Post by g on Jul 21, 2011 16:01:02 GMT -5
www.askmehelpdesk.com/advice/t-19826.html
Text of First Issue of
the Post-Traumatic Gazette
(May-June 1995)
©1995 by Patience H. C. Mason. All rights reserved, except that permission is hereby granted to freely reproduce and distribute this document, provided the text is reproduced unaltered and entire (including this notice)
and is distributed free of charge.
Excellent article
This is a quote from a long article I'm reading. G .
RECOVERING FROM PTSD:
It is normal to be affected by trauma. That is the most important message in this newsletter. Recovery is healing your life. You'll have a scar. You'll also know what to do if the pain comes up again. Trauma never stops affecting most trauma survivors. Those who forget or deny how much pain they were (or are) in can't help others, can barely help themselves. They hurt others with remarks like "I was in a real war," or "Put it behind you!"
PTSD symptoms, numbing, hypervigilance and reexperiencing, are hints to get help! They helped you survive, but they do not go away by themselves. People have to warp their lives to control them. They can become both ineffective and a source of constant pain. When that happens, it is possible to change.
If you are in pain because of the way your life is today, you can change your life. It will be a slow process. Pain will come from the memories of what you survived and from frustration at new stresses and slow progress. It is okay to be in pain. That is the first principle of recovery. Your experiences were painful. You survived the pain of the actual trauma, and you can survive the memories. To recover you need to know at least a part of what you survived, to reconnect your feelings to those events, and mourn your losses.
Treat yourself with respect. Respect your experiences and your problems. Your symptoms are circumstantial evidence that you have been through a lot. PTSD is normal when you have been traumatized. You are not weak, weird, or unusual. If we could live through something without it affecting us, it wouldn't be trauma and we wouldn't be human. Admitting we're human and we have problems is respectful of ourselves. Many trauma survivors minimize the effects of what they've been through (It didn't affect me!) and then wind up resenting people for not respecting their pain. This is human but not very effective.
There is no rush in recovery. Recovery is based on acceptance. I have been traumatized. It did affect me. Why wouldn't it? I have skills that kept me alive which are now causing me trouble. I'm closed off from my feelings and from others. This makes my life lonely and difficult. I am in pain from my memories because what I went through was painful. I need help.
It's ok to need help.
It is ok to ask for help.
Help is available from therapists who are well trained in the field of trauma. Ask about training and experience and pick someone you are comfortable with.
For years 12 step programs were the only help available to survivors who self-medicated with alcohol or drugs. Thousands of veterans, incest and domestic violence survivors and others have dealt with PTSD by going to Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Overeaters Anonymous and other 12 step programs. I started going to one to get help with my problems in living with a guy with PTSD, but since I knew about PTSD, I saw it everywhere. It was clear to me that the people who get diagnosed and get help from the psychiatric community are the tip of the iceberg. Many 12 steppers mistrusted everyone and everything except the 12 step fellowship they were in for good reason. Their traumatic experiences had been ignored and discounted and their self-medication called willful misconduct or self indulgence. They had been insulted, misdiagnosed, drugged and told it was all in their head.
There were people who thought they were stupid because they couldn't concentrate in school but thought being battered hadn't affected them because they always had a job and could take a beating from anyone, people who had stayed drunk for 20 years, married a series of alcoholics, or weighed 300 pounds and never connected it to their traumas. Trauma was invisible to the survivors who thought it shouldn't bother them. Yet, using the steps they were slowly recovering; some simply through working the steps of the program. Others needed and became able to seek outside help.
It takes time to get better. Getting better is the reward for taking the time to recover. Getting better is a slow process. The physiological arousal which many trauma survivors live in makes it difficult for survivors to take in the kind of information needed to heal. This is part of the brain chemistry of survivors. It is not resistance. People can talk about changing but all survivors see is their lips moving. The words and concepts make no sense. This is because they are taking in survival information: who's in the room, where are they sitting, where is the door, how are they reacting to me? In twelve step meetings we have a saying which describes this process: "came, came to, came to believe," meaning we got ourselves to meetings (or therapy), eventually we started to be able to hear what was being said, and finally we came to believe it could work for us too.
