is that McGrath is not a PTSD sufferer himself. His is a view in from the outside. In our conversation after the reading, I asked McGrath how he had prepared to write about PTSD. He mentioned a list of research efforts that included reading the PTSD Bible, Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman. He also spoke with several psychiatrists, as well as veterans in order to obtain a completely rounded view.

I’ve been thinking that in all of the PTSD reading we all do that is directly, research and non-fictionally oriented, perhaps it would be a nice break, an interesting perspective to retreat to the world of fiction for a while where the characters act and we simply observe; where the author tries to ferret out the details and next steps while we allow someone else to do this kind of work for a change; where we look at PTSD outside of ourselves, as if it were someone else’s problem and not our own. I'm wondering what kind of perspective might we gain then....

When I have read the novel I’ll get back to you with a review. Until then, here’s what other reviewers are saying about Patrick McGrath’s, Trauma:

Michiku Kakutani, INTL. HERALD TRIBUNE
“…revealing about the peculiarities of the human psyche.”

Hilary Mantel, THE GUARDIAN
“Patrick McGrath is a writer of proven imaginative scope, dark in his concerns, vigilant in his methods... the easy conversational tone of Trauma is effective in its restraint, and the intertwining narrative strands are handled adroitly. The novel works beautifully as a sober, tightly written character study.”

Sven Birkerts, SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES
“Trauma is the tortuous, often gripping, account of [the narrator’s] collapse in the face of various long-denied recognitions, of the destructive guilt caused by the inadvertent consequences of actions that have not been completely understood… What gives McGrath’s novel its complexity, its shadowy dimensions, is the fact that [the narrator] has the training and the insight to see what’s happening.”

Boyd Tonkin, THE INDEPENDENT
“… has all McGrath's mastery of looming dread: not of what's to come, but of what has been [as the characters] seek ‘some means of escape, some portal through which we could flee the past’.”

There is a World Outside our PTSD Problems

Saturday night was balmy in Miami, and sweet. The kind of succulent air that makes you feel like you’re on vacation because the only time the air usually smells that delectable is when you’re not in your hometown and you don’t have a care in the world. But I wasn’t on vacation; I was at the Miami Book Fair International 2008. I had spent the day listening to authors reading their works, answering Q&As and discussing the world of literature. My friend Laine and I had sweated out the 85 degree sunshine standing on line to see Dave Barry and Frank McCourt on a panel (they overfilled the auditorium 15 people ahead of us). And we had wandered through the book vendors in the swarm of other people searching for just the right title. In a fit of desperation at the paltry food court, we had broken down and eaten lunch at McDonald’s.

And then at 5pm as the sun set in soft greys and purples over the skyline, we found ourselves on a rooftop overlooking the city, listening to the sound of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of bestselling authors. Picture a large, square rooftop with hundreds of people lounging around small tables and on the concrete floor. A free BBQ was provided; people milled around with plates piled with ribs, chicken, corn on the cob and biscuits. A few of us danced. All of us clapped and sang and cheered and laughed at this band of quasi-musicians, some of whom were definitely tone deaf, but all of whom were people who, regardless of musical talent, daily seek to connect to the world and entertain, not only in isolation at computers and typewriters across the country, but here, in this Miami moment where they could sing and dance and play together for all of us.

For you book junkies, this band included Dave Barry (on lead guitar), Amy Tan (on vocals in a platinum wig), Scott Turow (who actually has a terrific voice), Mitch Albom (who came out dressed as Elvis and wasn’t a bad imitation either), Frank McCourt (looking his trademark downtrodden even while playing the harmonica), Ridley Pearson (sort of singing), Carl Hiasson (playing a mean guitar), Matt Groening (wandering around the stage unable to find his niche), Kathi Goldmark (who really can sing and writes some funny country songs), and Roy Blount, Jr. just to name a few. For a few songs, Richard Belzer haunted the stage with his odd, surreal presence. To give you a real feeling for the hominess of this band, Dave’s wife and daughter came on stage to sing ‘La Bamba’, and his future daughter-in-law belted out the Joan Jett classic, ‘I Love Rock ’n Roll’. It was a groovy time.

As I was dancing along there in the crowd my favorite poetry mentor strode by – there, in the flesh, my old pal Billy Collins. I have not seen Billy since I left New York City over three years ago. In the flash of our hug and greeting something flipped in me and I remembered myself as Billy met me 6 years ago, a haunted, struggling, depressed, brittle, scrawny woman trying to cope with PTSD without even knowing it. It was a difficult time for me, one of those times when you are in the dark and really, really conscious of it. Not that Billy knew that because of course, you can be so close to the edge and hide it from just about everyone. I had applied and been admitted to a Master class Billy was teaching at NYU. To Billy, I was cheerful and fun and a writer of humorous, whimsical (read: not my true voice) poetry. We hit it off and became good friends.

