Inspiration

One of my almost-three-year-old twins has pneumonia-- came down with it very suddenly yesterday-- and my husband left tonight on a business trip, so I'm a bit frazzled at the moment and can't write a whole post.

Just a few bits to tide you over, including a short video I hope you'll watch-- it's a very inspiring 5 minutes.

1. My daughter is already on the mend, so there's probably nothing to worry about there. We had a scary 24 hours, but it looks like it's not going to get any worse. We'll confirm that with the doctor tomorrow. Despite our ages, we are still new parents, so stuff like this still scares the living shit out of us. Anyway, since I brought it up I didn't want to leave you hanging.

2. I had another Rosen session this week that went well, and will have another this Friday, where the plan is for me to tell the whole car accident story in detail while she works. I've already been feeling a bit more emotional since the first session (relatively blank slate that I am in that department, a small change is very noticeable), so I am hoping/dreading that this week's session will dredge up something juicy.

3. Speaking of getting emotional, I got emotional in therapy for the first time this past week. "Well, three tears is not very emotional," said Dr. Oz, "but I agree that it's a start." More importantly, it was over the accident and PTSD-related stuff, making it the first time I've had an emotional reaction to accident since 1993.

This, friends, is News.

I'll post about it at the earliest opportunity. Until then, I'll just tease you with that. Progress!

4. A friend posted this video on Facebook today and it resonated with me, for obvious reasons. I found myself wondering how much the work I'm doing could impact this man, as well as how much the work he's doing might impact me. 

One of the things that struck me most was his sense of helplessness-- his physical condition made it extremely difficult for him to do the work needed to heal his body. This is true for me, as well, and is the hardest part of this whole thing-- probably because it's the part I deal with most consciously.

But this guy's physical challenges are worse than mine. And it was even harder for him to do the work. And guess what: he did it anyway.

Inspiration. I'll take it where I can get it. I'm glad to say I'm finally in a place where I recognize it when it comes.

Behold: Arthur. You won't believe what he does. I hope his story speaks to you as strongly as it speaks to me. He is living proof of what I try to convince myself of every day: we all have the power to reclaim ourselves. 

The Rosen Method

Well, what do you know?

The Rosen Method. Huh. There appears to be something to it, although I can't for the life of me tell you why or how it works.

As promised, I went to see Catherine MacGuinness at Body Therapy this week, and experienced the Rosen Method for the first time. Like most of you, I'm sure, I had never heard of it before, and didn't really know what to expect.

In a nutshell, the Rosen Method (developed by Marion Rosen, 1914-2012) uses touch to achieve the mind/body connection, based on the idea that the body is "a living metaphor for a person's inner state." 

(Didn't I just say that a couple of weeks ago, you guys? "After all I've learned, I should know by know that what's really happening is that the issues in my body are literally represented in my life."  Yup, that was me. Apparently, I was not the first. Marion Rosen was way ahead of all of us-- including Western medicine and modern psychology and neuroscience.

Anyway. I told Catherine the basic back story, and that I've been doing EMDR and talk therapy for the past year and a half, and focusing for the past year on long-term PTSR symptoms. My awkwardness with the intimacy of this retelling was obvious, I'm sure. But I fumbled my way through it.

She had me lie on a massage table without one of those face-rest thingies (to use the technical term), explaining that it was important for her to be able to see my face during the treatment, since she'd be reading my muscle tension and facial expressions for guidance.

That's an odd sort of vulnerability. It requires a connection between you and the practitioner that is different from a regular massage. It's also something particularly uncomfortable for me, the reigning Queen of Boundaries (henceforth known as TRQB). (Just kidding). But I complied. 

Because: mindfulness. That's what we're doing here. Mindfulness--being present in your body, in the moment-- is at the heart of so much of this recovery work. And, not-so-coincidentally, being present in this way is particularly, spectacularly difficult for someone who has spent 20 years building iron-clad structures between herself and the present moment. 

The absurdity of that difficulty doesn't escape me. How can it be difficult? How can you not simply be where you are and feel what you feel?

If I knew that, friends, I'd be off doing it instead of sitting here blogging about it. I have no idea.

Looking at those words on my screen, be where you are and feel what you feel, it strikes me that this seems like something fundamental to life, to humanity, to simple human biology. I mean, it does, doesn't it? It's as basic as breathing, as existence. Feel. Be.

And those words also conjure something more abstract, something as tenuous and transcendent as faith. Feeling and being aren't just about biology, or feet-on-floor, breath-in-body mechanics. They're also about groundedness and connection-- things some people attribute to the spiritual realm, a belief in god or goddess, and others to a sense of community with humanity, with nature, with the universe. 

Either way: feeling and being are at the essence of our sense of ourselves within our bodies, within our communities, within our world. They are, literally and figuratively, life as we know it. Life as we experience it. I am. I feel.

