Tuesday, September 06, 2011
An open letter to someone looking to help a loved one with ptsd
Hi,
Since you did not post anonymously and wanted to get a hold of me I won't publish your comment but will respond to your email. If you want to repost anonymously, you might get some help that way too, so if it comes through again anonymously I'll publish the comment. I never had Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT), and have heard nightmarish stories about it, even in the new and improved version. If it is not having a helpful effect, please reconsider it!
First off, sorry to hear you and your wife are having such a tough time. When I went through the worst of the flashbacks and other stuff I was very difficult to deal with and a real burden. I am fortunate my wife recognized what was going on as similar to what happens to battered women (she had done some work in the domestic violence field) and people who have been abused, but we had no idea when it went down what PTSD or flashbacks were. It was incredibly frightening...I thought I had just gone crazy. That is why I publish the blog, so that if people are hunting around they will know that what is happening is not unique and that there are ways through it. The only way out, unfortunately, is through.
It put me out of work for 1 and 1/2 yrs, and I had to go to inpatient. We basically maxed out credit cards and borrowed from friends and my wife's family. Insurance would not cover anything. I looked into but did not get social security for a disability, we were too busy with the symptoms to be able to go through with that when it actually could have helped. My family of origin was in such denial they did not help and went on a sort of in-the-family PR campaign to discredit me and my wife. I don't talk to them at all any more. That whole things was weird, because the immediate causes of my ptsd were not directly anything to do with family other than raising me so I couldn't recognize psychopaths when I encountered them. We had ok credit but not much income at the time and basically maxed out the 0% introductory offers and juggled them around for a couple of years before paying them off. No fun, but it worked.
If you can go that route, do careful research on the place. I went to Life Healing Center in New Mexico. Some people, like me, have gotten a lot out of it, others, not so much. It did not cure me, but it did give me enough tools to manage the worst of the symptoms and set up a structure of recovery, which slowly happened (with lots of work from me) over the next five years. I have not had a flashback in bout five years, but I know that seems like forever from the other side. With help though, it can and does get better. Without help it will not ever get better, and would have resulted in incapacitation, institutionalization, and death for me if left untreated any longer. It kills lots of people through suicides and addictions, and the stigma prevents the experience from helping others.
About the careful research, look at the comprehensive list of treatment centers. You might contact Life Healing Center and ask where to go or what you can do. They were supportive when we called. The Sidran Institute that is listed at the top of that page serves as a clearinghouse of info and advice on getting help with PTSD. They have a great help desk. I would also check "how to choose a therapist" on the blog. While setting up longer term plans, try to get short term support in place. If Kaiser will pay for therapy, try to get a referral for PTSD. There are lots of positively harmful mental health professionals, I would say the majority of them, so if you get a bad vibe with one try another. It is not you! Other people I know on Kaiser have managed by trial and error to keep trying the therapist they assign and if that one does not work ask for another. Make the first session an interview. You may want to attend with your wife, because if she is now like I was a few years ago, I would pick abusive therapists! Ultimately though it has to be someone she feels she can work with, so you can only support, not do it for her. But she has a right to get appropriate treatment specific to her case, and might need help to do that.
Kaiser may want to do an economy one-size fits all solution, but you have the right to get the help you guys need. Especially be careful with psychiatrists prescribing meds. If you get a sense they are just prescribing this week's pharmaceutical company offering and not listening to you either before during or after you start on meds, clear out fast! I'd say psychiatrists approach closer to 90% incompetent. I really had to hunt to get a good one that would actually listen. My wife helped me find a good one, and the "how to pick a shrink" page is what we learned about how to find one and interview her or him. Meds are an important part of my recovery today though. But if one gets overmedicated, it is just zombifying, and if your wife gets on the wrong meds and the psychiatrist does not listen, it is horrible.
Also, check the laws in your state. In my state, major depression, which I had from the PTSD, qualified for more intensive treatment and the insurance company had to pay for unlimited sessions, not just the usual 24/yr or whatever. The insurance company of course will not tell you this, so check the laws and the fine print of your policy on it. I went twice a week sometimes when things were just starting to get better.
If there is addictive behavior involved, tread very carefully around 12 step programs. They have little to no understanding of trauma issues and even if it works for the addiction, like it did for me (I went to 12-step groups for 16 years), the cure can be worse than the ailment, and charlatans and @$$holes abound. That is not to say don't use it as a resource if it works for halting the addictions, because the addiction, particularly to drugs or alcohol, will prevent any progress in recovering from the ptsd. Just don't drink the kool-aid that says it is a cure-all and if you are not happy joyous and free in 6 months you are doing it wrong. That is positively harmful and very prevalent. Get help with the PTSD elsewhere.
With that said, a number of treatment centers are incorporating trauma work into their inpatient programs. The meadows in Arizona and the Caron Foundation rehabs in PA are two examples. Places that work with trauma primarily often won't take a person with substance abuse issues until they have come through a rehab for that. When I went to Life Healing Center I was already 16 years sober and had to do a bit of convincing to get in without having to go through another drug and alcohol rehab! Without the sobriety, the other work is impossible.
I am forever grateful that my wife and my friends I had made outside of 12 step groups came through and stuck with me. I did get better over time and returned to being a more-or-less fully functioning adult again. It was (and still is) a long slow process, but things do get better. My wife was for me when I was not, when I was hopeless, she supplied the hope, and we came out the other side of it fine after some couples counseling. Don't underestimate the strain on yourself and inequitability of what is happening. It is not fair that you should be stuck cleaning up trauma that you had nothing to do with, and Christian strategies of turning the other cheek and repressing anger will backfire, coming out sideways and destructive. It is a tremendous strain to live with someone going through PTSD, to the point they have a name for it, secondary PTSD. So please, if you are going to support your wife, remember that you need to take care of yourself ultimately too. That can get lost in the cycle of crisis, but it is crucial if you are to be supportive and if the relationship is going to come through in the long run. It can and does happen, even if it seems hopeless now. Having come out the other side, it was an awful expereince, but once we sorted things out, with a lot of emotional work from both of us and short term guidance from a good couples therapist when we got stuck, we are stronger in the relationship than ever, and I owe my recovery in large part to my wife's unstinting support. I'm not advocating martyrdom though, please be clear. I had to work hard at my recovery and do a lot of work in restoring the relationship. If I had not done that work, even when I saw no point in it, nothing would have gotten better between us.
I hope this is of some help. I know PTSD is terrifying and awful, so please hang in there. All the struggles and hardships paid off for us in the long run and I hope they do for you too. I'll probably post this as an open letter on the blog without hooking it up to your comment. Thank you for writing.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
New Look
When I moderate comments, I often go back and review posts and comments for strength and sustenance (especially the comments!). Today I realized that the bright white text on a black background was hard to read for any length of time, so I updated the look and feel. I know a lot of people who come here go on extended readings of the info and your comments, so I made the text a little less bright, and switched from a sans serif font to a serif, Georgia, for the main text. Serifs, the little horizontal guidelines at the tops and bottoms of letters, make it easier to read because the help the eye follow along horizontally instead of emphasizing the vertical. I enlarged the font a notch too. The background is from a stock theme. I like it because it is bokeh, out of focus, so it gives the illusion of depth. I also like that it stays in place while the text scrolls: it gives the illusion that there is a scene behind the writing. And the rainy day seems to fit PTSD bouts with depression, even if the vista is inspirational. The headings are in a felt marker-type font. I wanted a sort of zen brush-stroke effect there.
The last real post is still the one about losing time, which I have been doing a lot of, and my updating the layout just goes to show you how desperately I am avoiding the real work I need to do!
Let me know whether you like the new look if you got distracted enough to come over to this page and have read this far. If you want to get back to reading the blog, here is the guide.
The last real post is still the one about losing time, which I have been doing a lot of, and my updating the layout just goes to show you how desperately I am avoiding the real work I need to do!
Let me know whether you like the new look if you got distracted enough to come over to this page and have read this far. If you want to get back to reading the blog, here is the guide.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
losing time
This started out a comment, but became a post. The time-wasting thing is weird...partly, I've had to learn to give myself some space to waste some time on having fun and stuff like that that I used to think I did not deserve. But the losing time thing was a real problem for me for a long time -- still is in some ways.
I used to be in this weird form of denial about it. I would have dissociative, losing time, flashbacky stuff happen all the time, but as long as I was the only one who witnessed it I could pretend it was not happening, or I was just faking or being "dramatic." Denial runs very deep in my family!
Anyway, eventually, I started losing time so others noticed and I had to make up stories to cover (should sound familiar to anyone who has or had an addiction that is trauma-related), but ultimately, it spilled over, or I finally decided I could trust my partner of many years and what had been my own private nightmare was all of a sudden shared. Instead of leaving me in disgust, she said "oh my this is terrible." She recognized what was going on with me as similar to what another set of trauma survivors (women who have suffered domestic violence) whom she was familiar with go through. This set us off on the slow process of learning almost from scratch what PTSD is. I thought she would leave if she discovered how "bad" and "crazy" I was inside my head, but instead, sharing what was going on, even though it kind of spilled over rather than being a conscious decision on my part, began the process of recovery for me.
My ability to trust others was so damaged by the various traumas I have alluded to in this blog that it was nine years into our relationship before I trusted her with what was going on inside me. I really thought I was to blame for it all, and that I was just crazy or defective, and I had been burned so many times on trust issues I was extremely wary. And I was fortunate to find someone who saw things for what they really were instead of just being freaked out and leaving.
I guess the moral of the story for me is that when I am "losing time" it is a good idea to run it by someone I trust. That is hard for me, because I used to trust people who had not earned it and I got burned all the time.
I used to be in this weird form of denial about it. I would have dissociative, losing time, flashbacky stuff happen all the time, but as long as I was the only one who witnessed it I could pretend it was not happening, or I was just faking or being "dramatic." Denial runs very deep in my family!
Anyway, eventually, I started losing time so others noticed and I had to make up stories to cover (should sound familiar to anyone who has or had an addiction that is trauma-related), but ultimately, it spilled over, or I finally decided I could trust my partner of many years and what had been my own private nightmare was all of a sudden shared. Instead of leaving me in disgust, she said "oh my this is terrible." She recognized what was going on with me as similar to what another set of trauma survivors (women who have suffered domestic violence) whom she was familiar with go through. This set us off on the slow process of learning almost from scratch what PTSD is. I thought she would leave if she discovered how "bad" and "crazy" I was inside my head, but instead, sharing what was going on, even though it kind of spilled over rather than being a conscious decision on my part, began the process of recovery for me.