And now here he was, a remnant of my past strolling through my present. My, I thought, How far I’ve come! Because here I am happy and free and real and healthy and singing along with Amy Tan’s rendition of ‘Leader of the Pack’ feeling such gratitude to be alive. Six years ago I never would have imagined this moment was possible. In the PTSD dark it always seemed like there was no possibility of light, as though the Hades of trauma had claimed me and I, unlike Persephone, was not allowed to spend any time back in the real world.

But that’s what’s funny about fate. One minute you’re fine, and the next you’re a tragedy; one minute you’re a victim, and the next you’re your own superhero. The flip can come, sometimes out of our control, and sometimes within it.

The band played through the sunset and into the evening. As they prepared for the last tune (not, as someone in the crowd suggested, ‘Freebird’), I looked around the smiling faces and felt, as I always do, how important it is to get out and be one of the masses. It’s so easy to become lost in our own problematic vortex, but there is – to quote Kevin Spacey to Judy Davis in The Ref – “a world outside our problems”. And it is really, really, really, good for us to remember that. It’s incredibly uplifting and soul satisfying to participate in a large group event where our isolated past is not the focus of the day, where instead, the present connected moment is all that matters and sweeps us up in it because we are not doomed and destined to the underworld. We have suffered, and we deserve to rejoice.

On glum days in Manhattan when I felt myself being pulled under I frequently and deliberately sought the outside world. I would walk myself over to Central Park to hear a classical music concert, or to Bryant Park to watch a movie in the midst of a sea of picnickers. I would go to the plaza in Lincoln Center to watch people dance, or I would walk down to Battery Park City and sit with all of the other people harbor watching and staring at the Statue of Liberty. On those days it grounded me to be out, around other people who knew nothing of my tragedy, and to connect to them and their lives and the rest of the world as a way to give myself a thread, just a thin, fragile strand that would guide me back from the edge inch by inch. It was good to be out and see that the rest of the world was continuing and functioning even as I became more dysfunctional; it was good to remember that functional, somewhere, could survive. It was good to remember that my problems were microscopic in the context of the world.

I haven’t lost my love for these mass communal events. I use them differently now, but their uplifting effect is still the same. I am still buoyed by the collective energy. And I still love the idea that on that day, at that time, all of us strangers decided to participate in the exact same experience. It reminds me that none of us are ever so isolated as we think. It reminds me that community is only a drum beat, a heart beat, a step away.

The Importance of PTSD Education, Part 2

Picking up from yesterday’s post…:

To be entirely accurate, it should be explained this way: despite my GI problems, I could eat, just not very much, and not a very wide variety of things. Vegetables, mostly, and some soft protein. That’s it. No dairy, no carbohydrates, no sugar, no fat. None of the things that help a body that’s lost weight due to illness put it back on for health. My small intestine didn’t work the way it should, which made my stomach not work the way it should, which made a whole host of other organs – liver, pancreas, pituitary, thyroid – not work the way they should. My body, it seemed, was in an all out revolt. And then it began to pirate itself: blood leached calcium from bone to make up for the nutritional deficiency. Guess what happens when it does that? By the age of 36 I was diagnosed with an aggressive state of osteoporosis.

To find a cure for these issues, I visited specialists all over Manhattan. I even went all the way up to Yale’s Center for Digestive Diseases. I sat in the waiting rooms of gastroenterologists, liver specialists, endocrinologists, internists, parasitologists and allergists. I submitted to their pokes, prods and needles and waited for them to cure me. When Western medicine offered no answers I turned to alternative outlets. On Mondays I took the subway to see Dr. Ng in Chinatown who sent me home with packets of herbs and pills and a disgusting concoction of roots and fungi to brew into a nasty-tasting tea in a special Chinese teapot I bought from the front of her shop. On Tuesdays I saw an Upper West Side psychotherapist who focused on cognitive behavior therapy and tried to help me undo the reactions that my childhood medical trauma put into place. On Wednesdays I visited a homeopath in Chelsea for an IV vitamin drip. Thursdays I had a standing appointment for reflexology on Park Avenue South. Fridays I saw a new age chiropractor just below 14th Street. His favorite thing was to manipulate my back to “release negative emotions.” Although the physical pain he caused reduced me to tears, he assured me this was the path to wellness. In desperation I even tried to work on the phone in New York City with a healer in Hawaii.

