Healing C-PTSD: Using EMDR to Discover the Roots of My C-PTSD, Part II

Part II:  Discovering the Roots  (For background information, please see my previous post, Part I.) 




As you heal, life becomes more and more beautiful!

 

As I have researched EMDR on the Internet, I have read comments regarding the efficacy of the treatment.  Some folks claim that EMDR is a sham, that it does not do a bit of good in reducing the emotional load of trauma memories.  Some folks claim that EMDR is the only therapy that has helped them.  And some folks claim that it may be of some use in defusing trauma memories but that it is not the “miracle cure” that the EMDR Institute and Francine Shapiro seem to think it is.  My position is that EMDR in combination with Ego State Therapy is helping me to reclaim the self that I was born to be, the self I was before my parents taught me otherwise.  I describe my most recent session here so that you may witness my experience and, if you wish, use what I say to inform your opinion.   

When I began my EMDR session on Monday, April 29th, I had no idea as to what my work during the session would reveal.  I hoped that I would be able to defuse my childhood sexual abuse experience, but I was not sure that would happen.  As I was to discover, however, my work on Monday revealed much more than I had hoped, for during the session I identified the taproots of all my abuse, including the domestic abuse I endured during my twenty-year marriage. 

At the beginning of my treatment on Monday, my therapist suggested that I imagine the living room and the couch of the neighbor woman who had sexually abused me.  We planned to move from the living room into the neighbor’s kitchen, the room in which she had violently sexually abused me, when I felt I could do that.  However, we didn’t get out of the living room, for as she tapped on my knees, the word BOUNDARIES came to my mind.  And with that word came so many other thoughts as we advanced through the session.  By the time we were finished with an hour of EMDR, I understood why I had been abused by the neighbor, by my parents, by my husband, and by others.  I will summarize my understanding below in three words:  

LACK OF BOUNDARIES! 

In recent years, a lot of parents and schools have taught children about “stranger danger” and saying “no” to people who attempt to harm them.  In other words, many of today’s children are learning that they have boundaries and also have a right to protect those boundaries.  In addition, those same children are learning that they are worth protecting.  After all, it's natural to protect something of value from harm. When I was a child, little girls were often not given permission to protect themselves.  In the first place, people did not talk about such topics as sex abuse, rape, and kidnapping.  Thus, often the context for teaching little girls to be assertive in protecting themselves did not exist.  In addition, many little girls were not taught that they were of value and were worth protecting.  In some respects, girls and women were still regarded as second-class citizens in the 1930s and 1940s, the decades of my childhood.  That fact plus the fact that my parents made it clear to me that they had not wanted a girl when I was born—indeed, they had not wanted a child of either gender—led them and me to believe I was not worth protecting.  

In my case, even if people had talked about abuse and sex crimes, I could not have protected myself because most of the time, my parents did not allow me to use the word "no."  My parents espoused a Nazi-like authoritarian philosophy of child rearing, and I was punished if I did not comply with all their demands.  My mother believed that babies and small children had to be taught “who was boss” so they didn’t believe or feel they were important.  To her, breaking a child’s will was an essential element of child raising, and showing love and positive attention led to a child feeling too important, too valuable.  If a child felt important, according to my mother, that child would become spoiled and would become a tyrant in the household.  Thus, I learned that I was not valuable and not important—and not worth protecting from harm.  

If you have read the posts in which I describe my childhood abuse, you read that my mother would put me out to roam the neighborhood after breakfast.  I was the perfect prey for the neighborhood predator, the woman next door.  She was an adult, and I had been taught that adults knew best and could do whatever they wanted to do to me, and I was too afraid of punishment to say no.  My mother didn’t want me in the house, and the neighbor woman invited me into her house and paid attention to me.  So I always accepted her invitation, hoping that she would not put her hands where they didn’t belong.  And when she did, then I froze and couldn’t run out the door.  On my final visit, her abuse was so violent that I did manage to break free and run home.  I sneaked into my house and hid from my mother until I was able to leave my hiding place.  I never did tell her about the abuse because I was certain that she would blame me and punish me. 

