Meandering Michele's Mind: Recognizing the Role of the Obvious

From the day my trauma ended through all the 25 years I struggled with PTSD undiagnosed through the following years of my healing one thought was always bigger and more constant in my mind than any other. One thought followed me wherever I went, no matter whether I was having a good day or a bad, spiralling or healing -- it didn't make a difference. This one thought was there, more a part of me than my shadow. It constantly resonated in my head and drove every action, reaction and desire I had. It was the reason I got up in the morning and the reason I couldn't fall asleep at night. It was how I celebrated my survival and how I condemned myself for surviving at all. It defined who I was even as it stripped me of my identity completely.

And yet, it never occurred to me to discuss this thought in therapy. It had become as familiar as air, as involuntary as breathing, as unremarkable as a sigh. There were bigger, more terrifying thoughts and I spoke about them and cried and raged and carried on. And yet, I came to find out later, it was the one thought I never realized I should articulate that ended up being the very crux of my entire PTSD experience.

I have to make my survival worthwhile.

It wasn't enough that I survived; I had to be worthy of surviving. But I didn't feel worthy at all. Instead, I felt that my life having been saved was a waste if I didn't do something extraordinary with that life. Only problem was: I was too fractured to do anything, and didn't know what to do anyway.

So the years went by and this thought morphed and grew and became the monster behind my anorexia, insomnia, flashbacks, dissociation, rage, depression, anxiety and fear. It itself became a fear. Every day I put myself through tests to keep my body and my mind conditioned to survive again, and to ensure that I was worthy of another second chance. Every day a part of me melted into a pool of butter in the frustration of not knowing who or what or how to be a survivor who was worthy of saving.

Still, I never told anyone about this idea. In therapy I spoke about my fears of my body and the horrific elements of my trauma. I vented about what went on in my head and my body that could not be explained, contained or managed. I cried that I was too weak to heal. But I never told my therapist I didn't believe I was worthy of surviving much less healing. A small detail that really might have helped us both make more progress more quickly.

When I finally did admit this thought - because I'd eradicted all the others and it was the only one left! - it was because I'd progressed my healing to a place that I could see that this was a thought operating all on its own, independent of me and harming me each day. It was the reason my PTSD stress was so bad my hair fell out. It was the reason the nightmares came night after night. I was the reason I couldn't 'let it go'.

And then I let it go and the whole world changed. I sleep at night. Not just a solid, dependable 7 straight hours but deep, peaceful and rejuvenating sleep. I see the world as open possibilities instead of a pressure cloud sitting on my head. I feel a resonance in myself because I am no longer critical of my right to be here in my self, in my body, in this life.

I'm wondering today how many of us, when we seek help, forget to mention the most important, most obvious things. It's so much easier to talk about the big, universal PTSD symptoms. How often do we forget to hear our inner dialogue and say, 'Forget all that other stuff, here's what's really driving me crazy.' How often do we even recognize what's at the root of our PTSD experience because it's become so familiar we accept it as normal? How often do we accept what we shouldn't?

How often does our healing stall because we forget to mention one not-so-tiny critical detail?

(Photo: Stallard Images)

Meandering Michele's Mind: In Memorium -- Bill Hering

For those of you who've been following this blog for a while, you know I'm a dancer and how much dance had to do with my PTSD recovery. When all therapies failed me I decided to pursue joy as a way to overthrow trauma's vicelike grip and to habituate myself to something outside of my trauma addiction, and to reconnect to my pure and innocent and untraumatised self, which I believed still existed despite the daily evidence that might have suggested otherwise.

I was a freestyle dancer with no background in partner dancing when I walked into The Ritz Ballroom and said, "Teach me." It was a rocky road at first. My mind and body were so used to being separate they did not speak the same language, nor did they want to. And I, so used to processing in the PTSD fog and dissociative state, found the present, in-the-moment, connected-to-your-partner aspects of dance incredibly difficult to sustain.

But I knew when I danced I felt joy, and when I felt joy I was transcendant, and when I was transcendant trauma and the past ceased to exist and for a little while I was free. I've already written about dance and how it impacted the evolution of my healing. I haven't written much about the man who taught me to dance, my instructor, Bill Hering.

As we're talking about seeking help this month, his portrait (above with dance partner/wife, Sylvie) becomes very relevant in its suggestion of how we can seek help in new, out of the box ways and find more help than we ever expected. I went to the dance studio Bill owned just wanting to dance, and what happened was that I discovered a whole new self, not just from the hours I spent in private lessons with Bill, but from the community he had built at the studio, the other teachers he employed, the dance parties he hosted and the classes he designed.

A few months after taking the dancing plunge (and dancing 7 nights a week because I wanted to develop a joy habit and once I began to feel joy it became addictive -- I wanted to feel that way every day!) an unexpected thing happened: the nightmares ceased. I began to sleep. The anxiety lessened. I became more open. My body and mind slowly renegotiated their connection. I became comfortable in the moment. I became comfortable in my body. I was flooded with good feelings instead of bad. I dissociated less. I began to laugh more. Good things came from my dance odyssey and Bill, for one hour twice a week and as a presence every other moment in the studio, was a big part of that.

Last Thursday while I was in Boston for the trauma conference Bill lost his year long fight with cancer. Our dance community has suffered a great loss. The funeral on Monday was difficult for all of the usual reasons but also because Bill is so entwined with my recovery. He was only 50, way too young for us to lose him.

In recovery we have to have a spirit of adventure. We have to imagine the impossible. We have to not get stuck in the rut of our own thoughts but seek help in new and unsual places. We have to think about who we are and who we want to be and how we can make the transition. We have to think about who can help us make that dream come true.

We think things through. We commit to the desire to heal. We educate ourselves. We educate those around us. And then we're left with the task of finding a way to make the fantasy reality. Help doesn't always come from the most predictable places -- sometimes, you simply pursue joy and a guide emerges to help you do so.