Are you surprised when I tell you: None of these treatments made a difference?

My life became my illness; management of illness became my life. Still, no one could define what, exactly, was wrong with me. I dragged around a bony, exhausted and pain-filled body in the years I actually had the strength to drag around at all. I tried to keep up with graduate school and teaching duties at the Fashion Institute of Technology, but slowly everything unraveled. I was exhausted. I was losing even more weight. I was in pain. I could not focus. My body was lost in a chaos of its own and my psychological self was on the brink of destruction. My life was full of undefined illnesses that lead to more directly defined illnesses. My primary identity: patient.

I look back at those years now and wonder how it’s possible not one single practitioner over the period of ten years recognized my classic PTSD symptoms.

If anyone had suggested my maladies were all related to PTSD, if any single practitioner had asked the right questions, I might have been lead to my PTSD diagnosis much earlier, and then to healing. If I or my care providers had been educated about and aware of PTSD I would not have suffered so horribly for a full decade. My mental and physical health would have been healed and I would have moved on to a happier life instead of completely crashing the way I did.

But OK, it’s fruitless to perseverate about the past since there’s nothing we can do except LET IT GO.

Here’s the upside to what I’ve learned:

We – you and me and all of us here on the blog and in the LinkedIn PTSD support group (email me if you’d like to join, you do not need to be a LinkedIn member to participate) – can spread the word so that we and other people suffer less and heal sooner. Knowledge on any of our parts can immediately aid ourselves and/or those we love. As the old adage goes, “Knowledge is power.”

The nice thing is, we’re not the only ones doing this work. Check out this interview with Dr. David Clarke on Alicia Sparks’ Mental Health Notes blog (posted on 8/18/08). Entitled, They Can’t Find Anything Wrong!, Dr. David Clarke’s book speaks directly to the PTSD community about just our kind of physical symptoms and ailments. He covers "5 Types of Hidden Stress" and also offers "7 Keys to Understanding, Treating and Healing Stress Illness". (You can read the interview by clicking the title of this post.)

The bottom line is: We need to educate ourselves, and educate those who care for and about us. PTSD is the ghost in many examination rooms. We can bust it if we work together! First, we need knowledge. Then, we need to share it. Finally, we need to heal. And after that…. We need to advocate. We need to exit our isolation and speak out loud.

Talking to people (even those who do not have PTSD) helps educate us all. Plus, it has the added benefit of being an exercise that bridges the gap between PTSD isolation and the rest of the world. Choose one person to explain it to today. Who will it be?

The Importance of PTSD Education, Part 1

I love radio! It’s such a fun and personable format. For those of you who missed my interview on THE VETERANS FORUM yesterday, it can be downloaded from the November 12 link at:

http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/Arch-Everett.htm

I will warn you that on the air the interviewer added to the original outline; the first 30 minutes are a detailed description of my trauma, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Syndrome.

Rather than subject you to this horrific and graphic description, I encourage you to fast forward the time stamp to 32:54 minutes; this is where the PTSD discussion begins. Or, all the way to 76:26, which is when the discussion turns to my ideas on healing PTSD.

One of the topics we didn’t get to discuss on air is the importance of PTSD education. Since this is an aspect of healing PTSD that I deeply believe in – the education of ourselves and of those living with, caring about and for us - I’m going to tackle it here today….

In the category of “Ooh, if only I knew then what I know now!” Or, “Why didn’t anyone ever mention that?” I offer the following story:

From the age of twenty-three to thirty-seven I was besieged by major illnesses. Epstein-Barr virus. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Celiac Disease. Mercury poisoning. Multiple sinus infections that finally lead to emergency surgery when the infection reached the brain barrier. My body was a host of various, uncontrollable problems. Then I took an antibiotic for a sinus infection and suffered an extremely adverse reaction to it.

Let’s pause for a moment here just to be clear:

In 1981 I took a routine antibiotic and suffered an extremely adverse reaction to it. Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Syndrome is a rare illness (.5/million people annually); most doctors have never seen it, they do not know how to diagnose it, and it cannot be stopped. Once the illness begins there is no treatment for it; in worst case scenarios like my own, the victim becomes a full body second degree burn patient. We are given burn victim protocol and allowed to ride out the illness. The mortality rate is 40 - 70%. The biggest difference between life and death in this illness is the level of care.

