There were times when no matter how much I had done, no matter how much ground I have covered ... even exercising, eating healthier, having a good support system, staying busy, reading good books, gardening, traveling, shopping ... I still felt just plain sad.
I still missed my imaginary friend! I understood that the Aydan I was missing wasn't really who he was anyway. Aydan was "the great pretender". He "play acted" some of the sweetest scenes in the beginning. How could something that felt so good disappeared into nothing so fast?
Three things died on that night with the gun:
1. The sheltered view I had of my world.
2. The notion that I could control anything that happened in my world.
3. The dream of the man I thought Aydan was.
Those things were hard to lose!
I lost was my sheltered view of the world ... I had always known bad things happened, but deep down, I believed they happened to everyone else. I was shocked when real trouble knocked on my door and even more shocked at how unequippedI was to deal with it! I had always felt like I was safe and protected on a high hill that was really far away from the bad things and the bad people that do those things ...
Aydan brought all that up close and personal. He got through all those natural barriers that had worked so well for me and
Aydan brought all his rage with him.
It's like watching a tornado on the horizon and all of the sudden, the tornado turns and heads straight for you! There is nothing you can do but run for cover and wait for the storm to pass. Only the storm of domestic violence keeps coming back ... over and over again, without warning, and every time it comes, it breaks something else.
Hurricane Aydan is gone from my life and I'm glad for it, but recovery is cleaning up the mess the storm left.
It's hard work to pick up what's left. I picked through the rubble, looking for pieces of my life that survived, but I found so many things that were broken and beyond repair. I lost things that didn't mean much to anybody but me. No one else will ever really know. You know what I mean if you are picking up after your storm. We all let go of different dreams.
So much loss!
The dream of the "perfect guy" was that deep down into your core schoolgirl feeling ... better than the movies and a romance novel because it was happening to me! It is ironic that abusive men just want to be loved and at the very moment they know they "have us", they began to abuse us, choosing to turn their rage on us rather than to enjoy and appreciate the adoration we offer them!We may have loved our abusers but abusers have a love-hate relationship with the entire world ... Did I really think I would be any different? Did you?
The adoration slips away like sand in an hourglass with every tear, with every ugly name, with every glare and smirk. The really bad stuff is just like shaking that hour glass ... Major portions of our heart and the adoration leave when his abuse turns physical. It isn't long before we wonder what we ever saw in the guy that shoves, hits, pokes, pushes, slaps, punches, chokes ...
(choking)
Does that happen to you? Do you ever feel yourself choking? Sometimes, if I think too long about the bad things, I get a lump in my throat that feels like, at any moment, my throat is just going to close up entirely. My heart starts beating fast and my head starts to hurt ... He's gone but the fear isn't.
If I watch a scary movie or a particularly disturbing news report too close to when I go to sleep, I dream that "Aydan is chasing me with a gun ... that he catches me ... pushes me to the ground, turns the gun sideways and chokes me with the barrel of the gun ... His eyes are like deep, black holes" ... I wake up absolutely terrified!
I have learned to wake myself all the way up, turn on the lights and walk around the house, maybe even read something soothing before I go back to sleep or there will be no sleeping for me!
We have no way of knowing or even imagining at the beginning of recovery that we will find new dreams. We have no way of knowing that a lot of the things we lost will be replaced by better things.
In the beginning, we are too tired doing the work to even notice a pretty sunset ... We fall into bed and miss seeing that our favorite flowers were starting to get buds. It's okay. We'll notice later.
Why am I writing this? Am I trying to depress you?
Heavens no!
I have so many things to be thankful for ... but every once in a while, I have felt overwhelming sadness. I could be sailing along, enjoying life, laughing and having fun and from out of nowhere, I felt suddenly lost and so very alone.
What doI do?
I have three things I still do.
1. I walk outside and take a deep breath offresh air. If one deep breath doesn't work, I do it again, until I feel the mood lift.