Safety first. Survivors won't feel safe with a therapist or group until they have, over time, experienced safety. Why should they? When they have been treated with respect, not discounted, not pushed to hurry up and recover (which are secondary wounding experiences and make PTSD worse), they will feel safe and know it because they will be able to hear and understand what the therapist or group is saying in a new way. A good therapist or 12 step group will let you take your time and treat your traumas with respect. Badly trained therapists often exhibit what I like to call "a profound and pervasive narcissistic sense of entitlement," which manifests itself as "I'm a therapist. You should trust me. I can fix you." An honest therapist will say he or she may be able to help you work on this problem..
When they can hear, survivors can begin to work on safety issues, understanding and protecting themselves from triggers, learning to handle anger and fear. Survivors can develop the capacity to respond rather than react, like having a pause button instead of an on-off switch. Sobriety is necessary if you've been using alcohol, drugs, food or some behavior to numb your feelings. You can't heal what you can't feel.
HELPFUL CONCEPTS
It is okay to hurt. As a survivor, you need to go through the process of mourning which takes about two years if your mother dies of old age in her bed at home and you were expecting it. Traumatic losses take longer.
Mourning has five stages:
**Denial: is screaming "No! No!' at the time of the trauma. It is also "Never Happened!" and "Didn't affect me!" People can get stuck in denial for years.
**Rage: People get stuck in the rage stage, too, screaming and lashing out at everyone around them, or coldly angry and unable to change.
**Bargaining: Stuck bargaining includes veterans who will only get well if the VA gets perfect or if Nixon or Fonda goes to jail, the child abuse survivor who will only get well when patriarchy is gone, or the survivor who will only get better when he or she finds a perfect therapist.
**Sadness: The sadness stage is very difficult for most survivors because of our feelgood culture. Being sad is practically illegal. Sadness refused leads me to deep depression, but today if I start to feel depressed, I ask myself what do I need to feel sad about. If I can identify and feel it, I don't get depressed. Sadness needs to be felt. What happened to you was sad, painful, grevious. The only way out is through. Those feelings won't kill you. It is okay to grieve. Grief is part of life.
**Acceptance: The final stage. Yes this did happen. It was bad and it has affected me. I have a scar, but I survived. In time, I may be able to use my experiences to help other survivors.
Recovery takes persistence and patience. "Progress not perfection" is a good motto. Recovery is not a smooth swift rise out of the depths of pain or numbness. It is a rough climb with many slips and lots of hanging on at new rough places in the climb.
"We recycle" is a slogan that will help you laugh when you slip. Acceptance of the slowness of the process is hard but it's reality. Since PTSD symptoms can come back with new stress, knowing that it is normal to recycle can help you continue to recover.
It takes what it takes and it takes as long as it takes. Human beings hardly ever change quickly except under extreme stress, so be easy on yourself. In response to the idea, I should be over this, remember this slogan (made up by yours truly) "Everything after the word should is bullsh*t."
H.O.W.? Honesty, openness, and willingness are characteristics that will help anyone recover. These things did happen and do affect us (honest). We can find help if we look (open). We try suggestions from others who have recovered or have worked with others who have recovered (willing). This is not to say that every idea or suggestion will work for you. Some won't. Some will be very uncomfortable, but will have a healing effect on your life, like getting sober
Yet. If those ideas scare you, the most healing word in the English language is yet, as in I can't do that yet... Someday you will when you are ready.
Willing to vs Wanting to: There is also a great deal of difference between the words "want" and "willing." Spelled differently. Mean different things. Willingness may mean I do things I don't want to do! If I wait till I want to do the things that will help me recover, I may never recover.
We heal by degrees. You don't have to heal perfectly or on someone else's schedule. People do this work in stages and have to take breaks from it.