In 1997, while the antibiotic adverse reaction was not as significant, it laid me up for a week. Just long enough for those parasites in my mind to go wild with an ecstatic source of their own nourishment. Another antibiotic, another reaction, another medical surprise, another fear, another trigger…. It was like a drunken frat party in my head.

While the reaction finally ceased, something in my body had been triggered and things were never the same. After that the annoying chronic illnesses went deeper, right into the organs that allow us to thrive. For the next seven years I suffered from a mysterious gastrointestinal disorder. I could barely eat. A part of my small intestine (we could see on the x-ray) had virtually shut down. In addition to that, my liver enzymes were skyrocketing, who knew why?

As the years dragged on my condition continued to defy medical knowledge. No one could find a cure for the host of food allergies I developed, the nausea, the cramping, the bloating; the incredible permeability of my gut that allowed no uptake of nutrients. I ate, and my body retained nothing. I was put on seventeen vitamins and supplements and prescription medications designed to nourish me and digest my food for me, and still, my calcium and magnesium remained dangerously low. My liver enzymes soared worrisomely high. Vitamin B counts barely made it onto the charts. I was at the borderline of anemia. My hair thinned. Test after test returned and now there were two kinds of bad news. The first, was some concrete problem. The second, was no problem at all, which meant there was nothing to cure although the problems persisted. Regardless of the hundred tests I was subjected to, I found no one to fix the systematic disintegration that brought my life down to a focus on calorie counting and wishful thinking. I was a medical anomaly, alone, a freak. Again.

The Veterans Forum: My PTSD Radio Interview

Hello, Readers! Today marks my internet radio debut on Passionate Internet Radio Voices (PIVTR). I’ll be the featured guest on E. Everett McFall’s internet radio talk show, THE VETERANS FORUM. Join us today for a positive, proactive discussion about coping with and healing PTSD. Topics will include:

-- Educating sufferers, caregivers and careproviders about PTSD
-- Building a PTSD resource community
-- Necessity of sufferers participating in the healing process
-- Constructing a post-trauma identity
-- Committing to the pursuit of joy
-- Benefits of hypnotherapy
-- Living a joyful, PTSD-free life

The show airs live from 3:30 – 5:30pm EST, and can be downloaded at any time via the November 12 link on the PIVTR website.

To listen live: http://www.pivtr.com/

To download later: http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/Arch-Everett.htm

We will be taking on-air callers. If you wish to participate in the show, you may phone in toll-free at: 1866-977-4887.

I hope you'll call in and talk to us about bridging the gap between PTSD and a joyful life!

Veterans & Combat-Related PTSD

Since today is Veterans Day, it seems appropriate for this post to be about veterans only, to thank you for your service on the field, and honor your continued presence here at home.

At a bridal shower this past weekend I met Becky, a vet who had been a nurse in Vietnam. We spoke at length about PTSD and the lack of public knowledge and awareness. We also spoke about how universal is ‘The PTSD Experience’. And we discussed something else that really shocked me to read recently, which is this:

"the V.A. requires that a Veteran has achieved one of several service ribbons in order to get PTSD benefits i.e. the Combat Action ribbon, Combat Infantry badge, Purple Heart, Bronze Star with V to name a few. However, for those that don't merit such an award by the military’s standards they are doomed to have to reconstruct their in-war stressor to prove they witnessed a horrific sight or came under fire."

This hardly seems fair. As all of us PTSD sufferers know, a trauma can be subtle, almost invisible to the human eye in some cases. To send our men and women into battle and not offer them equal support when they get home as we should be giving them on the battlefield is a horrible way to thank them for risking their lives. To demand that they prove they have been traumatized is criminal and ridiculous.

I was encouraged this morning to hear on the news about RESET, a new program being implemented by the military to offer psychological readjustment programs to returning soldiers and their families. Does anyone have info on this? I can’t find anything concrete and would like to know more. As we’ve all experienced, during trauma we do what we must to survive, but the cost of that to us afterward can be almost (if not more) psychologically damaging than the original trauma itself. Developing a program to directly address this issue would be of great benefit to military personnel as well as their families.

