I am so very blessed to finally be on this PTSD healing journey. So many things aligned for me to be able to finally heal (and there’s a good chance that I will never get another chance to heal like this). Unexpected? Absolutely! But the Good Lord usually just laughs at any “plans” I develop. Nope, I am not in charge of my journey on this crazy spaceship we call Earth. And usually the BEST things in my life have arisen from the unplanned detours. I’m ridin’ that wave and whatever that wave does is any mortal’s guess.
That said, this is no easy journey. I am having to descend into the depths of Hell so I can heal my broken parts (under the guidance of a gifted psychologist…wow, sometimes she’s like a dragon slayer or a witcher the way she goes after the demons in my mind…more on that a different day). And those broken parts in me aren’t much interested in being fixed. In so many ways my spinal fusion and double carpal-tunnel surgery was SO much easier because all I had to do was lean back and let my body drive. Not so with this mental stuff. This is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done (but if I can survive and persevere through the forking Hell known as dental school then there is a good chance I’ll survive this PTSD healing journey).
I am no expert on mental illness/wellness but I’m trying to make sense of things within me the best I can. For my PTSD (I wager this is the same for many suffering from PTSD) it seems like there was an initial trauma event that triggered emotions. You might not even realize that that particular incident did or meant anything (I didn’t). Maybe our brains downplay the event or even block it from consciousness (my brain totally blocked the event!!!). But that damn event is always there lurking behind a veil within our unconscious mind (case in point: ME!!!). And that damn event can wreak havoc without our even knowing it as the emotion/s from that event can rear its ugly head in so many different and potentially damaging ways.
I am going to use fishing as an analogy for my PTSD because I feel like my initial trauma event (and its emotions) was like a fish hook or a fishing lure. Often times when fishing I use several fishing rods at once and I feel like my initial event/hook was something I casted out into the lake (unconsciously) and that hook just sat in the water quietly doing nothing and eventually just became forgotten. Over time I casted out lines from several other fishing rods and those lines were definitely within my conscious world and were even productive (I think of this as my ability to live my life and build a semblance of success). But that one forgotten line just sat there doing nothing but waiting for its moment.
As time moved on I had a few more trauma events after that initial event and I think of those events as weeds and/or snags on the bottom of the lake. They grew and multiplied but they were never really a problem. I just kept fishing and catching fish with my productive (conscious) fishing rods. In other words, I was living my life with some semblance of success.
Then the storm: the big trigger event that activated my PTSD. And now that quiet and forgotten hook went berserk. It was like an unconscious out-of-control reeling in of that forgotten hook followed by an unconscious wild/out-of-control cast of that hook with no particular aim. And then that crazy hook dove deep. And as that hook dove deeper it grabbed onto and dislodged multiple weeds/snags which led to even more furious reeling. Finally that weed and snag filled hook lodged in an immovable snag (like a submerged tree branch). And then that hook was STUCK!!! In other words, my PTSD had now come into full consciousness and it was not going to release without HELP!!!
And now I am receiving help. My psychologist is helping me to get that hook dislodged from that submerged tree branch. My psychologist is helping me to clean all those weeds and snags from my hook. And my psychologist is helping me to learn ways to safely cast that hook again. It’s ridiculous for me to think that that hook will go away for good. Far from it. That hook will likely be with me forever. But with care and training and retraining my hope is that I will never get that hook snagged into anything ever again. But even that may be ridiculous. So should that hook become snagged again (likely it will) my psychologist is teaching me ways to dislodge that hook effectively.
I am a work in progress. I am a glorious mess. But I’m doing the work. And I will continue to do the work. Stay tuned…
Doc's Writing Refuge 