Imagine feeling disconnected from that. 

HOLY SHIT. 

This is literally coming to me right now as I type. That's it. I've said The Thing.**

This has to be at the core of the fear and anger and despair and dissociation and disconnection of PTSR. Trauma doesn't just rob you of a sense of safety or innocence or invincibility. That's just the beginning. 

After that, if left to its own devices, trauma robs you of your sense of humanity. Of connection. Of being in your own fucking body. And then what? How can you take anything in when you're not there to receive it? How can you experience life like that? How can you truly feel?  And if you can't feel, how can you be?

Trauma puts you on an island, far out to sea, and then, stone by stone, it takes the island right out from under you.

God damn.

_____

Whew.

Okay. Coffee drunk, migraine pill swallowed. 

Give me a second. 

This is recovery in real time, folks. 

Watch this space.

_____

All right. I'm back. My quota of universal truths having been uncovered for the afternoon (sweet jesus!), I'll go back to my Rosen session...

So. I was lying there on the table, face visible. She told me to stay mindful, not to follow my thoughts and get distracted from what was happening, but to "let them pass like people on the sidewalk in front of a cafe window," and beyond that, just do whatever I wanted. Say whatever came to me, or make a sound, or describe a color, or if I needed to move, move. Whatever. We were going to follow my body's orders.

It should be noted that my skeptic's heart was not encouraged by this direction. I don't typically respond well to "say whatever you want," since what I want to say, especially under circumstances like these, is nothing at all. Not a blurter, me. Not a spontaneous mover or color-describer. 

As has been, I hope, sufficiently explained above.

So I was feeling more than a little self conscious at this point (which is not, somehow, anything like mindfulness, what with the self-loathing element). This is where the hippies leave me behind. Don't tell me to do whatever I feel (again: no. QED). Give me structure! Give me homework assignments! Ask me a question that has a concrete answer, a beginning and an end, and involves no spontaneous interpretive dance!

But I digress.

Catherine put her hands on my back-- softly, gently, hardly any pressure; no typical massage, this-- and after a moment, said, "Your body loves to be touched, doesn't it?"

Um.

She smiled at my open-mouthed hesitation and said, "It does. It is crying out for this. It is responding instantly."

I decided to take her word for it.

As she continued to move her hands around my back, my arms, my neck-- pausing now and then to press lightly and hold, breathing deeply, making small affirmative noises-- she asked me mild questions: What did I do for work? I told her about coaching students, helping people achieve their dreams and receive education. I told her about teaching. I told her about writing. I told her about being a stay-at-home mom.

How did I feel about staying home to raise my children? I told her I loved it. I told her I felt so lucky to be able to do it. She stopped, hands firm on my mid-back. Exclaimed: "Wow, I can feel your joy in saying that. Your muscles here just released."

I felt more relaxed, closer to the table. I tried to stay present.

She slid her hand under my left shoulder and lifted it, then released it. It didn't fall back to the table, but stayed, rigid, suspended in the air. 

I am, ahem, tightly wound. 

She pressed it down, then lifted again. Down. Up. Down. Easier each time. Muscles beginning to understand what relaxing was, relative to their normal state. Muscles began to prefer relaxing.

Interesting.

She kept her hand under my shoulder and pressed lightly on my back, my shoulder blade. Not firm pressure like a massage, just soft, curious pressure. Inquiring fingers. Tension here? Here? Why? Where? What?

And suddenly, I just started talking.

I told her about my accident in more detail. I told her about the years since. I told her about my migraines, about my desire to lose weight, about my anxiety, about this blog.

At some point, she slid her hand out from under my shoulder, and it slumped to the table, softened, relaxed, as if I'd just undergone a deep Swedish massage. She had done nothing more than lay her hands on my skin.

She had me turn over on my back, and put her hands on my abdomen. I told her that I've gone to the doctor many times over the last 15 years to complain about my inability to draw a full breath. I go for long periods-- sometimes more than a year or two-- where I feel like I can't fill my lungs, like I'm slowly suffocating, unable to get enough air.

I'm in one of those periods now. My poor husband always asks if I'm upset about something, because I keep heaving enormous sighs. I'm just trying to catch my breath.

She told me this is a common condition for people with PTSD. The diaphragm contracts as part of the fight-or-flight response-- in which state PTSD sufferers permanently reside-- and prevents the lungs from expanding. As she said this, she laid her gentle hands over my midsection, right above my diaphragm.

And just like that, I kid you not: I took a deep breath-- the deepest breath-- a breath that completely filled my lungs without struggle-- for the first time in almost two years.

_____

Throughout the session with Catherine, I kept waiting for the "real" massage to start, the one with firm pressure and muscle manipulation. With the Rosen Method, there is no such work. In that way, I admit, it's not the most satisfying experience while it's happening.