Finally, combat-related PTSD is getting a little bit more exposure, and from sources that could really help sufferers. Our new president elect, Barack Obama, was the co-author of a 2007 letter to Secretary Gates requesting an accounting from the Dept. of Defense on the number of psychological injuries sustained by service members since October 2001 and how the military reports on and invests in treating these less visible psychological injuries. The letter specifically mentions PTSD. The full text may be found here:

http://obama.senate.gov/press/071023-obama_bond_dema/

In the past year alone there have been several reports that diagnosed military PTSD cases jumped significantly, as much as 50% – that’s over 40,000 newly diagnosed military personnel, and that’s only reported cases. Here are links to 2 articles on this topic from May 2008:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24842653/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/27/wartime-ptsd-cases-jumped_n_103779.html

Finally, Dr. Matthew Tull wrote a brief but good recently historical overview about PTSD in the military. Click here to view:

http://ptsd.about.com/od/prevalence/a/MilitaryPTSD.htm

As I read these articles I’m wondering how military personnel feel about the care they receive, and also, how they feel about the experience of PTSD itself. Do they feel differently than we civilians do? It must be so difficult to survive the theater of war and the power of the enemy, only to return home and be undone by the power of your own mind. If any vets are willing to share their thoughts, please email me anytime.

Recently, I accepted an invitation to join the creative team of a new PTSD organization: Dream Peace Foundation. Launching in January 2009, the mission of this organization is the same as mine: to spread the word that PTSD is eminently treatable. I’ll write more on Dream Peace when it actually gets off the ground. For now, I’ll just add that a large part of its focus is to reach out to vets with combat-related PTSD. I’m hoping that some of our advocacy work will eventually include breaking the barriers to all military sufferers, regardless of whether or not their stressor meets military standards.

Tomorrow I’ll be the featured guest on E. Everett McFall’s internet radio talk show, THE VETERAN’S FORUM. We'll be discussing healing PTSD. The show airs live from 3:30 – 5:30pm EST, and can be downloaded at any time via the November 12 link on Passionate Internet Radio Voices (PIVTR).

To listen live: http://www.pivtr.com/

To download later: http://www.internetvoicesradio.com/Arch-Everett.htm

We have a lot of work to do, my fellow survivors! In order for us all to get the care we need and work our way toward a trauma/PTSD-free life, it’s imperative that we begin using our suffering toward a better end. We can do this by uniting together, whether through public organizations or our personal actions within our own worlds – or both! What can you do today?

The Universality of PTSD

In the past month I’ve learned something very interesting:

In all sectors of society our traumas are individual (and yes, we are oh, so very special in our tragedies), but the more I talk to and hear from people of all backgrounds, the more I’m realizing how united we all are, despite country, culture, age, race, social orientation, etc. PTSD is an equal opportunity invader. We are all experiencing the same things in PTSD land: we have the same symptoms, the same distresses, the same weariness. Which means, we can find more strength and support in each other than I ever suspected. Our stories and experiences cross any perceived boundaries; regardless of the origin of our traumas, there are no state lines on the map of our suffering.

This has been a fascinating discovery for me. For the 25 years of my PTSD I felt so alone, so isolated and freakish in my symptoms, my dissociated fog, my psychologically and physically impaired functioning. And now… I’ve been approached to write about PTSD for a law enforcement newsletter, plus do an interview for a military radio show. I’ve been asked to write articles for other general PTSD websites, and I’ve been approached for an interview by a mental health writer. Do you see what I’m seeing here? We are a large, non-partisan, non-denominational group. We are not alone in our suffering – and we are not individual in it. We are walking around and through and past each other every day without even knowing it.

Recently, I read that the American Psychiatric Association did not formally recognize PTSD as a legitimate psychological affliction until 1980. But in the intervening years to 2008 not so much has changed in terms of how well prepared the medical and psychiatric industries are to help us. We can help them help us (to use a by now cliché Jerry Maguire reference) by being proactive about what our symptoms and suffering are, mean, and how they manifest. The more we reach out to each other and the world around us the stronger we will all be. Each of us can contribute to the collective good (and, by the way, bridge part of the PTSD gap between victim and society) by educating ourselves and everyone around us. That means learning as much as we can about PTSD’s symptoms, effects, treatments and cures so that we understand ourselves, and also, educating those who interact with us, which includes family, friends and the medical community.

Together we have pull. We have power. We have strength. If our voices rise up we can be heard. If we advocate for ourselves others will begin to advocate for us. Together we can bring PTSD to the forefront of medical and psychiatric thoughts, which would hopefully lead to more proactive, immediate, and deliberate treatment for all of us, including those who follow after.

Part of healing PTSD comes from reconnecting to the world at large, coming out of our trauma induced comas and resuming life with purpose, passion and promise. How can you do that? What one thing can you do to reach out today? How can you begin to bridge the gap?

Join PTSD Group On LinkedIn

Hello, Everyone --

I've created a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder group on LinkedIn, come join us!