My ability to trust others was so damaged by the various traumas I have alluded to in this blog that it was nine years into our relationship before I trusted her with what was going on inside me. I really thought I was to blame for it all, and that I was just crazy or defective, and I had been burned so many times on trust issues I was extremely wary. And I was fortunate to find someone who saw things for what they really were instead of just being freaked out and leaving.
I guess the moral of the story for me is that when I am "losing time" it is a good idea to run it by someone I trust. That is hard for me, because I used to trust people who had not earned it and I got burned all the time.
Monday, July 06, 2009
god and stuff
Catherine wrote in a comment here, "Does this mean the steps don't work? Does this mean God does not exist?" I tried to answer briefly but it turned into a post.
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God
I always liked that even if I disagree with the moral of it. I have come to more or less of a truce about spirituality. I have no way of telling whether or not any deity exists other than subjective guessing, which I have seen is often wrong when I do it and when others do it. In fact, the most harmful people in 12 step rooms for me were ones who were convinced they knew and were carrying out "God's will" saying things like "I like to think things happened for a reason" when the reason was that they did it: god as cop out in other words. So I have suspended judgment. If there is one (or more) or not is apparently not my business. My job is to do the best I can with what I have got, and belief in a deity has just not been sustainable for me, though I don't see disbelief as being any more supportable in my own case. In other words, I am not an atheist, I just don't know (which I think is the literal meaning of agnostic, though I am not keen on that label either). I am not one to substitute a faith that god does not exist for a faith that one does. Same goes for faith in science or AA or anything else as the answer to everything too. I don't think the whole world is reducible to the observable, but again, I don't know. I just don't know, and that is fine.
A higher power is a different story, I just don't need to deify it for it to work in my life...it is just the admission that I can't do it all, know it all, be it all, myself. I need others, their perspectives, their help sometimes, their human frailty at others, and mostly their love (that last one is hard to admit and write even now -- trauma has taught me so many times that I must be self-sufficient because I can't trust anyone). Finding a few people I can risk trusting in this regard has changed the everything for me and allowed me to get better even when faith and 12 steps failed me.
I know this is not everyone's path, and I hope I am not going to draw and evangelical types by my stating my lack of belief, but it has worked for me when all else failed and I have some peace of mind, whereas before, for me to believe at all, I would have had to have bought into the idea of a punishing (or very stupid and powerless) god that pretty much wanted me to suffer in order to test me. If so, I failed the test, or maybe I aced it, I don't know, which is the point. If the deity I used to believe in is in fact the case, nothing I can do about it, but I don't have any compelling reason to place my life in the hands of some invisible malevolent-for-my-own-good deity any more. Been there, tried real hard to make it work, results not so good. I have had to find my higher power in people around me, human and imperfect as they (including me) are. That has sometimes worked and sometimes not so much, but it is good enough for me right now.
What does it have to do with PTSD? Well for one thing, many of the tools that self-help have to offer rely on on putting your trust and faith in a deity of some sort, however contrived. Professionals rely on this to some extent too, especially ones who don't have proper training or better tools to offer. Some of the trauma I suffered had to do with spritual abuse of the first order, people invoking a spiritual higher power to gain trust and to then do extremely harmful things that truly f***ed up my life. And it was done as part of my seeking to recover from earlier trauma. So the tools I was supposed to use to get better were turned on me. Talk about having trust issues. Same sort of thing happened, in a related way, with therapists. And the end result was that "very spiritual" people put a big head trip on me, so that I was supposed to (and did for a time) believe that things happened the way they did because of my failures and shortcomings and god's will (constructed in the usual new agey fashion...I never got into church since being raised as a strict Catholic as a child).
This left me in the most forlorn place in my life, worse than the black hole of addiction because there was no addictive pain relief and no reason for any of it that made sense other than that I sucked. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that I was taught would make me "happy joyous and free" made me miserable...I got the feeling of being some kind of alien, the butt of a joke I did not get, plopped down in a world meant for others that worked for them but not for me. That was the effect of spiritual and emotional abuse I now understand, but it led to a feeling of nearly complete abandonment and years of suicidal depression as I labored under the beliefs I had learned in early recovery.
I won't say too much about how I got through it, but after a suicide attempt that could have been successful, when I chose (a few moments away from not being able to come back), to go to the hospital, I made a very willful decision. They held me at the psyche ward until I promised to be good, that was about all, other than some horrible group work and an attempt to torture me physically in the name of an EEG by sticking an electrode on the end of a tube through my palate and into my nose. But while thereI basically made a decision that if I wanted to kill myself that I would have, that I had my chance and failed even at that, and that I just would not try killing myself to relieve pain any more, no matter what I had to do. This was not easy, because for the next nine years I suffered from ptsd without knowing what it was, getting (mis) treated for whatever this week's malady was with last week's pharmaceutical offering. I walked around suicidal for nine years, figuring that that is how I would live out my life. If I felt so bad I thought I would act out on it, I spoke up, not because I wanted to get better -- I had no such illusions by that point, but because I had promised myself not to and yelping for help was the only way I coulds see not acting out on the desire to stop hurting. The one thing I did right was I kept showing up as best I could. The other thing I did was change my friends and gradually, fitfully, and with much guilt and worry, clear out of 12 step rooms. Finding out about ptsd was like a cover being removed from my eyes. Things that made no sense finally did. That is why I write this blog, on the chance that someone else in the same state as I was might find out what the hell is going on in their life and skip some of the forlorn-ness of it all without checking out permanently.
As for the steps, they work for some people, though not nearly as many as 12 steppers claim, and I see value in them as a way to "clear the wreckage of the past" but they alone were not enough for me. I kept going over the same things, working the steps as well as anyone, and things kept getting worse. The reason was that I was taking responsibility for things that were not mine and stuffing anger because the literature said it was a "dubious luxury we can ill afford." One of the things I heard in 12 step rooms was that if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results, that's insanity. I finally had to apply that to how the steps (did not) work in my life after a point. PTSD complicated matters and the steps did not and were not designed to help with it. I needed to do something different, but the only solution 12 steps had to offer was more step work. So my short answer to Catherine's question, "Does this mean the steps don't work?" is that they did not work on PTSD for me. A lot of the stuff was simply not my fault, and any attempt to take responsibilty for it just aggravated the problem. I needed to get good and angry, and I did not and still do not have any need to forgive or forget, much less make amends to these people. My life did not fall apart as dire warnings from the literature and the rooms said it would. In fact, getting angry and placing responsibility where it belonged was a true first step toward my ongoing recovery from PTSD and a return from the brink, or maybe over it, of insanity.
This turned into a way heavier post than I intended, but there it is for what it is worth; it is my experience and your mileage may vary.
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God
I always liked that even if I disagree with the moral of it. I have come to more or less of a truce about spirituality. I have no way of telling whether or not any deity exists other than subjective guessing, which I have seen is often wrong when I do it and when others do it. In fact, the most harmful people in 12 step rooms for me were ones who were convinced they knew and were carrying out "God's will" saying things like "I like to think things happened for a reason" when the reason was that they did it: god as cop out in other words. So I have suspended judgment. If there is one (or more) or not is apparently not my business. My job is to do the best I can with what I have got, and belief in a deity has just not been sustainable for me, though I don't see disbelief as being any more supportable in my own case. In other words, I am not an atheist, I just don't know (which I think is the literal meaning of agnostic, though I am not keen on that label either). I am not one to substitute a faith that god does not exist for a faith that one does. Same goes for faith in science or AA or anything else as the answer to everything too. I don't think the whole world is reducible to the observable, but again, I don't know. I just don't know, and that is fine.
A higher power is a different story, I just don't need to deify it for it to work in my life...it is just the admission that I can't do it all, know it all, be it all, myself. I need others, their perspectives, their help sometimes, their human frailty at others, and mostly their love (that last one is hard to admit and write even now -- trauma has taught me so many times that I must be self-sufficient because I can't trust anyone). Finding a few people I can risk trusting in this regard has changed the everything for me and allowed me to get better even when faith and 12 steps failed me.
I know this is not everyone's path, and I hope I am not going to draw and evangelical types by my stating my lack of belief, but it has worked for me when all else failed and I have some peace of mind, whereas before, for me to believe at all, I would have had to have bought into the idea of a punishing (or very stupid and powerless) god that pretty much wanted me to suffer in order to test me. If so, I failed the test, or maybe I aced it, I don't know, which is the point. If the deity I used to believe in is in fact the case, nothing I can do about it, but I don't have any compelling reason to place my life in the hands of some invisible malevolent-for-my-own-good deity any more. Been there, tried real hard to make it work, results not so good. I have had to find my higher power in people around me, human and imperfect as they (including me) are. That has sometimes worked and sometimes not so much, but it is good enough for me right now.
What does it have to do with PTSD? Well for one thing, many of the tools that self-help have to offer rely on on putting your trust and faith in a deity of some sort, however contrived. Professionals rely on this to some extent too, especially ones who don't have proper training or better tools to offer. Some of the trauma I suffered had to do with spritual abuse of the first order, people invoking a spiritual higher power to gain trust and to then do extremely harmful things that truly f***ed up my life. And it was done as part of my seeking to recover from earlier trauma. So the tools I was supposed to use to get better were turned on me. Talk about having trust issues. Same sort of thing happened, in a related way, with therapists. And the end result was that "very spiritual" people put a big head trip on me, so that I was supposed to (and did for a time) believe that things happened the way they did because of my failures and shortcomings and god's will (constructed in the usual new agey fashion...I never got into church since being raised as a strict Catholic as a child).
This left me in the most forlorn place in my life, worse than the black hole of addiction because there was no addictive pain relief and no reason for any of it that made sense other than that I sucked. Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that I was taught would make me "happy joyous and free" made me miserable...I got the feeling of being some kind of alien, the butt of a joke I did not get, plopped down in a world meant for others that worked for them but not for me. That was the effect of spiritual and emotional abuse I now understand, but it led to a feeling of nearly complete abandonment and years of suicidal depression as I labored under the beliefs I had learned in early recovery.