I grew from being a child with no sense of value and no boundaries into an adult who had no protective boundaries and no sense of self worth.  If a woman has no sense of self worth, then why would she protect herself?  And because I had been taught that everyone else knew what was best for me and everyone else was right and I was wrong, I fell for the first man who told me that he knew I wanted sex whether I knew it or not.  I married the second man who showed any interest in me.  My twenty-year marriage was a nightmare of sexual abuse and psychological abuse.  The nightmare ended only because I caught my husband doing the same thing to my daughter that he was doing to me.  I knew that my daughter did not deserve the abuse, so I reported my husband to the authorities, saw him prosecuted and sentenced, and got a divorce.  

I have spent the past thirty years trying to make sense of the mess I have called “my life.”  On Monday, April 29^th, during my EMDR treatment, many of the puzzle pieces fell into place. I now can trace all my abuse back to the fact that I had never been taught that I was worth protecting and, therefore, that I had never been taught to protect myself by saying “no” to a potential abuser.  In addition, until I caught my husband in the act of abusing our daughter, I had thought that he, like all other adults in my life, was always right and I was always wrong.  Finding him using our daughter for his own selfish purposes caused me to re-think that belief, but I continued to believe that I was worthless—until Monday’s EMDR session.   

Now I understand that my parents, in addition to my former husband, were wrong.  I am still trying to wrap my mind around that one!  And now I am in the process of re-thinking the entire matter of my value as a human being.  I have always considered other people as being valuable, and now I feel as if I’m in a department store fitting room, trying that concept on my own self, looking into the mirror to see if it fits, trying to decide if it is comfortable.  As with most changes, this new concept may take me a while to adopt, but I’ve taken the first step.  One step at a time—that’s the only way to go.  For me, at least.  One step at a time.  

Somewhere in my brain, I’m processing the material from that recent EMDR session.  Chances are, I’ll be working on it a while.  After all, I’m 74 years old, and for that amount of time, I’ve believed I’m worthless.  It may take a while to forge the new neural pathways that will change my attitude and cause it to be reflected in the way I think about myself.  Thanks to the EMDR treatment, I know now that I feel worthless because I was TAUGHT to feel worthless!  When I came into the world, my brain was new, ripe for learning the lessons of life.  Unfortunately for me, my parents, both public school teachers, taught me the wrong lesson, a tragic lesson.  Now it’s up to me to erase their lesson and teach myself the correct lesson—I have value, and I am worth protecting!  

To conclude, I firmly believe that if I had not had this EMDR session, I would not have had the insights that surfaced on Monday—the insight that my parents failed to give me the tools I needed to protect myself from people intent on taking advantage of and harming children and women.  Now that I understand that it was my parents’ failure to do this and that it was, as people say, about them and not about me, I can go about the work of rebuilding my self-concept.  I am sure that this process will involve more EMDR work.  So—full speed ahead! 

Here are a couple of Scottish proverbs to help you along your path— 

“Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.” 

“Twelve highlanders and a bagpipe make a rebellion.” 

 

(This one may not be relevant to healing C-PTSD, but I thought it was worth throwing in.  You never know when you might need to make a rebellion!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos taken at tulip farm in April of 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Healing C-PTSD: Using EMDR to Discover the Roots of My C-PTSD, Part I




Me, Age 74, standing next to a steam-driven tractor, April of 2013

Part I:  Background

On Monday, April 29th, 2013, I engaged in my second major EMDR treatment, and I'd like to describe it for you so that you can witness this aspect of my healing.  Let me give you a little background first.

I have spent the past three years getting my brain/psyche ready for EMDR--to learn more about the Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, Google the EMDR Institute or any of the reputable sites that come up when you Google EMDR.  Some sites will tell you that EMDR is a way to reprocess trauma damage quickly.  For some trauma victims, that may be the case.  However, for somebody with C-PTSD, I do not believe the "quick processing" claim is true, but I'm not a mental health professional.  I'm just a retired community college instructor who is healing her C-PTSD.  I have childhood traumas and the damages from the sexual and psychological abuse during my twenty-year marriage to reprocess--some 42 years of abuse in all.  Healing all that damage involves more than a "quick fix." In my case, getting ready for the EMDR "fix" has taken three years of commitment and hard work so far.  I sense that I am on the "down slope" now and that the end of my therapy is in sight.  I don't want to discourage my readers, but this present round of therapy is not my first. 

