Now That I’ve Closed A Few Doors, Which Door Will I Open Next?

Until I wrote the previous post, the one in which I discussed closing and locking the door to my twenty-year marriage that ended three decades ago, I had never thought much about doors, either the physical doors we encounter in our homes or the metaphoric doors of our inner lives.  However, since I wrote that post, I have given the matter of doors much more thought. 

As I have been reflecting upon the topic of doors recently, I have become more aware of them.  And now that I am about to open a new door, the door leading to the EMDR segment of my therapy, I am experiencing anticipation, eagerness, a sense of nearing the end of my present therapy—all good feelings.  On the other hand, I am also experiencing fear, the fear that goes with the uncertainty of doing something new and different.  In my case, though, my fear of starting EMDR work is also based on a previous bad experience I had with a different therapist.

Before I relate the unfortunate incident, though, let me say that EMDR works!  The Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy goal is, roughly, to defuse the traumatic memories, leaving the memories but taking away much of the emotional pain associated with the memories.  For more about the technical aspects of this therapy, please see the following website: http://www.emdrnetwork.org/.  See especially the clients’ pages for descriptions of the therapy from the clients’ perspectives. 

The first time I experienced EMDR I had been traumatized by an incompetent therapist.  She had slapped me because I could not stop crying.  I did not return to her, and I thought I was able to forget the incident, but months later I found myself needing help processing it.  A new therapist used the EMDR technique with me, and afterward I could remember being slapped, but the emotional content of the experience had lost its potency.  I could remember, but I wasn’t upset by the memory.

The second time I experienced EMDR, I was treated by a person who should not have been treating me.  If you read the protocol, the steps of preparation listed on the website, you will see that the preparation for treating a person who suffered one traumatic incident can be vastly different from the preparation needed in treating a person who has C-PTSD. 

The therapist who used EMDR with me the second time evidently had not read the information on preparation.  There was little to no preparation, and when she put the apparatus on me, she turned up the dial to maximum potency and left me for what seemed like a half hour.  When she removed the apparatus, my mind was in a fog and I felt lucky to be able to find my way home.  Shortly after arriving home, I suffered a horrible reaction!  My mind was caught in a time warp, and I was back in my kitchen being forced by my husband to engage in sex; at least one of my children was present in the house and could hear me cry.  When I had recovered sufficiently from this reaction, I called my therapist and asked for her help, but she said she didn’t know what to do for me.  That was a Monday. By the next Monday, I had a new therapist, the one I am seeing now. 

My present therapist and I have been working for about 2 ½ years now to get ready for EMDR.  We are approaching this door very slowly, and I anticipate that we may open it with extreme caution, inch by inch, maybe even centimeter by centimeter. 

So this coming Monday, November 12th, I will begin opening the door to EMDR, which possibly will be the last phase of my treatment for C-PTSD.  I say possibly because in my experience, I can never be certain as to the course my treatment may take.  I suspect, however, that while I am undergoing EMDR treatment, I will also be working still at my Ego State Therapy.  The two therapeutic modes are intertwined.  I have come a long way in working with my ego states and getting them to the point where the parts work together for the good of all, but as the collection of personality parts that I call “myself” or “I” opens the door to EMDR and steps across the threshold of this new experience, I anticipate that more work will need to be done to insure that the ego states involved can continue to work together in relative harmony.  I may be wrong about this!  On the other hand, I may be right on the money.  I don’t know, for I have not yet even put my hand on the door knob. 

My therapist and I have a lot to talk about regarding the EMDR facet of my therapy.  I will do my best to let you, my readers, know what happens so that you can follow my process.  EMDR defuses trauma energy.  That I know from my previous experience, for now I can remember the experience of being slapped by a therapist and also remember what happened in my kitchen when I was married, but the two experiences do not carry the emotional load that they once had.  Because I know the therapy is effective, I am willing to give it another try, this time with a therapist whom I trust to do her absolute best in making the experience effective and without “side effects.”  If side effects do occur, however, I plan to hang in there and continue with EMDR because I know my therapist is experienced and competent enough to know how to give me the support I need. 

So look for future articles on my blog describing my journey through EMDR.  Again, an ancient Gaelic blessing—

May Your Journey Be Successful ,
May The Wind Always Be At Your Back,
May The Sun Shine Warm Upon Your Face,
May The Rains Fall Soft Upon Your Fields,
And May The Roads Always Lead You Home.