To heal, sometimes you just have to put on a pair of suede soled shoes, step onto the floor, give in to the music, and dance. And if you've searched hard enough you'll find someone with the patience to lead you through.

Meandering Michele's Mind: Doing the PTSD Romance Dance

I’m still thinking about partners and PTSD. I’ll tell you why. In the past two weeks, I’ve received more than one email from men wanting advice about how to stand by, support, help and love women struggling with PTSD. The traumas range from domestic violence to rape, but the words of the men are all the same: “I love a woman with PTSD. How can I help her recover?”

In times when we’re so depressed and despondent, struggling and healing that we don’t imagine anyone can love us, these men prove there are partners out there who do, like John did, see who we are beyond the PTSD symptoms we seem to become. This has got me thinking today about how we can support them while they support us. OK, true, at first it doesn’t seem we should have a job to do outside of healing. But here’s the thing: If we want them to stay with and support us, we have to do something that makes our partners feel there’s someone worth doing that for.

An example: in our emotional numbness and isolation, we still, if we choose to engage in a relationship, have to find a way to connect with our partner. We have to find some time we set aside symptoms and make an effort to engage in the present moment. One of the men who emailed me has been completely cutoff by his fiance; she wants to stay engaged, but she doesn’t want to see or speak to him while she breaks down and attempts to heal. “How long does healing take?” he wrote, hoping I’d be able to give him a specific time frame. “Is three to six months enough?” He sounded so hopeful. I hated to disappoint him.

It doesn’t seem fair that this man, who so purely loves his woman, is left feeling so bereft and without any kind of connection. It seems amazing that he continues to vow his love for her even while he’s feeling isolated, doubtful, hurt and unsure. A few days later she emailed him and he wrote me excitedly that while she doesn’t want to see him she is reaching out. What a big result from such a little gesture.

If we want our partners to stay with us they can’t be the only ones making the effort. We need to make an effort, too, even if it’s only 1/10 of the effort they’re making. We need to reach out to them, engage them in our thoughts, explain our struggles, invite them to therapy and then, give them who they’re waiting for: the man or woman they love, at least once every now and then, at least for an hour or two. We can’t become so lost in our struggle that we forget our partners exist. We can’t, that is, if we want them to stay; if we want to have some semblance of a relationship when we’re healed we have to tend the relationship along the way.

Since John supported me during my final phase of healing, I asked him what his tip would be for a partner wanting to help someone during recovery. Two interesting things in his reply.

First, he said, “I didn’t think you were that bad.” Partly, this is the beauty of John. You can wake him up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, you can not let him go to sleep because you can’t sleep, and he’s not annoyed. But there’s also this: John’s right. While I felt like hell, I worked very hard to make sure he didn’t have to experience every single bad moment. I didn’t break down every 5 minutes or let the shadow I felt fall all over him.

Instead, I made a great effort to connect with him when we were together. I was very aware that if I wanted to be in a relationship I had to be in the relationship. This meant present in the relationship on some sort of basis so that John felt and knew I was reaching out. I made an effort to show him who I was as much as he looked to see beyond what I was.

Second, when I asked John what a partner could do to help someone with PTSD, he immediately answered, “Find something that brings comfort, and then do that a lot.” What simple advice. What complex impact. When someone does something that makes us feel comfort, we feel safe, we feel loved, we feel worthwhile; we feel a measure of peace, plus (even if it’s small) the desire to connect and reach out to that source.

What’s the takeaway here? I didn’t think about any of this when I had PTSD, I just managed as best I could. But looking at things now I realize we have to routinely break out of our PTSD self-absorption. If we want to remain partnered up, we have to do some work on our end. Being in a relationship means proactively connecting with a partner in moments that foster closeness, bonds and connection. If we’re going to say we expect partners to support us and understand our bad days, we have to do the same for them. That is, on our bad days we have to support, understand and comfort them – and even occasionally thank them for sticking with us while we muddle through.

(Photo: Bob Murray)

Meandering Michele's Mind: And I Think It's About Forgiveness

When we're wronged by someone we can spend hours, days, weeks, even years thinking about how much we've been hurt, how we're owed an apology, how we didn't deserve whatever thing was done. We can lose ourselves in the victim mentality and fall down that rabbit hole of wanting an apology so that we can move on.

And we should do that. We need to acknowledge what's been done to us and hold the perpetrator accountable, even if that's just in our own minds.

And then what?

Many times the liklihood of getting an apology is a long shot. So, we're waiting for recalcitrance that will allow us to forgive and move on and.... that scenario never does come. We get stuck in a form of purgatory, floating through our lives unable to move forward or back. Instead of an apology and release what we get instead is just another layer to our PTSD that drives us crazy. What we get is another situation where someone else holds all the power and we are powerless.

What happens then? We hold onto the stress of that lack of power and it gnaws at us and, over a period of time, we need that apology even more. We absolutely will not forgive until we get it. We get lost in a moral and ethical conundrum all by ourselves -- and the perpetrator's (and the past's) power grows and grows and grows. And we wonder why our PTSD keeps getting worse.

Over the years our mental state withers and deteriorates and we develop more extreme PTSD experiences and then, in addition to the trauma we suffered, and the forgiveness we cannot give, we begin to turn the light on ourselves and hate the way we are behaving, and hate our overwhelmed emotions, and hate that we cannot 'just get over it', and hate that we live the way we do and are powerless to do anything about it. And so what began as the innocent wish for the apology we're taught is what we'll get when someone is wrong, becomes a pretty big stake the heart of our healing.

I've been thinking this week that the whole heal and forgive issue seems like a sort of chicken and egg theory -- which comes first? How do we forgive? Whom do we forgive? And in what order? In response to Nancy Richards' guest post I received this email from a blog reader:

I know from experience that you can't force yourself to forgive, trying to do that is a stumbling stone and in the end comes back and hurts even more. I think the two, healing and forgiveness, work together, but there is a lot of "push me/pull you".