I had my very first experience with therapy in 1980 when I recognized that I needed help and found it.  I didn't know what my problem was then.  I just knew that I kept fragmenting and having auditory hallucinations, and the fragmentation and hallucinations kept me from functioning the way I wanted to function.  My therapist was wonderful!  She used her training, her intuition, and herself to help me, and gradually I was able to put myself back together and the auditory hallucinations faded--all without medication.  Six months after I began therapy, I caught my former husband molesting our daughter, turned him in, and got a divorce.  Therapy at that point helped me get my bearings so I could deal with the aftermath and the legalities  and so I could make the transition to being a single parent.  Although my therapist was not familiar with Complex PTSD and did not treat me specifically for that disorder, thanks in large to our relationship and her training, she saved my life and helped me put myself back together. 

In 1980, when I saw my first therapist, few people were aware of Complex PTSD.  Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman may have been developing the concept of C-PTSD at the time, but the symptoms were usually credited to other mental health disorders.  In the years between 1983, the year my first therapist retired, and April of 2010, the year I began seeing my present therapist, I saw about 14 therapists, none of whom diagnosed me as having Complex PTSD and treated me appropriately.  Some of those therapists were good people and did their best to help me despite not really identifying my disorder; a few of those therapists were so disturbed themselves that they inflicted more damage on me and added to the trauma damage in my brain. 

Through all those years, I did not take medication.  As is sometimes the case, my symptoms calmed down long enough to allow me to earn straight A grades in four years of graduate school and then to have a successful community college teaching career for about thirteen years.  The symptoms were always there, playing in the background like elevator music.  They were obvious enough to drive my search for appropriate help, but they did not hinder my functioning until after I stopped working in 2004.  Then, perhaps because at some level of my awareness I gave them permission to emerge, my symptoms became more obvious and began causing me more distress.  In 2009, the flashbacks and instances of dissociating became truly bothersome, and that is when I once again looked for and found a therapist who claimed to understand how to treat my problem but who, as it turned out, was not competent.  After I discovered that, I found my present therapist, a woman who is experienced not only at working with EMDR but also at preparing clients for the EMDR work so that it can be done efficiently and safely.

So in the past three years I not only have had to deal with traumas from my childhood, traumas from my married years, but also traumas caused by inept therapists who may or may not have had malicious intent.  The accumulation of trauma damage, then, is a gigantic mound of horse sh-- that has taken me an even more gigantic amount of energy, perseverance, commitment, intelligence, and plain old stubbornness to shovel off the barn floor, so to speak. What has motivated me to hang in there and do the job?  Have you ever heard of anger??  At some point in the early 1980s, all the anger I'd been accumulating through the years of abuse boiled to the surface, and the energy from this anger motivated me to start the process of healing.  I'm a true believer of the saying "The best revenge is a good life," and I started on the path to finding that "good life,"  the word "good" meaning to me "the life that I will find most satisfying." 

Actually, my life has been and is "good" in some respects, but since I began the journey toward healing my C-PTSD, my life has gotten better.  And I believe it will steadily become even better as I continue healing.  But back to my EMDR session yesterday, April 29th.  How did this session contribute to my healing?  Answer below:

During my EMDR session on Monday, April 29th, I discovered the roots of my C-PTSD and could understand how my C-PTSD developed.  I believe that what I discovered about myself probably lies at the roots of C-PTSD for many people--perhaps even for you, my reader, if you suffer from C-PTSD.

I will continue this essay in my next post and will reveal what I discovered regarding the roots of my own C-PTSD.  Right now, though, I need to gather and organize my thoughts.  Below are photos I took at the tulip festival near Woodburn, Oregon, last Saturday.  The tree is a pink dogwood tree.   Enjoy!

A Quick Comment on "complex PTSD and constant anxiety"

Today somebody found my blog by typing "complex PTSD and constant anxiety" into Google.  One assumption I can make is that the person wanted to know if the two go together, the anxiety and the C-PTSD.  From my own experience, I will comment.