However.

I stood up from the table, and felt... relaxed. Not a little relaxed. Relaxed like I'd just had deep body work done. My back, neck, and shoulders felt warm and soothed. And over the next hour, where, after past massages, the tension usually returns and the migraine kicks in, I felt progressively more relaxed.

In fact, three hours later, I felt even better than I did when I left Catherine's office. My back was more comfortable than it has been in months. My neck, which had been hurting all week, was pain-free. No migraine. No migraine!

And today, three days later, my neck and back feel as good as they've felt in recent memory. The discomfort, my constant companion, has not returned.

I don't know how it works. I don't know why it works. I don't know how it will impact my work with Dr. Oz (although if this post is any indication, the intellectual work is getting a boost from the physical work, which is exactly what I'd hoped for). I can't explain any of it, so I don't know what to expect.

What I do know is that my skeptical self is withholding judgment for the foreseeable future. The Rosen Method will get its chance with me. Let's see what happens next.

I've got another appointment this Wednesday, and will continue once a week for a while. My body is crying out for this, according to Catherine, and if current results are to be believed, she's right. Time to turn off the intellect, the skepticism, the self-consciousness, and let the body be my guide.

As weird as that sounds, I think it's the only way I'm going to get any further on this journey. My thinking brain has taken me about as far as it can. 

Time for my body-- which has been here all along, waiting for the rest of me to return from whatever shrinking island it's been stranded on all these years-- to show me the way.

**I once saw Charlie Rose interview Tom Stoppard, and he asked him what part of a play he most enjoys writing. Stoppard thought about it for a moment, and then said, charmingly, "I like writing the part where the guy says the thing." Meaning, the part where the meaning of the play, the whole point, is revealed in a single passage, like you can do in plays but not really anywhere else. The part where the guy says the thing. So rich. So perfect. In the words of a certain subset of friends: this has become a permanent part of my head!canon.

Updates: Bruce and Body Work

A bunch of you have asked for an update on Bruce.

I wish I had one for you.

As you may remember, I wrote him a big, heartfelt email the week that I posted about him, thanking him for everything, trying to put into words the influence he's had on me all these years, and telling him I hoped we'd renew our conversation and see where it might lead.

I don't really know what to say about it. It's been almost three months. I haven't heard back from him.

I'm surprised by it because of the way he responded immediately to my sister. Maybe I offended him with my posts. I don't know. 

I have no idea what to do about this. It's an odd position to be in. I wonder if he never got my email. I wonder if he didn't want to respond or couldn't respond. I wonder if it was too difficult for him to look back on that time-- he was going through something big then, too, if you recall.

What would you do if you were me (and had, in addition to your strong connection to Bruce, an innate shyness and overzealous adherence to very firm boundaries) (this is sort of a nightmare scenario for my particular brand of social ineptitude) (I just don't want you to forget how awkward I will be at this) (I mean you, if you were me)?

_____

On to the next update: the body work.

After my last post, my good friend Sarah recommended that I try a kind of body work called the Rosen Method. It's a technique that is often very effective for PTSD sufferers, based in part on  the notion that trauma is physiological rather than psychological, and suppressed emotion and energy from an incomplete fight/flight response causes tension in the body.

Basically, it's the physical version of the therapy I'm doing.

This makes perfect sense to me, obviously, and it's coming at the perfect time. I feel like I'm at a point where my head has lead me about as far as it can, so I'm going to give my body and subconscious a chance to take the lead for a while. 

I need to go places where my intellect can't lead me, and since that's the only way I know how to operate, I've had no earthly idea how to proceed.

The Rosen Method appears to be the way.

My first appointment is in a few days, so I will let you know how it goes. 

_____

I can't remember if I've told you this already, so I'll tell you again: since this whole thing began, so many little pieces have fallen perfectly into place at just the right time and with the greatest of ease that it's almost scary. 

Rather than having obstacles thrown in my path, I've had the path thrown in my path from the very beginning. It's a little unsettling, but in a very good way-- constant reminders that I am in the right place at the right time.

If I believed in magic, I'd say my life is pretty magical right now.

Since I don't, I'll stick with this: when you're ready for something and committed to doing it at any cost, and you approach it with as much honesty and openness as you can and surrender yourself to the process, the way becomes clear. 


Speaking of things I don't believe in but suddenly seem eminently, magically relevant, I got this horoscope the other day from Rob Brezsny, who writes such good horoscopes that I subscribe to his newsletter just for the inspiration it provides:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): A starfish that loses an arm can grow back a 
new one. It's an expert regenerator. According to my understanding of 
the astrological omens, you are entering a starfish-like phase of your 
cycle. Far more than usual, you'll be able to recover parts of you that got 
lost and reanimate parts of you that fell dormant. For the foreseeable 
future, your words of power are "rejuvenate," "restore," "reawaken," and 
"revive." If you concentrate really hard and fill yourself with the light of 
the spiritual sun, you might even be able to perform a kind of 
resurrection.