We are all journeying home, home being that place inside us where we are the authentic people we were born to be! 

Closing the Door Too Long Open

One reason it’s taken me so long to write a new post for this blog is that I’ve been busy closing a door that has been opened way too long, the door to my marriage of twenty years.  “But," you might ask, “that door should have closed for good in 1983, the year the divorce was finalized—why are you just now getting around to closing it?”  All I can say in reply to that question is that sometimes, especially if a person has C-PTSD, doors might stand open for a long, long time before they are ready to close.  When the time is right, the doors can be closed, one by one.  But doors cannot be closed until the “closer” is ready to do the closing. 

Believe me, I have wondered during the past twenty-nine years why I could not close that door.  After all, I separated from my husband in 1981 after reporting him for sexually abusing our daughter.  Why wasn’t attending his hearing and seeing him convicted for the felony enough to get that door closed?  I don’t really know.  Logically, one would think that seeing him convicted and then possessing a copy of his conviction papers would be all I needed to get unstuck and get moving forward with my own life without him.  But as you may already know, especially if you have C-PTSD, tossing a twenty-year marriage onto the midden heap, especially if child abuse and spousal abuse have been factored into the equation, is not a simple act.  Sometimes before that particular door can be closed, a lot of other doors must be closed.  That seems to be the way the healing process works, at least for me that’s the way it works. 

That day in August when I went to court to finalize my divorce, I was forty-four years old; now I am seventy-three years old and am finally closing that door.  What happened to all the years in between?  Did I spend those years steeped in bitterness and anger?  Did I try to lose myself and stop the pain by seeking out another partner and hoping to “do it right this time”?  

First of all, for those of you who have never had to clean up the emotional mess left by an abuser, I had no time to wallow in anger and bitterness, and I had absolutely no desire to risk going through the same experience again in another relationship.  I had a badly damaged daughter to finish raising, and I still had the prospect of my own life to deal with.  Once my daughter was on her own, then, what kind of a life did I want?  There was still time for me to start anew.  My daughter was thirteen when I reported her father in 1981, and I figured that she and I would be together for at least five more years.  Probably by 1986, I reasoned, she would be on her own, and I could start a new life on my own.  In the meantime, I had a lot to do. 

At the top of my list was repairing the relationship with my daughter.  I wasn’t sure how to do that, but I was determined to try.  Since my former husband was required to pay for our daughter’s therapy and also for mine, she and I saw therapists regularly.  That helped.  Time, patience on my part, a desire to develop a loving and healthy relationship, and a lot of hard work all went into the mix.  When my daughter “graduated” from living at home with me, I helped her learn how to pay her bills and how to manage all the other responsibilities of a one-person household.  I helped her for a year, and then I knew it was time to tackle the next item on my list, preparing for my own future.

Because I’d had a position as a teacher’s aide in the learning center at the local community college, I knew the direction I wanted my own life to take—I needed to go to graduate school, get a graduate degree, and then find a teaching position in a community college.  I loved my part-time work helping adults earn their GEDs and high school certificates, and I knew that only if I had a graduate degree could I get a position with stability and benefits.  So that’s exactly what I did!  I actually earned two graduate degrees, one in adult education and one in composition and rhetoric—just the right degrees I needed to teach remedial writing in a community college.  I loved my work and did it for about thirteen years.  Then I retired. 

About three years ago, shortly after I had turned seventy, my old PTSD symptoms became especially burdensome.  I found a therapist who specialized in trauma work, but our client-therapist relationship did not work well.  Then I did some careful research and was referred to my present therapist.  Our client-therapist relationship has worked well, and I am healing.  I can see daylight, now, and I think that within a year I will be finished with active, intense therapy.  I’ll be putting pieces together until I die, but I can do that. 

Recently, in the process of closing the door on my marriage, I found myself asking questions such as,  “How could he have done that to his own daughter?”  “How could he have called his own little boy a ‘stupid sh . .thead?”  How could he have cheated on me?”  How, How, How??  Well, as a friend pointed out, my former husband saw life through a different lens than the one I use for seeing life. When I was married to him, he saw the glass as “half empty”; I saw--and still see-- the glass as “half full.”  He regarded people with suspicion, wondered how they were going to “shaft” him, and was prepared when they did; I regarded most people as being well-intended, and when they “shafted” me, I was surprised—but I always recovered my perspective.  He was stuck in negativity, and I more often than not was positive about life.  My friend is right—my ex and I saw life through vastly different lenses.  Somehow, that concept helps me close the door the final few inches.  I may even lock the door!  Now, there’s a thought.  I may just do that, for I have that power.

