An Unexpected Breakthrough

I'm not really sure what to write about today. Med and migraine updates are boring (doubled Effexor dose again to 150mg, where I think I will stay; have migraine but it's my once-a-month menstrual one that I consider the most tolerable, somehow. There, done). Anything too off-subject isn't the point of this blog. So what, then?

I have some undeveloped thoughts about stuff I could share. See what you think.

I was thinking the other day about the nature of this whole PTSR thing-- the emotional numbing, the separation of the intellectual brain from the feeling one from the instinctive one, and how, all these years on, it feels like such a long and layered thing to unlearn.

But the truth of it, as I've written about here but never said in so many words and never really thought about in quite this way, is that it isn't something that happened slowly over time.

It happened immediately, the night of the crash. Bam. Boom. Splitsville.

That's really weird to me.

I've come to think of all this condition as something that has accumulated, and in so many ways it has-- protective behaviors and habits and blind spots that have built and layered upon each other over time.

But that initial split, the thing it all boils down to and the thing I'm still struggling with now that I've peeled away as many layers as I can, is something that wasn't conditioned or learned or developed over years and years.

It happened immediately.

Immediately.

That... blows me away.

I mean, all implications aside, think about that. The power of that. The brain is capable of taking such deeply protective measures that in a mere instant-- a second, no more than two-- it can reorient itself to the world so completely. 

It took the measure of that second and decided what needed to be done to keep me safe and made it happen: it shut down memory recording for me so I would never have to experience consciously the moment of impact-- a moment I did experience consciously, mind you-- and then it began, right then, to scan for further threat so that such an unthinkable, horrifying violation could never happen again.

I will save you, it said. And then I will keep you safe.

And 23 years later, it still hasn't stopped.

_____

WOW.

After I wrote that, I had... a really intense full-body physical reaction.

My legs and arms started doing the cold-fire, off-gassing thing, and my scalp started prickling, so I closed my eyes and put my head down and planted my feet on the floor and started doing my grounding exercises: pool of saliva in the mouth, table under the elbows, mantra in the head: I am here, I am safe, I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.

And then my scalp... and the migraine beneath it... just... released.

And a cold-fire shiver went from my neck down through my whole body to my feet.

And knots in my shoulders and abdomen I hadn't known were there... relaxed.

I lifted my head and opened my eyes and everything looked a little strange and floaty, like I was sitting too high in my seat and the lights were too bright, so I closed them again and went back to my mantra, and just did that for a while.

The next time I looked up, everything was settled again.

I think my body just let something go. Somehow, saying that stuff in just that way allowed me to let another piece go.

_____

That was cool and crazy!

The cold fire is still going strong all through my legs and up the backs of my wrists and forearms, an hour later.

The migraine is creeping back, though. :/

Whatever, body. We just had a moment, you and I. Deny it all you want. We both know what happened here today.

Ha. I should try writing undeveloped thoughts more often, eh?