Feelings are facts: you feel what you feel. It doesn't have to be reasonable, justified, or what other people feel. Feelings do not have brains. They are not logical! Part of recovery is learning what you do feel so you can take care of yourself. Trying to take care of yourself without knowing what you feel is like trying to budget without knowing your income.
Feelings are not facts: Emotional reasoning is a distorted way of thinking common in our society: I feel it therefore it is true. I feel hurt therefore he/ she meant to hurt me. I feel guilty therefore I am guilty. Many of us tend to feel hurt by or guilty about everything. It comes with our culture, but we don't have to believe it.
It is ok to feel more than one contradictory emotion at the same time.
Respect your emotions but don't necessarily believe them and don't act on them in old ways. People can change by acting in new ways until new feelings come. Waiting till they feel like changing is a dead end for most people!
When trauma survivors begin to get better it is very scary for family members. Underlying this is the fear that if you change you may not love them any more. You may wonder why they have problems since they weren't traumatized. Next month I'll talk more about the effects of living with PTSD, of seeing someone hurting and doing all you can to help and having it all be useless.
Don't compare: Compassion is something that develops in recovery. You will see that what each person has lived through is the worst thing he or she has been through. Remembering how you felt after the first firefight, the first beating, the first time someone in your neighborhood was gunned down, before you got so numb, will give you empathy for others.
Recovery leads to autonomy, the feeling of being whole, the ability to change when necessary and the ability to regulate yourself. These are important concepts to people who may feel they have lost great parts of themselves. You may not get all of yourself back, but you can get some of it back. For people who have been stuck in survivor skills, being able to change is freedom, and for people who could be blowing up one minute and numb as a stump the next, the ability to regulate these reactions is pure joy.
Recovery will bring back joy into your life. It will be mixed with pain because this is real life, but learning to feel the pain lets it pass and the periods between the pain will get longer and longer and better and better.
One final word, no matter what you did to survive, you do deserve to recover. Many survivors feel guilty for surviving or for not doing enough or for overreacting. During the recovery process, your feelings about this may change. If you find that some of your guilt has a realistic basis, you can make amends for your actions.
--Patience Mason
Text of First Issue of
the Post-Traumatic Gazette
(May-June 1995)
©1995 by Patience H. C. Mason. All rights reserved, except that permission is hereby granted to freely reproduce and distribute this document, provided the text is reproduced unaltered and entire (including this notice)
and is distributed free of charge.
Excellent article
This is a quote from a long article I'm reading. G .
RECOVERING FROM PTSD:
It is normal to be affected by trauma. That is the most important message in this newsletter. Recovery is healing your life. You'll have a scar. You'll also know what to do if the pain comes up again. Trauma never stops affecting most trauma survivors. Those who forget or deny how much pain they were (or are) in can't help others, can barely help themselves. They hurt others with remarks like "I was in a real war," or "Put it behind you!"
PTSD symptoms, numbing, hypervigilance and reexperiencing, are hints to get help! They helped you survive, but they do not go away by themselves. People have to warp their lives to control them. They can become both ineffective and a source of constant pain. When that happens, it is possible to change.
If you are in pain because of the way your life is today, you can change your life. It will be a slow process. Pain will come from the memories of what you survived and from frustration at new stresses and slow progress. It is okay to be in pain. That is the first principle of recovery. Your experiences were painful. You survived the pain of the actual trauma, and you can survive the memories. To recover you need to know at least a part of what you survived, to reconnect your feelings to those events, and mourn your losses.
Treat yourself with respect. Respect your experiences and your problems. Your symptoms are circumstantial evidence that you have been through a lot. PTSD is normal when you have been traumatized. You are not weak, weird, or unusual. If we could live through something without it affecting us, it wouldn't be trauma and we wouldn't be human. Admitting we're human and we have problems is respectful of ourselves. Many trauma survivors minimize the effects of what they've been through (It didn't affect me!) and then wind up resenting people for not respecting their pain. This is human but not very effective.