Magic, I tell you. Magic! 

Everywhere I look!

Deserve, Allow, Accept

Yesterday, I had the most wonderful massage.

Massages trigger migraines, for me, so I haven't had one in a long time. The last time I had one, I was so miserable afterward that it just didn't seem worth the momentary relief from tension anymore. But I miss them, and there is something so offensive about not being able to have them-- like the migraines have stolen even simple relaxation from me, adding insult to injury. So when my sainted husband suggested the other day that I give it another try, I decided to try to take the power back.

Shurrone Wallace at Table 4 One Massage is amazing and intuitive and five minutes away from my house, and yesterday I lay on her table and within five minutes, she knew exactly what was going on with me.

My husband had seen her earlier in the week, and had told her about my car accident and my migraines, so she knew that much when she met me. I told her I was in therapy for PTSR from that accident, and was easily triggered for migraines. She told me she wanted to "listen to what my body was telling her," as far as what and where and how much pressure was needed. I liked that.

So she probed around on my back and neck and shoulders for a few minutes, and then said, "It feels like your body is putting up some sort of shield. It's asking me to go deeper, but then it prevents me from doing that. It really wants more, but it's also resisting at the same time."

I had to laugh at that. A more succinct summary of me, in this work, in this blog, in this life, I cannot imagine.

"That pretty much sums up where I am with my therapy," I said. 

She hesitated, then said, "Would you mind if I asked about the accident? What happened?"

I gave her the basics: drunk driver, high speeds, tow bar, skull fracture, whiplash, nerve damage, head tilt.

She was working on my right shoulder at the time. "Interesting," she said. "As you were talking about it, it started to open up and let me in a little."

Again with the metaphors! It was a little eerie, the way the issues in my life are represented so literally in my body. It should come as no surprise, I suppose. As Dr. Oz keeps reminding me, trauma is in the body.

After all I've learned, I should know by know that what's really happening is that the issues in my body are literally represented in my life.

On the way home, my only goal was to keep a migraine from coming on. Shurrone had worked on the physical aspect, so I decided to try prevention from the psychosomatic angle. 

Relax, I told myself. Let it in. 

It occurred to me then that despite all the work I've been doing: the therapy, the blog, connecting with others over this strange, sad story, I've kept my shields mostly intact and still haven't gotten as deep as I know I'll need to if I'm ever going to find resolution.

It's not that I don't want to get there. It's that I don't know how. I'm as locked out as anyone else.

Shurrone said my body wasn't letting her in. My mind does the same to me.

I realized a while ago that I feel like I'm on the outside of my emotional core with no clue how to get in and figure this whole thing out. I even made a little diagram of what it feels like:

Sorry it's a little blurry. I am apparently also locked out of the part of my brain that knows how to  fix that.

I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else, but this is what it feels like to be me. Outside of these concentric circles is the world. Mindful interaction, authentic engagement. The moment we're all always trying to be in.

Yeah, I'm not there. Not quite in my body, not quite in my head.

I'm inside these layers, remote, distant, an observer from afar, locked safely away from over-stimulation.

But I'm also locked away from my emotions, for the most part. For the same reason, I think-- emotional experience is... well, emotional. And much more than my hit-the-brakes-with-both-feet parasympathetic nervous system can handle in any effective and consistent way. 

I feel like I only ever get Emotions Lite, out here in the outer realm. It's too overwhelming to feel deeply. It's too overwhelming to be authentic. It's too overwhelming to be vulnerable.

I think this started as a way to protect me from "bad" feelings. Fear, anger, sorrow. All the emotions that would have come up in confronting the trauma directly and dealing with it. My body started building walls, instead, to keep all of that from happening and to protect me from further trauma.

Those walls get awfully high, though. And before long, it's not just the bad feelings that are too much to deal with. The good ones become so, too.

This is where that flatline feeling that so many PTSR sufferers report feeling comes from. We disconnect from our emotional centers because we are trying, relentlessly, to stop the stimuli that our reptilian brains mistake for threat.

_____

I turned to the book I've recommended here before, Crash Course: A Self-Healing Guide To Auto Accident Trauma & Recovery by Diane Poole Heller, PhD, to see what she had to say about disconnection:

"Many auto accident survivors end up dissociated and disconnected from their bodies."

"These dissociated states are a signal of extreme activation and must be worked with slowly and carefully" to prevent re-traumatizing the victim.

And: "Food, alcohol and drugs can be used in a misguided attempt to get the nervous system back into balance and ultimately make things worse."