I have found that most of the time, when I need to forgive someone I need to forgive myself for something first and that, of course, involves healing. We need to accept forgiveness, too, when we have hurt someone else and they come openly to us asking for forgiveness. It hasn't always been easy for me, that whole forgive and forget thing.

No, it isn't easy, but I think here's where I come down on the issue: I think Nancy and this blog reader are right - we need to heal ourselves so that we can forgive, but I think maybe that healing involves forgiveness of ourselves.

We have to forgive ourselves for wanting the apology. We have to forgive ourselves for needing it. We have to forgive ourselves for the behavior that need is causing. We have to forgive ourselves for our focus on getting it, waiting for it, expecting it.

And then there's this, which was particularly difficult for me, who didn't think she had any forgiveness issues: We have to forgive ourselves for our participation in the trauma; our behavior during the moment, our reaction or non-reaction, our response in ways that we think or deem was or was not right, appropriate or heroic. We have to forgive ourselves for the experience, our memories, our grip on the past and our resistance to letting it go.

Healing ourselves enough to forgive someone else has, at it's base I think, the critical component of needing to forgive ourselves first, so that we become whole, integrated and powerful enough to forgive someone else. Forgiveness is a magnanimous gesture. It cannot be done from a perspective of victimhood. He who forgives is in the power position. In order to do that, we need to see ourselves as holding the power.

Not any easy thing to do, for sure. But despite what has been done to us, we are not powerless. We have the right to choose to change. Healing is about just that: choosing to change -- behaviors, perceptions, thoughts, ideas, wants, desires and needs. Most of all, healing is about choosing to change from powerless to powerful.

When we make choices we take back our power. When we take back our power we heal. When we heal we grow strong. When we are strong we can forgive. When we forgive we can let go. When we let go we are set free.

(Photo: Claudia.Annette)

Meandering Michele's Mind: PTSD is a Hard Habit to Break

I hear over and over that 98% of what we do every day is by habit. And I read recently that 95% of the population is habituated. The psych community has assured us it takes 21 days to form a habit. And the breaking habits pros say it takes just as long to replace bad habits with good.

All this has me thinking about how those numbers apply to the PTSD experience. As in:

To what extent do and have we become 1) habituated to PTSD and, 2) habitual in our PTSD so that these involuntary actions and reactions are part of our unconscious approach to every day?

And if (as of course, we do) we say that, yes, PTSD has become habitual, then doesn’t that mean that another way we can strive to overcome it is by breaking the PTSD habit??

I did some research; there’s actually a lot of info out there about how to break a habit. Check out these step by step guides:

How To Break A Habit

How To Break A Bad Habit

Bad Choices, Bad Habits

12 Proven Steps to Break Any Habit in 21 Days

And then let me know what you think. 21 days to break a regular habit might be a little ambitious for PTSD, but the theory and actions are grounded in really positive changes that we can immediately put into effect.

Without thinking about it all this clearly, my decision to pursue joy was a way to break the PTSD habit. And it worked. In spades.

Which makes me think that an additional therapuetic tool can be consciously taking actions to break the PTSD habit. Do you agree, or disagree?

(Photo: Colin Key)

Meandering Michele’s Mind: The Most Negative Voice of All

Reeducating family can be tough – an enormous job where we have to overcome negative reactions, assumptions, comments and perceptions. I was corresponding with someone about this today when all of a sudden it hit me: the most difficult person to educate in my family was… me!

I’ve written before about how avidly I fought my PTSD diagnosis. As if dealing with the symptoms wasn’t enough, I complicated things by hating myself for the fact the diagnosis described and fit me, and that I couldn’t just overthrow it all with a willful flick of the wrist.

While I was lucky enough to have a family who was respectful of my diagnosis and the healing journey I needed to take, I was the one saying to myself,

Why can’t you just let it go?

Get over it already!

How tough is it to stop thinking about the past?

How long is this going to take??

How is it possible you need more therapy?

I beat myself up, berated my emotional and psychological state, banged my head against the proverbial wall of healing, and in general made myself more miserable than I already was because I demeaned myself for needing help or taking my time to sort things through. Whew! Healing is exhausting.

While we spend a great deal of time lamenting family reactions, today I’m thinking about our own reactions to ourselves. The more unkind we are to ourselves the slower we will heal. Almost more than anything we do for ourselves we need to cultivate a spirit of generosity. While we’re figuring out our healing journey is a time to give ourselves room, to make demands that we actively engage in healing – but not demand how quickly we achieve it. To tell ourselves it’s time to look forward, but not smack ourselves around each time we steal a peek back. Recovery requires a safe place; our own minds need to be the first element of that space!

I’m thinking back to an evening I wailed to my mother that I would never be free, that I was lost and incapable of finding my way back; that I just didn’t have the strength and was sick of being in my own head. It was about a year after my diagnosis and I was just done. Things were not going well, physically or mentally. I had no idea how to move forward, no energy to figure it out, and felt doomed to live the PTSD way forever.

My mother listened empathetically, and then refuted everything I said. She believed in and supported me. She told me to hang in and continue trying; that freedom was worth struggling for and it might be closer than I thought. She reminded me what she had always taught us growing up, Live the questions.

We don’t have all the answers when we’re in the PTSD blackhole. We feel we should. We want to and wish someone did if we don’t. But we can’t let our own negative thoughts about ourselves and our inability to instantly heal get in the way of our continued progress. We have to live the questions of healing, and treat ourselves the way a loving parent or friend would: with dignity, respect, understanding and a generosity of spirit. My own healing took off when I stopped trying to force it or denigrate myself for how long and circular that process seemed. I healed faster when I was nicer to myself. Not soft on myself, but nice.

