Hey, this is really cool, and probably old news to most of you out there who watch TV. (I generally don't.)
Dove (the ones who make the soap) has a new line of advertising using old (over 50) non-model women as its spokespeople. And they're naked! And beautiful!
www.doveproage.com
I hear they're also on billboards around the country, including one in Times Square.
This is the second thing I was going to write about in my previous post.
I don't know why exactly, but these women make me really happy. Seeing them, seeing their pictures, seeing their age, seeing their beauty: there is something deeply right with this that I can't quantify.
I'm normally severely allergic to corporate ad campaigns, but I'm so happy with this one I actually bought some Dove soap, just for the principle of the thing.
Be well!
And thanks to the folks at MommyCast.com for introducing me to the Dove Campaign.
Quote for today: When an emotion feels good, we know we’re on the right course. Feelings like joy and love are your internal cheering section. They tell you you’re succeeding at something, you’re on the happy track, and you should keep going the way you’re going.
--Mona Lisa Schultz, M.D., Ph.D.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Womanly Learning on the World Wide Web
Two interesting things have come across my attention in the past couple of days.
First:
There is new research about the fight or flight reaction to stress (something that those of us with PTSD are well acquainted with!)
Some really thought-provoking new research has identified a different mechanism used when dealing with stress. It's being called "tend and befriend" and the research is showing that women are more likely to react this way to stress, while men are more likely to react with our old friend fight or flight.
Here's a couple of links.
Readable, thoughtful article about tend and befriend:
http://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/services/ucla_study_friendship.html
Wikipedia's article, which is more technical:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend
This new information is really making me think.
Personally, one of my most difficult symptoms of PTSD is constant, tight, physical tension in my body, with an overly active startle reflex. At one point, I clenched my jaw tightly at night, and woke up in the mornings with my teeth and jaws very sore. I trained myself to fall asleep with my tongue poking between my teeth. That way, when I clamped down during the night, I would bite my tongue and wake myself up. This solved the problem pretty quickly.
Then I started clenching my fists so tightly while sleeping that my hands were aching the next morning. I trained myself to sleep with my hands pressed flat under my pillow to prevent this, and my hands got better. I don't know what, if any, habit I replaced this with while sleeping. Whatever it is doesn't cause me to wake up in physical pain.
Maybe the antidepressants help with this. My physical ability to relax (while awake) is much better now. There was a level of physical relaxation that I didn't even know about before. You know those exercises where you tense and then relax each part of your body one after the other? Pre-Prozac, there wasn't much difference in the two states for me.
I am always aware of my surroundings, and it's important to me to feel safe. I cannot wear my hair in any style that impedes my peripheral vision even the tiniest bit. It panics me. I tend to position myself in a room so as to be able to watch the whole space and keep an eye on the exits. I live high up in a secured condo building where my front door opens into an indoor hallway. I feel safer here than any other place I have ever lived.
In the past few years, I learned that my both my maternal grandmother and my mother's sister where sexually abused as children. (My mom seems to have escaped this.) Both my grandma and my aunt are long-time sufferers of fibromyalgia, an arthritis-like condition where the muscles are affected rather than the bones. Research shows that women who were sexually abused are much more likely to develop fibromyalgia as adults.
I could probably claim to have fibromyalgia, although my pain threshold has always been very high. Definitely I have more than a couple of symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. I shy away from any diagnosis or labelling, though. I do believe that our thoughts affect our reality, and I do not want to identify myself with an illness. (This is not a criticism of anyone else, just my personal quirk.)
I don't know how to tend and befriend. There have been a couple of points in my life where I had an active social network that I interacted with almost compulsively. It never felt genuine to me, though, on my end. I always felt like I was playing a role, like I was just pretending to be a part of things. More lately I've given up most of my social network. I can't clearly articulate to myself why.
But I cannot be social when I'm stressed. When I'm stressed, there's nothing I would rather do than burrow at home, preferably under my bed covers, until I feel more able to handle the situation. I will avoid people as much as I possibly can until I feel more under control.
