Life after Trauma

When home is a refuge: trauma survivors and safety

Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.

Unknown

                                     Houses, Paul Klee

I'll be going home in ten days. My mother's appointment with the orthopedic doctor went well this morning and, now, there really isn't anything essential I need to do here. I could make my mother's stay more comfortable at the rehab center and I could make sure that my dad doesn't do anything foolish - like his proposed idea to stand on a ladder on the stairs and nail a loose  board onto a window. But, really, right now, what I need is to be home.

Hyperarousal

People with PTSD have difficulty feeling safe. That's because we've gone through times when we couldn't keep ourselves safe and terrible things happened. This feeling of not being safe is associated with a PTSD symptom known as hyperarousal. Hyperarousal is when you feel anxious, can't sleep, and are easily startled. Essentially, it means that it is very hard to settle and nearly impossible to feel safe. 

My Refuge

Even though I have experienced hyperarounsal at home, I feel safe there because I know that if I truly can't function, I can retreat to the refuge of my bedroom. Having that "escape route" for hard times is reassuring. My husband and son aren't always happy when I take refuge in my bedroom, but they understand because I've explained how important having a safe place is as I continue to heal from trauma. Before I was diagnosed with PTSD, I used to have panic attacks at night. I would wake up and scream and jump out of bed. These panic attacks happened often enough to be frightening and unpleasant. Today, after almost two years of therapy and working with other healing techniques, including singing, walking, and yoga, I have a greater sense of safety both at home and away from home. I rarely have panic attacks and, most days, I lead a normal life. However, when I am experiencing difficult times, due to anniversaries of traumatic events or exposure to triggers, the ONLY place I feel safe is at home. 

At my parents, I have a wonderful bedroom that I can retreat to. It is furnished with a bed, dresser, and cedar chest from my beloved grandmother's house. I love everything about this room. However, I can usually only retreat here at the end of the day. A few days ago, I was feeling overwhelmed, so I stayed home and hung out in the bedroom. Neither of my parents understood and explaining PTSD and the concept of refuge to my cognitively-challenged parents seemed impossible; so I didn't try. Since I've been here, I've been able to get up and go out into the world most days and help my parents with the things they need help with. But all that helping, even when I don't feel up to it, takes a toll and I've been feeling exhausted. And that's another reason why I can't wait to get home. 

Early on the morning of March 8th, I will board a plane bound for Vancouver. Once I recover from jet lag, I plan to rest a lot and, then, sit at my laptop in our sunny dining room and write. I will be barefoot because I love going barefoot at home. I will probably have music playing and my cat will be nearby - probably begging for food. When I go out to check the mail, I will hear ravens and bald eagles calling from down by the ocean and crows and finches calling from nearby trees. If I'm lucky it won't be raining. Raining or not, daffodils and cherry trees will be blooming and the long, cool, wet Vancouver spring will be on the way. I expect to feel relaxed and, above all, SAFE.

I realize that not everyone with PTSD is so lucky. Many people, particularly women, may still live with abusive partners or alone and their homes may not feel - or be - safe. However, it is possible to create a sense of safety in other ways. Visiting a trusted therapist, keeping a journal, talking with a friend, or practicing yoga can all provide the safety and grounding that trauma survivors need. Lately, yoga has been getting a lot of attention as a wonderful healing method for helping people with PTSD. Some people also "build" a safe place in their mind that they can retreat to whenever they need to. Others meditate. (cat on box, photo: J. Ota, flickr) 

How do you create a feeling of safety?

 Where do you feel safe? If you don't feel safe in a "real" place, what are some other ways you help yourself to feel safe? Do you have an imaginary place you go to, to feel safe? Do you practice yoga or meditate? Are you ready for the "storm?"

Finally, enjoy the video below of Deanta performing the Dougie MacLean song, "Ready for the Storm." I had the great pleasure of hearing Dougie MacLean perform this song in person. 

 

Comfort me with kindness: what trauma survivors need most

. . . it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day . . . 