Albert Camus wrote, Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. We can’t give our all to healing if we’re battered by the voice that’s in our head.

Be generous, be generous, be generous….

(Photo: Spongita84)

Meandering Michele’s Mind: The Secret About PTSD Recovery

Here’s what they don’t tell you about healing PTSD: the healing journey doesn’t end when the nightmares cease, or when the insomnia goes away and the anxiety ebbs. The yellow brick road to recovery doesn’t run straight into the Palace of Oz when dissociation takes a hike, hypervigilance lies down, emotions unnumb and the intrusive thoughts fly away on a monkey. No, what happens when you heal PTSD is that you come to the end of one path and must make the leap to continue traveling down another.

PTSD robs us of our identity. Part of healing is getting it back. When I was healing, the development of a post-trauma identity was critical to my learning to define myself outside of my trauma; in the present instead of the past; in terms of today instead of yesterday. I used the exercise of building a post-trauma identity as a way to ground myself in the moment, make choices about who I was and wanted to be, shed the survivor self that continued to imprison me in trauma mode, and begin to explore the life I would lead if I had a choice. I didn’t think about things beyond those immediate goals.

But now I’m discovering there’s a whole world beyond that mindset. I worked hard and built my post-trauma identity through the series of steps outlined in the BRIDGE THE GAP workshop. Through inhabiting my post-trauma identity I found a way out of the PTSD madness. And now, even though I’m into my second year of being 100% PTSD-free, my healing journey continues to develop and expand. Today, here I am, still unfolding and learning to fully grow into that new identity not for the purpose of healing but for the fun of it.

Which is not, exactly, how I thought things would go. I thought I’d heal and just live happily ever after content in my post-trauma identity. But no, now that I’m healed I’m realizing there are possibilities for that identity. Healing doesn’t end when symptoms cease; when we become symptom-free that’s when a whole new phase of healing begins. Whereas initially my post-trauma identity was merely functionable in order to get me to a healthier place, now I’m in that healthy place and that identity can really breathe. Every day it comes more and more to life and here’s the odd thing: I’m surprised and startled by it, and unprepared. I was only coping when I constructed this new identity, but in the more fluid place of health an identity has legs and it can grow in so many directions. There are more choices to make and I keep being caught off guard by the new me and the options it offers.

The biggest chore I’ve encountered is saying I am and realizing that simple phrase doesn’t refer to what it used to. Not, I am a survivor; I am struggling with PTSD; I am a trauma victim. These are easy to say, they fold around you like a really warm blanket and you snuggle in and say, Ahhhh, yes.

Saying, however, I am healthy! takes courage, you have to leap for it. You have to reach out and grab I am whole. I am happy. I am healed. I am joyful. I am free. The positive I ams have more spunk. I am a dancer. I am a company founder. I am an advocate. The positive I ams are playful. They make you engage in the game of catching them. They make you run down a new path with a skip in your step.

What we take from one healing path to the next is this concept of I am. Part of constructing a post-trauma identity relies on redefining the old I am. Continuing to develop that identity when we’re healed means continuing to explore the new I am. This is a conscious exercise. We have to practice it. In PTSD we see ourselves in the negative and, if you’re like me, see ourselves from outside the self and very, very far away – that is, in the moments we can even see ourselves at all.

The healed I am is an unmapped road and it sits patiently beneath our feet. It can lead anywhere. I am is our compass. The more we practice and develop a comfort level with it and the possibilities it presents and represents, the stronger our post-trauma identity grows.

98% of what we think and do daily occurs by habit. Meaning, beyond the purely psychological and physiological aspects of PTSD, that condition also becomes habitual. When we’re healing and when we are healed is a time to choose and build our own new habits, to put in place fresh, supportive habitual thoughts, responses and actions that further enhance our wellness process.

It takes 21 days to develop any habit, which implies we can develop good habits as easily as we can bad just by making the choice and performing the dedicated exercise.

Starting today, my mantra for the next 21 days is I am, just to remind myself to continue discovering who I am now, today. It’s never too early to commit to building an I am habit. Anyone care to join me?

How do you practice the idea of ‘I am’? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.

(Photo: D3)

Meandering Michele's Mind: Transforming Our Perception of PTSD Recovery

My approach to my own PTSD healing was all wrong. I thought I could force it to happen, cause it to occur overnight and then, poof!, 25 years of undiagnosed PTSD and all the memories and emotions tied to 1 life-threatening trauma would just evaporate. Just like that. Wasn't I optimistic?

OK, so now I’ve learned it doesn’t happen that way. Back then, though, I didn’t understand all of the work that needed to be done by me, that no one could do but me, and that no one could just bestow recovery upon me like a title.

As I started and stopped, succeeded and failed, I learned the hard way that PTSD recovery is all about our own evolution as people. We evolve constantly in our relationships, careers and other activities, how could healing be any different? As survivors we are trying to move from one identity to another, that takes time and devotion.

Eventually, I learned that we must be dedicated and passionate and accept that healing comes in increments and that we must fight for what we wish to achieve, regardless of the bumps along the way.

What I wish I had learned while I was healing was that a lot of how we progress has to do with our perspective. I never looked at my healing as an exciting event. I did not perceive it as an adventure but more as life on a chain gang and I didn't know when my sentence was scheduled to end. The PTSD mindset is prisonlike. We need to learn, as prisoners do, to imagine something else; what our lives will be when we are released.

A lot of trauma healing has to do with reframing events, perceptions and memories. I've come to understand that this applies to the healing process, too. We need to reframe our idea about what we're doing when we attempt recovery. For example:

Last week I was on vacation in North Carolina. Some friends and I stayed in a house on a lake up in the mountains, but each day we chose a different small town to go into for supplies and lunch. One of these excursions took us to Hendersonville, a tiny, one street (Main Street, of course!) town about 3 blocks long. After lunch at a cute American Bistro we took a stroll up one side and down the other side of Main Street.