I can intellectually see how and why tend and befriend makes sense. I can't do it, though. I do "tend" in the sense of caring intensely for my children and their safety and well-being. But I do this by pulling them into my "burrow" with me, and by going with them when we are away from home. There have been a couple of times when there has been a true physical threat to my children, and my instinctive reaction is to dig a hole for the three of us and pull the earth in over, so nothing and no one can find us or hurt us. (I mean this figuratively, of course.)
Here's a theory: PTSD short-circuits tend and befriend. Or maybe PTSD kicks in when tend-and-befriend can't help us. A child being molested in her bedroom by her father, a little boy being beaten, a woman being raped or a soldier being shot at, cannot be helped in that moment by tend and befriend.
(There is another fascinating topic that begs to be discussed here. Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, both of which I highly recommend, has an interesting take on this. In his work, he has identified factors that separate combat veterans who develop PTSD from those who don't. A major factor is something he calls a betrayal of "what is right." Something to post about another time, maybe.)
Is PTSD what we do when we learn on some visceral level that no one else can or will help us? Is it what happens when whatever intrinsic faith we have in the protection of our community is stripped away?
I don't know. But it's giving me something to think about. Lately, lots of information about the physical and emotional benefits of friendship and community is pinging my personal radar screen. On some level, this totally makes sense to me. On another level, it baffles me. My immediate interior reaction to a new group of people is wariness, at least until I feel like I have a handle on what's going on with them.
There was a point when I was younger was I was indiscriminately friendly and trusting, with predictably unpleasant results. This probably also contributed to why I am this way.
Another theory: the trauma that leads to PTSD short-circuits some of the wiring that allows us to use discernment in who we should and should not tend and befriend. If you tend everyone and befriend anyone in your path, it's not a great way to protect yourself from stress. And then, maybe, this leads to more fighting and flighting?
All I have today is questions, and some things to think about. No answers. But maybe sometime soon I'll start figuring all this out, and more importantly figure out how to overcome it.
I'll leave the second second interesting thing I found recently for my next post. This one is long enough.
Be well.
Quote for today: Yes, something happened to me. And I can’t talk about it. And yes, that’s probably how you let it go–sooner or later you have to face it. If you don’t, you become suspended between your yearning and your fear, and you’re doomed to repeat the same sad acts without end, without completion or satisfaction.
You become a ghost.
--Daniel Hecht
First:
There is new research about the fight or flight reaction to stress (something that those of us with PTSD are well acquainted with!)
Some really thought-provoking new research has identified a different mechanism used when dealing with stress. It's being called "tend and befriend" and the research is showing that women are more likely to react this way to stress, while men are more likely to react with our old friend fight or flight.
Here's a couple of links.
Readable, thoughtful article about tend and befriend:
http://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/services/ucla_study_friendship.html
Wikipedia's article, which is more technical:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend
This new information is really making me think.
Personally, one of my most difficult symptoms of PTSD is constant, tight, physical tension in my body, with an overly active startle reflex. At one point, I clenched my jaw tightly at night, and woke up in the mornings with my teeth and jaws very sore. I trained myself to fall asleep with my tongue poking between my teeth. That way, when I clamped down during the night, I would bite my tongue and wake myself up. This solved the problem pretty quickly.
Then I started clenching my fists so tightly while sleeping that my hands were aching the next morning. I trained myself to sleep with my hands pressed flat under my pillow to prevent this, and my hands got better. I don't know what, if any, habit I replaced this with while sleeping. Whatever it is doesn't cause me to wake up in physical pain.
Maybe the antidepressants help with this. My physical ability to relax (while awake) is much better now. There was a level of physical relaxation that I didn't even know about before. You know those exercises where you tense and then relax each part of your body one after the other? Pre-Prozac, there wasn't much difference in the two states for me.
