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Rip Van Winkle Revisited
Part 2: Waking Up from PTSD and Moving On
As you may remember from Part I, “my PTSD didn’t begin with cancer; it began the day I cried too much, when I was 21 years old.” After the doctor told me of the impending death of a second sibling, I blacked out and apparently started screaming and tearing up the waiting room. When I returned to consciousness awhile later and the nurses told me how I had lost control from the overwhelming grief, I was really embarrassed and made a strong commitment to myself. I gritted my teeth and thought, “I will never let that happen again.”
From that point on, whenever I was faced with deep grief, I gritted my teeth and stuffed my tears deep inside my heart and soul. It wasn’t that I thought I had done something “wrong” but I made a subliminal connection between my natural, innocent grief response of crying and losing control. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t cry one tear. I gritted my teeth and marched ahead for as long as I physically could. But a person can’t run from grief forever. My subliminal associations had unwittingly entrapped me and set me up for triggering PTSD last summer when I could no longer deny or escape the trauma in my life. Because I had subliminally blocked myself from a typical expression of grief, I had developed a kind of detached grieving response. It felt almost like an out of body experience. Tears flooded my eyes and flowed uncontrollably down my face–day after day, week after week, month after month. I was still so detached, I didn’t feel anything; I just “watched” the tears flow. At the time I didn’t realize what was happening, but I was headed toward a crisis.
Then, like Rip Van Winkle, I came to a point in my life where I just physically collapsed. My medical doctors, friends and family decided that it was time for me to look back and figure things out. I am now able to see how complex the subject of PTSD really is. But, for me, recovery from PTSD came down to taking a couple of major steps. I had surrounded myself with really good people and my first step to recovery was taken by following their advice–getting a good medical evaluation. After telling me that there was no new illness or physical condition, my doctors validated me by telling me to remember that I am a good, kind, loveable person and that I do the best I know how in difficult and traumatic situations.
It wasn’t that I needed to find out what I’d done wrong, so I could be fixed. Recovery from PTSD meant that I needed to be surrounded by people who were healthy enough to offer and give unconditional love and support while I was physically incapacitated and just let myself grieve about nothing in particular, and yet anything at all. Sometimes unconditional love means giving yourself permission to just let the tears flow and flow. At other times, unconditional love means being together with other people who genuinely know what PTSD means and validating each other. In my case, I didn’t really start to recover from PTSD and find joy in my life again until our FAS*FRI board met at Vicky McKinney’s house in December in order to gather the Collective Family Experience on caregiver PTSD.
It was at her house, surrounded by supportive friends, that I was able to take my second major step in recovery from PTSD. By listening to those who loved me and who let me talk, I was able to understand once again the difference between depression and grief. Grief is a process and in the 1960’s we just didn’t understand that. Besides, even if someone had told me that, I probably would have decided that I was just too busy to be interrupted by a lengthy grief cycle. The truth is that grief isn’t something you can hurry or shortcut. In our culture today, we are considered successful if we are good at multi-tasking. I am very good at that, but I couldn’t really heal from cancer or anything else (much less the trauma of FASD) until I set aside time with my Lord, my friends and my family and allowed grief to run its natural course to full completion. And now like Rip Van Winkle, I am awake, it’s spring and it feels great to be out in the sunshine again.
During the next few weeks other mothers who were at the retreat will share some of their experiences with PTSD too. We have set aside this little Blog as a safe place for all of us to share with each other.
Have you had personal experience with caregiver PTSD? What has helped you?
April 24th, 2009 at 10:48 pm Just also want to add the thought that siblings are also part of the family PTSD picture. I definitely think there is a cumulative effect that seems to make me rebound with a little less emotion -a sort of dulling, each year.