Well. Yes. Those dark, difficult posts I keep hinting are coming? Let's just say I've got that last point covered.

And yes, this is me avoiding it for one more week. It's hard. But I'm running out of excuses.

_____

So, what does all of this have to do with a massage?

Like I said, it occurred to me that in spite of all the work I've been doing, I still stay within my little walls and don't push myself to be mindful, in the moment, actively trying to reconnect to the part of me that feels things just fine.


Mindfulness also short-circuits your reptilian brain's auto-response-- scan for threat! Run! Fight!  Retreat!-- by taking you out of your perpetual imaginary danger-state and planting you firmly back in reality.

So I tried it. 

Breathe deeply. In, out, in, out. 

Mindfulness begins with an awareness of the body in the moment. This is where you are right now. This is how you feel right now. 

This. Right now. Right here.

Let it in.

I tried to use words like the ones Dr. Oz always suggests; the ones I don't dare to believe, most of the time. I tried to believe them. I tried to let them work their magic.

I deserve to feel better.

I allow myself to relax and take this in.

I accept the healing that my body craves.

Little thrills washed over me in waves. My hair was standing on end. I felt my body relaxing, relaxing, taking it in. It felt impossibly good. Euphoric. Wonderful.

I tried to hang on to it, repeating those words when I caught my mind drifting and my shoulders tensing up again: Deserve. Allow. Accept.

I made it home, and maybe a full hour after that, before the all-too familiar, electric-mayhem- under-the-scalp feeling of an oncoming migraine began to break through my post-massage haze.

Wait, wait! I tried to yell at myself (silently) (mindfully). DESERVE! ALLOW! ACCEPT!

My muscles were beginning to feel sore, the tension returning. My eyes were struggling to hold focus as the light became sharper around me. 

DESERVE!

ALLOW!

ACCEPT, GOD DAMN IT!

And my over-stimulated, comfort-resisting body returned a request of its own: 

Medicate.

Well, it had worked for a while, and I suppose I shouldn't complain. I really understood for the first time the nature of the work I have yet to really begin: Mindfulness, openness to the world, acceptance of healing.

All this work, and it suddenly feels like I haven't even started the important stuff yet.

_____

I am planning to keep going back to Shurrone, migraines or not. She connected with exactly what I am trying to connect with, and I am going to trust her to keep working from the outside while I work from within to bring my body back into balance.

And I think I have a mantra now. 

Deserve. Allow. Accept.

I have spent so much time and energy protecting myself from the bad-- real and imagined-- that I have insulated myself from the good as well, and it's just as hard to let myself feel the pleasure as it is let in the pain.

It is not, however, as difficult to choose which one to start with, if I'm going to attempt to open these floodgates of mine.

Pleasure, comfort, healing, love, life: let's do this. I'm going to give it a shot.

I deserve. I allow. I accept.

The Persistent Demon

It's weird, how difficult it is to write about this.

I have mentioned the migraines before. Most people who know me well know I get them, and get them often. Readers of this blog know I've been getting them more frequently these past several months, triggered by the therapy in some mysterious way. They are not really something I can hide.

But there's more to them than just discomfort and inconvenience. There's a whole history, a pathology, a legacy of shame and guilt built around them that I can't seem to shake no matter how hard I try.

I've always been a headache person. I had frequent, powerful headaches (migraines even then?) as a child, which were traced to food allergies and treated through dietary modifications. This worked, to some extent, although I remained prone to headaches in general.

The regular, monthly migraines didn't start until a few years after the accident, when I was about 26. They seemed to be connected to my menstrual cycle, so were categorized as "menstrual migraines."

(Future rant topic: the tendency for medical professionals to relegate "female troubles" like this into the "get over it, you hysterical idiot" category, which I hereby dub YWS, or "Yellow Wallpaper Syndrome." Thanks, docs.) **

Clearly, there was more to them than mere hormones. I know that now. Besides my cycle, I am also triggered by muscle tension in my neck and back, by stress, by sinus trouble, by alcohol, by roller coasters, by therapy sessions, by writing this blog, by thinking about therapy or writing this blog, and now I'm casting an inquiring eye upon dairy products, citrus, caffeine, and sugar. 

(How about AIR?! Is OXYGEN now a problem for me, migraines?! WELL?!)

But migraines are tricky and mysterious-- not much is known about them, and while there are medications that can help control them, there is no cure. 

A few migraine facts for you to ponder: 

• "Severe migraines are classified by the WHO (World Health Organization) as among the most disabling illnesses, comparable to dementia, quadriplegia, and active psychosis." (see link above for all citations)
• Migraine sufferers are 3 times more likely to have depression than healthy people, and are also more likely to attempt suicide.
• Women are about three times more likely to have migraines than men. Coincidentally (or not), migraine is "the least- publicly funded neurological illness relative to its economic impact." (YWS, anyone?)