I am always aware of my surroundings, and it's important to me to feel safe. I cannot wear my hair in any style that impedes my peripheral vision even the tiniest bit. It panics me. I tend to position myself in a room so as to be able to watch the whole space and keep an eye on the exits. I live high up in a secured condo building where my front door opens into an indoor hallway. I feel safer here than any other place I have ever lived.
In the past few years, I learned that my both my maternal grandmother and my mother's sister where sexually abused as children. (My mom seems to have escaped this.) Both my grandma and my aunt are long-time sufferers of fibromyalgia, an arthritis-like condition where the muscles are affected rather than the bones. Research shows that women who were sexually abused are much more likely to develop fibromyalgia as adults.
I could probably claim to have fibromyalgia, although my pain threshold has always been very high. Definitely I have more than a couple of symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. I shy away from any diagnosis or labelling, though. I do believe that our thoughts affect our reality, and I do not want to identify myself with an illness. (This is not a criticism of anyone else, just my personal quirk.)
I don't know how to tend and befriend. There have been a couple of points in my life where I had an active social network that I interacted with almost compulsively. It never felt genuine to me, though, on my end. I always felt like I was playing a role, like I was just pretending to be a part of things. More lately I've given up most of my social network. I can't clearly articulate to myself why.
But I cannot be social when I'm stressed. When I'm stressed, there's nothing I would rather do than burrow at home, preferably under my bed covers, until I feel more able to handle the situation. I will avoid people as much as I possibly can until I feel more under control.
I can intellectually see how and why tend and befriend makes sense. I can't do it, though. I do "tend" in the sense of caring intensely for my children and their safety and well-being. But I do this by pulling them into my "burrow" with me, and by going with them when we are away from home. There have been a couple of times when there has been a true physical threat to my children, and my instinctive reaction is to dig a hole for the three of us and pull the earth in over, so nothing and no one can find us or hurt us. (I mean this figuratively, of course.)
Here's a theory: PTSD short-circuits tend and befriend. Or maybe PTSD kicks in when tend-and-befriend can't help us. A child being molested in her bedroom by her father, a little boy being beaten, a woman being raped or a soldier being shot at, cannot be helped in that moment by tend and befriend.
(There is another fascinating topic that begs to be discussed here. Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, both of which I highly recommend, has an interesting take on this. In his work, he has identified factors that separate combat veterans who develop PTSD from those who don't. A major factor is something he calls a betrayal of "what is right." Something to post about another time, maybe.)
Is PTSD what we do when we learn on some visceral level that no one else can or will help us? Is it what happens when whatever intrinsic faith we have in the protection of our community is stripped away?
I don't know. But it's giving me something to think about. Lately, lots of information about the physical and emotional benefits of friendship and community is pinging my personal radar screen. On some level, this totally makes sense to me. On another level, it baffles me. My immediate interior reaction to a new group of people is wariness, at least until I feel like I have a handle on what's going on with them.
There was a point when I was younger was I was indiscriminately friendly and trusting, with predictably unpleasant results. This probably also contributed to why I am this way.
Another theory: the trauma that leads to PTSD short-circuits some of the wiring that allows us to use discernment in who we should and should not tend and befriend. If you tend everyone and befriend anyone in your path, it's not a great way to protect yourself from stress. And then, maybe, this leads to more fighting and flighting?
All I have today is questions, and some things to think about. No answers. But maybe sometime soon I'll start figuring all this out, and more importantly figure out how to overcome it.
I'll leave the second second interesting thing I found recently for my next post. This one is long enough.
Be well.
Quote for today: Yes, something happened to me. And I can’t talk about it. And yes, that’s probably how you let it go–sooner or later you have to face it. If you don’t, you become suspended between your yearning and your fear, and you’re doomed to repeat the same sad acts without end, without completion or satisfaction.
You become a ghost.
--Daniel Hecht
Sunday, March 4, 2007
My Own Personal Chaos Theory
Chaos.
So much of my life is in constant chaos. My house is disorganized and messy. My finances could be some kind of failed experiment in Creative Psychic Financial Determinism. My personal habits, like nutrition, exercise, style, make-up: well, let's just say that when I am good I am very, very good, and when I am bad I am 'orrid.