2. I walk along the river and listen to the birds. I watch the water flow past and I put my sadness, my little worry, in the middle of the river and watch it flow away.
3. I pray. Sometimes, I pray really hard!
You may find other things that work for you. Whether it's working out in a gym, gardening, reading a book, taking a long, hot bubble bath, painting, writing in a journal ... it's good to find something that will occupy your mind.
I was with Aydan three years. It's been almost that long since he's been gone. I have made some remarkable progress ... The panic or anxiety attacks were there at the beginning but they didn't stay with me long. The really HEAVY feeling in the middle of my chest was there for months and for a while, that HEAVY feeling would come back on holidays or anniversaries. The bad dreams got less frequent.
But there are some things that remain incredibly dark.
I think those dark places are part of our survival instincts. I used to meet everyone with the idea that there is good in everybody and I trusted indiscriminately. It's not that way anymore. I remember. I will always remember what the sky looked like before Hurricane Aydan struck my little world! I listen to people closer and when they start to look like a hurricane brewing, I just leave. I know better than to get tangled up with another storm!
I have been reviewing some of the books that have helped me, so I could share the best ones with you. I chose one of the first books as soon as I read the title! This book talks about the feelings we have at the very start. There is so much hurt. You can't believe that "this" has happened to YOU! It's easy to go over and over things in our minds, just hoping to figure out WHY? This book helped me:
I CAN'T GET OVER IT
A Handbook For Trauma Survivors
by Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D.
The Healing Process
You are not alone. You are not crazy. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a normal reaction to being victimized, abused, or put in a life-threatening situation with few means of escape. Some survivors report feeling as if they are choking, drowning, or "falling apart". In their book, COURAGE TO HEAL, Ellen Bass and Laura Davis (1988) aptly call this initial stage of healing the emergency stage. During the emergency stage, denial of the traumatic events lifts, and you begin to look at the reality of the event and its negative consequences. Many survivors compare this stage of healing to a natural catastrophe. For example, some sexually abused women describe the emergency stage as feeling like being caught in a tornado, avalanche, or earthquake (Bass and Davis 1988).
(If you do not feel emotions like these in reading this book, it may be that you do not need healing, or that you have already recovered from your traumatic experience. Alternatively, you may still be in a state of denial or emotional numbing as a result of the trauma.)
Throughout the healing process, you will need to talk to others about the trauma and your reaction to it. Allow yourself to focus on, even be obsessed with, the traumatic event for a while. Such focus and attention is a necessary part of healing and, like the emergency stage, will not last forever.
Taking as good care of yourself as possible throughput the healing process (and afterward) is vital. This includes proper nutrition, exercise and rest, as well as trying to accept whatever stage of the process you are in and however you are feeling at the time. You may want to decrease some of your outside obligations and try to reduce external stresses in your life in order to focus on healing. The more time and energy you can devote to healing, the more quickly and thoroughly you will be able to heal.
THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULA THAT WILL UNDO ALL YOUR PAIN AND LOSSES.
No self-help book, regardless of it's quality, is a substitute for individual counseling or other forms of in-depth help. You will probably need the assistance of caring friends, other survivors, and qualified professionals in understanding and meeting the challenges the trauma has thrust upon you.
The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - 4th Edition) Criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:
According to the official definition of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to qualify as having PTSD you must meet the following criteria:
CRITERION A: A TRAUMATIC EVENT - You have been exposed to a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death or injury, during which you respond with panic, horror and feelings of helplessness. You are in a traumatic situation when you either know or believe that you may be injured or killed.