On the corner of one block was a municipal building, in the basement of which is housed The Mineral and Lapidary Museum. Down the main stairs and into a small room, the museum is about 500 square feet. The walls are lined with artifacts and geological samples for sale. In the center of the room are glass displays of all kinds of stones, rocks and other mineral oriented stuff.

The major attraction of the museum, however, is its geode cache imported from Chihuahua, Mexico. Geodes are small round balls that, as the theory goes, are formed from volcanic bubbles. They are unremarkable to look at, like this one:

However, geodes are a little like the earth’s version of clams: Many contain beautiful crystals inside so you never know what to expect when you get one open.

‘Cracking a geode’ as the process is called, is done with a large machine that basically puts the geode in a chain link choke hold and then applies pressure until the outer shell, well, cracks. This is a main attraction in the museum. When my friend Laura decided to buy a geode the news whipped around the museum and brought everyone, shoppers and staff alike, to come stand by the machine. ‘She’s cracking a geode,’ was whispered and told to anyone who walked in, telephoned, or happened to be standing by.

In a group we all gathered around the machine as the Head Museum Volunteer positioned the geode in the chain and an assistant pulled the lever that applied the pressure. Silence enveloped the room as we waited for the geode to release its resistance and break open. And then it did, and now in Laura’s office on her desk she has a beautiful crystallized sensation that looks a lot like this:

As I watched this whole process I couldn’t help thinking how similar it is to PTSD recovery. We feel ugly, hard and trapped inside an isolating, impenetrable shell. And then we begin healing – we put ourselves into a position of incredible pressure until finally, that outer shell cracks and inside is revealed the beautiful crystals of our real selves that have been hidden for so long.

(Photo: a winner)

Meandering Michele's Mind: What Kind of People Surround You?

The following quote comes from Mike H's ever evolving and really interesting Zen/PTSD blog:

You simply cannot become healthier and happier as a human being unless you hang with people who are healthy and want to encourage health. That's the crux.

This morning I'm wondering: Who are you hanging with?

During my healing PTSD years, I made and got rid of many friends. Some friends I made because it seemed like a good idea at the time. They seemed interested and understanding and totally supportive of my PTSD. They asked questions, wanted info and generally kept up with me on a daily basis, always trying to better appreciate my predicament, prodding me to go deeper in my explanations than even I had planned to go. It was nice. I got to explain and expound on what I was going thrugh.

And then I got hip to the fact that these friends behaved this way because they liked seeing someone more miserable than they were! When I began to heal, all they wanted to do was poke at me to see where was the misery? It had to still be there, they were sure. They weren't interested in my growing strength or happiness because then they were left with the fact they still had to handle and manage their own displeasures, disappointments and sadness. When they couldn't vicariously and voyeuristically experience mine (and then go home at the end of the day thinking themselves so much healthier and happier than I was) these friends got annoyed at my unwillingness to be the one cataloguing desperate emotions.

There've been people, too, oddly enough, on the other side of the spectrum. People who so genuinely loved to feel my pain and share my burden that I felt worse because of it. I have made friends because their love and compassion and emotional connection to my struggle felt so good. But then, as I healed, their interaction with me didn't evolve. They still handled and approached me through this murky emotionality; they wanted to always soothe and empathize, even when that was no longer necessary. I found myself playing a role - playing the PTSD victim because that is what our friendship needed to survive. If I healed, our friendship had no other substance. I got tied to a couple of these people and it was hard -- really hard! -- to realize they were becoming toxic to me.

In healing, we're so desperate, desolate, isolated and fragmented we don't always make the right decisions. Heck, sometimes we don't even make decisions; we do things by default. This can be hazardous to our recovery. We must become conscious at all times in order to really heal. We can begin this sort of cosciousness raising (to revamp a phrase from the 70s) by being aware of the simple act of choosing whom we allow around us.

Take a look at the people with whom you surround yourself. Ask yourself whether or not they support or hinder your being yourself; how they encourage or discourage your feeling good about yourself, recovery, and the future. Ask yourself if the people around you are good or bad for you. If the answers are negative... well, you need to begin thinking about how to change the energy surrounding you. Time for some friend/family spring cleaning! If we want to heal we cannot have our energy siphoned off or mutilated by the negative effects of others.

Mike includes in his approach to new friendships the question, 'Would this be healthy?'

Are you this conscious in choosing who you spend time with?

How do you approach new friendships? How do you choose who you allow into your inner circle? Have you seen friendships begin or end in relation to your PTSD evolution? This is an important topic to consider! Let's pool our resources.



(Photo: vnduan)

Meandering Michele's Mind: The Critical Question

I’m still thinking about the significance of the AMA study about how much and how quickly different therapies work. And I’m still not surprised that hypnotherapy has the best rate of return because we do our own healing in hypno.

I know this sounds strange because, after all, a professional practitioner is involved. But any hypnotherapist will tell you (pretty aggressively in my experience) that he did not heal you at all. YOU healed yourself and he just guided the way. Engaging the subconscious in the healing process is incredibly powerful because it is us talking to ourselves, and in that relaxed state we listen.

I think when we approach healing, we want someone to fix it. We are societally trained to seek the help of practitioners and professionals for everything in which we are not the expert. We are taught if we are not professionally educated in something we cannot possibly be adept enough to manage a procedure ourselves. And sure, this is true for things like brain surgery, rocket science and making an atom bomb. But here’s what I’m mulling today:

Who’s more professionally trained in ourselves than we are?

There is no one with more authority, more training, more education in our thoughts, feelings, emotions, needs and reactions than each of us. Which means, there is no one more equipped to heal us than we are ourselves.

Ever thought about that? Do you agree, or disagree?