Yes, in my experience, the two go hand in hand.  The chronic anxiety has been with me since I was a child.  I know that because I remember when I was about five years old, I would try each morning to jump out of bed before whatever was fluttering around in my stomach woke up.  You see, I thought I had butterflies actually flying around inside me because I had heard somebody say they had butterflies in their stomach.  So I figured that if I jumped out of bed before the butterflies woke up, they somehow would not wake up in time to begin their fluttering in my stomach.  But I never seemed to jump out of bed soon enough to beat the butterflies. 

That feeling of butterflies in my stomach has been pretty constant all my life, constant to the point where I never think about it except at the rare times when the fluttering stops.  I've never intentionally taken an anti-anxiety medication.  Once, however, a doctor prescribed Ativan for the allergic reaction following a yellow-jacket sting.  I wondered, after I had taken that medication for a while, why I felt so relaxed.  No butterflies!  Then I looked the medication up in the Merck Manual and found that it was an anti-anxiety medication and was addictive.  I tried to stop it cold turkey, but each time I stopped, the swelling returned.  So I eased off it.  Back came the butterflies.  Better the butterflies than an addiction, I reasoned. 

Until I was diagnosed with C-PTSD, I did not know that I had an anxiety condition.  Now I know, but I don't really suffer with it.  I'm so used to it, probably, that I don't think about it.  So to respond to the searcher:  Yes, chances are good that if you have C-PTSD, you also have a problem with chronic anxiety.  Learning how to deal with stress may help.  Singing and working on my icon painting help me find some relief from the anxiety and stress.  If it really bothers you, it might help to ask your doctor or therapist about it.  Peace be with you . . .  

 

Unfinished Icon--lots of work to do on it yet!

EMDR Treatment on Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013.  Yesterday my therapist and I worked together with EMDR for almost an hour.  She is very careful, and I appreciate her willingness to go slowly.  After the horrible abreaction I had with my previous therapist, I am not about to rush the process!  (See other essays under the topic heading "Therapy (EMDR)." 

My target for this round of EMDR is the memory of the violent sexual abuse inflicted upon me by the neighbor woman when I was four years old.  The main event took place in the neighbor's kitchen, and after that event, I never returned to the neighbor's house.  What my therapist and I are doing is gradually leading up to the target event by dealing with my memories of the grooming previous to the event.  So I visualized as best I could yesterday the living room of the woman's home and tried to remember what I could of my feelings surrounding the grooming. 

Since this happened seventy years ago, I couldn't really remember what the living room looked like or what the woman looked like.  All I could remember is how I felt and the sense that the living room was dimly lit and the woman had white/gray hair that, to my childish mind, looked like the hair of Medusa--I'd heard the story of how Perseus slew the Gorgon, Medusa, and the vision of Medusa's head with writhing snakes coming from it stayed stuck in my head.  So what I remembered of the woman is that she had hair like Medusa, complete with writhing snakes.

Now, why would any child want to visit a neighbor who had hair that looked like Medusa?  I was just four years old, and the woman always seemed glad to see me.  She sat on the couch with me and paid attention to me--attention that I did not get at home.  My mother usually put me out after breakfast if it wasn't raining, and I roamed the neighborhood for lack of anything else to do.  I knocked on doors and visited any neighbor who would let me in for a while.  The last neighbor I visited was always the woman next door. 

Each time I knocked on the woman's door, I hoped that she would not put her hands where she wasn't supposed to put them.  In my child mind, I knew that what she was doing was "bad" and that I was a "bad" girl for letting her do that.  I wanted to run out of her house each time she did it, but I was too scared to run.  I froze, instead. 

All my life, I've blamed myself and have judged myself as "bad" for returning to visit that neighbor woman time after time and for not running away from her when she molested me.  Yesterday, though, during my EMDR session, the thought that came to my mind was the thought or memory of being too scared to run, of freezing.  When I thought about that yesterday, I realized that I was just a normal little girl, not a bad little girl.  And I also remembered the hope, the thought that "maybe this time she won't do that," meaning that I hoped she wouldn't touch me where she should not have touched me.  Because I hoped she would not touch me, that this time would be different from the other times, I accepted her invitation to enter her home.   Then, when she did touch me where she should not have touched me, I was too scared of her to move or to run out the door. I froze. When I realized those two things yesterday, I felt relieved, like a falsely accused person on trial for some horrible crime must feel when he or she is declared "innocent on all counts."