Wikipedia says this about about chaos theory: "Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder." Which gives me hope of some kind, although I'm not sure what!
What I'm coming to realize, as I mull this conundrum of life through the lense of PTSD, is that on some very real level, I need this chaos. I need the mundane, everyday, seemingly simple aspects of my life to constantly preoccupy my entire consciousness. Because if I don't have that ever-present, overwhelming matrix of distraction, life becomes unbearable for me.
As a child, I had a recurring nightmare that stayed with me into my early adulthood. As silly as it sounds, my nightmare was about infinity, a concept that I contemplated obsessively through much of my early childhood. (Yes, I was weird then too.)
In my nightmare, I was floating through a darkness of infinity interspersed by tiny shining spirals of light. The blackness, the darkness, just went on and on and on forever, and it was terrifying. In the dream I would try to really, truly understand the nature of this infinity. I would feel like I almost understood it, but that understanding always remained just outside my grasp.
I would try to get out. I knew that somewhere, in one of the spirals of light, there was a way back to my normal life, if I could only figure out which one it was and how to get there. And I would desperately, obsessively, rush through the darkness, experiencing constant vertigo, trying to find the exit, trying to find a way out. And I never could. No matter how much or how long I tried, I could never find the way out, even though I knew somehow that it was there.
I can't explain how completely terrifying this dream was for me. I would wake up crying and screaming, and I was often afraid to sleep, scared that I would be stuck again in this terrible dream. But I don't ever remember talking to anyone about it. I'm not sure, as a child, that I had the vocabulary to describe it.
That's what I feel like now. I feel like my own silly, crazy, little life is a nest of sorts, and I feel safe here, even knowing that this infinity still surrounds me. Somehow, it's the constant petty details of stress: Where's the rest of the rent payment? How can I afford to take my kids on vacation? What am I going to throw together for dinner tonight? When will all the boxes from my last move finally be unpacked? When will I finally start training for that marathon I've been planning for the past two years? These things, the everyday details of a fractious existence, keep me always focused, and always slightly afraid, in the milieu of my daily life.
So I never have time to look outside my nest. Somehow, truth be told, I think that if I let go of this chaos, I will be sucked forever into that dark blackness of infinity. The idea of what my life could be, unfettered by these petty concerns, terrifies me.
I know what I need to do. Spend less than I make, and save some money. Pay off debt. Do the basics of dishes and picking up everyday. Stick to some reasonable housework schedule that gets everything done on a regular basis. Get out and at least spend time walking consistently, instead of exercising in the sporadic fits I'm prone to now.
But my God, what would I do then? If I wasn't worried about money, if my house wasn't a mess, if I had no cause to constantly fret over my personal self, what would I do? I would spin out into the darkness and be lost.
I might have to face my potential. I might get out and have a social life. I might go back to school for that graduate degree I've always wanted. I might travel. I might finish and submit the novel I've been working on for years.
See? It's terrifying. I know it's irrational, but it doesn't matter. About the scariest thing I can envision is having my life, my basic sh--, together. What would I do then?
But if Wikipedia is right, maybe there is some sense to all this. My own vague remembrance of the reading I did about chaos theory way back when, is that chaos imposed order on seemingly random incomprehensibilities, and that eventually, chaos led to new forms of stability that could not have happened otherwise.
So maybe there's hope. Maybe somehow out of all of this, a new version of me will result, and finally make sense of the current chaos in my life. This sounds wonderful.
Or maybe I should just go do the dishes.
Quote for today: Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are unwritten in a foreign tongue. The point is to love everything. Live the questions now. You will then gradually, without even noticing it perhaps, live along some day into the answer. --Rainer Maria Rilke
So much of my life is in constant chaos. My house is disorganized and messy. My finances could be some kind of failed experiment in Creative Psychic Financial Determinism. My personal habits, like nutrition, exercise, style, make-up: well, let's just say that when I am good I am very, very good, and when I am bad I am 'orrid.