The group will be a safe space for discussion of all of our PTSD history, symptoms, thoughts, ideas, treatments, cures, responses to this blog -- you suggest it we'll discuss it!

If you're a LinkedIn member you can access the group through the group directory; it is called "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder".

However, you do not have to be a LinkedIn member to join the group. If you're interested, email me at parasitesof.themind@yahoo.com and I'll send you an invitation.

Let's create a supportive online PTSD community today!

Are You Ready To Let Go Of Your Trauma/PTSD Identity?

We all want to be healed, right? We all would do just about anything to live more happy, PTSD-free lives, wouldn't we? .... Or would we?

I'll tell you a little secret: For a long time, even while I felt controlled, manipulated and devastated by my extreme PTSD symptoms, I wouldn't have given them up, not for anything in the world. Here are a few reasons why I loved my PTSD:

#1 PTSD made me feel safe.

a) The illnesses, emergencies, depression, symptoms, anxieties, all of it made me feel as if I was involved, as if I was connected to the moment and myself, even if it was in a negative way. I existed so dissociated from everyone and everything that the minor traumas that kept occurring bridged the gap between me and everyone else.

b) The symptoms made me feel awake and aware. If I was already always feeling in danger that meant I was paying attention. No new trauma could rise up and surprise me. If I was constantly feeling threatened then I would not be caught off guard when a new, cataclysmic trauma presented itself.

c) The symptoms made me feel powerful. In the moment of my original trauma, I had been completely powerless, and in the wake of PTSD symptoms I was powerless again. But in my management of those symptoms, I regained some sort of power. I could decide or not decide to pursue a treatment, a therapy, a practioner. (I'll get back to this idea of power in another post because I believe that as trauma survivors it is critically important to regain a sense of our own power.)

d) The symptoms made me feel stoic. I was constantly suffering and enduring, as I had throughout my original truama. The continued extension of that act guaranteed that I was keeping up my strength and my ability to endure again. If another major trauma occurred I would be ready. I would not have gotten soft, I would be primed like an athlete for an event.

#2 PTSD gave me an identity.

a) After the original trauma I lost a sense of myself. I split into selves (I'm not talking personalities here, just sensibilities). Where there had been one united entity, now there were three, a self for each phase: Before, During, After. Each self had strong opinions and experiences and wanted to run the show. I was completely at the mercy of the motivations of them all as they fought for control, which only made me dissociate more, which only made me feel even more lost. Galvanized by PTSD symptoms, however, I could muster a single, overarching identity: patient; trauma survivor; PTSD sufferer, take your pick. I could choose to be someone instead of a plethora of people all at once.

b) The original trauma so decimated the real me that I became someone else. I was a new person. That original self, the one who had not suffered, was dead (or so I thought). This new identity, Survivor, was very much alive and living a life that celebrated not survival of the truama, but survival of every moment afterward. I no longer saw myself as a regular person, but a 'special' person. In her book, Faith, Sharon Salzberg writes that “sometimes… I secretly build a monument to [my distress], as though I am really very special in [it].” Ring a bell? That was me, and I'd be damned if I was going to give it up. If I had suffered this life-altering trauma, it damn well better be good for something.

#3 PTSD reinforced how I had come to see the world and my experience of it.

a) Every minute holds the potential for trauma. Oh, yes, it does, especially when you've got a bad case of PTSD!

b) The original trauma stunned me and changed my entire outlook on life. Afterward, I made some startling life decisions (i.e, about my purpose, philosophy, religion) and set about living accordingly.

I decided the world was not a safe place and I must guard against it in every minute.

I decided it was not possible to enjoy life because that was distracting. How could I prepare for another trauma - how could I be sure I would be ready to survive again - if I was off having a good time? I couldn't, so better make sure my focus was on trauma all the time. It was not OK to be OK. How nice of my debilitating PTSD symptoms to comply!

So there I was with many reasons why, for all that I railed against it, on another level PTSD was really working for me. It was not until I took a really good look at who I was, what my identity had evolved to be, that I recognized the fact that it was not at all whom I wanted to be. I did not want to only be a survivor. There is so much more to me than that! I did not want to be a PTSD sufferer. I can be so much bigger than that!

At the nadir of my PTSD struggle I sat myself down and looked at who I was Before, During and After, and then I decided that I wanted to be someone else Now. This is what brought me to the pursuit of joy, which gave me the courage to bridge the gap between who I had become as a result of my trauma, and who I really wanted to be. I wanted to be well. I wanted to be healed. I wanted to cured and PTSD-free. I wanted to be happy and adventuresome and unafraid. There were so many ways that PTSD was preventing me from becoming a post-trauma person. My Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was really Prevalent-Traumatic Stress Disorder and it was time for it to end.

