libbyliberal's Up Close and Personal -- Fun or Glum

This is a comment I just made to jackie2's blog entitled "Post-traumatic Wisdom-Dr. Jackie's Mental Health Moment". Some excerpts from Dr. Jackie:

... there's another side to surviving trauma and I'll call it Post-traumatic Wisdom or PTW (my term). It comes from our ability to learn, grow, and develop.

snip

They all have bad memories and don't dwell on them but distract to the present and remind themselves of the preciousness of the life they can choose now.

Many of the wisest people around know how to think, feel, act and organize their lives in a sane way based on the insanity of life which they have experienced. There's nothing good about the trauma they survived, but the wisdom they have now keeps them strong for the future.

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[r] jackie, a very positive and respectful take on the survivors of PTSD.

With me, complex-PTSD involved ferociously repeated, chronic trauma -- hostage learned helplessness and hopelessness trauma.

In my research I have learned 4 basic responses to PTSD condition [explained in terms of my own "complex-PTSD" history].

You easily drop into "infant time" whereby when emotionally ambushed IRL you have a glass jaw with the fellow adult threatener and suddenly they "seem" to have the power of your original perpetrator(s) and you are childlike vulnerable, defying the reality of being an adult and empowered to walk away or give it back. I think being aware of this unpleasant phenomenon helps. But authority figures, any kind [even non-authorities assuming an authoritarian tone], if they shame or criticize have strong emotional leverage on one and may inspire [intense] fight, flight or freeze responses in one still. I am speaking for me still at my not young age. Risk-taking more than avoidance helps soften the responses but that desensitization mode has short term stress but is worth it in the long run in life.

Then there is hypervigilance whereby one carries from childhood a lot of isometric tension in one's body from walking on eggshells so much of one's childhood in physical fear as well as emotional fear. Being around inhibitions-loosened acting out alcoholics reckless with their rage can inspire this tension but also psychological threats can also induce physical reactions of fear. Exercise, yoga, meditation can help deal with this. As well as desensitization by taking risks in adulthood. [I had a friend long ago I met in the 12 step program who used to say that if you wanted to find out who was an adult child of an alcoholic, say, in a room full of people, fire a gun into the air. Whoever doesn't flinch is the adult child of an alcoholic. These people are already in a "permanent flinch" since childhood. I found her comment amusing but disturbingly reality-based.]

Psychic numbing comes with cutting oneself off from feelings and trying not to think about the trauma [also during our childhoods natural but so-called "negative" feelings like anger and sadness were overly censured by stressed out mentors who couldn't handle the challenge or inconvenience of them so as adults we over-readily try to stifle, escape or deny these same kinds of feelings]. Self-medicating [over-using alcohol, drugs, food, etc.] and process addictions [over-doing gambling, working, shopping, sexual activity, caretaking, etc.] are a way to do this. Distracting oneself. Becoming "numbed out" to pain that needs to be processed to get through it. To go through the five stages of grief rather than to stay locked in the shock or low-grade depression is the answer but the pain of reliving is not easy and takes a long time.

Therapy, journalling, support groups, research, giving service to others struggling with similar challenges all help. The last though comes with a warning not to deny one's own history and codependently try to fix others while being in denial of one's own trauma and affliction. Unfortunately many of us gird our egos after trauma by denying our own vulnerability and project our vulnerability onto needy others. This is a kind of narcissism that isn't healthy for the helper or the helpees. But a natural, predictable phenomenon. As kids we were blocked from focusing on ourselves sometimes, to be "trophies" not real entitled to be "normal" children to our significant others. We were shamed when we were simply being normal and age appropriate so we became detached from our REAL selves. Perfectionism was mandated.

Finally, one that haunts me is survivor guilt. One was conditioned by witnessing so much pain in significant others and having been mandated to devote oneself to relieving their pain, that experiencing the joys and pleasures of life is treasonous to them in our minds if not in the reality that occurred (though I am thinking some of both) and causes irrational guilt and even automatic shame and thus what is the word, anhedonism? Fear and rejection of pleasure. "Satisfaction" [career successess, for example] was often a good thing, encouraged by dysfunctional mentors, but pleasure and happiness ["gratification" as opposed to "satsifaction"] was another matter and signals may have been chronically sent by stressed out and thus narcissistic needy supposed mentors to keep the focus on THEM and their pain and not yourself and your natural inclinations to pleasure and joy.

best, libby

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Oh, geez...