The above, then, is the most important result from yesterday's EMDR session.  Now, a day later, I can tell that my brain is processing all this, still.  My session yesterday was 90 minutes long, and I had about 30 minutes to gather myself before heading into the real world and catching my bus for home. It took me a while to recover, but I was fine when I left my therapist's office.  Since my session, I know my brain has been busy processing, and that is normal. 

Since my session on Monday, I've noticed a few changes that may be related to the treatment--1.  I was very tired Monday night.  I've read on various web sites that this is normal.  It stands to reason that when the brain is working so hard to process the experience, it uses a lot of energy, and being tired is a natural result.  2.  I had a higher-than-usual craving for sweets, glucose.  Since the brain uses a lot of glucose, anyway, it seems normal that when the brain is working extra hard, it would need extra glucose.  I'll try to figure out how to satisfy this need without pigging out on sweets, however.  3.  There are short periods of time when I don't seem to have many thoughts floating around in my head.  This is unusual for me, but I chalk it up to my brain being busy with changes.  Sort of like a computer freezing when too many activities are taking too much memory.  4.  Although I can't be specific, I feel a tiny general feeling of increased sense of well-being.  Maybe this is because I believe that EMDR works.  Who knows?  We'll see how this goes as time passes.

Since I have C-PTSD, I foresee a long time span for EMDR treatments, but maybe I'm wrong.  I've had a lot of surprises in my life, so I'm not predicting anything.  If I were working with EMDR for a one-time event and had non-complex PTSD, I would expect to improve dramatically in a few months.  Since my trauma history has spread over more than half my lifetime, I don't expect a quick cure!  However, the Ego State Therapy work I have done in the past three years has paved the way and has brought improvement, especially in symptom reduction, so I'll just keep on truckin' with the EMDR and see what happens.  Right now, I'd say that I'm on the best path possible as I work toward increased healing.

In conclusion, please consider the following words of Scotland's Robert Burns:

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.

For those of us who have been touched by "man's inhumanity to man,"  there is hope for healing.  With all the present knowledge of brain science and new therapeutic techniques to help those of us who suffer from C-PTSD, if you suffer from this disorder and its life-sapping symptoms, you owe it to yourself to get the best available help possible!  You can heal C-PTSD!



 

An Update on My EMDR Treatments

Last Monday, April 8th, my therapist and I began working in earnest with EMDR.  She is an expert, and I am happy at this point to let her direct this part of the work.  I don't want a bad reaction anymore than she wants me to have one!  So she is being very careful in the pacing of the sessions.  This means that we are going slowly, and that's okay with me!  If you have read my posts, you know that my previous therapist did not follow the protocol, and I had the reaction from hell to one session with her. 

My therapist and I agreed to tackle the violent sexual abuse I experienced when I was four years old and was violated by the neighbor woman.  The event took place in the neighbor's kitchen, and during our EMDR session, I imagined I was in the neighbor's living room with the kitchen door closed.  Going up the steps to the porch and then into the living room in my memory and imagination was as far as I wanted to go on Monday.  Maybe in a month I'll actually get to the kitchen and the event itself, but it may take longer or it may not take that long.  It will take as long as it takes, in other words.  When I left my therapist on Monday afternoon, my anxiety/fear level was still around 6 on a 10-point scale, so I have work to do yet in desensitizing myself regarding just the experience of entering the neighbor's house and being in the living room.  The EMDR process may be slow, but I know from past experience that it is effective.

Tomorrow is another Monday, and I will probably have another EMDR session.  If I'm feeling really anxious, I may not have the EMDR session.  I won't know until the time comes what I will do.  That's okay.  It's best to be careful!  When I consider this process, I'm amazed that it's possible for me to defuse the emotional charge of an event that took place about seventy years ago.  But, then, as scientists learn more and more about the brain, we are just beginning to recognize its potential for healing itself.  I don't plan to ever take my brain for granted!