The last three decades of my life, then, have been good, maybe even GREAT!  Once free from the negativity and the abuse of my marriage, I shaped my life into a life that I really wanted.  Taking statistics into consideration, I probably don’t have more than ten more years to live—at the most.  But those ten years will be good years because I can make them good.  I’m free from the painful environment of my childhood, free from the negativity and abuses dished out by my former spouse, free from the burden of working every day to keep a roof over my head, and I am freeing myself from the crippling symptoms of PTSD.  I am well on my way to climbing to the highest rung of Abraham Maslov’s ladder, the rung he called “self-actualization.”  Sounds good to me!  Maybe even fun!  Want to come along?  Work hard in therapy and heal your Complex PTSD!   The reward is worth it!  I know. . . 

Here, again, is the Scottish fisherman’s prayer to help you on your way--

Big Sea, Little Boat
Dear God, be good to me;
The sea is so wide,
And my boat is so small.
(Fisherman's prayer)

Of Folk Songs, Psychic Change, and Healing Complex PTSD

Blowin’ In the Wind . . . 

If you fall into the age group that society labels “senior,” you probably remember one of the songs that made Bob Dylan famous—“Blowin’ in the Wind.”  “The answers, my friend, are blowin’ in the wind” . . .  or something like that.  It’s autumn, now, and the winds are blowin.’  I can sense changes in the air, not just the seasonal changes but changes taking place within myself.  My intuition, right brain—whatever you want to call that part of ourselves where we sense things that cannot readily be put into words or conceptualized neatly—is signaling me more strongly than ever that this healing process is coming to some point of fruition, that changes are manifesting themselves.  I seem to be becoming not a “different person” but the person I would have become had I not been sidetracked by so many obstacles that required adaptation.  In the process of adapting, I became somebody else, somebody I didn’t really want to be but somebody I HAD to be in order to survive.

First, what signs have I noticed recently that tell me I’m changing?  The signs are subtle, but here they are:  1.  I feel more like connecting with other people now than I ever have in my adult life, and I feel more like wanting people to connect with me;  2.  I feel more confident than ever that what I have to offer other people is valuable because I am valuable and I am capable of offering something valuable to others;  3.  I feel less afraid of other people than I was two years ago—or ever--and less vulnerable;  4.  I understand now that my powers of intuition are well developed and may often serve me better than my intellect.  Also, I know that I can develop my intuitive powers to serve me in ways that I don’t even understand right now—the potential for that growth exists.  These four signs, then, are the signs I recognize as indicators of change within myself at this moment.

Can I identify the source of these changes?  My sense is that the source is the Universe—God, if you prefer to think in this term.  I believe that within each of us is the drive to be who we really are, our authentic selves.  We are born with this drive.  All nature, in fact, has this drive.  But along the way we encounter, as I’ve said, “obstacles” that force us to make adaptations in order to survive.  In the process of adapting, I relinquished some of my authenticity and left my true path.  Malvina Reynolds, a little before Dylan’s time, put it this way:

“God Bless the Grass”

God bless the grass that grows through the crack. 
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back. 
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do, 
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru, 
And God bless the grass.
God bless the truth that fights toward the sun,
They roll the lies over it and think that it is done
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air, 
And after a while it is growing everywhere,
And God bless the grass.
God bless the grass that breaks through cement,
It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent,
But after a while it lifts up its head, 
For the grass is living and the stone is dead.
And God bless the grass.
God bless the grass that's gentle and low
Its roots they are deep and its will is to grow.
And God bless the truth, the friend of the poor,
And the wild grass growing at the poor man's door, 
And God bless the grass

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/p/pete_seeger/#share

Now, each listener can put a different spin on Malvina Reynolds’ lyrics, just as each reader can put his or her own spin on the text that he or she reads.  Malvina’s song speaks to me of hope and possibility for those of us who need to undo old adaptations to find the selves we were originally meant to be.  The grass is, indeed, living, and the Truth of which the song speaks is what I call authenticity. 