I decided to pursue joy to eliminate the dark psychological stasis in which I lived. The resulting flood of joy gave me the courage to imagine a life that was both trauma and PTSD-free. The more joy I felt, the more close and attainable that new life felt. Joy gave me the courage, too, to feel I would survive if I left my trauma behind. I would be able to define a new identity for myself, even if I let go of what had defined me up until then. I would be able to carve out a new philosophy, purpose, etc. even if I released my grip on what had formed me up until then.

The constant experience of joy brought me to a place in myself where I was ready, truly ready, to bridge the gap between trauma and a happy life. And that's when I discovered I didn't know how to make that final leap. If I wasn't so entrenched in this trauma life, I might have been able to do it myself. If the PTSD habit hadn't spent so many years digging its way deeper and deeper into my pysche the joy alone might have formed a new joy habit that freed me. Indeed, I almost did achieve the conversion on my own. But then I hit a wall, and that's where hypnotherapy came in.

I meant to post more about hypno today (I will tomorrow), but it seemed important to note one thing: We can only be healed if we want to be. Before hypno is approached as a panacea, it is important for us to do the internal work that smoothes the land in which hypno is going to work. We must accept that we have suffered, and commit to moving beyond it. We must love who we were Before, celebrate who we were During, and respect who we became After. We must want to choose who we can become Now.

The degree of success of any hypno experience relies on the strength with which we want to be free. I wanted it desperately. Do you?

Recognizing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Ever been in psychotherapy for your PTSD issues -- and have them not resolve? Ever have people in the psych community NOT EVEN DIAGNOSE your clear PTSD symptoms? Several caregivers don't know enough about PTSD to recognize its presence. It's important for us - sufferers and those who love us - to educate ourselves.

Over the course of 20 years I saw several psychotherapists as I saught help for anorexia, insomnia, frequent mysterious medical problems that doctors (since they couldn't diagnose a cause for, say, my skyrocketing liver enzymes) suggested I seek alternative help, and a whole host of other traditional PTSD issues. Even as I sat in front of these professionals talking about and complaining of PTSD red flags, no one saw what was happening to me. It wasn't until I took responsibility for my own healing that I did some research and found the results: I had a classic, extreme case of PTSD.

Need a list of dead give away symptoms? Here they are, courtesy of the Sidran Institute (http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?sectionID=4):

Introduction

There is a growing awareness among healthcare providers that traumatic experiences are widespread and that it is common for people who have been traumatized to develop medical and psychological symptoms associated with the experience.

Recent studies have shown that childhood abuse (particularly sexual abuse) is a strong predictor of the lifetime likelihood of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although many people still equate PTSD with combat trauma, the experience most likely to produce PTSD is rape. PTSD is associated with an extremely high rate of medical and mental health service use, and possibly the highest per-capita cost of any psychological condition.

But there is help and there is hope.

PTSD is a long-term problem for many people. Studies show that 33–47 percent of people being treated for PTSD were still experiencing symptoms more than a year after the traumatic event. Without treatment many people may continue to have PTSD symptoms even decades after the traumatic event.

What Are the Symptoms of PTSD?

PTSD symptoms are divided into three categories. People who have been exposed to traumatic experiences may notice any number of symptoms in almost any combination. However, the diagnosis of PTSD means that someone has met very specific criteria. The symptoms for PTSD are listed below.

Intrusive Re-experiencing

People with PTSD frequently feel as if the trauma is happening again. This is sometimes called a flashback, reliving experience, or abreaction. The person may have intrusive pictures in his/her head about the trauma, have recurrent nightmares, or may even experience hallucinations about the trauma. Intrusive symptoms sometimes cause people to lose touch with the "here and now" and react in ways that they did when the trauma originally occurred. For example, many years later a victim of child abuse may hide trembling in a closet when feeling threatened, even if the perceived threat is not abuse-related.

Avoidance

People with PTSD work hard to avoid anything that might remind them of the traumatic experience. They may try to avoid people, places, or things that are reminders, as well as numbing out emotions to avoid painful, overwhelming feelings. Numbing of thoughts and feelings in response to trauma is known as "dissociation" and is a hallmark of PTSD. Frequently, people with PTSD use drugs or alcohol to avoid trauma-related feelings and memories.

