Mini-breakthrough: Affirming Identity

[InsideAWord]

I went through a big regression last month, and something my new therapist had said to me TWO months back popped up in my head last night: "Now, do you think that your emotions right now are really tied to the PTSD or just stress?"

And something kind of clicked as I thought about that...

Now, hear me out. This attitude may not work for everyone, but this different perspective has worked for me.

If I spend too much time thinking, "Oh, what just happened right now is a flashback" or "I just had a panic attack" or "This anger was a result of my hyper-vigilance," then I am going to drive myself crazy. And, I feel like when I spend too much time labeling my reactions to various scenarios, retracing steps to see what the stressor was, or thinking to myself how what just happened was due to a symptom of my PTSD, then I am basically allowing the PTSD to take responsibility for my actions and emotions rather than saying to myself, "No, this was me. This was in my control, and I allowed this moment to overpower my reasoning."

No matter what, if I am encountering a negative situation, I may or may not have a choice in how I respond to it. So, I've just come to the conclusion that I shouldn't think in terms of "PTSD symptoms" or "Natural emotions" because everything has just muddled into one.

Whether I like it or not, this is how my mind and body functions at this moment. By dismissing some personal experiences as symptoms of PTSD, I feel like I am not only pushing away responsibility but also making more problems for myself.

Thus, I have made my decision to become more mindful of my actions and behaviors by not viewing one moment or the other in terms of PTSD symptoms or natural emotions because, at the end of the day, this is my consciousness and my identity. And, in the end, it is my decision to allow PTSD to embody half of my identity or not. And, I choose to not allow PTSD to define my behaviors, thoughts, or actions.

So, now I'm thinking more in problem-solving frames: If this happens, how do I deal with it? Rather than, "HOLY CRAP! My symptoms are back in full-force."

I've hit the threshold where I'm just saying to myself, "Whatever, this is what is happening now, and I may have to learn to live with these symptoms. How do I deal with them in a way that is productive, constructive, and positive without them putting up too many obstacles in my daily life and long-term goals?

For instance, if I'm going to have a flashback, I have to train my mind to say, "Well, that just happened. Okay, we got through it. Let's find something to keep myself grounded, like a task that I enjoy." I'm trying to frame my perspective so that I don't focus on what just happened or what is happening -- rather, what is the next step I am going to take.

Yes, the night terrors suck and those are sort of out of my control since that is my subconscious taking over. But, while I'm awake, I'm trying to make sure that I'm not just thinking in black-and-white terms.

Yes, the labeling and understanding of PTSD with its symptoms was helpful when I was first diagnosed since I didn't really understand what was happening to me after my trauma. And, that knowledge about the various symptoms did help me figure out that those experiences were just remnants of trauma.

But, I feel that in order to recover, I have to figure out how to be more proactive rather than reactive. Or else, I cease to be as myself and become more and more of a victim.

 

[arfie]

Sounds like a breakthrough! Way to go! Little things can make huge differences.

Congratulations!

 

[SeanCharles]

Kudos! Sounds like progress in moving forward in your healing!:D

 

[InsideAWord]

I'm just starting to think of some symptoms are just like hiccups that occur sometimes.

 

[Promicarus]

I agree-I think you have officially pulled yourself up to the next plateau and out of the morass which is reactivity/helplessness.

One of the chief symptoms of PTSD is termed "learned helplessness", which I think is just a jargbuoyantelabeling of acepting victimhood to the point of "Inhabiting" it, I.e. becoming invested in it as one's identity. And when that happens...you've no less than made a home In that morass-stopped even looking to rise above it, anymore.

When I struggle against things, instead of "relaxing in to them", letting them unfold, I am ironically falling victim to them, in the sense that I implicit in that struggle is the tacit acknowledgment that I am not big enough, i.e. adequate enough, to not be washed a ay when they wash over me. The avid swimmer doesn't flounder at the rising swell of a wave. Only the novice does. But unlike such a physically material proposition, that of our emotions/symptoms depends almost wholly on our attitude toward them, rather than on skill or prowess resulting from practice of a practical technique. See the wave of emotion as overwhelming and the swell grows to proportions which dwarf all efforts. Greet it as a new experience, and one rides only a relatively gentle crest. What do tgey say of those who drown? Most often it is their frantic flailing which dooms them. They had only to hold their breaths and relax, in order to float, after all.

And so I naturally seek to tighten my efforts at control, in hopes of achieving it, understanding that as my goal, as "success", only pulling all the harder at the ends of the lines, in hopes of untying the knot of obsession, only to have it tighten all the more.

Only when I relax my tugging to give it slack, will the knot have room to work free.

And when I accept my emotions rather than struggle with them for control over them, I have made myself bigger than their "wave", by the "art of expectation", as self-fullfilling prophecy.

And when the next comes, my memory of my buoyance in the swell of the last serves to condirm my identity...as a "floater", not a "sinker", my expectation of adequacy so established in an upward spiral of such virtuous cycles, that one day, I might even thrill to surf.

Kudos, @InsideAWord, breakthrough indeed