How do we find this authenticity?  How can we crack the concrete and allow the air and sunshine to nourish the roots of our grass so it can thrive?  My answer:  By being open to the love emanating from the Universe.  And how can we do this?  How can we be open, and how can we feel this love?  The answers to those questions can, I believe, be found only in our individual hearts and souls, our intuition, maybe—whatever we call the part of us that contains the wisdom of the Universe that is so hard to put into words.  We each are capable of knowing and listening. We know the answers, but we must be quiet before we can hear them. 

Some people learn to meditate and to tune out all the distracting noises and chatter in their minds so they can listen to the voices of their heart and soul.  For other people, attending a religious service helps them tune into their heart and soul voices.  And some people find that watching television puts them into a light trance state and enables them to listen. There are as many ways to access the quiet inner voices as there are human beings, probably, but mental stillness is required.  And for people who live in our Western society, being mentally quiet isn’t easy!  But it’s necessary. 

How do I, personally, go about listening?  I’m not sure, but I think I’ve always been aware of the quiet voices.  When I was a child, I discovered that during church services I became aware of the quiet, gentle voices speaking from my heart and my soul.  The ancient liturgical service in the quaint little Episcopal church I attended during the 1940s and 1950s never deviated from its basic structure and gave me a sense of stability that did not exist in my other world, the world of my home.  I felt safe as the service moved from the Invitatory, the psalm or prayer that invited people to worship, and proceeded to the dismissal, the Nunc Dimittis.  And when I felt safe, my mind grew still, and I was able to feel the Love of the Universe and hear the quiet voice that spoke to me.  Now, I can quiet my mind and listen without being in a religious setting and even without deliberately meditating.  Maybe that ability is a perk of old age.  God knows, those of us over age sixty-five need all the perks we can get! 

But where, you might ask, does psychotherapy enter into the picture as a force for change?  This may be the most difficult question of all for me to answer.  Why?  Because therapy is different for each person.  In my case, however, the relationships I’ve had with the two therapists who have best facilitated my growth, my change, have been fundamental to my progress.  Both therapists have been non-directive.  They have allowed me to follow my own process, in other words.  They have, however, been present to me and have cared enough to support my own natural psychic process.  They have had enough faith in me, in the process, and in themselves to override their training, in some instances, so they could allow me to do what I have needed to do.  Without the presence of these two people in my life, I would have changed, alright, but I would not have changed as quickly.  Considering my present age of seventy-three, I need to change quickly if I am to spend a few years free from the shackles of C-PTSD!  And I am doing that.  Thanks to the Universe, my therapists, and my own native capacity for change and the wisdom to find my own direction, I know I’m getting there! 

For all of you who, as I do, still struggle, remember Malvina’s Truth—

God bless the grass that breaks through cement,
It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent,
But after a while it lifts up its head, 
For the grass is living and the stone is dead.

You are ALIVE!  and the stone is dead! 

       

“May I Have This Dance?” (A post about setbacks during the healing process.)

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

    

I'm Healing--But How Do I Know?

Ever experienced the sudden unblocking of your sinuses and nasal passages?  One minute, it feels impossible to take a breath and then suddenly the head clears and breathing is so easy, amazingly easy.  What a relief! 

Well, yesterday I had that same sense of relief, but my relief was totally unrelated to my sinuses or my breathing.  Rather, my relief was related to suddenly becoming aware that after all my hard work in therapy, I am healing.  And how do I know that?

In previous posts, I have mentioned that my PTSD symptoms--flashbacks, space-outs, numbing, and so forth--have faded into the background.  No longer do they bother me during a normal day.  Before I began seeing my present therapist, these symptoms made my life miserable every day, especially if I left my apartment and traveled on public transportation.  Whenever I was around a lot of people, an unavoidable situation in a big city like Portland, the symptoms reared their heads.  Only if I stayed in my quiet apartment could I avoid them.  Sometimes they recurred even in my own apartment, depending on what was happening in my day.

Well, I'm a fighter, and the thought of being stuck inside my apartment, a prisoner of  PTSD symptoms, made me angry, particularly when I considered the fact that the symptoms appeared as a result of traumas inflicted upon me by other people!  I realized that when I limited my life in order to avoid the PTSD symptoms, I was still, in a sense, letting myself be victimized by people from my past, including my own parents and my former husband.

