During some critical points in my life, I should have run when I was forced to stay. My insides took off, while my butt stayed in the seat. I can recall several times where I felt that I was floating outside of my body, and watching from above. It was as if I were watching someone else endure painful things. I later learned this was a fight or flight mechanism called "disassociation". It's where your run from something in your mind, but your body is still undergoing the pain. It takes quite a bit of work to go back and repair memories like that. It's almost like forcefully shoving your mind from several feet above, back into the body below, and trying to wrap your mind around the hurtful things, in order to even begin to heal them.
For the past 18 months I've been in counseling. We went in to it looking for some help with our marriage, but ended up finding that we needed critical help dealing with my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I didn't know I had PTSD, until my second visit with our counselor. I guess my symptoms were classic, but I had missed them entirely. I just wondered why going through stress was such a huge problem for me, and for us.
PTSD can happen at any age. It can result from a disaster, or a traumatic event. In my opinion, those are one and the same. In my case, it was a traumatic series of events. I'm not sure that just one thing would have caused my PTSD, but it was a repetition of traumatic events in my history. There was one stacked on top of the next, on top of the next, and so on, until my brain couldn't handle the weight of it all. Somewhere along the road, it began to crumple, all while I continued to try to live a normal life. When I am asked what caused my problem, the best answer I can come up with is to just say that it wasn't just one occasion, but a collection of damaging events over the course of my life that added up to one big pile of confused, and improperly trained neurotransmitters.
Re-training my neurotransmitters sometimes feels nearly impossible. It's not like I'm volunteering to over-react to situations, but once I find that my ship is heading that direction, I have to get everyone on board to let loose the sails, drop anchor and turn that boat in a different heading. The problem is, "everyone" is just me. Trying to correct course on a huge vessel all by myself is hard work. It takes a lot out of me mentally and physically. This is because it isn't just a casual change of mind, it's a war inside my brain, complete with all the hormones and chemicals being dumped violently into my bloodstream that are screaming at me to RUN, when I have nowhere to go but overboard. Sometimes I describe it as doing aerobics without moving a single muscle.
It's not uncommon to find myself needing several hours, if not a full day, of rest to "recuperate" from an episode, particularly if it's a highly exaggerated set of responses or I have had to endure a lengthy time period of excess stress. Unresolved conflict falls into that "lengthy time period" category. Sometimes in my marriage, a trigger can get set off (usually unintentionally!) and if the resolution doesn't occur shortly after the trigger was hit, then this snowballs into a very uncomfortable state of hyper-vigilance. This is where I am aware of everything and life gets put on pause.
Sometimes being aware of everything can be good - if you're trying to proof-read, for instance. But being aware of everything in a highly stressful situation means your brain takes notes. It notes the bad and the good - but mostly the bad. It records sounds, smells, temperatures and the weight of the air around you. It takes a word-for-word transcript of every single thing that someone else says, and places it incorrectly in the permanent file instead of the temporary - where it would be easier to forgive and erase. It leaves no room for you to concentrate on anything else. It also means that you're probably going to jump out of your skin anytime you are startled, plus not be able to fall asleep. Having an outburst of anger or being irritable is pretty classic here too - because that's about all the emotion you can manage to squeak out of your brains.
Other times, life around you just sounds like static on the radio. I guess this is the opposite of being aware of everything. It's when you begin to unconsciously avoid everything instead. I hate it when this happens, because I feel like I've missed out on so much. So many wasted opportunities, and moments that could have been wonderful.
During a period of"static", you become numb. You don't really care about anything, so you don't even know what you're missing. You don't remember things, which can be really embarrassing. You detach yourself from people and situations. You're not really interested in anything, so it's quite easy to tell people no. You don't show very many emotions, and quite frankly if you avoid leaving your house altogether, then you don't have to show emotions at all, or tell people "no", or even have to try to remember things. You become highly agitated, and may sleep too much or too little. This presents itself like a major depression. I got stuck in this. It sucked.
During my last period of "static", I got really good at just not going anywhere, so I wouldn't run into anyone, so that they wouldn't ask me how I was doing, so I didn't have to choose between lying or telling the truth. Telling the truth was hard, because usually it meant I would show emotion, and if I showed emotion, who knows how long it would be before I could stop crying. It was easier just to stay in the shadows, and protect other people from myself. Or so I thought.
I like pizza. I know that was pretty random, but one way I can describe how I have been able to drag myself out of my last bout of static was using a pizza analogy. Somewhere along the line I felt like a calzone instead of a pizza. I had good things, good people and my faith, but somehow it all got wrapped up and sealed off from the rest of the world. You couldn't tell who the real me was, because the crust was in the way. But looking back, it was God who was the crust all along. He held me tight, and protected me from further harm, until I could open myself back up and reveal who I am to anyone who looked. He allowed me to heal, to mature, and to rely on Him for my everything.
Not too long ago, my husband and I decided it was time to pry open that pocket pizza of my life and allow the gross things and the distasteful parts of me to get inspected. Then, we allowed each other to point out some of the negative stuff, then pick it out and throw it away. My pizza is a size large. It's not an individual size pizza because I'm a Mom. I have different toppings, and sometimes even a different sauce (haha). My husband is his own pizza too... but thankfully he keeps his mostly flat, and his toppings are usually rather benign and predictable. We do have one thing in common about our pizzas though, and that is our crust. It is made from the same ingredients. We obey the same God, we worship the same God and we know that we wouldn't be who we are without our crust. We'd be floppy piles of gunk on the floor, unable to be sustained or to hold ourselves up without the proper support.
The toppings on my pizza vary. Some days or weeks it's rather plain. Sometimes it's complicated. Sometimes it's heavy on the fruit, sometimes it's heavy on the protein. But however it is topped, it is always with a hefty dose of cheese. I do believe that one of the things about my life that has kept me from throwing myself off the ship is humor. A good dose of laughter now and then seems to snap my head back on straight and keep me from over-stressing myself.
One of my goals this year is to keep my pizza flat out and visible to everyone. Writing this post made me want to curl up like a calzone again because it was downright uncomfortable and I feel exposed, but that wouldn't do either of us any good. Hopefully having experiences like this in my past that I can talk about, will help someone else see that they aren't alone in this world. God loves you and He wants to support the ingredients that make up your life. The awesome part, is that even when your toppings may be overloaded and unhealthy, He's still willing to carry them all for you until the day comes that you're ready and able to pick off the nasty stuff, and give it another go. Trying to dust myself off from the battles of life isn't easy, and each step must be deliberate and intentional. Failures come along the way, and that's ok, because it's what you're striving for that counts, not how many times you fall down. So, in your journey, keep your pizza healthy, and keep your crust as a firm foundation, but whatever you do, don't get rid of the cheese.
