The color I'm currently looking through is a swamp-green. I didn't even know I was walking around with a balloon shoved in my face until after I re-read TBBS last week. Then it hit me, I may not be trying to see around a solid black ball right now, but things are not as clear to me as they have been or will be again some day. I am seeing things from a tainted perspective. I've thought a great deal about it over the last few days. I've consulted people I know and trust from a psychological stand point, read articles and papers on different topics and then it dawned on me.
Yes, I got out from behind the eight ball, but I am still mopping up leftovers from the person who smacked me in the face with the most recent ball. I'm using all my resources cleaning up how this person affected my kids. And in doing so, I have completely neglected this part of me. I haven't looked long and hard at me and compassionately given me a break. I've been tough on myself emotionally, pushing myself, demanding more and the more I demanded, the less I could give. I have PTSD. It is nothing to be ashamed of. The Black Ball Syndrome is basically that, but PTSD has some residual effects and I'm staring right through them and my world can look like a hideous color of green because of it.
Does PTSD mean a person is crazy? Aw heck no! It means a person was hurt and now they live in fear. Some professionals will call that generalized anxiety disorder, others will say its a fear that makes a lot of sense given the person's history. I know mine does. It has taken me years prior to now and serious soul searching this week to figure it out. I have the right to be afraid. I don't want to be. I want to stop seeing everything as though it is a scary green color. I don't want my view distorted. I'm generally very proactive about seeking help, but my kids have needed me, so I dropped me for them. The best choice is going to be finding balance, healing for all of us. The road to recovery is not a pill, one therapy session & voila! I'm fixed. No one is, especially when the trauma has had serious implications on their lives. It takes work. It takes a change in perspective.
My friend, Susan Kingsley-Smith wrote on her Empowering Solutions facebook page the following quote
(I swear she did it just for me!):
" 'Irrational' feelings of fear, anger, anxiety etc... are often very rational when comprehended in the full context of ones experiences."
I know this is true of me and my kids.
I'm not 'paranoid' to think someone is lying to me. I was lied to for years, by many people. Someone in particular took great pains, to cover their tracks and keep me from knowing who they really were, about their double life and all the things they did to keep that double life hidden. It is not weird for me to suspect that there are disloyal people out in the world. I've run into many, especially some disguised as friends. These past experiences are smudges for me. These are some of my unhealed emotional bruises. These keep that line of vision all mucked up. It doesn't make me crazy, it makes me understandably scared.
As I watch my kids struggle through their own pain, now I get it more than I did yesterday. I have even more empathy and compassion for them as I give it to me. The longer I hide away behind the green smudge, denying my hurts to be heard, to be validated, the longer those bruises will have the power to hurt me.
Another quote from Susan:
"I realized that the reason I kept talking about the past was because I'd not yet been heard. Validation is vital; its like oxygen. Sharing with someone I trusted to honor, yet not "fix" my pain, became an empowering solution."
And,
"Although for me my pain had been dismissed for so long and I'd been told I was "blaming" when I tried to address my trauma experiences. Invalidating ones normal emotional reaction to trauma is invalidating them as a person; this left me confused and reinforced the trauma's that told me it was my fault and that something was wrong with me. Having my feelings validated - that my experiences were horrendous - allowed me to put responsibility for the trauma/abuse back on the abusers and freed me from believing something was wrong with me and the shame I'd carried that I'd had such an intense reaction to these experiences."
I know that when I try to be responsible for what happened that isn't mine, I do feel a strange, foreign shame. It feels that way because it doesn't belong to me. When people discount what we endured, its like they're saying I'm a liar. I absolutely understand what Susan is saying in all of these quotes. And all the denying, invalidating and silencing keeps smudge happily in is place; denying the viewer a happier view.
As people who have had traumatic experiences once, its likely that we'll have them again and again. I have yet to meet anyone who hasn't experienced something or another. And if they don't validate the pain, all their lives are spent pretending and they are never free. Those of us who can raise our hands and say "yep, I was", have a better chance at surviving the harsh realities of life, have lower blood pressure and are less prone to cardiovascular illness. And we seem to grow more empathy than the deny-ers.
IS the world a scary place? Yep. But it also has beauty and love AND good people in it too. So, I have a new job to do. I need to stop seeing the world through a smudge colored balloon; all distorted and frightening. Its time for me to give myself a break, give myself a hug, pat me on the back and take time to heal me too.
Pretty soon, you will hear a very loud POP!!
Inspiration for today:
"You are more than what is hurting you tonight."
~ MercyMe
"Choose to align yourself with people who are like minded in their search for simplified inspiration. Give those who find fault or who are confrontational a silent blessing and remove yourself from their energy as quickly as possible. Your life is simplified enormously when you don't have to defend yourself to anyone and when you receive support rather than criticism."
~ Dr. Wayne Dyer
"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
~ Anais Nin
An article from our local paper about PTSD.
http://www.standard.net/topics/medical/2011/05/01/child-abuse-trauma-can-surface-later
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