Thus, I have dedicated the past few years to my therapy and to doing everything I can to alleviate my PTSD symptoms.  Realistically, I recognize the impossibility of completely eradicating the symptoms, for PTSD symptoms occur when the brain tries to protect itself.  However, I have managed to reach the point where I don't experience the symptoms unless I am under a lot of psychic stress.  If I manage the stress, I manage the symptoms.  I credit my work in Ego State Therapy for getting me to this state.

Yesterday, however, I experienced another sign that my psyche is healing.  For a long time I have considered visiting a psychic/intuitive to learn how to use my intuition more effectively.  I had not taken this step, though, because the thought of doing so has scared me.  The abreactions, flashbacks, space-outs I have experienced due to trauma damage have scared me, and the thought of venturing into any psychic territory that might be remotely related to my PTSD experiences has caused me to avoid acknowledging my intuitive powers.  This, despite the fact that my intuitive powers have helped me heal!  In fact, they have been the primary factor in my healing.  So why would I not want to explore this part of myself?  Fear of the unknown can be crippling.

Frankly, I'm a pretty average person, or so I've believed.  Society as a whole seems to snicker in disbelief and not respect those who claim to have "powers," and I have bought into this attitude--for myself, at any rate.  Where other people are concerned, I have believed that what they did regarding this sort of thing was their business. Always nagging at me, though, has been the sense that ignoring this part of my being could be "the blue screen of death"--an error that I would regret forever and could never be corrected. 

But yesterday that all changed: A friend suggested that I make an appointment to attend a class given by a local psychic, and I felt no fear.  The purpose of the class is to help me utilize my own intuitive powers to identify my spiritual guide or guardian angel and to get a glimpse of my potential as a human being.  I want to do that!  I really want to do that!  I want to grow beyond the psychic boundaries my PTSD has put in place and develop my psychic and intuitive powers in any way possible.  I want to develop as a human being in ALL ways possible! 

When I realized that the fear had disappeared, suddenly evaporated, I asked this question:  Why, suddenly, does going to a psychic to learn more about myself and to learn more about my intuitive powers seem so natural and nonthreatening?  My answer:  Because that place in my psyche where I was so afraid is now healing!  My hard work and efforts are being rewarded!  I am becoming a whole person, able to face getting in touch with places in my psyche that have hitherto been too scary to even acknowledge. 

This discovery, this evidence of my healing, dear readers, is just now beginning to sink in and become real.  What amazing creatures we humans are!  And the way I see this matter, if I can do it, others can do it!  We each heal in our own way and in our own time, of course, but I'm so glad I have dedicated this part of my life to becoming whole and to undoing the damages inflicted upon me by others.  My fervent hope and prayer for you is that you, too, will have and will take the opportunity to heal and become whole! 

To put all this in the vernacular:  Don't let those bastards from your past continue to keep you down!  As a famous Scotsman named Braveheart once shouted while in the thick of battle:  FREEDOM!!   Go for it!!    And here's an ancient Scottish blessing to help you along the way . . .

Be ye our angel unawares
If after Kirk ye bide a wee,
There's some would like to speak to ye,
If after Kirk ye rise and flee
We' all seem cauld and still to ye.
The one that's in the seat with ye
Is stranger here than ye, maybe.
All here have got their fears and cares,
Add ye your soul unto our prayers,
Be ye our angel unawares.

(Ancient Scottish/Celtic Blessing)

My own rough translation:

Be you our angel unawares. . .

If after church you stay a while,

There are people who would like to speak to you.

If after church you rise and hurry off,

We'll all seem cold and silent in your memory.

The one who is sitting next to you

May be more of a stranger than you.

All here have their own fears and troubles,

So add your soul to our prayers, and

Be you our angel unawares.

(The ancient Celts were believers in hospitality and the value of being kind to strangers.  They survived hard times by sticking together and helping one another.  That's what life is all about--"aboot" as they would have said.  They didn't have iPods, laptops, and other personal communication devices--they had to be present to one another in order to survive!  Present-day society could learn from the ancient Celts.)

Help! My Therapist is on Vacation! How Do I Survive?