Wikipedia says this about about chaos theory: "Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder." Which gives me hope of some kind, although I'm not sure what!
What I'm coming to realize, as I mull this conundrum of life through the lense of PTSD, is that on some very real level, I need this chaos. I need the mundane, everyday, seemingly simple aspects of my life to constantly preoccupy my entire consciousness. Because if I don't have that ever-present, overwhelming matrix of distraction, life becomes unbearable for me.
As a child, I had a recurring nightmare that stayed with me into my early adulthood. As silly as it sounds, my nightmare was about infinity, a concept that I contemplated obsessively through much of my early childhood. (Yes, I was weird then too.)
In my nightmare, I was floating through a darkness of infinity interspersed by tiny shining spirals of light. The blackness, the darkness, just went on and on and on forever, and it was terrifying. In the dream I would try to really, truly understand the nature of this infinity. I would feel like I almost understood it, but that understanding always remained just outside my grasp.
I would try to get out. I knew that somewhere, in one of the spirals of light, there was a way back to my normal life, if I could only figure out which one it was and how to get there. And I would desperately, obsessively, rush through the darkness, experiencing constant vertigo, trying to find the exit, trying to find a way out. And I never could. No matter how much or how long I tried, I could never find the way out, even though I knew somehow that it was there.
I can't explain how completely terrifying this dream was for me. I would wake up crying and screaming, and I was often afraid to sleep, scared that I would be stuck again in this terrible dream. But I don't ever remember talking to anyone about it. I'm not sure, as a child, that I had the vocabulary to describe it.
That's what I feel like now. I feel like my own silly, crazy, little life is a nest of sorts, and I feel safe here, even knowing that this infinity still surrounds me. Somehow, it's the constant petty details of stress: Where's the rest of the rent payment? How can I afford to take my kids on vacation? What am I going to throw together for dinner tonight? When will all the boxes from my last move finally be unpacked? When will I finally start training for that marathon I've been planning for the past two years? These things, the everyday details of a fractious existence, keep me always focused, and always slightly afraid, in the milieu of my daily life.
So I never have time to look outside my nest. Somehow, truth be told, I think that if I let go of this chaos, I will be sucked forever into that dark blackness of infinity. The idea of what my life could be, unfettered by these petty concerns, terrifies me.
I know what I need to do. Spend less than I make, and save some money. Pay off debt. Do the basics of dishes and picking up everyday. Stick to some reasonable housework schedule that gets everything done on a regular basis. Get out and at least spend time walking consistently, instead of exercising in the sporadic fits I'm prone to now.
But my God, what would I do then? If I wasn't worried about money, if my house wasn't a mess, if I had no cause to constantly fret over my personal self, what would I do? I would spin out into the darkness and be lost.
I might have to face my potential. I might get out and have a social life. I might go back to school for that graduate degree I've always wanted. I might travel. I might finish and submit the novel I've been working on for years.
See? It's terrifying. I know it's irrational, but it doesn't matter. About the scariest thing I can envision is having my life, my basic sh--, together. What would I do then?
But if Wikipedia is right, maybe there is some sense to all this. My own vague remembrance of the reading I did about chaos theory way back when, is that chaos imposed order on seemingly random incomprehensibilities, and that eventually, chaos led to new forms of stability that could not have happened otherwise.
So maybe there's hope. Maybe somehow out of all of this, a new version of me will result, and finally make sense of the current chaos in my life. This sounds wonderful.
Or maybe I should just go do the dishes.
Quote for today: Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart; try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books that are unwritten in a foreign tongue. The point is to love everything. Live the questions now. You will then gradually, without even noticing it perhaps, live along some day into the answer. --Rainer Maria Rilke
Saturday, March 3, 2007
How I Came To Be This Way: the Ultra Short Version
So here's the deal with me.
I am far more interested in looking forward than back, but since I'm blogging about PTSD, I figure I should explain how I got here.