 

 

For more information on the incident of abuse that is the target of these EMDR treatments, please read "The Day I Stopped Dancing," posted on 4-28-12.  You may also find "My Own Comments on 'The Day I Stopped Dancing'" to be useful.  Both essays are found under the topic heading titled Sexual Abuse.  Warning:  If you have been sexually abused violently as a child, you should not read these essays.

How can I afford to heal my Complex PTSD? I don't have the money for therapy.

Today I looked at the search terms that have led readers to my blog recently, and the newest term on the list was "financial aid for healing complex ptsd."  This term has appeared several times in the past, and I have not done a good job of addressing it in any post because finances can be an overwhelming issue. 

As I've mentioned, I'm lucky because I'm old and on Medicare, and now Medicare pays about 55% for outpatient therapy.  My backup insurance pays the rest. In the past, Medicare paid partial coverage for treatment if a person was hospitalized but paid nothing for outpatient therapy unless it was done by a psychiatrist.  Since the Iraq war, however,  research on PTSD and its symptoms and the return of people from the battlefield who suffer from PTSD have come to the attention of the public, and interested groups have put enough pressure on our government to include Medicare coverage for outpatient treatment by various types of qualified mental health professionals.  As far as I know, this is where the matter stands at present. 

The problem, as you may be aware, is that people who do not qualify for Medicare are often not adequately covered by their private insurance.  Many insurers, to cut costs, just provide minimal mental health coverage, so even if a person has insurance that provides good coverage for physical ailments, the insurance may not help much in covering the expense of mental health therapy.  Or the insurance may provide coverage that is good but provide it for just a limited number of visits.  As you know from reading my blog posts, Complex PTSD is not, in my experience, a disorder that can be healed in fifteen visits!  A condition like C-PTSD builds over a long period, and it takes a long time to heal.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that if one is creative, sometimes help can be found in places where few people think to look.  For example, if you are a victim of domestic/sexual violence, the person who violated you can be made to provide restitution as part of his or her punishment.  When I reported my husband for child abuse in 1981, for example, the court ordered him, as a condition of his probation, to pay for therapy for my daughter and me.  He, through his behavior, had damaged our lives, and he needed to do whatever was possible to undo the damage.  That was the rationale for making restitution a part of his sentencing.  Paying for our therapy was part of his act of restitution. 

Of course, healing takes time, and paying for our therapy was not sufficient to undo the damage, but we got a start on undoing the damage.  That helped.  Later, when I was working, my health insurance helped me pay for therapy.  My daughter was out of luck, for the most part, because the work she did was not the sort that provided good insurance.  She was largely dependent upon public clinics that had sliding fee scales when she needed help.  As a result, she was not able to access long-term therapy as I was.  Also, she was not as persistent as I was in getting help and in getting a diagnosis that led to long-term help.  Her therapy was sporadic and was not specific to helping her heal PTSD. 

One source of help that is often "lost in the shuffle" is financial help through a victims' fund.  Some cities and states have funds for victims of crimes, and one use of these funds is to pay for therapy.  In order to access the fund, however, a person has to be able to prove that he or she has been victimized.  That normally means that a woman, for example, has had to press charges against her abuser and the abuser has been found guilty of the charges.  If a victim has not pressed charges and is not legally a victim of a crime, then chances are, the person cannot utilize this source of funds to get help.  This is one good reason, for instance, for a woman who has been raped to press charges against the perpetrator. 

In the case of a person who has been sexually abused, the abuser can be sued.  That is a long and extremely painful process for the victim, but if the victim wins the suit, then he or she can use some of the money to pay for therapy.  The newspapers have published many accounts lately of suits brought against the Roman Catholic Church by people who have been sexually abused by clergy.  One purpose for the settlement money is to undo some of the damage to the bodies and souls of the victims.  However, in general, people who have not endured this sort of abuse have absolutely no understanding of the extent to which the victims have been damaged.  Money for therapy helps the victim, but it will never restore the victim to his or her condition before the abuse.  For those who regard the clergy as God's representatives on earth, being abused by a clergy member is often akin to being abused by God, and many victims of this abuse lose all faith in God as a result.  Abuse by a clergy member inflicts deep damage on a person's soul.  But, then, any sexual abuse damages the soul. 