I won't say too much about how I got through it, but after a suicide attempt that could have been successful, when I chose (a few moments away from not being able to come back), to go to the hospital, I made a very willful decision. They held me at the psyche ward until I promised to be good, that was about all, other than some horrible group work and an attempt to torture me physically in the name of an EEG by sticking an electrode on the end of a tube through my palate and into my nose. But while thereI basically made a decision that if I wanted to kill myself that I would have, that I had my chance and failed even at that, and that I just would not try killing myself to relieve pain any more, no matter what I had to do. This was not easy, because for the next nine years I suffered from ptsd without knowing what it was, getting (mis) treated for whatever this week's malady was with last week's pharmaceutical offering. I walked around suicidal for nine years, figuring that that is how I would live out my life. If I felt so bad I thought I would act out on it, I spoke up, not because I wanted to get better -- I had no such illusions by that point, but because I had promised myself not to and yelping for help was the only way I coulds see not acting out on the desire to stop hurting. The one thing I did right was I kept showing up as best I could. The other thing I did was change my friends and gradually, fitfully, and with much guilt and worry, clear out of 12 step rooms. Finding out about ptsd was like a cover being removed from my eyes. Things that made no sense finally did. That is why I write this blog, on the chance that someone else in the same state as I was might find out what the hell is going on in their life and skip some of the forlorn-ness of it all without checking out permanently.
As for the steps, they work for some people, though not nearly as many as 12 steppers claim, and I see value in them as a way to "clear the wreckage of the past" but they alone were not enough for me. I kept going over the same things, working the steps as well as anyone, and things kept getting worse. The reason was that I was taking responsibility for things that were not mine and stuffing anger because the literature said it was a "dubious luxury we can ill afford." One of the things I heard in 12 step rooms was that if you keep doing the same thing over and expect different results, that's insanity. I finally had to apply that to how the steps (did not) work in my life after a point. PTSD complicated matters and the steps did not and were not designed to help with it. I needed to do something different, but the only solution 12 steps had to offer was more step work. So my short answer to Catherine's question, "Does this mean the steps don't work?" is that they did not work on PTSD for me. A lot of the stuff was simply not my fault, and any attempt to take responsibilty for it just aggravated the problem. I needed to get good and angry, and I did not and still do not have any need to forgive or forget, much less make amends to these people. My life did not fall apart as dire warnings from the literature and the rooms said it would. In fact, getting angry and placing responsibility where it belonged was a true first step toward my ongoing recovery from PTSD and a return from the brink, or maybe over it, of insanity.
This turned into a way heavier post than I intended, but there it is for what it is worth; it is my experience and your mileage may vary.
Friday, March 13, 2009
exploitative folks in 12 step programs and elsewhere
Once again, somebody's comments sparked a post from what started as a simple response. Anon, thanks for your comments on this page and and on the "type A&B" page. In a nutshell, she said thanks for the heads up as she tended to trust 12 step folks blindly and had not realized there were some exploitative types in the rooms.
I really need to tread a fine line...AA and 12 step programs saved my life at one time, but nearly cost it another. I managed to get sober there when I could not under my own steam no matter how hard I tried. I'm forever grateful for that, because it has made the rest of my life possible, painful as parts have been.
That said, the most manipulative, scheming, two faced, fair weather friend type people I have ever met, straight or high, have been in 12 step programs or the addictions recovery field. I had the blind trust anon talks about -- after all, these people had literally saved my life and I knew it! And there are some great, decent, and honest people in AA. There are also used car salesmen (I bought a lemon from a guy who used 12-speak and AA "seniority" to get me to trust him when making a purchase I wished I hadn't), spiritual abusers ("when I f&%*ed you over it was God's will"), therapists ( did anyone ever notice that the word spells "the rapist?" -- just kidding sort of...while several of my therapists were akin to rapists, others I have learned to choose have been remarkably helpful) willing to rip up families to make a few thousand bucks, even to the point of driving the abandoned ones to suicide ("oh she was messed up...good thing he left her when he did!"), and this is before even getting to romantic relationships, where as I said, because of my tendency toward trauma repetition, and never having been around healthy people to know any better, and my blind trust in 12 step folk, I got involved with the sickest most twisted people I have ever met in my life. I'm still trying to sort it out 15-20 years later!
I would never tell anyone to avoid all relationships with recovering people...there are some healthy ones I am sure (plus I'm one!), but tread carefully! Trust slowly and cautiously if at all. Trust is earned and provisional, based on actions not words, and not granted eternally, just for now. Pay attention...don't disregard your common sense and intuition...a major part of my recovery has been to slowly reclaim those things...if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The thing is, I was so needy and vulnerable, even 5-6 years into recovery, that I ignored all this and rather than waiting and going slowly, I dove in and trusted blindly because I did not know how to develop earned trust over time rather than just give it or withhold it arbitrarily. As a result, I got in traumatic relationships again and again (twice in recovery, to be exact) that I am still struggling with much later. They very nearly cost me my life. They did cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost work time when I just could not function because of the results of them. They caused unbearable and completely unnecessary pain and a number of trips to psyche wards and a trauma treatment center. When I have told people the details, they have been amazed that I didn't pick up over this stuff...many just assumed I had. One person I respect a lot, an earth person (i.e., not in 12 step programs) said the last perpetrator was an emotional rapist.
But honestly, I don't know if I could have taken the advice I am giving now, because I was stubborn and thought if I did not get somebody *now* I'd be alone forever. Looking back, I would have been better off alone, but I needed to learn it the hard way I guess. And even today, knowing what I know, I don't know that if I were single and put in the same situation I wouldn't repeat my mistake again. I like to think I have learned better, but I don't know that. I am just glad I am in a healthy non-abusive relationship for a long time and don't have to face that particular weakness in myself.
It is a funny thing...the healthy relationship didn't come with all the drama, risk, and emotional highs -- or lows -- that the sick relationships did, so it took me literally years to figure out that all that drama and ball of hurt I was used to was not an intrinsic part of human relationships! I thought I was missing something and I guess I was. To be honest I missed the rush, just like a drug, but also to be honest, I have learned I certainly don't miss the consequences.
I just have to say, over the few years I have intermittently written this blog, I have been continuously gratified that there are other people who understand. One of the worst parts of my PTSD was thinking I was alone and hopeless and crazy. So thank you to all of you who have commented over the years. You keep me thinking and writing about this stuff, which helps me work stuff through, and I am grateful that something helpful to others has come out of something so insufferable.
I really need to tread a fine line...AA and 12 step programs saved my life at one time, but nearly cost it another. I managed to get sober there when I could not under my own steam no matter how hard I tried. I'm forever grateful for that, because it has made the rest of my life possible, painful as parts have been.
That said, the most manipulative, scheming, two faced, fair weather friend type people I have ever met, straight or high, have been in 12 step programs or the addictions recovery field. I had the blind trust anon talks about -- after all, these people had literally saved my life and I knew it! And there are some great, decent, and honest people in AA. There are also used car salesmen (I bought a lemon from a guy who used 12-speak and AA "seniority" to get me to trust him when making a purchase I wished I hadn't), spiritual abusers ("when I f&%*ed you over it was God's will"), therapists ( did anyone ever notice that the word spells "the rapist?" -- just kidding sort of...while several of my therapists were akin to rapists, others I have learned to choose have been remarkably helpful) willing to rip up families to make a few thousand bucks, even to the point of driving the abandoned ones to suicide ("oh she was messed up...good thing he left her when he did!"), and this is before even getting to romantic relationships, where as I said, because of my tendency toward trauma repetition, and never having been around healthy people to know any better, and my blind trust in 12 step folk, I got involved with the sickest most twisted people I have ever met in my life. I'm still trying to sort it out 15-20 years later!
I would never tell anyone to avoid all relationships with recovering people...there are some healthy ones I am sure (plus I'm one!), but tread carefully! Trust slowly and cautiously if at all. Trust is earned and provisional, based on actions not words, and not granted eternally, just for now. Pay attention...don't disregard your common sense and intuition...a major part of my recovery has been to slowly reclaim those things...if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The thing is, I was so needy and vulnerable, even 5-6 years into recovery, that I ignored all this and rather than waiting and going slowly, I dove in and trusted blindly because I did not know how to develop earned trust over time rather than just give it or withhold it arbitrarily. As a result, I got in traumatic relationships again and again (twice in recovery, to be exact) that I am still struggling with much later. They very nearly cost me my life. They did cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost work time when I just could not function because of the results of them. They caused unbearable and completely unnecessary pain and a number of trips to psyche wards and a trauma treatment center. When I have told people the details, they have been amazed that I didn't pick up over this stuff...many just assumed I had. One person I respect a lot, an earth person (i.e., not in 12 step programs) said the last perpetrator was an emotional rapist.
But honestly, I don't know if I could have taken the advice I am giving now, because I was stubborn and thought if I did not get somebody *now* I'd be alone forever. Looking back, I would have been better off alone, but I needed to learn it the hard way I guess. And even today, knowing what I know, I don't know that if I were single and put in the same situation I wouldn't repeat my mistake again. I like to think I have learned better, but I don't know that. I am just glad I am in a healthy non-abusive relationship for a long time and don't have to face that particular weakness in myself.
It is a funny thing...the healthy relationship didn't come with all the drama, risk, and emotional highs -- or lows -- that the sick relationships did, so it took me literally years to figure out that all that drama and ball of hurt I was used to was not an intrinsic part of human relationships! I thought I was missing something and I guess I was. To be honest I missed the rush, just like a drug, but also to be honest, I have learned I certainly don't miss the consequences.
I just have to say, over the few years I have intermittently written this blog, I have been continuously gratified that there are other people who understand. One of the worst parts of my PTSD was thinking I was alone and hopeless and crazy. So thank you to all of you who have commented over the years. You keep me thinking and writing about this stuff, which helps me work stuff through, and I am grateful that something helpful to others has come out of something so insufferable.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
PTSD and the holidays revisited...
Holidays have always been rough for me. A lot of trauma anniversary (pdf) stuff comes between Thanksgiving and New Years for me. I didn't even realize it but my partner pointed out that I always have a hard time with holidays and depression and PTSD symptoms. This year seems better so far. I am in a place I like. I won't be alone. People who traumatized me are far away and not in contact. So maybe things will be ok this year.
Another set of holidays has started, and I need to be aware of anniversary reactions. Awareness and talking about it to the people around me (I wouldn't recommend this unless they understand PTSD and are supportive) have helped reduce the worst of the reactions, as has staying away from my abusers, and unfortunately in my case, my family of origin, who are all mightily invested in not understanding my PTSD, which several of them find pretty threatening.
Why are holidays tough for people with PTSD? Well for one thing, getting in touch with positive feelings can be really difficult, and during the holidays there is a lot of pressure to do just that...be jolly in other words. For another, some holidays a reminders of anniversaries of traumatic events. Anniverseries are proven triggers for PTSD, and they sure were for me. I finally realized I needed to cut off contact with my family of origin -- a drastic step, not for everyone, BTW -- after calling on Thanksgiving and getting off the phone and having a severe flashback. I would have never put the two together because the content of the flashback was not my family, but my partner noticed that this happened regularly with contact with them and around holidays in particular. The "joke" in our family was "OK, we're going to have a good holiday or else, godammit" which was usually followed by some drunken craziness that turned ugly.