Naomi Shihab Nye

People who have PTSD, or are grieving, crave comfort the way a plant craves water or the way sunflowers turn towards the sun. Sadly, loved ones and friends may avoid people who most need their help. Sometimes, I think it's because they don't know what to say or they cannot deal with the hard truth that they cannot change what has happened or control what is to come. People are afraid of hard truths. It doesn't have to be that way. Some people may be more gifted, if you want to call it that, at opening to other people's emotions. But I believe that nearly anybody can learn to help a loved one along their healing journey.

One of my dearest friends (J.) told me a story that has a lot to teach about courage and kindness. On an autumn day about ten years ago now,  J. and her husband were driving along the highway that runs between the Yukon and Haines, Alaska. The road was wet and the sun had come out and the pavement was glistening and, suddenly, as they rounded a curve they were surprised to see a loon on the road. Now, loons - as some of you may know - can only take off on water and this particular loon must have mistaken the road for water, landed, and was unable to take off again. J.'s husband pulled over and, without thinking about it at all, J. got out of the car, gently picked up the loon and got back into the car and held the loon on her lap. She told me recently that she never even thought about how the loon could have hurt her with its strong beak. All she thought about was that it was in need of help. J. and her husband drove until they came to a lake and let the loon go at the water's edge. The loon swam out into the middle of the lake and was gone. This story has lodged in my mind because it involved a living being in need of help, two people who were unafraid of being hurt, who knew the right thing to do, and did it. I have held onto that story like a talisman because it embodies what I have often wanted and rarely found: someone to comfort me when I was in need of comfort.

How Can You Help Loved Ones with PTSD

If you have a family member or friend with PTSD, or one who is dealing with grief, they need someone with the courage to simply "be" with them during difficult times. Even if you are afraid or feel like you just don't know what to do, that someone can be you. Dr. Frank Ochberg, who has worked with trauma survivors for many years, offers some basic advice about how you can help your loved one. It is well worth reading. Below are some things to try that my husband and I have come up with during the years I've spent struggling with healing. For more suggestions, take a look at Shock Waves: A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One's PTSD.

What Can You Do?

• Give your loved one a foot rub or neck rub
• Go for quiet walks
• Go for coffee or hot chocolate
• Hold their hand
• Listen, listen, listen 
• Be there

What Can You Say?

• Are you okay?
• I'm sorry you're feeling bad right now.
• Can I hold you?
• It's okay to be sad, hurt, angry (whatever the person is feeling).
• I love you.

Things NOT to Say

• What do you expect me to do about it?
• It's been ___ years (fill in the blank), why can't you just get over it (your pain, the past, your grief)?
• It upsets me when you're sad, mad (feel in the blank).

How to Soften Your Heart

The bottom line is that it isn't so much about what you say or do, it's about how you are. Can you be kind? Can you be accepting? Can you open your heart to what they're feeling? I like to think of it as a kind of quiet opening, a softening, that allows someone to be present with intense emotions without blaming the other person or expecting them to change too soon. Like my doctor told me: healing is a process not a race. (Moss heart, photo: Randi Hausken, flickr)

(This is not to say that loved ones should take the place of a good therapist or doctor or that they should be "on call" 24/7. More in a future post on how people whose loved ones have PTSD or complicated grief can cope with stress and get support for themselves.)

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Whitney Houston, my daughters, and substance abuse

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we look for ways to make the pain go away.

Sherman Alexie

           Whitney Houston performing in New York City

It was the 80s and women singers were HUGE. In those days, my husband and I were raising two teenaged foster daughters and every day after school they would plop themselves down on the couch and watch music videos. Today, music videos seem quaint artifacts of another era. In those days, they were the only show in town. Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Tina Turner, our girls adored them all.

They were all great performers, but there was something truly special about Whitney Houston. Young and beautiful and shining. When you heard her sing "The Greatest Love," you couldn't help but get tears in your eyes. "Everybody's searching for a hero/people need someone to look up to." Whitney was "someone to look up to," for our daughters. We believed in her and in them too. 

 

The 80s were filled with bright shining moments. Our daughters were fabulous volleyball players and doing well in school. Whitney kept ringing up hits, seemingly just as beautiful year after year. In those days, I believed that our daughters were going to escape the curse of alcoholism that blighted the native community they came from. Sadly, that's not what happened. Both of our daughters are now in their 30s and struggle with alcoholism. Whitney's struggles with substance abuse were newsworthy and her death put substance abuse and addiction in the spotlight (again). 

