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……………..    

Hope

I recently had a conversation with a friend who responded following our dialogue, “I need to hear hope”.   Yes, it’s true I have been navigating a faith crisis, what some would call a Dark Night of the Soul.  My seminary experience challenged me to my core; relationally, theologically and emotionally exposing the buried shame, pain and questions of a traumatized past and defended by a religious system that promises what it was never intended to deliver.  As if this was not enough stress, my mom’s health failed and as some of you know she died less than two months ago.  Nevertheless, my friend’s statement had me seriously contemplating the definition of hope. 

I did what I initially do when I begin to ruminate; I pulled out my thesaurus.  Words like confident, expectant and optimistic jumped off the page…. secure, cheerful, content, undisturbed and upbeat challenged my current sensibilities.  So I moved on to the antonym section.  Discouraged, disheartened, dreary, gloomy and pessimistic are not terms that I would use to define my present attitude either.  I am grieving.  I am in pain over multiple losses which include my mom’s suffering and foreseeable death; the reality of deception both self and other driven; dreams deferred and deceased; time robbed that should have been spent building a career and family; and the sheer weariness of navigating a life long journey to restore health and hope.  Yes it’s true, I have spent the larger portion of my graduate career weeping, wailing and lamenting….. does that indicate that I am or have been without hope?

My answer is a passionate and emphatic no!  Hope is not solely an emotive expression or affirmative sound bite that offers shallow responses to wells of agony.  Hope is the human drive to survive… an instinct; a survival mechanism and an internal motivation to move forward when everybody and everything screams, ‘give up’.  Hope is intrinsic to being human – it is engraved on each individual’s heart and is primeval.  Hope is the motivation to continue to exist or function in spite of adversity.   It is something that propels me forward even when I can’t clearly see – it causes me to persist, ride out, carry on, endure and weather the storm.  At my lowest point, when hope’s vision was eclipsed, I had the word “Hope” tattooed onto my wrist.  The very act of doing the opposite of what my internal life screamed speaks to hope. 

Theologically I ask the question - was Jesus propelled by hope to endure the cross?  I am pretty sure that his countenance was not cheerful or upbeat.  I can confidently surmise that grief accompanied Christ’s journey to his crucifixion, yet it did not obscure the joy that was set before him.  I would say that my life has been and continues to be a testimony of hope.  I have had to fight against and endure obstacles that most, gratefully, will never have to.  I have had to persevere, to rise above conditions that would and has bankrupted others.   Yes, I may be experiencing a season of sorrow, but I can say with all confidence I do have hope......and so do you.   

The Darkness

It was dark when I got up this morning for my daily walk – it has been over a week since I have done this and I was hoping that it would help combat some of the weariness that has found residence in my soul.  I overextended myself this summer and what I thought would be a good distraction is turning out to backfire…..I suppose I should back my story up a little.    

I have spent the past year walking a journey of what Christian culture calls transformation.  When those in leadership preach on the term it seems so innocuous – so innocent – so safe.  The truth is it is a journey back into the darkness of one’s soul revisiting places of pain that have long been cut off  – places that are so infected with toxins that opening them up is like releasing a contagion back into your very existence that births one thought, will my faith survive. The anguish that attends this process is excruciating and if bottled could take a family of rhinoceros down.  Coupling this with the academic expedition through seminary; one that is specifically designed to deconstruct, has left the foundations of my life in constant movement – what I am calling my emotional and theological earthquake.  This is testing the very core of who I am. 

I have faced severe trials in the past – those that have ended other people’s lives both literally and figuratively.  Nonetheless, this time is calling for me to pull on internal resources that I sometimes wonder if I possess.  The tentacles of agony grab and drag me down at the most inconvenient times.  I sometimes find myself crumpled in a corner like yesterday’s dirty laundry tears pouring from a place so dim it oozes from every pore making it difficult to breath.  Yet, this is not the darkness I experienced before – the sable that permeated much of my youth.  I have been blinded by evil’s sinister fingers where the daytime is as black as a starless night; where everything is obscured by a veil of hopelessness concealing any of life’s beauty.  I have been imprisoned by shadow’s nefarious claws that bound me to a deep depression and I have been held captive in desperation’s dark dungeon entombed with no way out.   But this is different…. 

