Really loves me.

And I’m coming face to face with the expected triggers.  Managing them (mostly) well.

No matter how mindful we are about the past,
and what it did to us,

and no matter how many times we say
“That was then, this is now…”

there is nothing we can do but to let the triggered emotions come, and then go.
Because they will go.

It helps to do what Peter Levine suggests – get a hug, or push hands, or do something to dissipate the physical manifestations of the PTSD triggered state.

I am learning to ask for what I need.  I am learning to give it to myself if, for some reason, my partner can’t.

And I am -really- careful, this time.

There is Nothing for which it is worth giving up my safety and peace of mind.

Nothing.

You wouldn’t recognize me now.

Someone looked at my license last week.
The photo had been taken 4.5 years ago,
at the height of the breath-holding, (will I live?)
the rollercoaster,
the  in/out, here/gone, love/hate, sword-swinging crazy crazy.

They said:  “Is this you?”
“Yes, it’s me.  Trauma changes a person.”

So now:  I am blonde.  My eyes are different.  I walk into places where I used to work, and they don’t recognize me.

And:  I have lost 17 lbs in the last 6 weeks, dropped 1.5% body fat, without really trying.

This week, I am going to try.

And trauma?  Mostly gone.
Got triggered last week.  A nut-case came into the office.  Left.
Phoned the next day, and said some scary things on the phone.
I was at the office late at night, worried for my safety.

Went for EMDR the next day.  I say to the therapist:  “You know, because of my history, I really reacted to this.”
“ANYONE would have had a reaction to this!” says the therapist.
“History or not, what that person said was frightening and inappropriate.”

Hey!  Does this mean I’m normal now?

Nope. “Normal” means the middle of the bell curve, what “most” people are like.

I’m one of the outliers, that small percentile of people who have had evil done to them,
and who have done a lot of personal work,
and transformed the evil and its effects
into something that can be of use to the healing of the world.

I took a couple of days off of Hot Yoga.  The Hair just looked too good!
Back to it tomorrow.
I look in the mirror,
and -I- don’t recognize myself.

Until I smile.

I am my own best friend now.
It’s nice here.

I am safe.

Justice? Compassion?

I had an “aha” moment today.  One time during the nightmare of abuse and trauma, the man I was married to said:  ”Something is broken in me.”

I didn’t listen.  I couldn’t understand.  ”Something is broken?  But you know how to be kind.  You know how to be loving.  What’s broken there?”  He didn’t answer.

He was right.  There is something very wrong with someone who becomes angry at being kind, at giving pleasure to another.

Further on, I realized how “broken” things were the last time he turned on me and wouldn’t get help, as he’d agreed to do.  But I didn’t understand how they were broken.

James Hollis, PhD sums it up nicely:

Only when the “…dimension that has been repressed – compassion, sensitivity to the needs of others – has risen to the surface” can there be a “possibility of mutual healing”.

“As there is no abuser who has not been abused, the capacity to feel empathy for their victim, rare as that may be, is the only hope for their healing. “

My abuser could in no way feel empathy for the person he had abused.  Eventually, after quitting therapy, he wouldn’t even acknowledge that he had been brutal, abusive.

How can one go from seeing a glimmer of what they have done (remember his “dark room , swinging a sword” analogy?) apologizing, being forgiven, then turn around and say they didn’t do anything?

Because it’s just too painful to acknowledge.

“Ironically, such empathy [for their victim] will be experienced as excruciatingly painful, for much of their survival depended on numbing themselves, transferring the pain to another, and learning coping adjustments that bury, desensitize, or dissociate the suffering.”

We can check all of those boxes off for my abuser:

He numbed himself with porn, food, shopping, internet surfing.

He transferred his pain to another:  Me.

He had ways of coping that buried the suffering (work),

desensitized it (ignoring, avoiding, running away, more work)

and dissociated the suffering:  by dissociating in the moment, then later by saying that I was the one who had done it to him  (! Huh?  How is that physically possible?).