Unlike Whitney, our two girls are still alive. One is a binge drinker who manages to hold her life together just enough to stay alive. She's had more than one wake-up call over the years: a nearly fatal car crash while she was drinking, two stays in the hospital with liver and kidney problems, and other things I don't even know about. Our other daughter is one of those drink-every-day-kind of alcoholics. She hasn't - as far as I know - had any close brushes with death, but she has lost four brothers to alcohol or drug-related causes. I'd like to think that Whitney's death will serve as another kind of wake-up call for both of our daughters. One has already phoned. "Is it true," she asked. "Is Whitney really dead? What happened?" When I told her, she said, "That would never happen to me." If only that were true. Sure, she may never drown or OD in a bathtub in a fancy hotel room. But unless she stops drinking - I doubt she'll live to see 50. I really hated to write that sentence, but I think it's true. Just today, she phoned and told my husband, when he asked how she was, that "I am going to keep on drinking." (Photo above, one of our daughters on the beach in Vancouver)

Depressing? Yes.  Hopeless? No.  Today, I ate lunch at a lovely cafe and a man sitting nearby was working on his laptop and, as is my wont, we fell into conversation. They were talking about Whitney Houston on the television that was mounted on one wall of the cafe and, it turns out, the man had been in sobriety for 5 years. We spent some time discussing why it's so hard to "get clean." He thought that the person trying to get sober really has to want it or they won't work hard enough. He also thought that you need to get to the heart of the pain that fuels the addiction. And that's the connection to PTSD: both of our daughters have experienced significant traumas in their lives and they drink to ease that pain. I don't know why Whitney had substance abuse issues or what her pain was. I'm only sorry that whatever her demons were, they destroyed her.

One of the last things the man told me was that sobriety takes a long time to feel good. In his case it took over a year. Then, one morning, he said, he woke up and noticed that the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Here's an iconic poem for all those who didn't make it past substance abuse to the shining sun and singing birds. 

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so for an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Why is it important for trauma survivors to speak out?

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 

 

I Can't Hear Your Pain

"I need to minimize my exposure to your pain," a friend told me recently, while we were discussing some of the traumatic events we've both experienced in our lives. Sadly, this isn't the first time I've heard those words. Another friend told me that "it makes her stomach hurt," to hear about my past experiences. The friend who I met for coffee last week, happens to be the father of the daughter I relinquished for adoption: aka my ex. The original intention of our reunion was to discuss and heal from the experiences of the past. Now, he's decided that he doesn't have room in his life for me anymore and he doesn't want to hear anymore about my grief. What he had to say hurt, but I had seen it coming for a long time and I wasn't surprised. 

The Loneliness of Trauma

Processing trauma can get very lonely at times. Therapist Dr. Kathleen Young refers to this as trauma stigma and her take on what silencing can mean to trauma survivors is worth reading.  I am a trauma survivor with complex PTSD and complicated grief recovering from and processing multiple traumas that took place over 20 years of my life - ages 17 to 37. That doesn't mean that I talk about trauma all the time. Far from it. I would get exhausted. However, there are times when I want to share how I'm feeling with friends, family and - in the case of my ex and my husband - those who have gone through traumatic experiences with me. I  have several wonderful friends who are not afraid of my pain. They can let me feel what I feel and be who I am. This is not a small gift. Others - even people I love - behave as if trauma is contagious and the less said about it the better. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they can't really understand what it means to be silenced. Sometimes, however, this is no longer possible. It is not healthy to be silenced. The problem isn't that I MUST always speak about my pain. The problem is that the traumas I experienced are a part of me and, even though I am working on healing, the pain may never be entirely gone. And so, I have to limit my exposure to people who want to silence me. 