If it's any consolation, you sure aren't alone feeling those things.

The only thing I might add is that, when threatened or "attacked" (even if only perceived by me), there is a STRONG desire to strike back. That is one of my own personal defense mechanisms that I struggle with daily.

Safe_Bet's Amy

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 04:49 PM

P.S. and big, uber hugs for sharing that.

Safe_Bet's Amy

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 04:50 PM

Thank you for this post from the front lines. I do not appreciate Dr Jackie's take on most things as I get the feeling she just doesn't have a clue about what she claims to have answers for. Love your take, Libby. You KNOW.

zanelle

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 06:10 PM

Recovery from PTSD is also easier if certain nutritional needs are met - at least that's been true in my own case. Maintaining healthy intestinal bacteria (by eating fermented foods and avoiding antibiotics and acids) is a biggie, as is maintaining adequate Vit D and omega 3 levels.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 07:14 PM

This is a condition I've never understood very well so thanks for detailing it libby. Sorry though you had to gain that learning the hard way.

Abrawang

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 08:22 PM

Psychic numbing involves becoming disassociated from one's body, in my own experience...
the emotions still play out down there,
in inaccessible space ,
one assumes, but one does not wish to live through them.

Clenching of the muscles doesnt help, ultimately, but clenching and holding the breath
are often the only avenues available
not to explode out of one's skin,

and too much living like that reduces one to infanthood
maybe simply to be able to indulge in physical habits again,
the body is yearning to be a felt-body so much?

Yes! Distract to the Present! Come into this very moment.

Timeworn successful spiritual (sic) practice.

James M. Emmerling

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 10:03 PM

Body and soul are one!
Body=Outward Expression of Soul.
The whole mind body thing.

James M. Emmerling

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 10:05 PM

I so admire the work you have done to try to understand your life, so many people just accept or wander. I know we don't know each other well, but I feel proud of you just the same.

rita shibr

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 11:59 PM

Amy, how nice of you to come by first and so soon and give me such validation! thank you. That first "infant time" trapdoor for PTSD has caused me no end of problems throughout life, including career advancement. It made me stifle myself when honest protest would have been mature and healthy, or too late and stridently to empty my gunnysack of anger and frustration after the stifling. Having a glass jaw.

When I moved to NYC after teaching I temped long term often which seemed to be convenient to my PTSD. Eventually things would naturally derail from stress and I had an easy "temp agency" escape to the next corporate family. Maybe that was me over-accommodating my disorder instead of fighting it harder! On the other hand it gave me opportunities to deal with skirmishes and asserting and learning I could pick myself up again.

Growing up with an active alcoholic parent and a controlling borderline disorder parent made "conflict resolution" seem futile and so often in my life I unhealthily endured toxic situations too long or at times prematurely and immaturely and irrationally escaped them unnecessarily when communication could have brought me comfort and a sense of satisfying mastery and collaboration with me as an adult rationally and easily asserting myself. I lacked trust in others and myself. I grew up in a family of some that could go into the "opera mode" and conflict brought rejection and abandonment or at the very least humiliation.

Fight, flight or freeze. The three panic modes when threatened.

I have gotten better I think at that panic stuff, but it still happens, especially when I feel a trust for someone and I am confused suddenly by seeming betrayal and remoteness and even malice. I am most vulnerable when I am making a special effort to assert my needs rationally and reasonably and I get a harsh or patronizing response. I feel rage and terror together. Oy vey.

Once I got annoyed at a therapist speaking to me disrespectfully. We had been talking about my issues with my mother's irrational rage. The therapist flew into an irrational rage with me, even left a nasty message on my phone machine. I was repeating with her acting out scenario with my mother which could have been enlightening and a turnaround somewhat maybe for me but neither of us was strong enough to survive the altercation.