But in the end, he said I deserved what he did to me, that it was nothing compared to how put upon he had been.

That made no sense to me, though it alerted me to how sick and dangerous he was.

I understand more now.  It was, as his therapist said, just too much for him to be able to face.

I have more compassion.

And still…

…I must let the courts handle what they must.

Quotes from Hollis, J.:  Why Good People do Bad Things, p. 111

It’s my birthday tomorrow.  There are two vases of flowers, gifted to me in surprising circumstances!

The scent of lily, carnation, the spray of baby’s breath.  Beautiful.

And …  I’ve got a bit of the birthday blues.
I’m on Day 4 of oral steriods to see if they may help the De Quervain’s in my left hand.
I have picked up a cold virus, stayed in bed most of the day sleeping,
occasionally feverish off and on.

But tomorrow, I’m having a party.
It’s been 4 years of “cave time”, cocooned, in hiding,
taking time to recover from that bizarrely abusive marriage,
getting off of the meds,
learning to see myself in the mirror at hot yoga, and love that person,
or to see my face in the bathroom in the morning,
and not see the strange and horrible images
that came from the abuse…

There has been -so- much progress.

And usually, there is so much hope, and happiness in my life.
But today, dear ones, I’m feeing fragile, self-indulgent.

After 4 years of cave time,tired of being in hiding,
I want my life back,
so I’ve gone out on a limb,
and planned a birthday party,
complete with dressing up, potluck, and dancing.
It’ll be fun.

I’ve also invited friends I haven’t seen since that twisted marriage ended, and I’m scared.
I’m fatter than I was then, though that’s not the most important thing.
Some of these folks I haven’t seen since the truth about the marital abuse came out.
Not sure how it’ll go, and I’m a bit nervous.

I’m going to keep the food steady tomorrow, even though there’s a party.
Some of my friends are such great cooks – it should be a fun dinner.
My plan to stay mindful:  Go to hot yoga in the afternoon before the party to increase the endorphins.
After the party:  get hugs from people who love me.  Walk the dogs.

Only a wee bit of chocolate.  C’mon, it’s my birthday! 

Wish me luck!

Prepared for: Liminal Experiences
Prepared by: Glinda the Good Witch

Proposal number: 123-4567

Proposed Project:  A Portable Airport Grief Deflection System.  Convenient, discreet, easily activated and de-activated.  When returning to Home Town Airport, a button gets pushed which creates a bubble around the operator.  Grief-filled images connected with the Airport  float outside of the bubble and therefore are not visible to the operator.   Though they may  forcefully try to break through the bubble and get to the operator’s mind,  they cannot penetrate the bubble.

Instead, on the inside of the bubble, there are images of people who truly love the operator:  her children, her mother, her father, her sister.  Her Labradoodle bounds happily about.  Images of the Lagoon, swimming with the dog, holding her newborn babies, having laughing fits with her daughters in the butter section at the grocery store — are projected 360 degrees around her, so that everywhere she goes she is surrounded with love and laughter.

Additionally, the System automatically arranges for everyone who loves the operator in this city  to come and meet her at the airport, complete with welcome signs, flowers, and hugs.  She is greeted with open arms, tears of happiness, expressions of gratitude for the joyful love she has shared with them, for the many ways in which she has made the world a better place.

Over time, the grief-causing memories at the airport become so diminished, so receeded, so faint, that the System is no longer needed.  Built-in obsolescence is an added feature, with no extra charge.

I’m noticing that I’m still doing things to cope with PTSD that are not always skillful.

-  I still buy soap. Every time I find a new soap that smells good, I buy it. My latest is Dr. Bronner’s.  I know that a new soap will not clean off the things that were done to me, but it’s okay.  I’m not compulsively washing, and I mostly use up what I have before I buy another, but when I do buy, I buy 3 of them.  So now I’m enjoying with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint, rose, and lavender.  Three.