Speaking Up

My ex followed up our talk with a hurtful email that said, amongst other things, that being reunited with our daughter should make up for any trauma that I experienced in the past and that he wasn't interested in holding my hand while I continued to grieve. If it were only that simple. My relationship with my daughter is a tenuous thing and she hasn't spoken to me in over a year, while my ex sees her and talks to her regularly. Both my ex and my daughter imply that "if only you would change and let go of the past everything would be great." That might be true. But it is hard for me to believe. Telling people that "if only you change, I'll love you," rarely seems to work, at least in my experience. My therapist has often told me not to disown that part of myself that experienced the trauma. I also know that if I tried to silence that part of me, not only wouldn't it work, but I would have to erase a large part of myself and I can't do that. It reminds me of the hikers we met along the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. There was a large dead seal near where they had pitched their tent They had simply thrown some dirt over the seal and moved their tent 20 feet. Both black bears and mountain lions frequent that stretch of the trail and neither animal would be the least bit fooled by dirt. Trying to cover up trauma and grief can be that way: only the person burying it thinks it's hidden.  To get back to my ex, I responded to his email with one of my own. Amongst other things, I said that "I am tired of your anger and your inability to accept me for who I am."  And that's what it comes down to: acceptance or silencing. I have silenced myself for many years and now that I am learning to speak out, I can't stop. I have a voice and I need to use it. That doesn't mean I have to speak out at inappropriate times and places. All I know is that I don't want to be silenced again. And after I sent the email, I felt a burden lift from my heart. Below, Dr. Maya Angelou reads her poem "And Still I Rise," Her poem evokes the beautiful resiliency of the human spirit under difficult circumstances. It is a poem that resonates with me. 

 

 

Has anyone ever silenced you when you were sharing your feelings about past traumas or your grief? What did you do?

This is the first in a series of posts on trauma within communities and why trauma survivors need to speak out in order to heal.  

Breathing Space: taking time for myself

And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void . . . 

I wheeled with the stars

my heart broke loose with the wind.

Pablo Neruda

 

 Wind chimes (D. Sharon Pruitt, flickr)

 

As I mentioned in a previous posting, I've been staying at my parent's house for almost a month now. My mother is in a rehab center with an unset fracture in her right hip. I am staying with my dad at my parent's house, which has its moments. For one thing, I've never been a Daddy's girl. Quite the contrary. Dad and I can clash if I'm not careful  - especially when he's anxious, like he is now. So, the past month has been trying in many ways. For one thing, I am rarely in charge of my own time. Mom expects me to spent large amounts of time at the rehab center. On Monday, of this week, she was at the ER again because she wasn't able to swallow. By the time they took an x-ray, however, whatever was lodged in her swallowing tube, had dislodged. Based on her description of what she ate for lunch, the ER doctor thought it was probably a carrot. I call it the "evil carrot."  Anyway, between time spent at the hospital, in doctor's appointments, etc. I am plenty busy with my mom.  At "home", I am the chief cook, laundry doer, medical liaison, and dish washer. What it comes down to is that I have scant time available for myself. I need that time, the way plants need water. 

Some people refer to this space as self-care. Self-care is essential for trauma survivors, people grieving, and people with PTSD; it is certainly essential for me. I have to have quiet "processing" time or I start to feel anxious or -given the small space in my mom's room at rehab - as though I am suffocating. One of my favorite ways to enjoy quiet time, is to lie in the guest room, which is furnished with much of the furniture that was in my grandparents bedroom in Kentucky - and listen to my dad's wind chimes. He has about a dozen of them hanging from trees in the wooded backyard and on windy days or nights I can hear their peaceful chimes up in my room. I love the sound of the wind, the wind chimes, and the whistle of the train that passes several times during the night. 

 

 

Other ways I practice self-care

• Going barefoot 
• Eating fresh fruit
• Listening to music
• Reading poetry
• Talking to friends and family via email or phone
• Writing family and friends
• Walking

All of these ways are good ones. Little things, like going barefoot in the house, help ground me, while "big" things like going for walks and reading poetry give me comfort and recharge my batteries. Yesterday, I went for a walk and saw, among other things, snow drops blooming, a disappearing snow man embedded with leaves, and heard birds calling high up in the trees. The sun was out and for 25 minutes, all I needed to think about was breathing in the fresh air, enjoying the wind, and moving my feet one after the other. Most days, I take time to read poetry and most days I discover a new poem to love, like the one by Neruda above.

I'm also reading three books that are rich sources for ideas on self-care and self-compassion.

Saved by a Poem

Healing Walks for Hard Times

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

And, at night, listening to music feeds my soul. Here's one of my favorite "comfort" songs.