There is no rush in recovery. Recovery is based on acceptance. I have been traumatized. It did affect me. Why wouldn't it? I have skills that kept me alive which are now causing me trouble. I'm closed off from my feelings and from others. This makes my life lonely and difficult. I am in pain from my memories because what I went through was painful. I need help.
It's ok to need help.
It is ok to ask for help.
Help is available from therapists who are well trained in the field of trauma. Ask about training and experience and pick someone you are comfortable with.
For years 12 step programs were the only help available to survivors who self-medicated with alcohol or drugs. Thousands of veterans, incest and domestic violence survivors and others have dealt with PTSD by going to Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Overeaters Anonymous and other 12 step programs. I started going to one to get help with my problems in living with a guy with PTSD, but since I knew about PTSD, I saw it everywhere. It was clear to me that the people who get diagnosed and get help from the psychiatric community are the tip of the iceberg. Many 12 steppers mistrusted everyone and everything except the 12 step fellowship they were in for good reason. Their traumatic experiences had been ignored and discounted and their self-medication called willful misconduct or self indulgence. They had been insulted, misdiagnosed, drugged and told it was all in their head.
There were people who thought they were stupid because they couldn't concentrate in school but thought being battered hadn't affected them because they always had a job and could take a beating from anyone, people who had stayed drunk for 20 years, married a series of alcoholics, or weighed 300 pounds and never connected it to their traumas. Trauma was invisible to the survivors who thought it shouldn't bother them. Yet, using the steps they were slowly recovering; some simply through working the steps of the program. Others needed and became able to seek outside help.
It takes time to get better. Getting better is the reward for taking the time to recover. Getting better is a slow process. The physiological arousal which many trauma survivors live in makes it difficult for survivors to take in the kind of information needed to heal. This is part of the brain chemistry of survivors. It is not resistance. People can talk about changing but all survivors see is their lips moving. The words and concepts make no sense. This is because they are taking in survival information: who's in the room, where are they sitting, where is the door, how are they reacting to me? In twelve step meetings we have a saying which describes this process: "came, came to, came to believe," meaning we got ourselves to meetings (or therapy), eventually we started to be able to hear what was being said, and finally we came to believe it could work for us too.
Safety first. Survivors won't feel safe with a therapist or group until they have, over time, experienced safety. Why should they? When they have been treated with respect, not discounted, not pushed to hurry up and recover (which are secondary wounding experiences and make PTSD worse), they will feel safe and know it because they will be able to hear and understand what the therapist or group is saying in a new way. A good therapist or 12 step group will let you take your time and treat your traumas with respect. Badly trained therapists often exhibit what I like to call "a profound and pervasive narcissistic sense of entitlement," which manifests itself as "I'm a therapist. You should trust me. I can fix you." An honest therapist will say he or she may be able to help you work on this problem..
When they can hear, survivors can begin to work on safety issues, understanding and protecting themselves from triggers, learning to handle anger and fear. Survivors can develop the capacity to respond rather than react, like having a pause button instead of an on-off switch. Sobriety is necessary if you've been using alcohol, drugs, food or some behavior to numb your feelings. You can't heal what you can't feel.
HELPFUL CONCEPTS
It is okay to hurt. As a survivor, you need to go through the process of mourning which takes about two years if your mother dies of old age in her bed at home and you were expecting it. Traumatic losses take longer.
Mourning has five stages:
**Denial: is screaming "No! No!' at the time of the trauma. It is also "Never Happened!" and "Didn't affect me!" People can get stuck in denial for years.
**Rage: People get stuck in the rage stage, too, screaming and lashing out at everyone around them, or coldly angry and unable to change.
**Bargaining: Stuck bargaining includes veterans who will only get well if the VA gets perfect or if Nixon or Fonda goes to jail, the child abuse survivor who will only get well when patriarchy is gone, or the survivor who will only get better when he or she finds a perfect therapist.