- I still eat carbs. They work, they’re sedating.  I’m getting more skillful at eating them at appropriate times, in appropriate quantities.  And then every once in a while, I make a conscious decision to eat LOTSA carbs.  Still too frequently for my waistline’s happiness.

- I don’t throw out the old meds in case I “need” them again.  But I don’t use them, because I don’t need them any more.  I’ve been 7 months away from antidepressants and anxiolytics.  Yay!  But what if…?

-  I still have to be careful around mirrors. Depending on the day, if I see myself when I’m going out the door to work, I sometimes have to stop and put on make up or something to try and make myself look acceptable.  But it doesn’t really make that much of a difference;  it just holds me up and makes me late for work.  Part of me knows I’m okay the way I am — some would even say beautiful — and some days I see it too, especially after I’ve been for EMDR.  Or after Hot Yoga.

I’m getting better.

- What’s in a name? Nothing. At work the other day, I had to say the offender’s name, though in a different context.  It was a bit loaded, but I was able to sail past the discomfort.  It’s just a name, there’s no story attached to this neutral person.  It’s just a name.

- Choosing peace: I am able to meet automatic thoughts of revenge and retaliation with a gentle smile, and to then choose to wish the perpetrator well.  And to be here now, making me well.  I want to be more skillful with this, to be able to “get into” my physical sensations of “now”, to be even more grounded in the present.

- Thought-stopping: I notice and stop the silent dialogue around the story of what happened to me, which occasionally pops up, especially when I think of people who knew the perpetrator in another light, who don’t know about how sick he is.  I imagine what I would say to them — to tell them the truth about him, about what he did to me, and when I notice I’m doing this, I stop.  I think of something that makes me happy, usually the dog, or laughing with the kids.  Or the blue sky at the ocean.  I will likely never see these people again.  They are connected to that horrible, twisted past, and although they weren’t horrible and twisted, it’s just too triggering to go into that part of my life again.

- I am clear about safety. The men my age who are not already married are either sick, prefer men, or have some other “issues” that would make them unsuitable.  So I am clear that my best safety lies in keeping a relationship with my Self.

- I have learned the most important love of all: As Ondrea Levine said, to be able to say:  ”I love you.  I really love you.”  to myself.  And I mean it.  I have fallen in love with this dear person who is me, and I don’t need to get it from anyone else.  I’ve learned to treasure myself.  I still have more to learn.

- I’m still going to hot yoga. My mind resists it, doesn’t want to look in the mirror, be in the heat, sweat… but my body loves it, and afterward my mind loves it too.

- I go to bed on time.

So here I go — to sleep, to dream.  Potatoes, not Prozac.

They say that if we can find humour in a situation, then it can diffuse or de-fuse pain, steering us away from suffering.

I’m trying to find the humour in PTSD.  It’s not funny; so let’s go with Irony.

Here are some definitions of irony at m-w.com:

a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning

b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style  (Sardonic:  disdainfully or skeptically humorous : derisively mocking)

c: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result

So now that we’ve defined terms… )

Nope, I haven’t found the humour in it yet.  I’ll keep working on it and get back to you.  Contact me if you’ve found anything humourous in PTSD.

There could be the beginning of a fantastic stand-up career here.

is that, after Camel Pose,

you can lie down in Savasana and cry

and nobody sees it.

A whole 20 seconds to let the body release the trauma, the somatic memories.

Then you get up again,

and face the Camel

and do your best

and lie down and cry again.

But nobody can tell those are tears running down your cheeks

because of all of the sweat.

Like Rutger Hauer in Bladerunner:

“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain… “

All those traumas will be lost in time,
like tears in the sweat.

My image for Camel pose was a seated dromedary with a gigantic knife in its side.

Now the knife is gone, and the Camel has butterflies floating around it.  And a smile.

I haven’t cried at yoga now for months.

Hot yoga is definitely helping the healing on all levels.