Finally, public agencies may be helpful in providing therapy.  Generally, however, because many such agencies rely on part-time people or interns to provide therapy, a client needs to be able to advocate for himself or herself so that he or she gets the appropriate help.  This means that the person seeking help needs to be knowledgeable about his or her condition.  To get the knowledge necessary, the person needs to be aware of symptoms and needs to perhaps come up with a tentative diagnosis, even.  The person must keep the information in mind as he or she visits the agency or clinic, and if it looks as if the treatment is going in a wrong direction, the person must call the clinician's attention to that possibility.  Nicely, of course.

Complex PTSD can be misidentified and mistaken for other disorders, so if you suspect you suffer from C-PTSD, you  must advocate for yourself and not allow yourself to be treated for some other condition until or unless you have been satisfied that the diagnosis is accurate.  The fact is that some public agencies receive funding for treating some specific conditions, and sometimes clinicians will try to shove people into those diagnoses in order to justify treatment.  That happened to me at one time when I wanted to work in guided imagery.  I was asked to sign a paper stating that I would discontinue abusing substances as a condition of receiving the help with guided imagery.  Since I had never abused substances, I was not about to sign a paper stating that I would discontinue doing something that I had not done in the first place.  As a result, I was not able to participate in the guided imagery.  Better that, however, than risking that my file someday be shared with somebody who would have me tagged as a substance abuser, which I have never been.  The information could have kept me from getting employment or from participating in certain programs.  In this age of technology, you need to be careful when you sign something! 

As you can see, getting help paying for therapy is fraught with pitfalls right now.  If you need help and your insurance is inadequate or you are not insured, just keep chipping away at the logical sources--mental health clinics, courts, victims' funds, and so forth.  Don't give up.  Most importantly, though, educate yourself.  Read all you can find that seems appropriate for your particular history, and talk to people who have been through similar abuse experiences.  Networking can bring about miracles!  Join a support group if there is one in your location.  If you keep working and advocating for yourself, one day you will get what you need.  As the Brits said during WWII, "Keep calm and carry on."  The Allies won the war, and you, too, can come out a winner if you just carry on.  It's taken me almost thirty years to find effective therapy, so don't give up! 

On to Oz: Healing Complex PTSD

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When I was a kid, my favorite film was "The Wizard of Oz."  The part I enjoyed most was at the beginning, when Dorothy found herself in Oz, one of the wicked witches was killed, and suddenly Dorothy, the Munchkins, the yellow brick road, and all of Oz  shifted magically from appearing in shades of gray to blooming in glorious, vibrant color!  And then Dorothy knew she was no longer in Kansas.  She was in a strange, new place which was definitely NOT Kansas--although she was not sure just where or what it was. 

Well, before I began therapy this time and for a while after I first started down that road, I had my share of what I call "Alice in Wonderland" experiences when I experienced derealization and depersonalization, both sensations that are sometimes part of PTSD.  At those times, the world appeared distorted, and I felt invisible.  I also lived in Dorothy's Kansas and experienced my life in shades of gray.  Last Monday, though, after working hard for three long years, I had what I call my "Oz" experience, for suddenly my gray Kansas world bloomed into gorgeous Technicolor Oz. I knew that, like Dorothy, I was no longer in Kansas, so to speak.  Last Monday's experience, unlike my "Alice in Wonderland" experiences, is an experience I'd like to remember, for it's a keeper!  It's where I want to go. 

First, a little background:  I have been in ego state therapy now for three years, trying to get to the point where I can safely experience EMDR.  My therapist is highly competent and has been working with trauma survivors for about thirty years, and I have a lot of confidence in her.  How, might  you ask, can I possibly afford to see this therapist twice a week for three years?  The answer is that I have Medicare, which pays about 55% of the fee, and I also have expensive but excellent coverage through my Washington State Retirees health insurance.  I have no co-pays when I see my therapist.  If I did not have this coverage, I could not afford the therapy.  I count my blessings.

My treatment for Complex PTSD is NOT short-term cognitive behavioral therapy!  I am well socialized, am not addicted to any substances, and have never had a problem holding down a job.  My social skills are good, and I have a strong work ethic.  So, why have I been in therapy for the past three years?  What's my problem?