If you have been checking this blog for new posts, you know that I haven't posted anything for several weeks.  Why not?  My therapist has been on vacation, and I've been on vacation--as much as one can be on vacation when one is in therapy.  She will return the day after Labor Day, September 4th, and then the neurons and the synapses will activate once again, but for now, it's nice to be taking it a bit easy. 

But I haven't always been able to slow down the process while I wait for my therapist to return from vacation.  In the beginning phase of therapy, slowing down has been hard for me.  Now, though, I'd say I'm getting closer to the end of the middle phase, and it's easier to slow down. 

I've learned a lot about the therapeutic process over the years, for as you know if you have been reading my blog posts on my Wordpress site (http://relievingptsdsymptoms.wordpress.com/), I have had a lot of experience as a client.  So, considering my wealth of experience on "the other side of the couch," do I have any tips for weathering a therapist's vacation or any other break in the therapy routine?  All I can give you is a list of the tactics that help me, and I do that gladly.  Here it is:

• If possible, plan an activity that will fill the time when you normally have your therapy sessions.  This week, for example, I have planned dental appointments for Monday and Thursday during the times I would usually be in my therapist's office.  Now, going to the dentist may not be enjoyable, but getting dental work done is important.  I'll get it over with this week and won't have to schedule appointments for times that may not be so convenient. 
• Get together with friends during the times you would normally see your therapist.  Just have fun spending a time socializing.  Relax and enjoy the other person.  A word of caution:  Your friend is not your therapist.  Enjoy your friend for the person he or she is, and don't use that person as your therapist.
• If you are retired or not employed, get away from home for the entire day on the days you would normally have your appointment.  Go to the zoo or lunch and matinee of some film you really want to see. 
• If possible, spend a day volunteering.  Getting outside yourself really helps de-stress the day sometimes.  Sometimes it's difficult to focus on the external world and on other people when one is in deep psychotherapy, but it's worth a try.  Seeing the world differently can be therapeutic in its own way.  See if the Salvation Army or one of the local food banks needs some extra help for a day.  In these hard times, they may!
• Engage in something physical during the time you would normally spend in your therapist's office.  Do physical activities you truly enjoy, however, and don't regard this time as a chance to beat yourself up with a brutal workout.
• Do something you have wanted to do for a long time but have never had the time to do.  This can be something as inexpensive as taking a city bus to a part of the city you have always wondered about but have never visited.  Or this can be something as lavish as getting a makeover.  It's your life, your decision. 

The six suggestions above have gotten me through the breaks in therapy.  You may think of more.  In the meantime, I hope these ideas help!  Namaste . . .    Jean

The Tale of a House

The word "essay" springs from the French word that means "to try" or "to attempt."  In this essay I am attempting to describe the atmosphere in my home where domestic violence took place.  I have attempted many times to describe the darkness that pervaded our family home, but I never seemed to be successful.  So I decided that perhaps if I wrote about this from the perspective of the house itself, I might be able to capture the atmosphere.  The people to whom I have read this essay have told me that it works for them.  I hope it works for you! 

Old timers in Centralia, Washington, call me the “old Winters house,” for I have sat here on L Street since 1920, the year Mr. Winters had me built for his new bride.  At the time, I was the only house on the street, and through my front windows on the west side I could see open fields all the way to Tower Avenue. 

Through my windows on the south side, I could see the creatures living in the gully—the voles, the raccoons, the beavers and opossums, the skunks--and see clear past the rolling hayfields to the Skookumchuck River.  From my back porch, I could see the fields and the railroad trestle where during the Great Depression the unemployed and the bindle stiffs gathered around their campfires as they paused in their journeys looking for work or simply looking for life.

 And through the windows in my dining room I could look north toward the railroad tracks and beyond to the little corner grocery and watch the children as they gathered after school and swapped secrets and stole puffs from the cigarettes somebody sneaked past the cash register.   Yes, for such an ordinary old two-story white frame farmhouse, I’ve seen a lot of history, a lot of just plain living.

To begin my tale, I was built right about the start of World War I, a time of turmoil and bloodshed all over the world, and especially here in my town, Centralia, Washington.  Just before Mr. Winters finished building me, in fact, Centralia had a massacre right over on Tower Avenue.  Seems some of the businessmen in town didn’t like the IWW men, those union men, so during the Armistice Day parade on November 11th, 1919, they opened fire on the IWW headquarters.  The shots, the screams, and the bloody pool in front of the union headquarters lingered in people's minds and fed their nightmares for decades. The fact that I owed my very existence to loggers and mill workers, some of them caught up in those horrible events, gave me pause to wonder back then if I, too, were destined to witness violence and suffering within my rooms.  I pondered that thought as I moved through my life.