So, serious. It's not just me-- these things suck.

But no matter what my intellect (and the WHO) tell me, it's embarrassing to have chronic, debilitating headaches. At least, it is for me. I fear it looks like I'm faking or exaggerating (a residual from a sickly childhood, wherein I sometimes did fake it), or like I'm complaining, or like I'm weak and can't handle a little discomfort. 

And then there's the guilt. I feel terribly guilty, like I'm forcing others to accommodate me. I don't like to ask for special dispensations. I don't like to put people out. I don't like to need help.

I don't like to need. And I certainly don't like anyone else to know it if I do. I think that's what it really comes down to. And yeah, I kind of know what's going on there, and I'm gearing up to tackle THAT little piece of fun in my next post.

So shame, once again, rears its ugly head. Having a migraine is somehow shameful, something to keep secret and suffer through in silence, and giving in to it and letting it impact my life (missing work, changing plans, having to lie down in a dark, quiet room) feels like a coward's retreat.

Still. After having one at least once a month for almost 15 years.

Migraines are also scary. Severe pain is scary enough on its own, but chronic pain, pain you know is coming and can't stop, is scary on a whole other level. You're afraid because you're helpless to avoid the pain, and then afraid of the helplessness itself.  

I am, I mean. I should say "I" here. I am afraid of being helpless against this. I am afraid of being helpless against anything.

And then, once the next episode becomes inevitable, it's a constant race against the clock: when will it start? Will I choose the right medication, and medicate it in time to keep it from getting bad? How bad will it get? How long will it last? What if it happens when I'm away from my medicine? What if the medicine doesn't work? When will it come back?

This anxiety is a constant undercurrent in my life. It's a form of claustrophobia, being trapped in a body that hurts. Sometimes I feel like I'm suffocating in my own skin. I can't imagine living the rest of my life like this.

Last summer, when the migraines began to change in nature, I was really encouraged. They actually became more frequent-- I have added a new and very sensitive trigger, with this therapy-- but they were much less intense and easier to control. 

More importantly, I'd removed so much of the fear element, with the knowledge that they are at least partly psychosomatic-- meaning that there is an emotional component, one that can be altered and maybe even removed. I had hope for the first time that I could resolve these headaches for good if I kept at the work.

I still think so. I still really, really hope so.

But for the past two or three months, the migraines have become even more frequent. These days, I have some level of migraine pain more often than not. Usually it's just lurking around the edges of my consciousness; an uneasy tingle in the scalp, a worm of nausea in the gut, eyes that struggle to hold focus, the occasional stab in the forehead. But this is enough to keep everything on high alert, and to set off all the same alarms that a full-fledged attack does. 

It's like walking around with a grenade in your pocket, hoping you don't jostle the pin loose. Every day. Every fucking day.

It gets to be too much, at times. I get tired of the strain. But I've been trying to keep the long view, knowing that if I can impact the migraines for the worse, I can probably also impact them for the better, and as I reduce the frequency and impact of the emotional triggers of the PTSR, I really do believe I'll reduce the frequency and the impact of the migraines.

I have to believe it. The alternative is just unthinkable.

But it's gotten harder, lately. The last two major episodes have been absolutely epic. The one I told you about already, one of the worst ever, was frighteningly intense but mercifully short-lived; the worst of it lasted about six hours. For me, that's a lucky break.

The second happened the weekend I was in Napa (it began while I was writing the previous post), and lasted four days, during which I had some of the worst and most persistent nausea I've had in years, which pretty much just ruins everything. 

And. most alarming of all, my meds stopped working.

_____

I'll pause here and back up a minute to remind you that in addition to the migraines, I've also struggled with major depression for years. This is common with PTSR and might even have been something I was prone to anyway, but it's not something I've felt comfortable talking about freely before.

I'm uneasy about doing it now, too, but it's relevant here and it's part of this condition and it's not something I want to gloss over. I want to be as honest as I can about what is happening to me.

I'm also really good at compartmentalizing it and putting up a good front and acting normal and together when I'm actually crumbling into tiny, claustrophobic pieces on the inside (I can feel myself pulling back right now, my language getting more remote and academic, my tone more impersonal; protect, maintain, oh yeah, I am good at this), so a lot of you might be surprised to hear this.

My depression has been fluctuating quite a bit during the therapy, as you might expect, and has been on the rise for some time now, and this change in the migraines was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.

So I went to the doctor. I got some new migraine med samples, an anti-nausea med, a muscle relaxant. I can attack the next ones from all sides. I am holding one at bay now, in fact, with one of the samples. So far, so good.

And I also asked for anti-depressants. 

It's my second foray. The first was an 18-month stint of Prozac, 10 years ago. In conjunction with therapy, it was the best decision I could have made at the time and was very effective. This time, after holding off for 18 months while I got this EMDR treatment going and have entered into the world of PTSR recovery, I'm finally accepting the help.

