[Issue #13] Week 2 Insights
A brief piece on my experience this week in intensive PTSD treatment
Thank you for your emails and your comments! Keep ‘em coming! Because I’ve gotten so many questions about it, I’ll be doing an article about art therapy specifically in the coming weeks (once I’m home and settled) and this is only happening because of the feedback you’ve given! Thank you! <3
“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
This week has been more difficult than the first.
The magic of this intense therapy hit me from the blindside when I felt the thematic link of shame crossing between different traumatic events that have stuck with me for the better part of 20 years.
Being blindsided by this thematic link surprised me precisely because of the shame bleeding through. And it’s not a “let’s talk about it” once and then we move on kinda therapy. It’s talking about it, literally breaking down the deep inner beliefs related back to these events using worksheets, then writing out how I feel, piece by piece.
A few weeks back, we explored processing trauma and using various tools and worksheets. Very similar tools and worksheets are used here, too. There’s a blend of therapies involved in the program and I’ve found all of it to be quite useful.
As someone who’s suffered savage and violent trauma, it’s no wonder I think the way I do and then react or act based upon these thoughts I have. The thing about thoughts, though, is that they are only thoughts. That’s it. Full stop.
By attaching judegements to these thoughts, they become beliefs. And beliefs are much stronger than thoughts because beliefs make up our interior. Our beliefs drive our decisions, our thoughts, our actions, and even our feelings. I know. Feelings, again.
There’s a little diagram called the cognitive triangle that we’ve been using for reference here as we move through our emotional regulation sessions and it illustrates how thoughts, behaviors, and feelings are connected.
Growing up, I was told over and over and over, almost taught, that I “shouldn’t trust anyone” or “don’t trust anyone, they will fuck you over eventually” or some version of this. When this kind of message comes from a parental figure, of course a child will believe it. And I did. While I had friends in high school, I can’t say I trusted them easily, if at all. I still struggle, at times, trusting my wife and she’s the most trustworthy person I have ever met! It’s no fault of their own, it’s the message I was given. The lie I was told.
We’re told a lot of lies, aren’t we?
The problem with lies is not that they exist but that we believe them. And we shouldn’t, because where did this message, this information, this lie come from? Is the source dependable? Is the source of this message someone you could call in an emergency and know they’d be willing and able to help?
I get it, we all do the best we can with what we’ve got. If messages like “don’t trust anyone” are presented in the form of protection, a message like that can manufacture a sense of safety. And it manufactures a sense of mistrust in others and the world. Eventually, I no longer trusted myself, either, and that’s where the real problems began.
Couple all of this with my battle with addiction, PTSD, major depression, anxiety, my seizures and my traumatic brain injury and it’s a real shit show some days. I imagine this to be true for most of you dear readers. Some days are better than others. Them’s the breaks.
I’ve learned a lot about manufactured emotions and natural emotions this week, too. A quick rundown - manufactured emotions are the emotions we aim to feel by engaging in some activity that will bring about the desired emotion. Natural emotions are the emotions we feel immediatly following an event, action, or words. If someone calls you an asshole, you might immediately get irritated, or pissed off. That’s a natural emotion, anger, to the event that took place. Going home after someone calls you an asshole and baking a cake to make yourself feel better is manufacturing emotion - you’re manufacturing joy or comfort or some other more desirable emotion.
Manufacturing emotions can be incredibly powerful in helping our brain tell a story to ourselves that may or may not be factually accurate. Manufacturing emotions can also be a powerful way to combat some of those other pesky undersirable emotions like shame and fear.
Part of the work for me this week has been beginning to mature into radical acceptance. Therapist Jenny Tates wrote about radical acceptance in the New York Times in early 2021 and here’s how she defines it:
“As a psychologist, I often teach clients in my clinical practice the difference between pain and suffering. Pain on its own can be difficult. But it’s only when you don’t accept it that it turns into suffering….”
…”Radical acceptance means recognizing your emotional or physical distress — whether around minor issues, like traffic, or more significant challenges, such as navigating a chronic illness — and wholeheartedly practicing acceptance.”
Radical acceptance is not about resignation. And for clarity, resignation is giving up. Radical acceptance is about allowing what is to be. We don’t have to like it. We don’t have to believe it’s fair or just or true or right. But the longer we go not accepting what is the longer our lives feel small, sad, empty.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living a small, sad, empty interior life. I want to enjoy my life and accept all the thing about myself I don’t like. This week has been about facing my shadow side in the daylight. And let me tell you how sharp the teeth of flourescent lighting can be when you want to hide the scars. Everything shows up, eventually. All of that mess, those lies, those beliefs pile up and spill over.
It’s taken me a solid 15 years or so to even acknowledge that I have PTSD and depression. It’s taken me anther 5 to come to terms with the facts of my reality and what is versus what I wish was. And now I’m arriving to radical acceptance that I do, in fact, have PTSD and there is, as of yet, no “cure” for it. There is only managing it. Navigating it. Working with it.
But I have got to stop fighting it. All of it.
Do I like having PTSD? Did I want to have a brain injury? Did I wake up on a Friday sometime 15 years ago and say “self, let’s get addicted to some shit!”? Fuck no. Who would sign themselves up for that kind of life?
And this is the life I was given. This is the life I have. Right now, this one, this moment and this moment that bleeds into another moment that make up the rhythm of my life.
I’ve also been given the homework of exposure therapy. There’s a rather large grocery store across the street with a death trap slash minefield of a parking lot included. So by the time I get inside I’m already ready to ram something with my cart. But last night was better. It was, dare I say, easier.
Today I was introduced to a new concept, “emotional exposure.” The instructions are for me to basically manufacture an undesirable emotion by thinking about a past traumatic or upsetting event. It has already struck me how rebellious I feel about doing this, manufacturing my emotions. I’m so good at manufacturing emotions when I’m unaware that’s what I’m doing and now, having to do it in a therapuetic way, feels hard. I have to use this vice as a skill now? What?
It’s almost like I’m getting all my favorite toys taken away.
I have a fairly strong belief that I am my PTSD, the sum of all my parts equals a messy traumatic outburst waiting to occur. And that’s not realisitcally or even factually accurate. But because I believe it so strongly, it certainly feels true. The question occurs to me then, “without all my PTSD symptoms eating away at me, what will I become?” And the answer lies in the future - a future I’m working toward radically accepting.
A pondering for this week - what is it in your life that you need to radically accept, allowing you to move on, or through, or past an interior barrier?
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Thank you for continuing to share your experiences and your golden nuggets of truth and insight. As always, your articles are very thought provoking.