Arousal

Symptoms of psychological and physiological arousal are very distinctive in people with PTSD. They may be very jumpy, easily startled, irritable, and may have sleep disturbances like insomnia or nightmares. They may seem constantly on guard and may find it difficult to concentrate. Sometimes persons with PTSD will have panic attacks accompanied by shortness of breath and chest pain.


Recognizing and Diagnosing PTSD

Three categories—or "clusters"—of symptoms are associated with PTSD. A diagnosis may be considered if:

A specific number of symptoms from each of the three clusters have lasted for one month or longer, and

The symptoms cause severe problems or distress in personal life, at work, or in general affect daily life.

Clusters:
Re-living the event through recurring nightmares or other intrusive images that occur at any time. People who suffer from PTSD also have extreme emotional or physical reactions, such as chills, heart palpitations, or panic when faced with reminders of the event. One or more of these symptoms must be present for diagnosis.

Avoiding reminders of the event including places, people, thoughts, or other activities associated with the trauma. PTSD sufferers may feel emotionally detached, withdraw from friends and family and lose interest in everyday activities. Three or more of these symptoms must be present for diagnosis.

Being on guard or hyper-aroused at all times, including feeling irritable or sudden anger, having difficulty sleeping or a lack of concentration, being overly alert or easily startled. Two or more of these symptoms must be present for diagnosis.

People with PTSD may have low self-esteem or relationship problems, or may seem disconnected from their lives.

Other problems that may mask or intensify symptoms include:

-Psychological problems such as depression or other anxiety disorders, including panic disorder.

-Physical complaints such as chronic pain, fatigue, stomach pains, respiratory problems, headaches, muscle cramps or aches, low back pain, or cardiovascular problems.

-Self-destructive behavior, including alcohol or drug abuse, as well as suicidal tendencies.

-Responses to trauma vary widely and many people who experience extreme trauma do not develop PTSD. However, for those who do, PTSD symptoms usually appear within several weeks of the trauma, but some people don't experience symptoms until months or even years later.

THE PROBLEM WITH TRAUMA SURVIVORS

"When Charcot (1887) first described traumatic memories over a century ago, he called them ‘parasites of the mind.’ Because [some] people … have a fundamental impairment in the capacity to integrate traumatic experiences with other life events, their traumatic memories are often not coherent stories; they tend to consist of intense emotions or somatosensory impressions, which occur when the victims are around or exposed to reminders of the trauma…. Years and even decades after the original trauma, victims claim that their reliving experiences are as vivid as when the trauma first occurred. Because of this timeless and unintegrated nature of traumatic memories, victims remain embedded in the trauma as a contemporary experience, instead of being able to accept it as something belonging to the past."

This quote appears in Bessel van der Kolk (the current guru father of truama psychology) and Alexander McFarlane's article, "The Black Hole of Trauma".

I don't know about you, but this passage describes me exactly. For 25 years I didn't know what was wrong with me, and then I read about 'parasites of the mind' and it all became so clear. My dissociation, the dysfunctional fog in which I lived, my constant fears, illnesses, depressions, emotional coma -- all of it came from these parasites that leached my ability to lead a productive life.

It all began in 1981 when, at the age of thirteen, a rare allergy to a medication plunged me into Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Syndrome (TENS). This life-threatening illness turns victims into burn patients almost overnight. By the time I was fully recovered I had lost more than just 100% of my epidermis; I had lost all sense of myself as anything other than ‘survivor’.

For over two decades I wandered through the darkness of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not that I knew that. Although I saw a multitude of professionals for relief from various, typical PTSD symptoms, not one single care provider (and that included several therapists and other medical staff) suggested that the fallout of trauma could lead to physical and psychological symptoms that would impair my ability to live a full life. Instead, they all scratched their heads when I turned up in their offices begging for help. Countless medical tests to define the cause of (what turned out to be psychosomatic) symptoms left my body bruised and my bank account incredibly depleted. Years of psycho- and cognitive behavior therapy did little for me. I would experience a temporary lift, and then a triggering event would occur and BOOM! I'd be right back where I'd started -- sick again, anxious, insomniac riddled and unable to see straight from fear, illness, depression, dissociation and sleep deprivation.

But that's not what this blog is about. This blog is about surviving survival. Coming out of the fog, swimming up to the surface of life and breaking through with strength, force and joy.

When I turned forty I decided it was time to change everything about the way I approached life. For over 25 years I'd lived in the shadow of trauma, consumed by a panic of fear, isolation and depression, suffering nightmares and flashbacks and a whole host of other physical and psychological disorders related to the trauma. In an effort to finally free myself from the past I determined to pursue joy in the present. I decided to get rid of the parasites once and for all.