In that case I thought she should have been less condemning of me. I remember now offering to come in for a session to discuss the issue but I had the audacity to want to pay for only half of the session and her the other half since I felt she owed me that half session from her own acting out at me. She went into another rage that I would dare muck around with her compensation for therapy. She was horrified!!! I was like Oliver Twist who had asked for me. I shrugged and quit. In my heart, I deserved that compromise. But I swear sometimes asserting and leaving a therapist was enhancing for my self-esteem in a way and fighting back re my control issues or being controlled issues.

At least now I understand what happens and can rein myself in to a degree or try to do some damage repair after. Extra tough when I am dealing with someone else doing their own irrational projections onto me from their complicated and painful emotional baggage.

Grateful hug back to you!!!

Is Medea Benjamin running mate for Stein??? Wow. That is TREMENDOUS NEWS!!!

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 05:43 AM

Zanelle, thank you. That means so much to me that you recognize I am on the front lines and am earnestly using this honesty and hardwon knowledge, at least my long fight to see the forest for the trees, to help myself and maybe others who are dealing with emotional disorders.

I felt Dr. Jackie was coming from an encouraging and enlightening place in pointing out the hard-earned wisdom one does achieve struggling with the disease but I wanted to write and emphasize the challenge of that long term coping with the disorder from my own particular brand of it.

Also, it is intuitive to want to avoid stress so as not to trigger strong feelings, but at the same time it is important to engage to begin to desensitize these automatic responses I have cited above. Choosing ones battles, but sometimes they find you first.

I read a definition of "compulsion" a while back. It said it was "responding to stimuli without intelligence." For years I have been trying to fight these strong reactions I seem to have conditioned into my hardwiring. I wish "intelligence" about them would be enough to rid myself of them. It takes emotional courage and intelligence. And even they are not always enough. There has to be that serenity from the prayer, to accept the things I cannot change.

best, libby
xxxx

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 05:52 AM

Stuart, thank you for commenting once again on one of my confessional blogs re my PTSD issues. I appreciated you sharing recently about your parental issues. I too am grateful I had extended family members who offered unconditional love which my parents could not seem to offer themselves easily or me, tragically.

The reminder of physical self care is a very good one. Nutritional self-care. I liked your suggestion about protein in the morning long ago which has helped me. Vitamin D I discovered was something I needed more of I found out and am taking supplements! Will look into omega 3s and "fermented" foods advice!! thank you.

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 05:58 AM

abra, thanks for commenting! yes, I seem to be doing my commentary still from the belly of the beast though I am much better than my earlier hellish decades. Was it Churchill who called depression a big black dog? And I think maybe Judy Collins once said in an interview that you learn to better train the black dog rather than escaping it.

There was a joke I heard in the 12 step rooms once. Some people when they get a flat tire call triple A. Other people call the suicide hotline. We PTSDers are in the latter group from our past stressors.

Maybe PTSD is like that depression big black dog that will continue to accompany me. I think you can't totally lose it, or at least I don't think I can. But I do feel I have made tremendous progress and garnered insights about it. I also struggle with ADD issues. I think recently I had some success fighting survivor guilt influence!

Alice Miller maintains that most emotional and psychological disorders come from childhood trauma. Reraising your own inner child seems to be the answer. Efforts from compassionate others certainly help, especially to deal with the pathological shame I find my PTSD and ADD conditions bring on. Support helps one feel less "pathetic" when comparing oneself to more functional fellow humans. Though I have come to realize it is not accurate to compare one's insides to other people's outsides and everyone has their own human struggles.

Also, I remember reading Gail Sheehy's book Passages, and she said that through the decades of our lives we have developmental challenges we must go through for healthy and serene maturation and if they get skipped or if other challenges pre-empt their accomplishment we have extra struggling to do. For example, the terrible twos as children, we need to say no to our parents to begin to feel a sense of mastery. We need to do that in our adolescence, too. With those assertions for identity it prepares us for young adulthood to take on independence and self-trust. But if those passages get interfered with there is dis-ease. It is not safe to assert and experience our "selves" and experiment with our real identities but have to assume roles to convenience our parents and we get psychologically and emotionally stunted.

Sheehy also said that some people have mid-life crises since they skipped some of those developmental challenges and they catch up with them in mid-life and the lessons still needing to be learned and experienced feel overwhelming.