For me, controlling whom I am around, and scaling back expectations of jolliness both help a lot.
There is a bit more on how someone with PTSD can cope with the hiolidays in About.com's PTSD section.
Another set of holidays has started, and I need to be aware of anniversary reactions. Awareness and talking about it to the people around me (I wouldn't recommend this unless they understand PTSD and are supportive) have helped reduce the worst of the reactions, as has staying away from my abusers, and unfortunately in my case, my family of origin, who are all mightily invested in not understanding my PTSD, which several of them find pretty threatening.
Why are holidays tough for people with PTSD? Well for one thing, getting in touch with positive feelings can be really difficult, and during the holidays there is a lot of pressure to do just that...be jolly in other words. For another, some holidays a reminders of anniversaries of traumatic events. Anniverseries are proven triggers for PTSD, and they sure were for me. I finally realized I needed to cut off contact with my family of origin -- a drastic step, not for everyone, BTW -- after calling on Thanksgiving and getting off the phone and having a severe flashback. I would have never put the two together because the content of the flashback was not my family, but my partner noticed that this happened regularly with contact with them and around holidays in particular. The "joke" in our family was "OK, we're going to have a good holiday or else, godammit" which was usually followed by some drunken craziness that turned ugly.
For me, controlling whom I am around, and scaling back expectations of jolliness both help a lot.
There is a bit more on how someone with PTSD can cope with the hiolidays in About.com's PTSD section.
Monday, December 08, 2008
toxic relationships
Well, this started as a response to a bunch of comments but turned int my first post in a while, so thanks to the anonymous poster who made the comments referenced below.
anonymous said:
It is a slippery and seductive slope though. Most traumatized people hold it in til it blows up, which I did, or find constructive ways of dealing with it, which is what I try to do now. But when things blew up, I hurt those around me, the closer and more supportive they were, the more so. I realized this and it was a major incentive to get better so that I would not continue to have the stuff come out sideways and hurt the ones I love and who love me. I can see though, that had I just felt entitled to what I was doing rather than being appalled at it, it would then be but a short drive to perp-dom. So I have understanding, but no tolerance or forgiveness for abusers.
I am grateful for being able to break the cycle in my own life but it has come at great cost. My tendency was to buy into the perpetrator's version of the story and see myself as defective or the source of whatever problems they blamed on me. I promised myself when I was a little kid that I would not do to my kids what was done to me. My latest greatest abuser played into all my fears and insecurities (and ignorance about boundaries!) and after I got totally screwed over, the person convinced me that I was the abusive one (I hesitate to even write this for fear that whoever reads it will side with my abuser too!) by invoking what I had recognized as lies a previous toxic person had accused me of.
The latest, greatest one knew my feelings and insecurities about this because I told her all about them. Rather than realizing "wow, what a sick person, trying to justify her abusive behavior by flinging that stuff at me," I thought "well that's twice in a row...maybe I'm as blind as my parents were to their abusive behavior and just cannot see it." As a result, I decided not to have kids, because I took my childhood promise to myself seriously, and until I could see how it was I was being abusive I would do what it took to make sure I didn't pass it on.
This was my backwards sense of boundaries, where I thought they were to keep me walled off from doing harm from others rather than to protect myself from toxic abusive people. Years later, the person admitted I had not been anything close to abusive and that she made it up to justify her actions, but by then it was too late to start a family and the harm had been done. Because a life of traumatic relationships with everyone from parents to siblings to strangers to lovers, my belief in myself and my own feelings was nil. This is perhaps the greatest thing I have recovered in getting better from PTSD, my trust in myself as a basically good human being. I had to learn what most people learn as children, how to tell what's mine from what's not, and that has made all the difference.
anonymous said:
My story was a string of "moderately traumatic" events that left me feeling constantly on edge, ready for betrayal or chaos at any moment, completely in physical and emotional pain for years.Yes, I know that feeling well, that there is no safe place, the world might give way under foot at any moment. Finding ways of being and places, even imaginary ones, that are safe has been a big part of recovery for me. EMDR, which I have been thinking of writing a post on for a very long time but haven't gotten around to it, was helpful in doing this. I started out with an imaginary safe place, but also learned to trust that loving and supportive network of friends, which has been a challenge, but also tremendously rewarding as far as recovering goes.
anonymous wrote:I think awareness is a crucial first step. All the toxic people who were in my life surely had their own unaddressed trauma issues, I know this for a fact. I think perpetrators of abuse are traumatized people who feel entitled to take out revenge for their trauma on the world around them. Its their way of dealing with it, but it creates more trauma, passing it along to new people. Most traumatized people won't turn into abusers, but I bet 99.9% of perpetrators come from traumatized backgrounds. Its important to reiterate that this is not a fait accompli.
The supportive, loving people I have new relationships with don't deserve to deal with my insecurities from the manipulative, destructive people in my toxic past.
It is a slippery and seductive slope though. Most traumatized people hold it in til it blows up, which I did, or find constructive ways of dealing with it, which is what I try to do now. But when things blew up, I hurt those around me, the closer and more supportive they were, the more so. I realized this and it was a major incentive to get better so that I would not continue to have the stuff come out sideways and hurt the ones I love and who love me. I can see though, that had I just felt entitled to what I was doing rather than being appalled at it, it would then be but a short drive to perp-dom. So I have understanding, but no tolerance or forgiveness for abusers.
I am grateful for being able to break the cycle in my own life but it has come at great cost. My tendency was to buy into the perpetrator's version of the story and see myself as defective or the source of whatever problems they blamed on me. I promised myself when I was a little kid that I would not do to my kids what was done to me. My latest greatest abuser played into all my fears and insecurities (and ignorance about boundaries!) and after I got totally screwed over, the person convinced me that I was the abusive one (I hesitate to even write this for fear that whoever reads it will side with my abuser too!) by invoking what I had recognized as lies a previous toxic person had accused me of.
The latest, greatest one knew my feelings and insecurities about this because I told her all about them. Rather than realizing "wow, what a sick person, trying to justify her abusive behavior by flinging that stuff at me," I thought "well that's twice in a row...maybe I'm as blind as my parents were to their abusive behavior and just cannot see it." As a result, I decided not to have kids, because I took my childhood promise to myself seriously, and until I could see how it was I was being abusive I would do what it took to make sure I didn't pass it on.
This was my backwards sense of boundaries, where I thought they were to keep me walled off from doing harm from others rather than to protect myself from toxic abusive people. Years later, the person admitted I had not been anything close to abusive and that she made it up to justify her actions, but by then it was too late to start a family and the harm had been done. Because a life of traumatic relationships with everyone from parents to siblings to strangers to lovers, my belief in myself and my own feelings was nil. This is perhaps the greatest thing I have recovered in getting better from PTSD, my trust in myself as a basically good human being. I had to learn what most people learn as children, how to tell what's mine from what's not, and that has made all the difference.
Friday, August 03, 2007
a loving and supportive network of friends
In a comment to this post, anonymous wrote:
This is true, sharing with others who have been there, or who have other ways of understanding, is a tremendous help. If you look through the rest of the blog, you will see that my recovery has come a long way. I do have a lot of support but it is not formalized in a "group" right now and that is fine with me. What I do have is a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Groups have served their purpose in my recovery, and I have done them in several different forms and may do more if I see an opportunity to get better by doing so.
But groups have also been fraught experiences for me. I've said enough elsewhere on 12 step approaches, but even in therapeutic groups, the nature of a lot of my trauma and its manifestations is often threatening to other male group members' sense of their own masculinity and they have often gone out of their way to not identify with me, distancing themselves as much as possible. From what I gather this is their issue, not mine, but I'm not there to have them play out their idea of what a man is by being hostile to me or undermining my sense of who I am and what I have been through. Its counterproductive and whatever the opposite of affirming is.
Here is what I do have though, a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Most untraumatized people grow up with the family part and develop the friends part as a matter of course. I had to spend decades to learn how to do it, and it had to be with a new family of my own creation, not my family of origin. I was able to manage this by reaching out to people as people, not as alcoholics, drug addicts, or trauma survivors.. Some had some of these issues mind you, but I reached a point in my life where that no longer needed to be the primary basis for a relationship.
When the PTSD came on hard, I involuntarily had to lean on this network for all it was worth, and these friends and family were there for me and came through for me in ways that my family of origin and my old frineds, both as an active addict and as a person recovering within the frame of the twelve steps, did not. What I like to think is that I had gotten well enough to operate in the world of "earth people" -- normal folks, in other words -- as one of them, instead of identifying as an addict or a victim or a survivor first and foremost. One of the goals of recovery is to reintegrate into society as a useful member, and over the course of many years that is what I have done. I'm just a person among people. Like everyone, I've got my own unique history, and I act in some particular ways...for example, not drinking or drugging. But I am more or less just a regular person, as long as I take care of myself.
So anyway, when doing EMDR, I was having difficulty facing some of the trauma yet it was intruding in my life in the form of flashbacks, seizure-like things, hypervigilance, and a host of other things. We did what is called installing resources, and the resource that I came up with was to think of my firends as a literal net, holding me up and protecting me from falling when I could not do so myself. This resource or whatever has helped me immensely, and my earth-friends have come through for me again and again to the point where I don't have to rely on that net anymore. It is good to know it is there though. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the end of Harry Potter (spoiler alert) where he goes and faces the evil Voldemort alone sort of, but with the sort of mental company of supportive and loving friends and family that carry him through things he did not believe himself capable of. Even when the are not there they are there.
Perhaps that image...a literal net made up of supportive and loving friends and family...is one that will help others get through the trying times of PTSD like it did me. It was not a cure, and it did not make it easier or less painful, but it did enable me to get better and to face some pretty horrific stuff to know I wasn't -- and still am not -- in it alone.
also maybe you just haven't found the right support group yet. There's nothing like sharing with others who have endured similar experiences
This is true, sharing with others who have been there, or who have other ways of understanding, is a tremendous help. If you look through the rest of the blog, you will see that my recovery has come a long way. I do have a lot of support but it is not formalized in a "group" right now and that is fine with me. What I do have is a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Groups have served their purpose in my recovery, and I have done them in several different forms and may do more if I see an opportunity to get better by doing so.