As a child, I suffered some physical and emotional abuse, and an unfortunate amount of sexual abuse. My parents are well-meaning, but my upbringing was a particularly stringent one, according to a specific religious denomination. Any deviation from the straight and narrow was viewed as incipient sin and handled severely. There was no room to just be hurting and maybe acting up because of this. My parents, as you probably expect, both had some childhood issues of their own.
As an adult, I married and had kids young. My divorce was messy, and scary and dangerous at points, though that's mostly all OK now. There was another significant trauma that happened shortly after my divorce, but was unrelated.
With all of this, I was hurting. I was having a very hard time keeping the basics of my life together. I had an eye-opening experience that made realize this sharply, and I had a few really scary flashback and serious, sudden, spacing-out episodes, one that nearly resulted in a freeway accident. I literally lost track of where I was (in my car, driving, on the freeway, in the pouring rain) for a few moments. And no, I was not using any substances, legal or otherwise. (We won't talk about coffee.) There were some really horrible nightmares and shaky, gut-clenching remembrances that I am almost certain were repressed memories starting to come back.
All of which brought me up short and sent me to a psychiatrist's office. I now take a couple of common antipressants. I am self-employed and have no medical insurance, though my kids do, and my psychiatrist presribes things that I can take relatively cheaply, buying wholesale and generic.
Because of my lack of insurance and my finances, I do not see my psychiatrist or anyone else for therapy, although I would like to. My psychiatrist is actually compassionate in this and works a visit schedule with me that takes my finances into account. I fortunately do not have any really serious mental health issues: I've never been suicidal or seriously out of control, and thank God I have never had any substance abuse issues. (Again, we won't talk about coffee!)
The medicine helps. I haven't had any more scary flashback episodes since I started taking it, and I am doing a better, if far from perfect, job of managing my life. I don't feel as numb as I used to. This is all good.
I do not and have not abused my children. My intense feelings about my own childhood, and supremely strong desire to do the best I can for my own kids, have kept me from that. I do not and have not used any form of spanking or corporal punishment. I try not even to yell at my kids, and most of the time I am successful. I provide reasonably well for them, although not as well as I would like. I spend time with them and listen to them and laugh with them. Most days I think I'm a pretty good mom, although if I was more emotionally present for myself I would probably also be more emotionally present for them.
This life is OK, but I want so much more. And somehow, I'm determined to figure my way through the mess in my own head so I can get there. To paraphrase from the Declaration, I want a life that is vibrant, liberty from the constricting parts of my past, and the ability within myself to truly pursue happiness.
Quote for today: Before we have children, we are, in fact, children ourselves, children of the culture. When we become parents, we become the culture. We become an adult in the eyes of the community. And as such, where we have once allowed authoritative knowledge to reside in others--in the expert, in our parents, in the state--we must now allow authority to take up residence within the self, within ourselves. --Peggy O'Mara
I am far more interested in looking forward than back, but since I'm blogging about PTSD, I figure I should explain how I got here.
As a child, I suffered some physical and emotional abuse, and an unfortunate amount of sexual abuse. My parents are well-meaning, but my upbringing was a particularly stringent one, according to a specific religious denomination. Any deviation from the straight and narrow was viewed as incipient sin and handled severely. There was no room to just be hurting and maybe acting up because of this. My parents, as you probably expect, both had some childhood issues of their own.
As an adult, I married and had kids young. My divorce was messy, and scary and dangerous at points, though that's mostly all OK now. There was another significant trauma that happened shortly after my divorce, but was unrelated.
With all of this, I was hurting. I was having a very hard time keeping the basics of my life together. I had an eye-opening experience that made realize this sharply, and I had a few really scary flashback and serious, sudden, spacing-out episodes, one that nearly resulted in a freeway accident. I literally lost track of where I was (in my car, driving, on the freeway, in the pouring rain) for a few moments. And no, I was not using any substances, legal or otherwise. (We won't talk about coffee.) There were some really horrible nightmares and shaky, gut-clenching remembrances that I am almost certain were repressed memories starting to come back.
