About as exciting as watching paint dry, right? Noone much wants to hear about other people’s ailments and challenges – physical or otherwise.
And so it was on my personal healing journey. There were dozens of false starts. Therapists who should have been flipping burgers, not perpetually flipping prescriptions at their patients.
I lost friends over the degree of disclosure I shared about my personal experience. Much of it would have had a priest in a confessional writhing in discomfort.
In the midst of the search for answers and the effort to become grounded, I knew nothing of this.
I only know it was a personal watershed to stumble across the diagnostic criteria for PTSD some years back.
I had struggled in a vacuum emotionally for some years. I knew I didn’t feel “normal” though I didn’t know exactly what that might mean if I did.
My internal reactions were too strong. My interactions too intense. My emotions were too jangled and out of control.
I would frequently “space out” when listening to people talk.
I would often have to consciously bring myself back into the room and concentrate on what was being said.
I didn’t think it should require that much effort just to socialize with friends.
When I read Amanda Melheim’s recent review of The Body Keeps the Score, I heard a reflected version of my own life story and healing journey.
Bessel van Der Kolk’s seminal work on trauma has been around for quite some time now.
Like many things, written work can be seen anew through the eyes of another skillful writer. Van der Kolk’s book sat at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months.
It is still the reference of choice for practitioners and sufferers to help them understand how trauma imprints and manifests in the brain.
Melheim weaves in the manifestation of her traumatic experience in her own behavior with explanations she only discovered in Van der Kolk’s book.
It is bad enough that a traumatic event can suffuse a victim with powerlessness and helplessness. Unresolved, that response can be triggered over and over again in adulthood until the source of the pain is addressed and expunged.
That is easier said than done. The field of trauma treatment is still developing. Thank heaven the established medical profession has at least evolved beyond frontal lobotomies on legitimately disturbed and agitated patients.
But trauma treatment is still spotty and disagreement exists on what the best modalities are to defeat its lingering symptoms. Melheim shares some important insights from Van der Kolk’s book about this.
Much as smoking took years to evolve in the public consciousness as the health menace it is, PTSD is still on the sidelines as a widely accepted and understood health phenomenon. PTSD in soldiers gets more attention and support than traumatized victims of abuse or sexual assault.
In the meantime, Melheim’s review of The Body Keeps the Score makes a strong case for why a more universal understanding of PTSD’s deleterious effects on society is likely to take awhile.
While weaving in elements of her personal story, she illustrates the symptoms of PTSD in everyday life that can be written off by the uninformed as something else – laziness, flakiness, bad character or histrionics.
Melheim has added to the evidence and ongoing necessary conversation about PTSD and C-PTSD. They are similar afflictions but differ in degree.
I am grateful she made that foray. Her article is well worth a read if you are a PTSD sufferer or if you know any.
Even if you just want deeper insight into why otherwise good people seem to act against their best interests, it can be helpful to learn their reactions aren’t always in their control.
Expressive Compulsive 