Are you talking about me?
Until 2009, I didn’t really get it. Despite all I had lived through, I never considered that I had been “traumatized.” I knew I had been harmed, abused, even. But I never realized that “PTSD” applied to me, much less a diagnosis of severe PTSD with anxiety, depression, and emotional dissociation. I thought those things applied to someone else who’d had it “worse than me.”
But slowly, I started to grasp that the recurrent bouts of anxiety I felt so often were actually “emotional flashbacks.” That some of my health issues came from stress. And that the nightmares and medication for depression and anxiety spoke to deeper wounds than I’d ever understood. I’d written things off as I’d “just” been abused, never understanding how much harm had been done.
It was only slowly that I came to truly appreciate that severity… and how much work there still was to do. There were still so many things that I couldn’t get past and so many issues I revisited again and again. There is that saying that if life presents the same problem over and over, it means you’re not done with it. So my lessons were not finished.
The shifting target
In the past I had always thought that if I just worked as hard and fast as possible, I could quickly fix everything and not bother anyone else with it. Just keep it to myself, fix it, go back to “normal.” Yes, well….
Over time I learned I couldn’t keep the issues to myself. Then I discovered that it might take a “bit longer” to fix them all. Finally I learned that I’d never fix it ALL, that there were wounds that were permanent, and that any future progress would take its own sweet time and form. I had no control over what would happen, other than to show up and do the work.
The funny thing is, though, that the more you learn, the more you discover how much more you don’t know. And that you’ll never fully get there. But you also come to accept that it’s okay. And a big positive for me at that point was that, unlike earlier years, I was not in crisis. My life had become much more grounded, and I had acquired many tools for managing my life.
Also, I had a huge resource- a gift, actually – in my therapist. She was compassionate and had laser-sharp insights. She was well qualified – a PhD, decades of therapy experience, and a specialist in trauma treatment who trained others. She was also a high-level yoga instructor and had extra certifications in additional treatment modalities like EMDR and somatic therapy.
It was her careful guidance that had not only brought me back from the edge, but had gotten me further than I ever thought possible in life. So, even as my expectations for what I could achieve in my healing changed over time — became more realistic and accepting — I also knew there was still so much more I could do.
What IS possible?
The truth is, for all my work, I had only scratched the surface. Underneath all the stability I’d gained were still all the broken pieces I’d not had time to reassemble, much less understand. I sometimes felt like I was running around trying to weave together hundreds of separate threads all at once. It made herding cats look simple.
My therapist had suggested that instead of trying to push away my anger, anxiety, and my wounds, bring them closer. Get to know them. So that triggered many questions.
They ran from the vague, general ones:
- I had trauma…I accepted that diagnosis…well, exactly what IS trauma?
- And PTSD – is that the same thing?
- I had flashbacks – what ARE flashbacks…and why do I have them? And how could I “get rid of them?”
- And I’d spent my life working to heal…exactly what IS healing…how would I know when I “got there?” What would it look like?
To the more specific questions:
- How was he able to control me so long?
- Why hadn’t I known better?
- Why did I stay so long? Or was the question really, “Why couldn’t I LEAVE?”
- And my health…what had a lifetime of such severe trauma done, not just to my mind, but my body? Was that the cause for some of my health issues?
And the ultimate question: Where were those answers? In my brain? Emotions? Body? Books?
Back to high school and the “scientific method”
Whenever I am confronted with a problem and no answer, I go back to my roots…science. The one thing I had learned from my career in science was that given any problem, you can always use the “analytical approach” to seek a solution — that good old “Scientific Method” I’d learned in high school chemistry.
The first step in that method is to notice something and then ask a question. So I thought back over all my years of therapy. All the insights and discoveries. All the issues still needing help. And I asked myself:
What patterns and observations had I discovered over all these years? What stood out…and even more importantly, what was missing?
Sometimes there are things you don’t even realize you don’t know until you stop to think about it. And even if you grasp that, can you then distill all that confusion down into a focused list of questions to dig into?
Frankly, that’s always been my nature and my love – to learn. Knowledge is power. Ask a question. Find facts. Notice how those connect to other things and see the bigger picture. Then ask even better questions.
So, that became my next phase of work with my therapist — my Albedo phase work – take my quest for understanding to the next level. Life had done things to me. To my relationships. Opportunities. To my brain, body, and abilities. I wanted to know more about all of that, and most importantly: What was still possible despite permanent wounds?
Up Next
The next few posts for this Albedo phase will be about some of the topics I researched. That said, I’m not going to write the next posts as dense “scientific-journal-type” research articles. I’m not a PhD psychologist or a psychiatrist. Nor do I want to be. Instead, I will simply share some of the key things I wanted to know more about and what I discovered.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Tags: healing, life, mental-health, PTSD, trauma
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