            However, the first forty-some years of my life were peaceful enough, and I began to forget those dark thoughts I had about my origins.  Shortly after the Massacre, Mr. Winters and his wife moved in, and I was glad to have a purpose in life, the job of sheltering and protecting my family.  Mr. Winters worked hard farming the acres around me, and his wife kept herself busy keeping my rooms clean and making pickles, canning applesauce, making jam with the strawberries from their fields, and awaiting the birth of their first and only child.  After he was born, life inside my rooms became a little livelier and a little noisier.  And then one day the boy was grown up and off to college, never to return.  Mrs. Winters took sick in the 1960s, cancer I think it was, and died in 1969.  Mr. Winters never could get over her death and decided in 1973 to sell me and move somewhere where he didn’t have to work so hard and where he could leave the memories behind.  And by that time, I was no longer the only house on the street, and Mr. Winters was feeling the squeeze of population. 

So in 1974 I was sold to a nice couple with two young children, the Kimble family.  Only problem was that they lived someplace called Crete, and they couldn’t move in until they retired.  I was empty for a few months, and then one day in late 1974 something happened that I had hoped would never happen: I became a rental.  And over the next few years I deteriorated something awful.  Bikers rented me and tore up the linoleum on my kitchen floor when they monkey wrenched their bikes.  Not only that, but they burned holes with their cigarettes when they stubbed them out on my counter tops.  And if that were not enough, they built huge fires in my Ashley Airtight in the dining room and sooted up all my nice white walls, the walls Mrs. Winters had worked so hard to keep clean for company. 

And then, after the bikers had been evicted, came little Johnny and his mother and father. Johnny was about six years old, old enough to go to school though young enough to need a good home.  But Johnny’s parents were the drinking sort, and many a night they locked Johnny in the attic and went off downtown to the bars and taverns, leaving Johnny without access to the bathroom or to food and water.  After the adults had slammed the front door on their way out, Johnny would lie down on his urine-stained mattress on the attic floor, and I would hear him cry himself to sleep.  One evening somebody from the neighborhood saw Johnny crying at my front attic window and called the welfare people who came and took him away. Soon his parents moved out, and I was empty again.  I thought surely the next people who moved in would be a nice family.

            Alas, the next people to find shelter in my rooms were a young couple and their four big dogs.  By the time these people moved in, I was a shambles and had sunk to a pitiful state.  Most of the panes in my windows were shattered from having been the targets of beer and wine bottles, my walls and woodwork were coated with soot, my toilet had been torn away from its plumbing and people were urinating and defecating down the hole in the floor—I cried to think of what I had become.  And the dogs—although I never have liked animals in my rooms, I felt sorry for those dogs, for their owners shut them in my front bedroom every morning with no food or water and left them all day long while they went about their business. The animals, frantic to get out, left claw marks all over my window sills and door.  And then one day, early in the morning, the man and woman left and never came back.  When the real estate agent came to look me over before the next person moved in, he found the bodies of four dogs in my front bedroom.  I could hear him retching as he walked back to his car.  Somebody came to clean up the mess, repair the damage, and again I was empty for a few weeks. 

            Then one steamy hot day in August of 1978 a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter came through my front door, and I heard the mother tell her daughter that they were moving into the new house they had bought.  I would be their new home for the rest of their lives.  Oh, I was so happy!  And I was even happier when the woman and an old man began hauling junk away and setting off insecticide bombs to kill the fleas left behind after the dog carcasses were taken away.  After the fleas had been killed, the woman and the girl painted my walls and ceilings with an undercoat to cover the soot and grime, and all my rooms were treated to a fresh coat of white paint.   And then I was deliriously happy the day the woman and her daughter were joined by a man and a boy.  Once again I had a real family to shelter in my rooms, a family that would grow old with me and sleep in my bedrooms, cook and eat in my kitchen, relax in my parlor, entertain guests in my dining room—oh, the joy of once more sheltering a real family!