My PTSD symptoms--flashbacks, numbing, dissociating, suffering bouts of derealization and depersonalization--were making my life so miserable that I had reached the point where I did not want to leave my apartment.  One day, when I had an especially frightening flashback while riding public transportation, I knew I needed to find a therapist who could help me, and that's what I did.  Of course, I could have given in and simply stayed in my apartment except for brief, miserable trips to the grocery store, but I got angry instead.  When I get angry, I take action.

After all, my symptoms were the result of damage done to me by other people.  I knew that!  I decided that I was not going to give in and give up.  I decided I was going to repair the damage rather than give up on life and give in to the bastards who damaged me.  The people who neglected and abused me and caused the trauma damage are either dead or are living their own lives with no apparent thought of remorse for what they did to me.  I wanted to live the last part of my life without Complex PTSD, without the constant reminder of the violence inflicted on me by others.  I wanted to heal my brain and my mind so I could experience life as I was meant to experience life when I was born. 

Thus, I began this therapeutic journey three years ago, in April of 2010.  I'd been in therapy before, but my previous therapists had not been trained specifically in long-term trauma work.  This time I knew the sort of therapist I needed, and after searching long and hard, I found my present therapist.  She and I have had our ups and downs, but neither of us has ever given up on the other.  And now I can say that I feel I'm on the yellow brick road, heading for my goal. 

So back to last Monday:  When I got out of bed that morning, I felt different.  Something was missing.  Later, I realized that the "something" was the fog or cloud that is normally present in my psyche.  On Monday, I felt the way I do when I'm getting fitted for eyeglasses--I looked into various lenses, and then suddenly one lens allowed me to see perfectly!  No distortion, no cloudiness, no fuzziness!  I could see clearly!  That is the way life looked on Monday.  Clear and wonderful.  On the way to my therapy appointment, I walked past a bed of tulips.  Wow!  The intensity of the colors blew me away!  I'd heard people exclaim over tulips, and I'd always thought they were pretty, but on Monday I could see their vibrant yellows, pinks, reds, and lavenders.  I understood, then, why people exclaimed over them. 

Not only could I see, but I could feel!  When I reviewed in my mind my experience at the Good Friday service I had attended a few days earlier, I wept.  The words in my Book of Common Prayer caused me to weep.  The interactions I observed between adults and children touched me on Monday as they never had before. "Is this what it's like to not have Complex PTSD?"  I asked myself that question.  My answer was, "Probably, yes."  I could see and feel to an extent that I had never before, in my memory, at least, experienced.  I thought to myself, "If this is what life is like without the fog of Complex PTSD, then I want it!  I want this life!  I want to live!" 

Monday evening, around 9:30, as I was watching a movie on television, I returned to Kansas.  As I sat there, I became aware of a cloud blanketing my mind, my insides became tense, and the old fuzziness of inner vision settled upon me.  I did not become alarmed, however, and I did not become disappointed or angry.  I just "went with the feeling" and felt grateful for the single day of clarity and feeling. 

Because I had that one day of feeling and seeing clearly and experiencing life without the fog or cloud covering my emotions, I know what it is that I am working toward.  I also know that something is changing in the very structure of my brain, something is shifting.  And what is happening is good!  I'm healing.  So I'll just keep on truckin' and see what the future brings.  I've had a preview of Oz, and that's where I'll aim myself. 

As I said earlier, therapy for Complex PTSD is not short-term.  Certainly not in my case, at any rate.  There is no quick cure, and taking a pill won't make C-PTSD go away.  But C-PTSD can be healed!  That's the good news.  If one works long and hard, it's possible to undo much of the damage and heal sufficiently to make life a lot more livable.  I have succeeded in controlling my symptoms sufficiently to make my life a lot more fun and a lot less stressful.  Now I'm working on controlling the coming and going of that cloud that comes between me and the land of Oz.  I'll get there--I know that!  I'll just keep walking the path, the yellow brick road.  You can get there, too.  Here is a line from Shakespeare that might help:

“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.” 

"The best way to get revenge on the people who damaged you is to work hard in therapy and heal."  I said that.  Don't let the bastards keep you down!  Don't give them that power over you!  Jean Fairgrieve