**Sadness: The sadness stage is very difficult for most survivors because of our feelgood culture. Being sad is practically illegal. Sadness refused leads me to deep depression, but today if I start to feel depressed, I ask myself what do I need to feel sad about. If I can identify and feel it, I don't get depressed. Sadness needs to be felt. What happened to you was sad, painful, grevious. The only way out is through. Those feelings won't kill you. It is okay to grieve. Grief is part of life.
**Acceptance: The final stage. Yes this did happen. It was bad and it has affected me. I have a scar, but I survived. In time, I may be able to use my experiences to help other survivors.
Recovery takes persistence and patience. "Progress not perfection" is a good motto. Recovery is not a smooth swift rise out of the depths of pain or numbness. It is a rough climb with many slips and lots of hanging on at new rough places in the climb.
"We recycle" is a slogan that will help you laugh when you slip. Acceptance of the slowness of the process is hard but it's reality. Since PTSD symptoms can come back with new stress, knowing that it is normal to recycle can help you continue to recover.
It takes what it takes and it takes as long as it takes. Human beings hardly ever change quickly except under extreme stress, so be easy on yourself. In response to the idea, I should be over this, remember this slogan (made up by yours truly) "Everything after the word should is bullsh*t."
H.O.W.? Honesty, openness, and willingness are characteristics that will help anyone recover. These things did happen and do affect us (honest). We can find help if we look (open). We try suggestions from others who have recovered or have worked with others who have recovered (willing). This is not to say that every idea or suggestion will work for you. Some won't. Some will be very uncomfortable, but will have a healing effect on your life, like getting sober
Yet. If those ideas scare you, the most healing word in the English language is yet, as in I can't do that yet... Someday you will when you are ready.
Willing to vs Wanting to: There is also a great deal of difference between the words "want" and "willing." Spelled differently. Mean different things. Willingness may mean I do things I don't want to do! If I wait till I want to do the things that will help me recover, I may never recover.
We heal by degrees. You don't have to heal perfectly or on someone else's schedule. People do this work in stages and have to take breaks from it.
Feelings are facts: you feel what you feel. It doesn't have to be reasonable, justified, or what other people feel. Feelings do not have brains. They are not logical! Part of recovery is learning what you do feel so you can take care of yourself. Trying to take care of yourself without knowing what you feel is like trying to budget without knowing your income.
Feelings are not facts: Emotional reasoning is a distorted way of thinking common in our society: I feel it therefore it is true. I feel hurt therefore he/ she meant to hurt me. I feel guilty therefore I am guilty. Many of us tend to feel hurt by or guilty about everything. It comes with our culture, but we don't have to believe it.
It is ok to feel more than one contradictory emotion at the same time.
Respect your emotions but don't necessarily believe them and don't act on them in old ways. People can change by acting in new ways until new feelings come. Waiting till they feel like changing is a dead end for most people!
When trauma survivors begin to get better it is very scary for family members. Underlying this is the fear that if you change you may not love them any more. You may wonder why they have problems since they weren't traumatized. Next month I'll talk more about the effects of living with PTSD, of seeing someone hurting and doing all you can to help and having it all be useless.
Don't compare: Compassion is something that develops in recovery. You will see that what each person has lived through is the worst thing he or she has been through. Remembering how you felt after the first firefight, the first beating, the first time someone in your neighborhood was gunned down, before you got so numb, will give you empathy for others.
Recovery leads to autonomy, the feeling of being whole, the ability to change when necessary and the ability to regulate yourself. These are important concepts to people who may feel they have lost great parts of themselves. You may not get all of yourself back, but you can get some of it back. For people who have been stuck in survivor skills, being able to change is freedom, and for people who could be blowing up one minute and numb as a stump the next, the ability to regulate these reactions is pure joy.
Recovery will bring back joy into your life. It will be mixed with pain because this is real life, but learning to feel the pain lets it pass and the periods between the pain will get longer and longer and better and better.
One final word, no matter what you did to survive, you do deserve to recover. Many survivors feel guilty for surviving or for not doing enough or for overreacting. During the recovery process, your feelings about this may change. If you find that some of your guilt has a realistic basis, you can make amends for your actions.
--Patience Mason