CRITERION B: REEXPERIENCING THE TRAUMA - You reexperience the trauma in the form of dreams, flashbacks, intrusive memories, or unrest at being in situations that remind you of original trauma. During the recall stage of the PTSD cycle, your memories and the emotions associated with them will emerge, in conscious and unconscious awareness, over and over again in a variety of forms. You may have intrusive thoughts or images, dreams and nightmares, even flashbacks about the event. You may suddenly find yourself thinking or feeling as if you were back in the original trauma situation, or you may experience physical pain or medical problems for no apparent reason. All these phenomena are part of the process of reexperiencing the trauma. According to Freud, reexperiencing the trauma, including repeating it in present-day life, are ways of dissipating the intense psychic energy generated by the trauma and of trying to gain mastery over it. The unresolved trauma can absorb so much psychic energy in some trauma survivors that they have less psychic energy to devote to work, friends, and family, and most importantly to themselves, in the present.
CRITERION C: NUMBING AND AVOIDANCE - You show evidence of avoidance behavior - a numbing of emotions and reduced interest in others and the outside world. Emotional Shutdown or Psychic Numbing = During whatever traumatic event you endured, it was probably essential for you to put aside your feelings. Feeling those emotions at the time could have been life threatening. Avoidance and Triggers = These feelings of fear, anger, sadness, and guilt may shake you to the core. In response to the power of these feelings, you may shut down, just as you did during the traumatic event. Shutting downserves as a means of reducing the intensity of these feelings, so that the mood swings and variations in your energy levels don't make you feel "crazy" or out of control. If you don't understand what is going on inside you, you might start berating yourself and want to lash out at others - or simply hide. You, like so many other trauma survivors, may find yourself retreating - mentally, socially and physically.
CRITERION D: HYPERAROUSAL SYMPTOMS - You experience physiological hyperarousal, as evidenced by insomnia, agitation, irritability, or outbursts of rage. Fright or Flight and Freeze Reactions = Trauma involves life-threatening situations. The possibility that you might die or be injured gives rise to feelings of terror and anxiety. All of these trauma-generated emotions - the fear, anxiety, and anger - are emotions that have a strong physiological component. They cause your body to react and change your body chemistry.
CRITERION E: DURATION - The symptoms in Criterion B, C, and D persist for at least one month. If the symptoms persist much longer than five or six weeks, you should seek help. The sooner you seek help, the quicker you can enter the recovery stage.
CRITERION F: DEGREE OF IMPAIRMENT - The symptoms have significantly affected your social or vocational abilities or other important areas of your life. Obviously, if you can no longer work because you cannot tolerate crowds or commuting, because you cannot concentrate on the task at hand due to depression or insomnia, then your vocational abilities have been significantly affected.
Does that sound like you? What can you do about it? What will help?
Only you can determine what helps and what does not. Friends and professionals can help you uncover your own truth and support you emotionally. They can offer suggested courses of action and alternative ways of viewing the trauma. Only you, however, can decide which of these suggestions applies to you and will benefit you.
FEELINGS AND TRAUMATIC EVENTS
Feelings are real and powerful things. Although you cannot see or touch them, feelings can heavily influence your behavior, your thoughts, even your spiritual life.
No matter how you push down your feelings, try to make them go away, or pretend that they don't exist or are relatively unimportant, they will eventually surface and clamor for attention: Here I am. Here I am. Deal with me now! In fact, the further you push your emotions away, the more violently they are bound to erupt.
One of the most important components of the healing process is to find and come to terms with your feelings. At first, as these feelings emerge, they may seem to wash away what you had considered the foundations of your life - your views of yourself and the world.
Your relationships can be affected, and you may not be able to think as clearly as you used to.
At times, you may even fear that you are losing yourself. But in finding your emotions you do not lose yourself, but instead find yourself.
In addition to your feelings, you also find some of the missing pieces of the trauma.
LEARNING ABOUT FEELINGS
Your journey back to health and well-being is a journey of increasing awareness of your feelings. Indeed, the process of healing is dependent on understanding your feelings and learning to manage them in ways that do not isolate you from others or otherwise harm you. Learning about your feelings is a lifelong journey.
Your Beliefs about why the trauma occurred and the way you judge your behavior during and after the traumatic episode are going to heavily influence the degree to which you continue to suffer.
(That's enough for today ... Let's talk more about this tomorrow)
No comments:
Post a Comment