• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Recovery - A Journey of the Heart - do you feel like part of your mental health concerns have something to do with having had your heart broken?

Status
Not open for further replies.

shimmerz

MyPTSD Pro
I read this today. It absolutely rang true for me. I recall through my recovery which includes today and will in fact include tomorrow and the next day - recognizing that my heart was broken. Over and over again it has been broken. Pat Deegan is one hell of a role model and hers is a life well lived. She is an activist and has great wisdom imho.

I am wondering, do you feel like part of your mental health concerns have something to do with having had your heart broken?

 
I think yes. I wanted to have a real dad who actually cared to protect me and I pretended like I did. I wanted to have a husband who actually held me in high regard and I pretended like I did. I wanted to have sons that looked up to me and felt encouraged by me. I wanted to be okay with myself and have confidence in who I was.

In order to be okay with myself I had to admit that the life I thought I had was false and I was lying to myself. That broke my heart repeatedly as I came to terms with reality. Without my therapist to teach me emotional vocabulary and witness the grief I wouldn’t have been able to accept it and move through it.

I am doing my best to repair the damage with my sons. I realized this week that since they observed and felt their dad’s passive aggressive contempt and jealousy toward me they modeled their behavior after that. Which is likely a significant source of the many conflicts we have had. On top of that I had no idea of the concept of boundaries and consequences until about four years ago and my boys were almost fully developed by then. So they had a lot of resentment toward me for trying to fix all their problems (or not fixing them) for so long.

I am rambling but I do believe that my heart was broken over and over in my recovery as I recognized the reality of my situation and what I needed to do to emerge.
 
I think the actions/ my inactions to the original traumatic event, and SI has been the culmination of a heart broken repeatedly. I can't really say I felt hardened of heart as the article says, more sliced and diced, I think sometimes it would have been more useful for survival if I did. (Though I'm not doing the article justice as it was a lot to take in- seems just nornal to me to view others as normal, not think of them clinically that is.) Neither did I have expectation, except as to what I should have accomplished, so my heart was broken with the absence +/or the impossibilty rather than the loss (eg love or regard or respect of family); the lack of expectation has probably been from a broken heart. But I do think suffering and brokenheartedness has a stange way- it's the athlete that ends up paralyzed; the person looking for work who has their car stolen; the person struggling with camcer who finds out with their trreatments their spouse is cheating; the person with few people left who die early- that kind of odd thing. So much there to wrench the strength to continue from hearts. In fact, most sorrows and losses up to age 7 shape where many futures go and live, so they say. I know for example with MAID I've almost never had someone cite physical pain as the reason for their choice, but rather that they feel unloved, isolated, and invisible. (Which those of us who 'get that' know it sort of already feels like we do not exist, so it's not a big leap).

But yes, TLDR, I think it can contribute to MH issues, grow from MH issues, but in another way without suffering we couldn't understand others very well. However I feel the presence of the opposite serves to show it is not all there is. Or maybe rather something else is possible (at least if it keeps occurring). There is a lot to be said to be forgiven when you don't deserve it; accompanied when you reject yourself; trusted when you can't trust yourself; considered even 'adequate' or 'ok-ish' when you don't see another way.

Hope that makes sense.

Thank you for the article @shimmerz . Hugs to you. 💙💙💙
 
I read this today. It absolutely rang true for me. I recall through my recovery which includes today and will in fact include tomorrow and the next day - recognizing that my heart was broken. Over and over again it has been broken. Pat Deegan is one hell of a role model and hers is a life well lived. She is an activist and has great wisdom imho.

I am wondering, do you feel like part of your mental health concerns have something to do with having had your heart broken?

Put this on my to-read list. It looks wonderful. TY 🌺
 
I was thinking about this thread, I know it can play out differently- some people act out, others turn inward, etc. But I think hearts break with cruelty, abandonment, being stuck in abuse, deceipt/ betrayal, shock etc. -the things that harm or cut to the core of one's identity. But also with loss of course, although the 1st involve losses too: loss of self -esteem and self worth, safety and security, freedom and peace and confidence, certainty and respect and trust, and self-trust, loss of happiness, goals, dreams, even survival instinct or desire to engage. And more I'm sure.
 
How I react to having my heart broken is infinitely different after PTSD than before.
Yeah, me too, but I react to everything infinitely differently after having PTSD. I think that is the nature of the beast. What I am trying to get to here is whether there is a component of healing that needs to address the wounds that have happened to our heart. Most of us think about our brain being defective or damaged in whatever way but what about a need to care for our heart woundings?
 
brain being defective or damaged in whatever way but what about a need to care for our heart woundings?
Isn’t the concept of the heart part of the concept of the mind? How are you separating the heart from the brain/mind? PTSD is brain/nerve-based and symptoms are experienced as a combination of corporal and mental sensations. Isn’t the concept of a broken heart a mental state of grief?

I think I might be missing something or reading it wrong. I am not sure I understand how you are separating them and saying that the “heart woundings” aren’t treated.

For me heart woundings are related to attachment wounds and the therapeutic relationship addresses those through work with transference, in my experience.
 
Hi @OliveJewel. I am not sure if you read the paper that I linked to in this posting. The idea that Pat Deegan was attempting to get across was to clinical staff in training is what they learn is primarily 'brain based'. So that is what they address with their future patients. That when assessing, they should be looking at the whole person and not just prescribing pills. That they should be asking about their current living situations and not just focusing on their past.

I am not sure I understand how you are separating them and saying that the “heart woundings” aren’t treated.
I am not separating them, I am speaking about being mindful of our heart based woundings and incorporate them into our healing even if clinical staff does not. Self care is a big example of this. For example, if there was as much emphasis on heart-based healing as there is the brain then we would (I think) be a heck of a lot better at looking after our own needs and self care. It seems to me that taking care of our own personal needs is a heart-based function. We have to have compassion for ourselves in order to really focus in on attending to our own needs and I see so many struggling with this. I am curious if people have a difficult time with their own self care - maybe this is a heart-based function. My apologies if I am not explaining myself properly.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top