But groups have also been fraught experiences for me. I've said enough elsewhere on 12 step approaches, but even in therapeutic groups, the nature of a lot of my trauma and its manifestations is often threatening to other male group members' sense of their own masculinity and they have often gone out of their way to not identify with me, distancing themselves as much as possible. From what I gather this is their issue, not mine, but I'm not there to have them play out their idea of what a man is by being hostile to me or undermining my sense of who I am and what I have been through. Its counterproductive and whatever the opposite of affirming is.
Here is what I do have though, a loving and supportive network of friends and family of choice. Most untraumatized people grow up with the family part and develop the friends part as a matter of course. I had to spend decades to learn how to do it, and it had to be with a new family of my own creation, not my family of origin. I was able to manage this by reaching out to people as people, not as alcoholics, drug addicts, or trauma survivors.. Some had some of these issues mind you, but I reached a point in my life where that no longer needed to be the primary basis for a relationship.
When the PTSD came on hard, I involuntarily had to lean on this network for all it was worth, and these friends and family were there for me and came through for me in ways that my family of origin and my old frineds, both as an active addict and as a person recovering within the frame of the twelve steps, did not. What I like to think is that I had gotten well enough to operate in the world of "earth people" -- normal folks, in other words -- as one of them, instead of identifying as an addict or a victim or a survivor first and foremost. One of the goals of recovery is to reintegrate into society as a useful member, and over the course of many years that is what I have done. I'm just a person among people. Like everyone, I've got my own unique history, and I act in some particular ways...for example, not drinking or drugging. But I am more or less just a regular person, as long as I take care of myself.
So anyway, when doing EMDR, I was having difficulty facing some of the trauma yet it was intruding in my life in the form of flashbacks, seizure-like things, hypervigilance, and a host of other things. We did what is called installing resources, and the resource that I came up with was to think of my firends as a literal net, holding me up and protecting me from falling when I could not do so myself. This resource or whatever has helped me immensely, and my earth-friends have come through for me again and again to the point where I don't have to rely on that net anymore. It is good to know it is there though. Actually, it kind of reminds me of the end of Harry Potter (spoiler alert) where he goes and faces the evil Voldemort alone sort of, but with the sort of mental company of supportive and loving friends and family that carry him through things he did not believe himself capable of. Even when the are not there they are there.
Perhaps that image...a literal net made up of supportive and loving friends and family...is one that will help others get through the trying times of PTSD like it did me. It was not a cure, and it did not make it easier or less painful, but it did enable me to get better and to face some pretty horrific stuff to know I wasn't -- and still am not -- in it alone.
Monday, July 09, 2007
More on Type A & B addicts, 12 steps, and trauma
This was originally a response to some comments to "ptsd, AA, and different types of addicts" that grew too long, so it became a post. If you're curious, or want to try and convince me that my experience is wrong ;^), you can read more about my thoughts on PTSD and 12-step programs, the Christian basis of AA's "spirituality", and why I finally decided, after 17 years, to leave 12 step approaches, a difficult decision.
anonymous at 9:17 pm said:
Oh dear, the type A AAs have found us :)
Indeed, during the seventeen years I attended AA I did find some people who knew personally what PTSD was and they were a tremendous help. I also met a lot of crazy people who thought because their way of doing things wasn't working for me that I was doing something wrong...kind of like you are here.
If I remember right, and I do, the definition of insanity I learned in AA was "to keep repeating the same things over and expect different results." Working things through the aa way became exactly this form of insanity. At a certain point the aa way...steps, spirituality, constant meetings, the whole thing that I was doing with the best of them...just wasn't working, again and again, no matter how hard I tried or how close I hewed to the big book and the rooms.
Maybe I'll drink tomorrow. I saw plenty of twenty and thirty year AA-ers go out and drink too. I plan on staying clean and sober, as I value the life it has granted me immensely now that I have been able to stay clear of the craziness and harm I encountered in AA. If it works for you, well bless you, go forth....I probably would have sided with you the first 5, 10, or 15 years I was sober. I was wrong, and I humbly submit that you are too if you think AA is a one stop shop with the answers for everyone's recovery. Open yer mind a little, please.
the next anonymous said:
Just for clarity sake, that quote within the quote is from another commentator, not something I said, though I said something similar. I agree with the wife of the PTSD sufferer, and I am sure my own partner would too, as she endured a lot of agony in supporting me through the worst of my PTSD. I am forever grateful for that...It has taught me what love really is in many ways, so if you are truly supporting the recovery -- and recovery can happen -- of a PTSD-er, well then props to you! Its a huge task and takes a lot of love and understanding.
I was referring, and I think the commentator was too, to the sort of perverse tendency Type Bs have of trying to make amends to their perpetrators. In my case that included members of my family. They are the ones who are in denial, not me. And to live as they would have me would kill me, quite literally, and they would rather see that than see what they did. I just stay far away now, which is sad, but I have developed a wonderful family of choice and made a life for myself with room for all of who I am.
When I was in the worst stages of my addiction, and my recovery, I isolated like the commentator, and any pain I caused my perpetrators was probably from pangs of guilt more than anything else. I managed to keep everyone else away from me. I didn't have anyone because I didn't think I was worth anything to anyone, and created a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I stopped drinking and drugging, this left me real vulnerable to a particular type of misanthropic, often charlatan, type of person who can be found in or around any AA anywhere (I had home groups in four different cities over the years). Mind you, I'm not saying all AA is like that, just that all AA attracts such people, and they prey on people like I was. I've seen it many times and experienced it more than once before I wised up. These types took some people's lives to get what they wanted and almost got mine. Maybe someday I'll tell that story here, but I try to keep things general so more people can relate and also so as to remain anonymous myself.
Anyway, there was no wife or partner or significant other in my addiction because I thought I was too fucked up to be with anyone -- and I mostly was. Type Bs tend to blame themselves and take on the violence and anger of others as their own. This has ...ummm....negative effects on one's social skills and attractiveness to others. This is what I had to learn to reject and get angry at in order to get better, that the guilt and shame I felt were not mine, but belonged to others, and I would imagine that the commentator was trying to express something similar. I am sure if he or she had people in his or her life, they were affected as you say, but some of us clear everyone out for their own good to protect them from what awful people we have been taught by our perpetrators to believe that we are. Realizing that was a lie, and dumping the evil others had dumped on me in a safe and non-abusive way were key to getting to a place where I could let people in and have real relationships. I could have gone to AA for eternity and I would never have learned what I needed there.
anonymous at 9:17 pm said:
I believe that AA can help anyone to sobriety and a life worth living.
Oh dear, the type A AAs have found us :)
...There ARE AA members experienced with PTSD. Value your own recovery enough to seek them out.
Indeed, during the seventeen years I attended AA I did find some people who knew personally what PTSD was and they were a tremendous help. I also met a lot of crazy people who thought because their way of doing things wasn't working for me that I was doing something wrong...kind of like you are here.
If it were easy, EVERYONE would be sober and sane.a little condescension to help you endear yourself to us struggling misguided fools who don't do things your way....
... But sobriety and life are worth the effort. ...Find the people in AA who relate to who you are and where you've been. They are there.Translation for type Bs: You are doing it wrong if you are not doing it my (anonymous's) way -- oops, I mean, the AA way, and you're not sober or sane unless you go through AA. Thanks, but no thanks. Been there done that. That is what the post explains if you could see through the haze a bit. If you go by the slogans, I might suggest "live and let live" to the anonymous poster here...Things only got saner and better for me after I left AA. That seems to be threatening somehow, and of course the type A response is that I didn't do it right. Well excuse my French, but fuck that. I've now been sober over 22 years, the last five without AA. I got a lot out of AA and gave a lot back, but it became more harm than help, to the point that my worst days sober were as bad or worse than the low points of my addiction, which included homelessness, hallucinations, lot's of "lucky to have lived through that"s, and lots of drug induced emotional and physical injury, so I left. Mind you, I wouldn't trade those awfullest sober days in for the druggy ones -- I learned a lot of hard-bought things about people and --I can't think of anything else to call it...sickness just doesn't capture the true extent -- evil from the hard times of my sobriety.
If I remember right, and I do, the definition of insanity I learned in AA was "to keep repeating the same things over and expect different results." Working things through the aa way became exactly this form of insanity. At a certain point the aa way...steps, spirituality, constant meetings, the whole thing that I was doing with the best of them...just wasn't working, again and again, no matter how hard I tried or how close I hewed to the big book and the rooms.
Maybe I'll drink tomorrow. I saw plenty of twenty and thirty year AA-ers go out and drink too. I plan on staying clean and sober, as I value the life it has granted me immensely now that I have been able to stay clear of the craziness and harm I encountered in AA. If it works for you, well bless you, go forth....I probably would have sided with you the first 5, 10, or 15 years I was sober. I was wrong, and I humbly submit that you are too if you think AA is a one stop shop with the answers for everyone's recovery. Open yer mind a little, please.
the next anonymous said:
But to say that the person with PTSD is .."almost exclusively harming themselves..." is denial at its greatest. It takes courage to ask for help.
Just for clarity sake, that quote within the quote is from another commentator, not something I said, though I said something similar. I agree with the wife of the PTSD sufferer, and I am sure my own partner would too, as she endured a lot of agony in supporting me through the worst of my PTSD. I am forever grateful for that...It has taught me what love really is in many ways, so if you are truly supporting the recovery -- and recovery can happen -- of a PTSD-er, well then props to you! Its a huge task and takes a lot of love and understanding.
I was referring, and I think the commentator was too, to the sort of perverse tendency Type Bs have of trying to make amends to their perpetrators. In my case that included members of my family. They are the ones who are in denial, not me. And to live as they would have me would kill me, quite literally, and they would rather see that than see what they did. I just stay far away now, which is sad, but I have developed a wonderful family of choice and made a life for myself with room for all of who I am.
When I was in the worst stages of my addiction, and my recovery, I isolated like the commentator, and any pain I caused my perpetrators was probably from pangs of guilt more than anything else. I managed to keep everyone else away from me. I didn't have anyone because I didn't think I was worth anything to anyone, and created a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I stopped drinking and drugging, this left me real vulnerable to a particular type of misanthropic, often charlatan, type of person who can be found in or around any AA anywhere (I had home groups in four different cities over the years). Mind you, I'm not saying all AA is like that, just that all AA attracts such people, and they prey on people like I was. I've seen it many times and experienced it more than once before I wised up. These types took some people's lives to get what they wanted and almost got mine. Maybe someday I'll tell that story here, but I try to keep things general so more people can relate and also so as to remain anonymous myself.