As I walked this morning I thought back upon a recent conversation with a friend in which we shared intimacies about our past.  Both of us had been bound by despair and our shared experience had me reflecting on what I am going through.  This journey is the testing of everything that I believe about God, people and myself.  The structure of my life has scaffolding surrounding it and the foundations have been unearthed.  This has me in a place of extreme vulnerability and one that sometimes suggests that the darkness will once again overtake me.  But that is a lie.  I am intimately familiar with darkness – I know it like a wife knows her husband.  I know it like others will thankfully never know it.  I possess an understanding of its nature that has not; nor will it ever fully disappear from my soul.  It has left its indelible handprint on me like a tattoo that has been permanently etched into my skin.  However, the darkness overextended itself.  In its quest to destroy my life it underestimated one thing…… the nail shaped scars that cover those handprints allowing for the light to shine hope back into my soul.

Solidarity

I should be sitting here finishing up my Matthew outline, but I can no longer in good conscience keep silent.  A good friend of mine and Christian brother has been navigating an extremely painful journey of healing; along with facing an astronomical crisis of faith while attending seminary.  He has been particularly transparent in the process; blogging for a wide variety of reasons.  Mainly to come to terms with questions that erupt from a place of such deep agony that only one who has been to hell and back can understand.  At the same time he has had the brave tenacity to often move against the tide of popular opinion; while at the same time holding onto a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe; he will find a place of peace and encounter the God we as Christians are all so quick to protect.

I have respectfully watched him knowing that he has the resolve to do what most find difficult – to be publically vulnerable and transparent in the midst of internal torment.  Those who have not traveled a similar road cannot begin to comprehend the weight of shame carried by those who have suffered abuse in all its varying forms; and how that keeps so very many silent and hidden in plain sight.  For this friend to put himself in the firing line in the midst of this type of struggle is admirable to say the least and heroic in terms of his Christian faith.  It is his example that gave me the courage to open up to my own soul’s deepest darkest dwelling places; which had been encased in steel, in order to let the poisonous demons (for lack of a better metaphor) out into the light. 

Many of you are not aware of the traumatic past I have experienced and the journey of restoration I have been navigating since becoming a Christian.  Even now - especially now, I am choosing not to write about these experiences due to my own level of vulnerability, quest for healing and unanswered questions.  It is not that I have not shared my story with some – I have.  However there is a huge difference in reporting incidents and the gut wrenching experience of sharing the deepest emotions of what has been done to you.  The fragility and exposure is excruciating to say the very least.  I have spent the greater portion of the past school year in hours of torturous prayer, writing and sharing some of the most deeply held pain with the people I finally found safe enough to open myself up to; a blog subject in and of itself.

Those who have not faced crisis of epic proportions or lived with unbearable pain are blessed and have been spared….for now.  With that comes a naïve view of the world – one that platitudes and pat answers often satisfy.  No matter how hard one tries to step out of that place of innocence; through education and/or heartfelt sincere desire, one can never fully understand the solitary journey it is until they face their own dark crossroad.  This has me ask the question of why we talk at one another about experiences we know nothing about.  Why we are so quick to talk at all rather than listen and hear the cry of the broken heart?  At a particularly dark point in my journey I was railing at God, railing at the church and especially railing at the trite answers people had continually given me in response to my pain.  A friend of mine who had the fortitude to sit with me in that deeply black place validated my feelings by saying; ‘platitudes are words that don’t give room for brokenness’.  How healing those nine little words were.  What they said was, I hear you.  

I have watched some push back against my friend with what I perceive to be an agenda of furthering their own theological position/worldview rather than listening to his heart.  I know as one who has traveled the tumultuous road of restoration, being heard is much more healing than finding answers.  No one has a right to dictate the acceptable avenue one should take in order to process their personal pain, nor does anyone have a right to stand in judgment of decisions made in order to obtain healing.  Those who have not lived with intolerable burdens do not fully understand how isolating an experience it is.  The only two that have experienced this journey; know its unique obstacles are the sufferer and God - they should be the ones to determine what is in the best interest for deliverance.  I stand in solidarity with you brother as you make choices that bring healing to your soul.