PTSD

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – upon hearing the term thoughts of military personal returning from combat with psychological wounds springs to mind.  Although this is true, PTSD effects are much more pervasive and touch a much broader base than many imagine.  It can include individuals who have faced or witnessed life-threatening events, sexual assault victims as well as members of oppressed cultures.  June has been designated the month to draw awareness to this area so I thought what better time to share than now.

I have PTSD born out of complex and multiple traumas experienced at an early age.  Without going into all the sordid details I have spent much of my adult life in recovery from emotional, sexual and physical abuse which led me into a religious system whose theological perspectives created a context where spiritual abuse was sometimes operating…..more on that later.   What I want to focus on initially is educating; and then sharing a small piece of my story of what it is like living with the repercussions and navigating what I call ‘my two realities’. 

The science behind PTSD is comprehensive and much too complicated for a blog post.  I will try to provide just enough information to shed a light on my personal experience, but if you have a loved one who suffers or an interest I would recommend several books; A Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment by Babette Rothschild, Spiritual Crisis Surviving Trauma to the Soul by J. LeBron McBride and my current read, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, Clare Pain and Daniel J. Siegel. 

Trauma wounds the very core of a person’s soul.  The following is paraphrased from McBride’s book Spiritual Crisis: Upon seeing innocent children burned alive, Elie Wiesel wrote of his traumatic experience; ‘flames consumed my faith forever, murdered my God and my soul.’  Others said the experience is when ‘the spirit went numb and soul development stopped’; it has also been defined as a ‘disorder of hope, a spiritual night and a loss of faith that there is order and continuity in life’. 

PTSD is a biological response brought on by life threatening events that trap the trauma within the autonomic system; in other words, it freezes the trauma allowing for an echo of the original trauma to reactivate the initial response making the person feel like they have traveled back in time and are re-experiencing the primary threat.  It is not a form of amnesia, but an experiencing of two realities in the same moment.  Sometimes the sufferer is aware they are in the midst of an episode; most often they aren’t until it subsides.  To put it in other words, the person’s system is reacting to a past event within the context of a current situation that has little or nothing to do with it.  Needless to say, it is disorienting for both the sufferer and those who are their intimates, specifically for those who have gone undiagnosed. 

Ogden writes, “The function of the ‘mind’ – that extraordinary human capacity to observe, know, and predict – is to inhibit, organize, and modulate those automatic responses, thereby helping us manage and preserve our relationships with our fellow human beings, on whom we so desperately depend for meaning, company, affirmation, protection and connection.” 

What PTSD ends up doing is inhibiting the brains ability to function in this manner; rather it activates the response that fuels chaotic emotions reinforcing the devastation of trauma’s prior event.  Hormonal secretions (a subcortical response) explain why responses to certain triggers can seem irrational or irrelevant and even harmful in the context of the present moment.  Episodes lead to blow ups in response to minor provocations, freezing when frustrated; and helplessness in the face of trivial challenges.  Without a historical context to understand the somatic and motoric inheritance, their emotions seem out of place causing significant shame and embarrassment to those who experience them. 

Neuroimaging of traumatized people under stress reveal that the sensory trigger of past trauma activates the emotional brain to engage protectively changing the sympathetic and parasympathetic system that ultimately interferes with effective executive functioning.  This leaves their brain with less control over behavior and causing behavioral regression.  With well-functioning rational compromised; the individual reverts to ‘fixed action patterns’ as well as reactivating the physical response of terror, abandonment and helplessness in excruciating detail. 

In an effort to simplify, McBride defines PTSD as leaving the sufferer without hope and disconnected from self, others and even God by destroying the ability to integrate their experience into their personhood.  The outcome is a loss of having a safe place to retreat to within or outside of oneself in order to deal with frightening emotions and experiences; and leaving them to relive the impact of trauma repeatedly; therefore compounding and reinforcing trauma’s affects.

Yes, I have PTSD.

It brings sorrow and tears as I reflect on how its operation in my life has hindered and aborted the very forces needed to heal; the unending consequence I pay for wrongs done to me, the time it has robbed and ultimately for the pain it inflicts on my most intimate relationships.  My journey has been much more problematic because I went undiagnosed long after the original injuries leaving me to blindly navigate it’s symptoms for many years.  Even when I was finally diagnosed in 2000 I was so embedded in a religious system that spiritualized every ill under the sun that the realities of what I was dealing with never fully landed.  In its wake I was left feeling incompetent, defective and hiding under shame’s shroud. 

In the early years I was barely functional suffering from anxiety and fear levels so high I was borderline agoraphobic.  Any event in public pulled deeply on internal resources that would lead me to shut down for hours, even days following in order to regain my internal equilibrium.  I would never travel too far or into unfamiliar places; and when I did I wouldn’t go alone needing to know the minute details of where, when and how in order to keep my anxiety in check.  Walking through a garage or entering into an elevator was an act of heroic proportions.  With my system in a permanent state of alert; the process of getting myself up, out and to work while navigating the eight hours at the task I was hired for left me with very little reserves pushing me deeper into isolation and into trauma’s prison.

It was that same confinement whose constraining nature pushed me deep into depression; yet eventually the sheer monotony of life stirred a deeper need than the anxieties I was dealing with drawing me slowly back into life.  Over the years my boundaries have expanded and passing time taught my system that daily events are not dangerous reducing the ever present anxiety to low grade hum until unforeseen triggers send me back into a full blown episode.  The saddest part of this narrative is the realization of its full implications and the way in which it has colored the actions of my life didn’t land until a decade after the original diagnosis.  But, this understanding has also helped me move away from survival mode and into a thriving life. 

The metaphor I use to paint the picture of this journey is I have gone from a place in my internal world that was pitch black, darker than night as I blindly bumped into the walls of my 2 x 2 x 2 PTSD cell.  In time light started to shine making all that I saw shades of grey and revealing that my cell was expanding.  Hours rolled into days and days into years when splashes of color would accent my black and white world.  Now the key has been turned in the padlock, the bars of my cell have swung open and I have walked into a world alive in all its Technicolor glory.  With that there is so much beauty, but at the same time it overwhelms my senses as I learn to navigate brand new challenges.  Entering into intimate relationship is drawing out the deepest trauma injuries triggering me in unexpected moments and in unexpected ways.  

I wish I could end this blog with a testimony that says full recovery is possible; but that is not the current statistic.  PTSD is a chronic condition whose effect on the system can improve, but will never completely leave.  Yet, with new studies in neuroscience and the infant field of brain imaging is providing hope to those who suffer.  EMDR and other somatic therapies are showing strong promise and my feeling is that at some time in the near future I can say I am no longer triggered allowing for my system to fully heal.

Until then, the journey of recovery continues……………..