Anyway, there was no wife or partner or significant other in my addiction because I thought I was too fucked up to be with anyone -- and I mostly was. Type Bs tend to blame themselves and take on the violence and anger of others as their own. This has ...ummm....negative effects on one's social skills and attractiveness to others. This is what I had to learn to reject and get angry at in order to get better, that the guilt and shame I felt were not mine, but belonged to others, and I would imagine that the commentator was trying to express something similar. I am sure if he or she had people in his or her life, they were affected as you say, but some of us clear everyone out for their own good to protect them from what awful people we have been taught by our perpetrators to believe that we are. Realizing that was a lie, and dumping the evil others had dumped on me in a safe and non-abusive way were key to getting to a place where I could let people in and have real relationships. I could have gone to AA for eternity and I would never have learned what I needed there.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Battle of the Effexor
Oh well, just checking in to update anyone who reads this. I more or less lost the battle of the Effexor. I had to go back on it, back up to 150 mg a day. This is a third of what I had been taking, so it is better, but the withdrawal just never went away while I was off it. I was miserable for a couple of months straight. Maybe it is the PTSD and depression returning without the meds, but I don't think it was. A lot of the stuff I felt was not related to the PTSD or depression, but after feeling like hell for a couple of months, I did get depressed. Anyway, my psych doc says we can try again down the road, going even slower on the tapering off, but I am feeling better again and in no hurry to go through that again, even if it means staying on the drug. Within two weeks of going back on it, I was better again.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Joy of Meds: Effexor withdrawal (and oh yeah, Blogspot sucks)
Grrrr...I spent a whole morning on this post and blogspot went down for maintenance and ate the whole thing when I tried to post. When they came back up, I could only recover about half of it. Bastards.
First the good news: I have been doing pretty well lately, well enough to slowly come off some of the meds I take. All has gone fairly smoothly. I went from 140 mg/day of Geodon to 40mg. When I went lower symptoms came back, but getting rid of that and the Seroquel was like coming out of a daze. Friends noted a definite change in personality for the better, I seemed more alive and engaged, both subjectively and in the eyes of others. I reduced the trazodone (for sleep) to where I usually take half of a 25 mg tablet, occassionally taking the other half if my head won't shut down for the day and keeps spinning, a trauma response in some ways but also I think a symptom of a busy life. Wellbutrin went from 450 mg to 300, where I am leaving it for now because it seems to help more than some of the others, and Naltrexone, which I use to fight some of the addictive thinking and compulsivity involved with self-harm stuff, is next on the block but currently at 100mg and holding.
Everything has been more or less fine until the Effexor. If I had known what the withdrawal was, I don't think I would have gone on it even though I was pretty desparate for some relief at that time. I was on 450 mg/day, pretty much at the top end of what can safely be prescribed. My psychiatrist, who I work with on the meds, said withdrawal can be tough, but at first it was fine. I got down to 75 mg/day over the course of the better part of a year, knocking it down by 37.5 mg every few weeks. In going from 75 mg to 37.5 mg, I felt a little achey in the joints and feverish, but it passed after a few days.
Then when I made the last step down to zero, it made me really sick. I had brain shivers, or brain zaps -- sort of like an electric short circuit going bzzzzt in your head with the attendant feeling, or like the sound some modems make when they are connecting (more on other people's experiences of Effexor withdrawal are here and here). For about a week I slept for 16-20 hours a day, and I was very low energy when awake. Fortunately, I don't have fixed hours at work in the summer so I could do this. I ran a low grade fever, felt constant nausea, felt dizzy, like if I closed my eyes I would fall down a dark hole. This was different from the top-o-the-elevator, car-with-no-brakes feeling and or the world-dropping out from underfoot feeling: It was a visceral, bodily sensation of falling rather than a PTSD-induced feeling of unsafety, sort of vertigo without the heights. Also experienced headaches along with the feeling of having a wet blanket over my brain, sort of like in the cartoons where they show the little fizzy bubbles above people's heads. Consensus seems to be that the severity of the withdrawal symptoms is due in part to the short half life of Effexor (several hours as opposed to weeks for Prozac). To quote Iggy Pop, "no fun."
I did some research and found out what I experienced, along with a couple more, are pretty common withdrawal symptoms from Effexor. There are some suggestions for alleviating them, including tapering off the Effexor in smaller increments than 37.5 mg. This was my psychiatrist's suggestion, but I had already gone through the worst of it by then, and was not experiencing a re-onset of the symptoms the Effexor was supposed to treat (PTSD-related anxiety and depression) so I decided not to go this route as it seemed like it would only prolong the misery. Another option was to take a dose of Prozac, which has a longer half-life and masks the withdrawal. I didn't like Prozac at all when I took it, so I nixed this. A third was to take the anti-flu concoction Benadryl. I was a little skittish about this as a recovering addict, as twenty some-odd years ago when I was in rehab, they said to stay away from anything with antihistimines because of speed-like qualities. I tried it anyway and so far have not broken out on a crystal meth rampage :) -- and it seemed to help a little.
I seem to have made it through the worst of it, though still a bit dizzy and have the wet-blanket-over-the brain sensation a little. I think that about covers most of the stuff blogspot deleted.
First the good news: I have been doing pretty well lately, well enough to slowly come off some of the meds I take. All has gone fairly smoothly. I went from 140 mg/day of Geodon to 40mg. When I went lower symptoms came back, but getting rid of that and the Seroquel was like coming out of a daze. Friends noted a definite change in personality for the better, I seemed more alive and engaged, both subjectively and in the eyes of others. I reduced the trazodone (for sleep) to where I usually take half of a 25 mg tablet, occassionally taking the other half if my head won't shut down for the day and keeps spinning, a trauma response in some ways but also I think a symptom of a busy life. Wellbutrin went from 450 mg to 300, where I am leaving it for now because it seems to help more than some of the others, and Naltrexone, which I use to fight some of the addictive thinking and compulsivity involved with self-harm stuff, is next on the block but currently at 100mg and holding.
Everything has been more or less fine until the Effexor. If I had known what the withdrawal was, I don't think I would have gone on it even though I was pretty desparate for some relief at that time. I was on 450 mg/day, pretty much at the top end of what can safely be prescribed. My psychiatrist, who I work with on the meds, said withdrawal can be tough, but at first it was fine. I got down to 75 mg/day over the course of the better part of a year, knocking it down by 37.5 mg every few weeks. In going from 75 mg to 37.5 mg, I felt a little achey in the joints and feverish, but it passed after a few days.
Then when I made the last step down to zero, it made me really sick. I had brain shivers, or brain zaps -- sort of like an electric short circuit going bzzzzt in your head with the attendant feeling, or like the sound some modems make when they are connecting (more on other people's experiences of Effexor withdrawal are here and here). For about a week I slept for 16-20 hours a day, and I was very low energy when awake. Fortunately, I don't have fixed hours at work in the summer so I could do this. I ran a low grade fever, felt constant nausea, felt dizzy, like if I closed my eyes I would fall down a dark hole. This was different from the top-o-the-elevator, car-with-no-brakes feeling and or the world-dropping out from underfoot feeling: It was a visceral, bodily sensation of falling rather than a PTSD-induced feeling of unsafety, sort of vertigo without the heights. Also experienced headaches along with the feeling of having a wet blanket over my brain, sort of like in the cartoons where they show the little fizzy bubbles above people's heads. Consensus seems to be that the severity of the withdrawal symptoms is due in part to the short half life of Effexor (several hours as opposed to weeks for Prozac). To quote Iggy Pop, "no fun."
I did some research and found out what I experienced, along with a couple more, are pretty common withdrawal symptoms from Effexor. There are some suggestions for alleviating them, including tapering off the Effexor in smaller increments than 37.5 mg. This was my psychiatrist's suggestion, but I had already gone through the worst of it by then, and was not experiencing a re-onset of the symptoms the Effexor was supposed to treat (PTSD-related anxiety and depression) so I decided not to go this route as it seemed like it would only prolong the misery. Another option was to take a dose of Prozac, which has a longer half-life and masks the withdrawal. I didn't like Prozac at all when I took it, so I nixed this. A third was to take the anti-flu concoction Benadryl. I was a little skittish about this as a recovering addict, as twenty some-odd years ago when I was in rehab, they said to stay away from anything with antihistimines because of speed-like qualities. I tried it anyway and so far have not broken out on a crystal meth rampage :) -- and it seemed to help a little.
I seem to have made it through the worst of it, though still a bit dizzy and have the wet-blanket-over-the brain sensation a little. I think that about covers most of the stuff blogspot deleted.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
safety and the familiar
My partner is out of town and I've been staying up late catching up on work. I got caught up so I decided to do something different and go out. I realized walking down the street that I have become a creature of habit because of the PTSD. I have a safe set of things that I do and seldom step out of them, which is strange because I used to be quite adventurous.
I realized that as soon as I got out in an unfamiliar time with unfamiliar people (I went out by myself) in a setting I no longer frequent, I got anxious and unsettled. The old feeling of being worried that the next step will be right off the world into some crazy traumatic space came back, like I had a feeling that I wouldn't be welcome -- these spaces are for other people, not for me. I wasn't doing anything dangerous, just going to a club to listen to some music and take in the scene. I don't drink or anything, so no worries about things getting out of control either.
Even so, my breath grew short and I had the top of the elevator, hit the brakes when your not driving feeling pretty bad. I practiced a mini version of my grounding excercise and tried to get back into my body and settle down. I just focused on breathing. Once when I was in the same room as someoone awful from my past, a friend just whispered to me to breathe. I think I had a mini-epiphany. When I dissociate, the first thing to go is I stop taking in the normal amount of air. It is like going underwater.
Focusing on breathing helped a little and I began to feel a better. Being outside helped, and I walked in the wrong direction, thinking the club I wanted to go to was somewhere else (I guess I don't get out much) and I think just walking helped. I hadn't been out all day, and a lot of the time, I think if I didn't force myself, or my partner didn't, I'd just hide out at home and never go anywhere because it is safe.
So my adventure was fine. The music wasn't so great, but I did something out of my usual routine and not only got through it, but even enjoyed it a little and learned a bit about how sheltered I have made my life. That has been crucial to my getting better, the feeling of having a safe place, a home. When I was in treatment for the PTSD, we decided that safety was the first thing I needed, before I could work on anything else. It makes perfect sense. I think a lot of Americans feel entitled to it and take it for granted for the most part, but the world I lived in wasn't safe and I no longer trusted any situation when the PTSD got bad. Everything was dangerous. Going out a little while tonight made me realize how much I depend on the safety I have established in my life, the familiar, home. Maybe I can extend that space outward little by little and slowly move back into the rest of the world without such a sense of foreboding anymore if I am careful and go little by little.
