Don’t be misled by the title: This post IS about healing from Complex
PTSD. In specific, this post is about
coping with the rough, bumpy nature of the healing process, the “two steps
forward and one step back” nature of the healing process. If you are in therapy, trying to heal your
PTSD or C-PTSD, you already may be aware of the twistings and turnings, the
irregular and unexpected moves that are part of the dance. You probably also have been slammed by the
sudden and unexpected recurrence of your symptoms, the sucker punch that
explodes from your subconscious mind when your conscious mind makes a
connection with trauma material, sends the message to your subconscious mind,
and you go reeling, out of control, across the dance floor of daily life.
Well, as far as I’m concerned, to paraphrase the
title of another country-western song, you can "Take This Dance and Shove It!” That’s
my first reaction when I experience a setback.
As the hours pass, however, I slowly
regain my perspective and begin to see the meaning and the value of
whatever the setback is about. Eventually,
I return to my pre-setback state, a little wiser and with a bit more sense of
direction. Even at my age, 73, I bounce
back, and I’m grateful for that!
Yes, setbacks during the healing process happen. Those unexpected and frightening occurrences
are bound to happen when events outside us collide with events inside us, those
inner events being trauma material that we thought we had at least managed to
reduce to a simmer. This, at least, is
my experience of the healing process.
And I suspect that I’m not the only person who has had this experience.
I’m no mental
health professional, and I cannot speak with the weight of research behind me,
but I have long suspected that ever since I’ve begun the healing journey, I
have become more vulnerable to “triggers.”
And I believe this increase in vulnerability is due to a reduction in my
ability to repress the effects of trauma damage. After all, I am healing, and in order to
heal, the trauma material must be more available so that it can be
addressed. And if the trauma material
becomes more accessible to my conscious mind, then my common sense dictates that
this would make me more apt to experience setbacks. If I were not trying to heal my C-PTSD and
were not in therapy, then I probably would not be so apt to be triggered.
Or, at least, I would not be so aware of being
triggered. During the period after my
divorce at age 42, when I was attending graduate school and later, when I was
teaching writing in a community college, I sometimes was surprised by my
reactions to certain situations, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to do
the work leading to understanding my reactions.
I remember one horrible incident when the husband of a dear friend
touched me on the shoulder during an after-church coffee hour, and I exploded
in a fury. I didn’t understand why I did
that then, and I felt so awful afterwards and wept as I apologized. I slunk out of the church, thinking I’d never
go back. Eventually, I did return, but
never after that incident did I feel the same acceptance from others as I felt before
the incident.
Now, of course, I understand why I reacted as I did,
and I am able to modify my response to unexpected touches from men, but then I
was in a different psychic place. Now
I’m healing, but then I wasn’t. Then the
trauma material, some of it the toxic waste resulting from twenty years of
spousal abuse, fermented in my psyche, ready to catch me in a weak moment and
re-traumatize me. As a friend says,
“With awareness comes change,” and now I am aware of the material and the
trigger possibilities, and now I take the time to consider my circumstances and
respond rather than react if a male touches me on the shoulder—usually. When I am caught by surprise, I can never say
with complete certainty what I will do, but usually now I am able to think and
respond with civility rather than to lash out in fear and anger. That’s progress.
Yes, the process of healing the ravages of trauma
damage is not a dance I enjoy. It is a
dance, however, in which I must participate if I want relief from the symptoms
of Complex PTSD. And there are rewards
inherent in the process, among them my inner sense of healing and also my
relationship with my therapist. She’s a
very gentle and kind teacher in this process of healing the damages caused by
people who have not been kind and gentle.
My therapist is a constant reminder that goodness and kindness exist in
a world that often in my past was filled with cruelty. As I progress through the healing process, I
need that constant reminder.
One day the lights on the dance floor will dim, the fiddles
and guitars will go into their cases, and I will be the only person left to
hear the ghostly echoes of music and the clomping of boot heels, but the
process will never entirely cease. It
will continue in some form within my psyche as long as I am alive. But thanks to the help I am getting now, I
expect to be a much better dancer at the end of the evening than I was at the
beginning. I wish the same for you. Peace . . . Jean
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