(Photo: jhhwild)

Meandering Michele's Mind: It's All About Attitude

It doesn’t do any good to know the facts, stats, symptoms, and causes of PTSD and just stop there. While we may feel helpless, muddled, hopeless and flattened by the weight of PTSD, it is, in the words of a psychologist friend, ‘eminently treatable’. And not just in the ‘let’s control the symptoms way.’ There is more to be done in recovering from PTSD than just striving to stop flashbacks. There is a life to be recovered and a future to be lived. We have survived. Are we now going to be undone by our memories and an overactive, overprotective subconscious? Hell, no!

My friend Tom Wootton has a fabulous attitude about recovering from Bipolar Disorder – it’s one I think every PTSDer should adopt. Tom says,

I am dedicated to the concept that recovery does not have to be limited to 90% of full function; true recovery means doing the hard work that brings you to 150%! I strongly believe that we can turn our 'condition' into one that becomes an advantage instead of an 'illness' or a 'disorder.'

We should approach healing PTSD like this, too. Our job in recovering contains two major elements:

1 – Conquer the past – Reduce our memories to their rightful size; get the subconscious to stand down; release our grip on the meaning of our trauma and its impact on our lives.

2 – Create the future – Enlarge our participation in the present; focus on whom we will become; reach toward our own personal concept of a future in which we are whole, productive and making meaning come out of our trauma, instead of looking for or finding meaning living in it.


For each of us our traumas are individual, which means the healing path will be, too. What is universal, however, is our approach and the necessity of the right attitude. What is your attitude toward healing? Are you conquering the past and creating the future? Or are you living in the past afraid of the future?

Don’t worry if you answer positively to the second question. That was me for 25 years. Only when I realized how afraid I was (of myself, my circumstances, my memories, their power, my weakness, my (in)ability to cope) – and that I had to overcome that fear myself, and that it was up to me to take an action, and that healing was not anything someone could do for me – did healing actually begin. Which is not to say that it happened right away! But changing my attitude changed my ability to find the right resources, do the right work, and make the slow progress healing requires.

My mother always taught me that courage is a choice. Healing is, too. The root of PTSD lies in the imprint trauma makes in our minds, which means there is always hope we can use our minds to lessen that imprint. While healing is not easy and the path not a direct route, I believe we can use the very power of our minds that is hurting us in ways that will set us free. This begins with having the right perspective about healing; it begins with imagining that we can do more than cope, that we can, in fact, put the demons to rest and find release. That we can be, in Tom’s words, 150%.

In living with PTSD we have two choices: 1) we can accept, 2) we can seek. What are you choosing?

(Photo: Langdon)

Meandering Michele's Mind: I Want It NOW!!

I’m overwhelmed. I’m running so fast I can barely breathe – and not for the same reasons I used to feel this way.

Years ago I ran and ran and ran trying to escape the past – I was miserable, depressed, and struggling with the mother of all PTSD experiences.

Then I ran and ran and ran trying to catch up with the present – I was hopeful, determined and obsessed with healing.

Now I’m running to try to warp-speed myself into the future – I’m excited, healthy and inspired to live the way I would have been if trauma hadn’t gotten in the way.

I’m not exactly a model of the Zen mindset. When I get an idea about something, I want it to happen immediately. But life – and healing – are not like this. Developing the world we want, creating the circumstances, recovering from experience, and redefining ourselves all take time.

It’s become clear I need to develop some patience and a new approach to achieving my desires. This past weekend at the end of an extremely hectic week (while I try to juggle my day job, launch Heal My PTSD, LLC, visit with family, catch up with friends, play with my puppy, dance and spend time with John) I came to the conclusion things cannot go on at the speed they are. I had to reassess my goals, reprioritize their importance, and restrategize how to accomplish what I want in a sane, practical and healthy way.

You could say I’ve been practicing a little Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Yes, that trusty technique PTSDers learn to manage and cope with PTSD symptoms and effects has lifelong benefits. Look at that, something positive I learned from PTSD.

And so here I am now, into a new week with a new attitude. I took one of my goals for this year – and pushed it into next year. There’s time for everything I want to do. After my trauma I felt the need to do everything all at once because I lived with that survivor anxiety that you never know when another trauma will strike. You have to make the most and get the most out of every day because tomorrow... No wonder I could barely breathe! This is a crazy way to live.

I accepted the fact that the more I stress myself to do everything NOW the less I’ll be able to do anything well. After my PTSD diagnosis my obsessed desire to be well – and the inevitable twists and turns in the healing process – brought me to my knees more than once when I did not heal right away. And then I decided to stop trying so hard to heal and just get on with moving toward healing and also living and what do you know? Healing slowly crept up on me while I was off doggedly pursuing joy.

I recognized there’s only so much I can effect myself and some things that can only evolve with time. I pledged myself to the idea that it’s only important I’m on the path to my future; it’s not so important I control everything about how the path winds and curves. So much of healing comes as we learn to re-engage with the present, look toward the future, and participate in creating our post-trauma selves. So much healing can come as the by-product of refocusing our attention and letting that new focus seep into our subconscious and encourage it to settle down by replacing anxiety with positive experience.

If we become militant or obsessive about healing we only increase our stress and in doing so decrease our ability to heal. There’s only so much we can do or expect to change at once. We can only heal so much at any given time. Part of healing is developing an awareness of ourselves and believing in our potential to achieve what we want in a healthy, methodical, forward-moving but not stress-inducing way.

Today, I’m thinking about how important it is to give ourselves realistic healing goals. To know it’s significant we’re dedicated to the healing journey – that we’re researching it, committing to it, walking the walk while we talk about wanting to be well.

Healing will not come overnight. It took me 3 long years after my diagnosis to completely turn things around. We can’t let our expectations overshadow the progress we’re making.