I realized that as soon as I got out in an unfamiliar time with unfamiliar people (I went out by myself) in a setting I no longer frequent, I got anxious and unsettled. The old feeling of being worried that the next step will be right off the world into some crazy traumatic space came back, like I had a feeling that I wouldn't be welcome -- these spaces are for other people, not for me. I wasn't doing anything dangerous, just going to a club to listen to some music and take in the scene. I don't drink or anything, so no worries about things getting out of control either.
Even so, my breath grew short and I had the top of the elevator, hit the brakes when your not driving feeling pretty bad. I practiced a mini version of my grounding excercise and tried to get back into my body and settle down. I just focused on breathing. Once when I was in the same room as someoone awful from my past, a friend just whispered to me to breathe. I think I had a mini-epiphany. When I dissociate, the first thing to go is I stop taking in the normal amount of air. It is like going underwater.
Focusing on breathing helped a little and I began to feel a better. Being outside helped, and I walked in the wrong direction, thinking the club I wanted to go to was somewhere else (I guess I don't get out much) and I think just walking helped. I hadn't been out all day, and a lot of the time, I think if I didn't force myself, or my partner didn't, I'd just hide out at home and never go anywhere because it is safe.
So my adventure was fine. The music wasn't so great, but I did something out of my usual routine and not only got through it, but even enjoyed it a little and learned a bit about how sheltered I have made my life. That has been crucial to my getting better, the feeling of having a safe place, a home. When I was in treatment for the PTSD, we decided that safety was the first thing I needed, before I could work on anything else. It makes perfect sense. I think a lot of Americans feel entitled to it and take it for granted for the most part, but the world I lived in wasn't safe and I no longer trusted any situation when the PTSD got bad. Everything was dangerous. Going out a little while tonight made me realize how much I depend on the safety I have established in my life, the familiar, home. Maybe I can extend that space outward little by little and slowly move back into the rest of the world without such a sense of foreboding anymore if I am careful and go little by little.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Writing when things are ok for once
Hi,
I'm still really busy with work and it is still crazy, but I've kind of made my peace with it for now and have gotten back to my regular work, which I like, and am just trying to stay out of the s***storm (see "Still here, still have ptsd"). The Grateful Dead had a song with an appropriate line about getting through such things: "aint no luck/I learned to duck." And no, I don't think I could be considered a deadhead. At least not lately. But sometimes when I am in the right mood I can listen to some of their stuff and enjoy. I used to like them a lot more.
So my ptsd on a good day is pretty mild. I feel a little off from the meds I take (still slowly lowering the doses on them) but that is normal. My hands are not very steady. That is from both the ptsd and the meds I think. But I am in the present. I am not obsessed with the traumatic past. I'm in my body and able to function. That is pretty amazing considering how awful the symptoms used to be.
I guess I should be grateful for all this, and to some extent I am. But I am not grateful for the traumatic events that led to the destruction of a good chunk of my life. I don't get all yippy-skippy with joy when things are going well. I've seen the bottom of that drop out in an instant and always remain a little detached and skeptical. I guess that will never go away. Maybe its normal, a reality check. When the ptsd was bad, I'd get terrible lows. But I am not after equally ecstatic highs. I'd rather go along kinda steady and ok. That is good enough for me and more than I would have expected if you had asked me a couple of years ago.
I'm still really busy with work and it is still crazy, but I've kind of made my peace with it for now and have gotten back to my regular work, which I like, and am just trying to stay out of the s***storm (see "Still here, still have ptsd"). The Grateful Dead had a song with an appropriate line about getting through such things: "aint no luck/I learned to duck." And no, I don't think I could be considered a deadhead. At least not lately. But sometimes when I am in the right mood I can listen to some of their stuff and enjoy. I used to like them a lot more.
So my ptsd on a good day is pretty mild. I feel a little off from the meds I take (still slowly lowering the doses on them) but that is normal. My hands are not very steady. That is from both the ptsd and the meds I think. But I am in the present. I am not obsessed with the traumatic past. I'm in my body and able to function. That is pretty amazing considering how awful the symptoms used to be.
I guess I should be grateful for all this, and to some extent I am. But I am not grateful for the traumatic events that led to the destruction of a good chunk of my life. I don't get all yippy-skippy with joy when things are going well. I've seen the bottom of that drop out in an instant and always remain a little detached and skeptical. I guess that will never go away. Maybe its normal, a reality check. When the ptsd was bad, I'd get terrible lows. But I am not after equally ecstatic highs. I'd rather go along kinda steady and ok. That is good enough for me and more than I would have expected if you had asked me a couple of years ago.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Still here, still have ptsd
Hi, it has been a while since I last posted, but I am still here. Lately I have been very busy with work. I pointed out a BIG problem there recently, and instead of dealing with it, the folks responsible decided to blame the messenger, scapegoating me as a distraction from the real problem. Getting blamed for stuff that I didn't do is a real trigger for me, and I woke up today crawling out of my skin, which I haven't felt in a while. For a little bit, I even thought I might go into a flashback or have a little non-epileptic siezure again. I was as close to that as I have been in quite a while. I was dissociating and feeling very much out of my body because of the skin-crawling feeling and another feeling that I have described as being in an elevator that is hitting the top floor all day. Another way I have come to describe it will make sense to drivers maybe. The feeling is like when you are a passenger in the front seat and somebody doesn't hit the brakes at a time when you would. That moment of feeling out of control, of not being in charge of yourself as you hurtle through space and time, of hitting the imaginary brakes and finding them not there, but all day, not just for the moment: that is my most common everyday experience of ptsd at present, some days worse than others and today, with the skin crawling and dissociation, pretty bad at the start.
What to do? I have a nice view out the window of my home that I find centering and comforting, so I sat and looked at that while I had my morning cup of coffee before going to work (cutting back on caffeine helps a lot! I used to drink a lot more coffee and it is no help for ptsd at all). At work I did my grounding exercise a couple of times through then got started with my job. After a while of engaging with that (I quite like my work, even when things are rough like at present) I slowly settled back into my body and the jitters and skin-crawlies subsided. Now my main goal is to stay out of the path of the mudslingers at work to keep the triggering to a minimum.
I still have plans for more posts, just no time to write them. I want to put a sticky post at the top of the blog with a sort of guide to all the previous posts so people can find resources quickly. I also want to talk a little about a couple of therapeutic techniques I have been working with, EMDR and a related practice called DNMS. I have had mixed, but overall useful results with both, though I remain a tad skeptical, which is an old defense that results from previous betrayals by therapists. I have since learned how to protect myself better when choosing therapists.
What to do? I have a nice view out the window of my home that I find centering and comforting, so I sat and looked at that while I had my morning cup of coffee before going to work (cutting back on caffeine helps a lot! I used to drink a lot more coffee and it is no help for ptsd at all). At work I did my grounding exercise a couple of times through then got started with my job. After a while of engaging with that (I quite like my work, even when things are rough like at present) I slowly settled back into my body and the jitters and skin-crawlies subsided. Now my main goal is to stay out of the path of the mudslingers at work to keep the triggering to a minimum.
I still have plans for more posts, just no time to write them. I want to put a sticky post at the top of the blog with a sort of guide to all the previous posts so people can find resources quickly. I also want to talk a little about a couple of therapeutic techniques I have been working with, EMDR and a related practice called DNMS. I have had mixed, but overall useful results with both, though I remain a tad skeptical, which is an old defense that results from previous betrayals by therapists. I have since learned how to protect myself better when choosing therapists.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Fell off the blogosphere....
Hi, If you have been looking for a post here this past week or so, it hasn't been happening. My partner is out of town on family stuff and I got really busy at work and the two combined have thrown me a little out of whack. Plus writing all that stuff about trauma, betrayal bonds and ptsd was sort of emotionally draining. I just kinda wanted to get that out and then didn't have anything to say for a while. So my clock is all messed up from the ptsd. Having a hard time sleeping...I get terrible nightmares as I am dropping off that then wake me up, then I start to fall back asleep and the same thing happens again. Oh well...this is probably my karmic payback for once telling someone with insomnia that nobody ever died from lack of sleep. Days have been ok though. I'm seldom alone so being by myself is a different way of occupying my world. I miss my partner bunches but I'm ok alone. With the nightmares its probably good she's not here as I often accidentally maul her (not hurtfully fortunately, just wakes her) in my sleep or wake her from yelling out in my dreams. This has been going on for several years now, but this past week has been the worst its been in a while. So I don't have any new info...there is more I want to write about...I got a couple of books that Holly posted on a while ago. I read one and will give a mini review, then look around the other blogs on ptsd and related stuff and see if I have anything to say! And Grrrr...I just found out one of my posts that has the links to all the other ones disappeared. OK, fixed it...If you have been looking for the first page of the betrayal bonds post its back up. So that's my little 4 AM stream-of-consciousness report from the front.
If I don't get to posting tomorrow, I hope you have a warm and safe holiday with people you love and that love you. G'night.
If I don't get to posting tomorrow, I hope you have a warm and safe holiday with people you love and that love you. G'night.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
grounding exercises for ptsd symptoms
Today I'll go over a grounding exercise I learned that was very helpful in managing ptsd symptoms. Its not a cure. At best, it makes the unbearable manageable. Sometimes when things were really bad it did not work well at all, but I did it anyway. The goal is to bring the ptsd sufferer back to the present by way of the senses, out of a flashback or intrusive memory. Anytime the symptoms of ptsd come on, whatever they are for you, is a good time to practice this exercise.
First look around and see five things present where you are, naming them -- out loud if possible (the naming out loud is supposed to help, but sometimes I would cheat and do it under my breath, too). Anyway, name specific things, in detail, as you see them. For example, I see a picture of my old dog with a wet nose; I see a black computer speaker; and so on. Then name five things you can hear, like the humming of a fan, cars passing by, the dishwasher running, and so forth. Then name five things you can feel. I had a hard time with this first, because I thought it refered to emotions, feelings, but that's not what I was supposed to be after. Its the sense of touch, so I feel jeans against the skin of my left thigh; I feel the soles of my feet on the floor, and so on. If you get stumped, its ok to repeat things, just concentrate on actually sensing them in the present. Then repeat the whole process for sight, hearing and touch four times, then three, then two, then one. You get extra bonus points if you become so wrapped up in your senses that you lose count. Generally, this would bring me back a little. I would still be miserable most of the time and in pain, but the memory part would subside and sometimes the worst symptoms of a flashback would recede.