I've needed this for a while. I'd convinced myself I couldn't do "the work" if I went on anti-depressants. Now I'm realizing I might be able to do it better with them. I'll have more focus, more energy, more motivation. I'd convinced myself I should be able to muster those on my own. 

I couldn't. Because when you're chemically depressed, you can't.

Depression is an insidious little demon. Its number one goal, as I've seen so clearly in others and am ruefully noticing now in myself, is to sustain itself. It is a master of self-preservation. Depression wants to live and thrive. It doesn't want you to feel better. It does whatever it can to keep you from taking action against it.

Depression tells you, "You're too tired to exercise," when exercise is exactly what you need to energize yourself. 

Depression tells you, "You're too busy/preoccupied/sad//unsocial to leave the house or talk to friends," when social connection is exactly what you need to bring you back to yourself and remind you of your support network.

Depression tells you, "The drugs will make you numb and you won't be able to feel anything," when they actually remove the fog and let you see yourself more clearly, not less.

Depression tells you, "You're weak if you take the meds. Only cowards need help," when identifying what you need to heal yourself and taking action, even when there's a stigma, even when you're afraid (especially then?), is actually a sign of strength.

Taking the help is a sign of strength. Showing the need... ahem... okay, talking to self in real time, here. I need to pay attention to this. Imma give this one its own paragraph:

Showing the need and accepting the help is a sign of strength. Remember that.

Idiot. 

And that brings us, friends, to right now. I'm on Welbutrin. Day Six. It has a profile that works for me, and none of the side effects I'd hoped to avoid, so I'd really like this to be the drug that works for me. It takes a few weeks to build to full potency, so I won't know for a while if it's right or not.

So far, though, so good. I've noticed that I'm already sleeping more soundly at night. I'm not knocked out or more tired or anything, just the quality of the actual sleep I get is better, smoother, with fewer wake-ups. As someone who hasn't slept more than 2-3 hours in a row without waking, child-induced or not, for over 3 years, this is Noteworthy.

After all the denial and resistance, the outlook is good. I suspect that this, like so many of my self-care decisions, will be something I'll wish I'd had the brains to do sooner.

But whatever. It is what it is, and it's done now. And like so many right decisions, it matters less why or when or what happens, because the power is in the doing, and in the doing, you are victorious.

Brave.

Strong.

_____

**If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about with The Yellow Wallpaper, here's a good analysis. The first few paragraphs should suffice, if you don't care to read the whole, nerdy thing.

A Request

Hello, dear readers!

I am coming to you live from St. Helena, California today. My superhero of a husband told me to go have a weekend to myself to recharge, and who am I to refuse such an offer?

So here I am, sitting in the window of a little cafe, watching the rain on the cobbled sidewalk outside. They say we'll have thunderstorms tonight, although I haven't heard anything yet. Two nights of uninterrupted sleep, a weekend of writing, good food, movie-watching, shoe-shopping... and now, thunderstorms?! 

I ask you: could this BE anymore perfect?!

Anyway. The next few posts are going to trigger me quite a bit, I suspect, so I'm going to hold off and start them next week. 

This week, I have a request for you:

If you are reading this blog, could you do me an enormous favor and sign up as a follower by clicking the "Join This Site" button in the right sidebar?

It doesn't do much, I admit. It puts my blog and any other Blogger blogs you follow on a dashboard for you so you can see at a glance who has updated. But as far as I can tell, that's it. No notifications for you about updates or comments or anything (for better or for worse. I would appreciate that, personally. Some people hate notifications. Here, we default to your preferences, haters. You win! Happy now?!).

HOWEVER: I do have ideas about turning this story into a book some day, and the more followers I have, the more additional ones I will draw, according to Those Who Know Such Things, and look at introverted little me, trying to draw followers!

So will you? Sign up? You won't get spammed or shamed or anything. You'll just have the warm, fuzzy satisfaction of knowing you've done someone a favor... and maybe, just maybe, one day you'll be able to say you knew me when, and you were following me before I sold out.

Thank you to all of you who read here. There are a lot of you! And thank you to all of you who comment, either here or on Facebook or in the private emails you have been sending me. 

You tell me my story is teaching you things about your own. Well, your words of sympathy, empathy, and support are teaching me, too.

We are not so different, you and I. The more I write, the more you write, the more I realize how connected we are, how no one's journey is only their own, how much it matters to meet others along the path, to nod or high-five in passing or to join arms and haul each other up a particularly steep and slippery hill. 

Coming or going, ahead or behind, armor-clad or barefoot and naked as the day we were born, we are all on the path together. 

I forget sometimes. You remind me. I'll try to keep returning the favor.