All of which brought me up short and sent me to a psychiatrist's office. I now take a couple of common antipressants. I am self-employed and have no medical insurance, though my kids do, and my psychiatrist presribes things that I can take relatively cheaply, buying wholesale and generic.
Because of my lack of insurance and my finances, I do not see my psychiatrist or anyone else for therapy, although I would like to. My psychiatrist is actually compassionate in this and works a visit schedule with me that takes my finances into account. I fortunately do not have any really serious mental health issues: I've never been suicidal or seriously out of control, and thank God I have never had any substance abuse issues. (Again, we won't talk about coffee!)
The medicine helps. I haven't had any more scary flashback episodes since I started taking it, and I am doing a better, if far from perfect, job of managing my life. I don't feel as numb as I used to. This is all good.
I do not and have not abused my children. My intense feelings about my own childhood, and supremely strong desire to do the best I can for my own kids, have kept me from that. I do not and have not used any form of spanking or corporal punishment. I try not even to yell at my kids, and most of the time I am successful. I provide reasonably well for them, although not as well as I would like. I spend time with them and listen to them and laugh with them. Most days I think I'm a pretty good mom, although if I was more emotionally present for myself I would probably also be more emotionally present for them.
This life is OK, but I want so much more. And somehow, I'm determined to figure my way through the mess in my own head so I can get there. To paraphrase from the Declaration, I want a life that is vibrant, liberty from the constricting parts of my past, and the ability within myself to truly pursue happiness.
Quote for today: Before we have children, we are, in fact, children ourselves, children of the culture. When we become parents, we become the culture. We become an adult in the eyes of the community. And as such, where we have once allowed authoritative knowledge to reside in others--in the expert, in our parents, in the state--we must now allow authority to take up residence within the self, within ourselves. --Peggy O'Mara
Friday, March 2, 2007
Post Traumatic Stress Transformer Begins!
Last night I was up late again. I stayed up finishing Gary Iles's novel Blood Memory, which is a disturbingly and wonderfully good fictional thriller involving PTSD.
I ended up again, as I often do, on the phone with my best friend, who knows far too much about everything about me, and so is one of the great comforts of my life (as I often am for her.) Her husband, like me, is an ostensibly functional person with PTSD.
I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of being numb, and afraid, and disconnected from life. I look at people I know who are functional and happy and purposeful (normal?) and I want to learn to be like them.
My father, a teacher in his heart and soul, always told me that the best way to learn something really well is to teach it.
So here I am diving into the world wide web to learn, to share, and to publish for all to see, my own crazy, personal, wonderful, nutty journey back to health and normality, or as close as I can manage to get to it!
Please join me.
Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional or legal professional of any kind. My entire qualifications for expertise in this subject are as follows: I am a woman. I am a mother. I have PTSD.
As with everything else, please take from this blog what seems good to you, and just leave the rest here.
Quote for today: A good friend is someone who sees right through you and still enjoys the view. --(I don't know who said this, but if anyone else does and lets me know, I will properly attribute it.)
I ended up again, as I often do, on the phone with my best friend, who knows far too much about everything about me, and so is one of the great comforts of my life (as I often am for her.) Her husband, like me, is an ostensibly functional person with PTSD.
I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of being numb, and afraid, and disconnected from life. I look at people I know who are functional and happy and purposeful (normal?) and I want to learn to be like them.
My father, a teacher in his heart and soul, always told me that the best way to learn something really well is to teach it.
So here I am diving into the world wide web to learn, to share, and to publish for all to see, my own crazy, personal, wonderful, nutty journey back to health and normality, or as close as I can manage to get to it!
Please join me.
Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional or legal professional of any kind. My entire qualifications for expertise in this subject are as follows: I am a woman. I am a mother. I have PTSD.
As with everything else, please take from this blog what seems good to you, and just leave the rest here.
Quote for today: A good friend is someone who sees right through you and still enjoys the view. --(I don't know who said this, but if anyone else does and lets me know, I will properly attribute it.)
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