About a year after my new family moved in, however, I realized I had been hasty in thinking that we might grow old together, for certain of my rooms harbored secrets, not the sort of happy secrets that people share before Christmas and birthdays but sad and fearsome secrets of the type that thrive in darkness and are nurtured by despair in the human heart.  In the little girl’s attic bedroom, a room where the freshly painted walls once had beamed a sunny yellow and the ceiling a brilliant white, these dark secrets drained away all the color and light and left the room bathed in a murky grey. The little girl no longer danced and sang; instead, she cowered in fear on her bedroom floor in the evening, waiting for her father’s footsteps on the stairs.  And to the little girl, even my outside grew dark and menacing, for she told her mother that the sight of me as she walked home from school no longer brought her comfort; instead, she was afraid to open my front door.  Furthermore, when she stood in the hallway and looked up at the stairway going to her room, she saw on the steps triangular disembodied heads, fearsome sights that caused her to awaken screaming in the night.  Her mother listened quietly and with love but did not understand.   

The girl’s brother also did not understand and spent as little time as possible in my rooms, preferring instead the company of his friends or the routine of his work at the grocery store.  One day he went out my front door with suitcases and boxes.  I heard that he was attending a college on the other side of the country, as far away from me and his family as he could be. 

            And then suddenly one spring day during the week before Easter of 1981, as if the drapes on all my windows flung themselves open, secrets cracked open, the darkness lifted, and life in my rooms became transformed.  I do not know exactly what happened, but I do know that the girl’s mother called the police that day. Early the next morning, the father loaded boxes and suitcases into the trunk of his car, and I never saw him again. Later that same day, I heard words such as “abuse,” “felony,” and “hearing” as the mother talked on the phone.  Just two people lived in my rooms, now, the mother and her daughter, and I sensed that something had happened that day to bring about a total change in their lives.

            Yes, just as life for my inhabitants changed, events of that day before Easter in 1981 set in motion my own transformation process. And at some point in this process, the girl’s mother and some workmen walked through all my rooms, strolled around my outside, poked and prodded me and talked about numbers and plumbing and wiring and paint and plaster.  And then what do you think happened?  My roof was fixed, I got new bathroom fixtures, the neighbor put a concrete foundation under me and removed all the rotten wood that was just barely holding me up, and workmen gave me a brand new kitchen with a sliding glass door out to a patio and new countertops and new appliances AND I got all new floors and electric baseboard heaters AND a new Ashley Airtight in the dining room.  Oh, I was ecstatic! 

And one night after all this work was completed, an Episcopal priest friend of the girl’s mother, who was also the girl's Godmother, and a lot of other friends came to see me, and they walked from room to room, all holding candles to light the places where there had been so much darkness and so many secrets and such fear.  They paused for prayer and sang in each room, and when they had finished, they returned to my dining room for a meal and wine.  Oh, it was wonderful to hear the laughter once more! 

The next day, after the little girl came home from school, I heard her say to her mother, “The house is different now.  When I walked down the street today, I felt the house welcoming me home and smiling at me.  And I don’t see those things on the stairs anymore.  They are gone!”  The mother smiled, for she finally understood, and she, too, felt comforted by my rooms and their light. 

Does my tale end here?  No, but the woman and her little girl no longer live in my rooms.  The girl became old enough to have her own apartment, and her mother went away to graduate school.  Before she left town, she sold me to a wonderful family, a mother and father with two little boys.  Since then, I’ve sheltered two other families, and each new family has given me gifts and cared for me and thanked me for keeping them cozy and protected from the elements.  I’m getting old and showing my age, but despite this, the families care for me tenderly and appreciate living where they can see the fog lifting from the meadows in the morning and hear the bullfrogs croak-croaking in the gully at night.  My latest family has even painted my outside a sunny bright yellow with green trim, has given me a new green roof, and has repaired the rail and steps of the porch that runs past my living room. 

No, my days as “the old Winters house” are not over yet.  So long as my siding, my roof, and all my internal workings remain intact, I will be here, sheltering and protecting my inhabitants from the elements.  And I have learned that as the conditions and the fortunes of the people I embrace twist and turn, my job in life is to give them shelter as best I can and wish them well; more than that I cannot do.  For I know now that the violence and suffering into which I was born are as much a part of the human condition as the love, kindness, and tender care that humans have shown me in my later years.  To live is to embrace it all.