Sign up and follow. 

Thank you.

Real Time

One of my hopes for this blog was that once I'd gotten you caught up with the back story, I could start blogging what was happening in real time.

There are two problems with this idea. First, it's impossible to catch you up, because the more I learn about what's happening to me, the more things in the past click into place and become new chapters in the unfolding story. So there will always be a need to hop back and forth. Which is fine, just not as clean or linear as I once thought it could be.

I'm not sure that was a good goal to have, anyway.

The other problem is that I don't really WANT to talk about what's happening in real time. I like to tell stories, where I can draw the conclusions and tie up the loose ends and pull out a pretty moral and stand back at a safe distance and say, look at that, isn't that clever?

I don't like to talk about feelings I'm actually having, at the moment I'm actually having them.

For one thing, this requires a hell of a lot more insight into one's emotional self than I have. I'm not good at this. I don't feel my feelings in real time, so how can I discuss them? I need a few hours or days to figure out what was happening to me in whatever emotional moment I'm trying to examine.   

This gets absurd in the therapist's office. Conversation I've had more often than I can count:

"How does that make you feel?"

"I don't know."

"What are you feeling right now?"

"I'm trying to figure out why I reacted that way."

"That's not a feeling."

"But that's what I feel."

"No, that's what you think."

"I don't understand the difference."

Okay, that's a paraphrased conversation. But the spirit of it reigns in pretty much every conversation I've had with every therapist I've seen.

For a long, long time, I didn't even get the distinction they were making. I didn't just fail to understand the difference, I failed to understand that there WAS a difference.

I used to. I did. I was extremely emotional, and extremely emotionally aware as a teenager. Even for a while after my accident, I still spoke this language, still perceived the nuance. I was a  poet as an undergrad, for god's sake. The language of emotion might have been the only language I spoke.

But I am far away from that now, and somehow, doing this work has taken me further still. Once I started down this road, it became clear that in order to work through this stuff, I'd have to embrace it, accept it, and move through it.

By "this stuff," I don't just mean the emotional distance. I mean whatever fear, anger, and sadness may come from the work, as well. I mean the depression and paralysis that those things cause. 

And, since these are all the things I've been struggling to keep under control for the past 20 years and have been operating under the assumption that they were caused by my own weakness of character and not that car accident, doing this work feels a lot-- A LOT-- like I'm giving in to my worst self.

Like I've had a secret shame hidden in the back of my closet for years, and am now walking around with it pinned to my shirt instead.

This doesn't feel like work, it feels like surrender. It feels like I've lost the fight.

_____

Okay, wow, here's a real-time moment: looking back over the previous paragraphs, I see a glaring contradiction. Did you catch it?

I'm complaining about feeling emotional distance AND feeling fear, anger, and sadness? As my therapists have helpfully pointed out, those are feeling words. Even my emotionally-stunted self can see that.

So... here I am, in real time, calling bullshit on myself. It can either be feelings or no feelings that I'm struggling with. Right? Can't be both.

Or can it? In the last post, I told you about the fog that descended during an emotionally-charged time, eating everything in its path and erasing reality right before my eyes.

So maybe that's what my problem is now. The emotional distance isn't just my default way of being, end of story, as I've always assumed. It's the result of the PTSR working against the impact of the feelings I'm actually having, because my limbic system can't handle anything outside of those drastically-narrowed boundaries I've set.

So that means that if I find myself struggling more, feeling darker, sadder, more depressed, more lethargic, further away from whatever epiphanal moment I've imagined is coming at the end of all of this, lost in some sort of dark, sterile void... it's not because I am emotionally distant, but because this is what emotions feel like and I've just forgotten?

The body knows, says Dr. Oz. What are you feeling in your body right now?

Tightness in my chest and abdomen. Can't draw a full breath. A familiar, chronic, frustrating feeling. Restricted lungs, with the added indignity of aching muscles in my back from restricting them my own damn self.

What else?

Frequent throbs in the forehead: the lingering traces of the migraine I had on Thursday, which was-- and this is really saying something, friends-- the second-worst headache I have ever had in my life. It was genuinely terrifying. Headaches like that make you think of things that seem crazy later but like the only possible truth in the moment: Aneurysm. Stroke. Sudden, screaming death. 

My husband pointed out to me this morning that I haven't been the same since it happened. I've been in some dark place ever since.

Assuming that these headaches are tied in to all of this-- and I think it's the correct assumption-- I think I may just have figured out the cause, or at least a major contributor. 

My problem isn't that I'm not feeling, it's that I am feeling. This is all working and I'm beginning to feel things again, and then I'm overcompensating by trying to erase it all as it happens, by any means necessary. 

Fog, funk, headache. 

Erase. Distract. Sabotage.

Huh.

Huh.

I've got to think about this for a bit.