[n.b.: updated 12/8/08 to replace broken links with new ones]
This isn't the only way to do it, just a very simple and easy to learn one that worked for me if you need it. About.com has some simple suggestions. The Mental Health Matters web site breaks it into three options: accept it and go through with it, learn to control it, or escape it. It is not always a matter of choice though. Their methods of coping are the same for whichever option you choose (or which chooese you!), including one that I tried during the worst of the flashbacks at the behest of counselors in the PTSD treatment center I was in. They had me hold two liter bottles of frozen water (ummm, I think they call it ice :), one in each hand to bring me back. I melted the ice in both and still didn't come back...they were about to send me off to the hospital, but I managed to get a handle on things after about a four hour flashback. Possibly the worst few hours of my life. Cold, the site explains, activates some reflexes that slow down the heart and exert a calming influence. Finally, you can read a more academic but still enlightening and useful treatment of coping techniques in the book Rebuilding Shattered Lives by James Chu.
First look around and see five things present where you are, naming them -- out loud if possible (the naming out loud is supposed to help, but sometimes I would cheat and do it under my breath, too). Anyway, name specific things, in detail, as you see them. For example, I see a picture of my old dog with a wet nose; I see a black computer speaker; and so on. Then name five things you can hear, like the humming of a fan, cars passing by, the dishwasher running, and so forth. Then name five things you can feel. I had a hard time with this first, because I thought it refered to emotions, feelings, but that's not what I was supposed to be after. Its the sense of touch, so I feel jeans against the skin of my left thigh; I feel the soles of my feet on the floor, and so on. If you get stumped, its ok to repeat things, just concentrate on actually sensing them in the present. Then repeat the whole process for sight, hearing and touch four times, then three, then two, then one. You get extra bonus points if you become so wrapped up in your senses that you lose count. Generally, this would bring me back a little. I would still be miserable most of the time and in pain, but the memory part would subside and sometimes the worst symptoms of a flashback would recede.
[n.b.: updated 12/8/08 to replace broken links with new ones]
This isn't the only way to do it, just a very simple and easy to learn one that worked for me if you need it. About.com has some simple suggestions. The Mental Health Matters web site breaks it into three options: accept it and go through with it, learn to control it, or escape it. It is not always a matter of choice though. Their methods of coping are the same for whichever option you choose (or which chooese you!), including one that I tried during the worst of the flashbacks at the behest of counselors in the PTSD treatment center I was in. They had me hold two liter bottles of frozen water (ummm, I think they call it ice :), one in each hand to bring me back. I melted the ice in both and still didn't come back...they were about to send me off to the hospital, but I managed to get a handle on things after about a four hour flashback. Possibly the worst few hours of my life. Cold, the site explains, activates some reflexes that slow down the heart and exert a calming influence. Finally, you can read a more academic but still enlightening and useful treatment of coping techniques in the book Rebuilding Shattered Lives by James Chu.
What's this betrayal stuff got to do with ptsd anyway?
I already wrote a little about betrayal in the posts on betrayal bonds and the effects of trauma over time. Carnes has a whole chapter explaining the power of betrayal. He write that "Common to all is a promise. Those who betray read their victims well. They appeal to the emptiness, the unfinished, and the wounds of others." Otherwise intelligent people set aside their intuitions because the promise is so attractive. "The starting point for all trauma survivors" he says, is a complete acceptance of the betrayal." From a distance this seems obvious, but it is hard to put into effect, and I still struggle with it. Abusive parents in denial, manipulative, self-serving people fostering traumatic relationships who want to feel good about themselves -- these types of abusers have an insidious way of getting into and undermining a person's very sense of self, making me doubt my own reality.
Carnes maps out "five main ways promises are used to betray:"
Carnes maps out "five main ways promises are used to betray:"
- Betrayal by seduction: "High warmth with low intention. . . . Relationships are manipulative and exploitive. Agreements are ill-defined, unclear, or tentative. Feelings are anxious and intense. Trust depends on exaggerated or unreal promises. Rewards are in the future and are often conditional. Risk is often one-sided." Most importantly, the seducer is deceptive about all these things in order to lure the other person into the relationship. People with family histories of abuse or trauma are particularly susceptible because they have never learned to protect or take care of themselves in important ways. A traumatized person's "picker" is often broken. Trauma shame creates doubt of one's intuitions. And there is a neediness that allows the person to ignore warning signs
- Betrayal by terror: If seduction fails, terror might work. Fear "deepens attachment" in ways that can be addictively intense, especially when coupled with seduction. Cults work this dual betrayal very well. They promise vulnerable people what they want, whether that be wealth, friends, spiritual growth, or whatever, but then withdraw support or even rip a person's life apart if they question things. This is the "love bomb" followed by the terror of abandonment. Often the result of betrayal by terror is guilt and shame on the part of the victim. According to Carnes, only seven percent of women who have been sexually assaulted, often by someone they know, report the offense. That is why Holly's work is so important.
- Betrayal by exploitation of power: Sexual harrassment often falls under this category, where women (or occasionally men) are in a position at work where to challenge the abuse would threaten their job because the abuser has more power. Incest relations are another example. They are "exploitation by people in power of those most vulnerable to them. If you're not equal in power, then by definition you're vulnerable. And that vulnerability is critical to trauma bonding."
- Betrayal by intimacy: In its strongest form this is emotional blackmail by someone you trust. Somebody does something wrong and the other person won't turn him in because she would be affected too. The cult abuse/'support community' that ripped up my life did this by trying to stop me from pursuing legal actions because of the ramifications it would have throughout the community.
- Betrayal by spirit: The most publicized version of this form of betrayal has been the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic church over the past few years. Not limited by denomination, numerous televangelists have been undone by their sexual betrayals in the past few years too. Carnes thinks the reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg. He doesn't talk about it, but somewhat amorphous New Agey cultish groups also commit these spiritual betrayals. That is part of the story of how my life got ripped apart. And outside institutional religion, "spiritual" abusers often frame what they are doing as "God's will" or some such happy horseshit ("I like to think it happened for a reason"). Whatever the source, spiritual betrayal is doubly damaging, because beyond the abuse, the betrayal cuts off a primary resource for recovery, at least in the twelve step model. Such spiritual betrayals are part of why I don't do step programs any more. Maybe my belief in spirituality was just an illusion anyway. I might be better off, less deluded and vulnerable, without it.
Again, any combination, or even all of the above may be present.
Let me know if you read this by leaving a comment, ok?
All the quotations and information not otherwise attributed above comes from Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications Inc., 1997), 47-72.Saturday, December 10, 2005
The roots of ptsd: how trauma affects people over time
Patrick Carnes lists eight ways trauma affects people over time:
- trauma reaction
- trauma arousal
- trauma blocking
- trauma splitting
- trauma abstinence
- trauma shame
- trauma repetition
- trauma bonds
Most traumatized people will display some combination of these rather than just one.
The information above comes from Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications Inc., 1997).
Friday, December 09, 2005
betrayal bonds: trauma repitition
trauma repitition: This aspect of betrayal bonds involves reenactment or re-creation of prior traumas. Carnes calls it "living in the unremembered past." This can take several forms. Some get in abusive relationships that re-enact the original trauma. Sometimes it manifests itself in a compulsive behavior. Compulsive masturbation, for example, is usually a reenactment of a childhood trauma. Combined with shame, the person often becomes suicidal.
The key to understanding trauma repetition is that "in part, trauma repetition is an effort by the victim [or insome cases, the victim/perpetrator] to bring resolution to a traumatic memory. " It is a way of coping with old traumas, but instead of resolving the past, it creates new wounds, compounding and multiplying the problem. This is where complex ptsd comes from -- the continued repetition and compounding of some earlier trauma. For me that was childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in a a family run by a raging alcoholic father and a classically co-dependent mother. It was a large family, and traumas inflicted on older siblings would then be reenacted on the younger ones.
Unfortunately, one form of trauma reenactment is "to victimize people in the same way they victimized you." While not all trauma repetition is perpetration (unless you want to count self-perpetration, which is sort of a contradiction of terms), all -- or nearly all -- perpetration is a repetition of some kind of trauma that the perpetrator also lived through. One perpetrator often victimizes many people, so the effects get spread widely. I reenacted things by somehow managing to always find relationships with abusive people, allowing both them and me to re-create traumatic experiences in a sick relationship.
According to Carnes (and I'm mostly but not exactly quoting), trauma repetition is characterized by repeated self-destructive (or destructive) behavior, usually of a repetition of some childhood trauma; reliving a story from the past, engaging in abusive relationships repeatedly (this was my pattern -- I thought abuse was normal, and couldn't even recognize it as such until I got in a non-abusive relationship and got help); repeating painful experiences, including specific behaviors, scenes, persons, and feelings; doing something to others that you experienced as an early life trauma.
All the quotations and information not otherwise attributed above comes from Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications Inc., 1997), 24-26.
The key to understanding trauma repetition is that "in part, trauma repetition is an effort by the victim [or insome cases, the victim/perpetrator] to bring resolution to a traumatic memory. " It is a way of coping with old traumas, but instead of resolving the past, it creates new wounds, compounding and multiplying the problem. This is where complex ptsd comes from -- the continued repetition and compounding of some earlier trauma. For me that was childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in a a family run by a raging alcoholic father and a classically co-dependent mother. It was a large family, and traumas inflicted on older siblings would then be reenacted on the younger ones.
Unfortunately, one form of trauma reenactment is "to victimize people in the same way they victimized you." While not all trauma repetition is perpetration (unless you want to count self-perpetration, which is sort of a contradiction of terms), all -- or nearly all -- perpetration is a repetition of some kind of trauma that the perpetrator also lived through. One perpetrator often victimizes many people, so the effects get spread widely. I reenacted things by somehow managing to always find relationships with abusive people, allowing both them and me to re-create traumatic experiences in a sick relationship.
According to Carnes (and I'm mostly but not exactly quoting), trauma repetition is characterized by repeated self-destructive (or destructive) behavior, usually of a repetition of some childhood trauma; reliving a story from the past, engaging in abusive relationships repeatedly (this was my pattern -- I thought abuse was normal, and couldn't even recognize it as such until I got in a non-abusive relationship and got help); repeating painful experiences, including specific behaviors, scenes, persons, and feelings; doing something to others that you experienced as an early life trauma.
All the quotations and information not otherwise attributed above comes from Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications Inc., 1997), 24-26.
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