Sometimes I feel like I see things so differently from the experts. Once on Dr. Phil there was a woman complaining that her hubby and two kids were driving her crazy since they were so very ADD. Phil was gushing about how hard she had it. I saw her as an extreme borderline disordered wife and mother and if the rest of the family was ADD I suspected her borderline-ness contributed to that. Having someone with a need for excessive control jam your self-governing radar is not healthy. We need as children to learn to be proactive and not be constantly in a reactive and fear mode.

Finally, the 3As, awareness, acceptance and action are a good guide. I seem to be struggling still with awareness elements. I seem to too readily entertain wrong-headed illusions about things. About people. My own needy ego I guess. But recovery comes from forgiving myself about those occasions and trying to move on to self acceptance and then action. And making amends to those I may have impacted obtusely -- that is part of the action phase I'm thinking. Risk-taking is tough, especially for those of us seriously shame-based! There are two sides to our coin so to speak, grandiosity and self-hate.

Sigh. Thanks for listening.

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 06:30 AM

Trauma, Somatic Experiencing and Peter A. Levine PhD

youtube his outlook. 45 years of work in the field. this is like nothing you have ever experienced before...like james says the body and mind are one...make time and space to be with, listen to and heal the body.
best,
mbj

marshallj4

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 06:43 AM

james, thanks for enhancing my explanations of the PTSD characteristics. I wrote that comment quickly off the top of my head. It had taken years to distill those characteristics and I am sure they need more work by me.

I agree re the psychic numbing and the unhealthy separation from body. Some of the best and enlightening self help books I have read were by Alexander Lowen about what he names bioenergetics and how the body recovery is key to making psychological progress.

I know as a kid I was a weak exhaler. Too hypervigilant in fear to maybe do that. Not willing to indulge in an exhalation to clear the lungs and bring more oxygen in for the brain to operate fully.

Lowen said we armor ourselves with muscular tensions that prevent serenity and inner peace and inner security. In my 20s I had many unpredictably timed crying jags. I hated that I could be ambushed by them and was so helpless but I realize that anguished crying was necessary for me to feel my feelings and process the horror I was going through even though I couldn't consciously see it at the time. I thought something was terribly wrong with my brain. I didn't see and was so girded by denial the forces I was dealing with. The trap I was in in terms of my survival. In 12 steps they say your defense mechanisms as children that saved you become your shame-based character defects as adults.

I remember once complaining to someone about how I used food to comfort myself and that was a kind of addiction. The men in my family drank, the women overate. The counselor told me that maybe I should thank not rue my body for absorbing my pain and preventing a psychotic break if I hadn't used the food that way. Talk about a positive take on that!

thanks for stopping by!!

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 06:43 AM

((((rita))))) -- thanks so much for saying that! sometimes I seriously wonder if my bouts of confessional bungee-jumping (I recently coined to an os friend) are helping me and/or others! I know that spilling my guts in 12 step meetings for so many years helped me finally respond back to my inner child banging on the pipes deep within me for help and un-abandonment! hah! And learning about just how many of us suffer a lot from childhood trauma. I had no idea that just reading psychological books for years was not enough. That walking the walk was key and facing down fear had to be done. I feel like I am in the longest recovery process -- glacial -- in the history of recovery processes. Thanks for the validation. You have no idea what music that is to my ears. I appreciate your blogs and comments on os blogs and feel a deep respect for you back. best, libby xxxx

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 06:53 AM

mbj, thank you. I appreciate the direction and will check out!!! the truth lives in the body. i believe that.

best, libby

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 06:55 AM

FWIW, I meant to mention this in my commenting. I so relate to the moment in the Ibsen play, A Doll's House, when Nora feels the horror that she has been on such a wrong and betraying track all her life up until that point and must go and find her identity and it will be an overwhelming but necessary challenge with an unsure ending. A sense of other- and self-betrayal overwhelms her at that point.

libbyliberalnyc

FEBRUARY 26, 2015 07:09 AM

libbyliberal's Up Close and Personal -- Fun or Glum

Sunday, March 22, 2015

100 Words to Mindfulness - 3/7/15 - 'Authenticity & Peace' (3-7-15)

My Comment to Dr. Jackie on Ongoing Struggles w/PTSD (2-25-15)