What’s meandering through my mind this morning is the idea that when we focus too much on the details of what we want to achieve we lose sight of the big picture. It’s in the big picture that our inspiration lies. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of healing - they're necessary to be sure, but they're not everything.

Sometimes, it’s good to take a break. Sit back. Reassess your current healing strategy, how it’s working for you, what could be better, what’s seems worse, and what could be changed about it, and also what can be changed about your perception of what you’re doing and how you’re progressing.

When we become slaves and prisoners to the bad thoughts, behaviors and attitudes that grow in our minds we impede our ability to live well, healthy, balanced, successful, happy and joyful lives. You’re in control of your healing experience. Commit to the big picture. Visualize the end goal. Reach out your hand and move (slowly) toward healing. Then, let it come to you.

(Photo: I’d still)

Meandering Michele's Mind: Changing Your Mind Impacts the Healing Process

For years I’d heard the refrain, “The universe conspires,” and I never really got what that meant. If it was true, then the universe had a mean streak. My world was so black and depressing and traumatized. I felt so trapped in some horrible place. What kind of universe would deliberately conspire that??

And then I finally heard the second half of that sentence: “What you think about you bring more to you.” So, the universe conspires to bring you more of what you think. Now, that I understand!

At the healing ceremony the other night I was explaining to the host how I largely healed my PTSD by deliberately constructing a post-trauma identity. When all traditional and alternative therapies failed to free me, I decided to free myself. I determined that I could not see myself in the present or move toward the future if I only saw myself in terms of the past. So, I determined to alter my perceptions.

“You changed your mind!” the host exclaimed. And I thought, Can it be that easy?

And the answer was no, it was definitely not that easy. It took a hell of a lot of hard work! I started, made progress, and failed miserably several times. Years of conditioning and developing survival mechanisms don’t disappear overnight. But this guy distilled what I finally did down to its essence: I changed my perspective; I did change my mind in determining how to perceive myself, and that made a huge difference in my ability to heal. It continues to make a huge difference:

We are never finished in our healing evolution – and I mean that in the best possible way. We’ve lived so long in the shadows of the past that coming out into the light is…. Well, entrancing. My appreciation of what my new life is seems unending. I am constantly caught off guard at some new element of my healing. When we heal from trauma and PTSD we do see things differently. It’s as if everything was in black and white and now it’s suddenly in Technicolor. We change our mind and we change our world.

My mind these days is focused on helping others achieve their healing goals. Healing is the focus of everything I think about, act on, desire and do. As the foundation for my personal and professional goals healing guides and directs my every decision.

And true to the adage, the universe is beginning to conspire. The more I think about and work toward my own and others' healing goals the more the universe seems to be bringing to me more healing connections and opportunities.

This is just a reminder today that what you think about is essential to how you heal. When I held on too tightly to healing I suffocated my own energy and ability to actually make the progress I wanted. When I let go and opened my mind to new ideas – when I changed my mind about how I saw myself and worked to institute a new view - things changed for me.

I had to work very hard not to perceive myself as a survivor but as a strong person who was no longer going to let the past get the best of me. The more I pursued joy and a newly defined self the more I found both; the more I tried to whip the past into submission the more I struggled with it to no positive end.

We all need to change our minds so that we change our thoughts so that we change our behaviors so that we change what we bring to ourselves every day.

We all need to change our minds about what we think is important: Who we were and what happened to us yesterday does not have to define who we are today and who we will become tomorrow. We have choices to make; healing comes from standing up and making them. Healing is not an easy task, but we can achieve it one thought at a time.

(Photo: rbsuperb)

Meandering Michele's Mind: Have You Ever Taken A PTSD Vacation?

I’m on my way to Miami on business. Just saying that makes me stop, take a look around and breathe an elated sigh of relief. Miami!

I lived the first ½ of my life in New York, and ½ of that in New York City itself. And then one day – I just needed to get the hell out. I was so physically debilitated by PTSD, and so psychologically haunted by living just a mile south of where my trauma occurred that something in me snapped. And just like that I threw away the life I had built and went from Manhattan to a small beach town in South Florida.

I didn’t cross the Mason-Dixon line alone. I convinced my parents and brother to come with me, so the move wasn’t taking me to a place of complete isolation, but still, it was a big step; one I thought would get rid of the parasites (those pesky unintegrated memories) once and for all.

Unfortunately, you don’t shed your past across state lines. Like your shadow, it follows you everywhere and after the initial high of thinking I had escaped I came crashing back to a very sandy reality: I was a survivor. PTSD was me. Relocation and the resulting temporary lifting of PTSD symptoms evolved into everything coming back full force.

The benefit of moving, though, was that I had a whole new state, city, town – beach! – to distract and support me during healing. Things got worse (much, much worse) before they got better, but being in a new environment allowed me to heal without being constantly triggered. The new location gave me a sense of adventure that was invigorating and allowed me to focus on the business of living a new life while I tried to get the old one to slip away. The new location made me feel like I could begin again; I could construct a new identity – a post-trauma identity – that was just waiting for me to conjure and design it.

It took 3 years, but I did finally construct that new identity and ultimately heal from PTSD. And now, I’m off to Miami for some business on South Beach, and then a little nightlife. Salsa, anyone?

Today, what’s meandering through my mind is the question of how many of you have used relocation to progress PTSD healing, and how well it worked.

Please share your experience/experiment with me and the other readers. If we all chip in what we’ve learned more people will heal faster!

(Photo: kleerteam)

Meandering Michele’s Mind: 18 Tips For Coping With A Flashback

If you’ve read my post ‘25 Things About My PTSD’ you know that like many PTSDers one of my prevalent PTSD symptoms was flashbacks. And if you read the post you know that the flashback I most often got caught in was the moment I felt myself leave my body.

The truth is, in the original experience of that moment during my trauma, I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to keep going into the tunnel and abandon my body forever. Later, then, it was a strange flashback in which to be stuck. Non-violent and peaceful, the memory stole over me at odd moments without a definitive trigger and the next thing I knew, I was back in that place, hovering ½ way between my physical body and a black tunnel, reliving the panic and fear of the moments prior to my escape, and then lingering in the peace of that ultimate disconnection from the world around me. Suspended there, my mind shut down and I sank into the deep, despondent wish that I could get back to the tunnel and leave behind the rest of the PTSD hell in which I lived.

Not easy, as we all know, to cope and carry on when intense moments of the past overwhelm us. I’ve been thinking, lately, how much we all struggle to control the flashback experience – or not control it. Since my PTSD experience was undiagnosed for 25 years, I just accepted that this memory would bowl me over weekly, would, itself, hover over me on a daily basis and that was just the way things would be. I didn’t develop strategies or coping mechanisms for it. I let it wash over me, felt myself float away, and knew at some point I’d come back. It was easy to live like this since the flashback wasn’t violent in nature.

But for many survivors flashbacks are a big issue that becomes physiological and destructive in its experience. We need a ‘To Do’ list for interrupting the flow; a list of strategies to reconnect us to the present moment.

This week, I’ve been on the task. I’ve polled some PTSD friends. Today, I give you a collective list of what ten PTSDers do to stop a flashback in its tracks:

1. Count 1 - 10 slowly; repeat until the flashback ends.

2. Practice breathing techniques to reconnect the body to the mind.

3. Focus on one of the five senses, i.e. slowly look at what's around you and notice the details; take a deep breath and smell the air; chew a piece of gum and taste the fresh flavor; put your hands together and feel the skin; listen to the sound of traffic.

4. Let the flashback flow and view it as you would a movie, as if you are removed from it and it is appearing on a screen. You are in the present moment; the flashback is a separate event.

5. Snap an elastic band around your wrist.

6. Hold onto an ice cube.

7. Put a squeeze of toothpaste into your mouth (very unique texture/taste/smell).

8. Take a swig of vanilla extract.

9. Stomp your feet.

10. Say the alphabet backwards.

11. Journal. "Put it in a box" and put the box away.

12. Smelling peppermint oil (helps with head-aches, nausea, and jolts the senses).

13. Reach out. Talk with someone.

14. Surround yourself with things that help ground you (clocks, calendars, music).

15. Develop a channel for safe venting if/when necessary. In the words of one survivor: “I used to take old jars from the fridge and smash them against a brick wall several blocks from my home, slamming a door, or screaming at the top of my lungs when no-one could hear me.”

16. Stretching, Yoga, biking, running, walking, or working out.

17. Counting without limit – begin counting when it starts and don’t stop until the memory recedes.

18. For this last tip, I’m going to post the words of a vet, but any civilian can use the technique, too, by substituting his/her triggering sound: “The sound of a huey chopper would set off a flashback, so the therapist had me install a huey sound file on my computer and listen to it over and over. My anxiety still goes high at the sound but now no flashbacks.”

What tips, tricks and strategies do you use? Add to this community resource by leaving a comment.

(Photo: Ewan-M)

Meandering Through Michele’s Mind (A New Thursday Feature): Let Go of The Illusion

As soon as my trauma ended – actually, while it was still ongoing – I decided I was going to be heroic. I was going to live. I was going to survive. I was going to endure. I decided I was going to be all the usual grandiose things we like to think of ourselves so that we feel strong, powerful and almighty. We need this, especially during trauma, so I’m not saying it was wrong, but…

When I was released from the hospital I went home and continued this way of thinking. A heroic girl (I was 13) would suck it up, get over it, get on with it, let it go, leave the past behind. So, that’s what I set about doing. I was no longer the girl I was pre-trauma, but that didn’t matter; I remade myself into another girl. A girl who didn’t think about the past, who was unaffected by it, stronger than it, transcending above it. Never mind that emotionally I was crumbling; I shut off my emotions and forged ahead. I put in place the survival mechanisms I needed, hid them from everyone else, and set about getting back on the path I’d been on before fate intervened.

I have to tell you, I did a great job. I ran headlong back into junior high school and then high school and then college and the professional world without looking back. I denied the memories that lurked and focused on forming myself into the epitome of the busy chick who was achieving and performing and getting things done and progressing along the usual social timeline for my generation.

And then it all fell apart because the truth is, if we build something out of thin air, it cannot possibly last. There came a day when I was forced to recognize the illusion – it was the worst and best moment for my PTSD healing. Worst, because discovering the falsity of something we deeply believe in is a staggering blow. Best, because it allowed me to face my PTSD with a new sense of honesty and clarity, two characteristics that allowed me to get on the right path toward ultimately healing.

It took a tremendous amount of energy to build and maintain the façade of my post-trauma self. I was so bent on being brave and strong, responsible and heroic that I was shocked to find, when it all came tumbling down, that I was lost and grieving, splintered and fractured, terrified and stunned.

I had to start from scratch: recognize who I had become, tear down the identity I had assumed, find out who I really was, make choices about who I wanted to be, and begin to build and allow to emerge a new, more authentic self.

Sound like a lot of work? It was! But… it was so worth it.

What illusions do you have about yourself after your trauma or during your recovery? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Next Tuesday at 1pm EST I’ll be the featured guest on Rena Reese’s radio show on BlogTalkRadio. An author, speaker and life coach, Rena recently wrote about illusion on her The Soul Salon blog. She looks at illusion from both sides, 1) how we benefit from participating in it, 2) how recognizing illusion wakes up a part of us that begins to make demands. Rena ends her post by saying,

If you chose to participate in an illusion, you may fake out the world, but your spirit will know the truth. That truth will manifest in your body as an illness or a depression... it will find a physical expression in the physical world.

Does that ring any PTSD bells???

(Photo: Son of Twins)