Of PTSD Flashbacks, and of Screaming to Be Heard

Hello My Dear One,

I've had a rough few weeks at work, and they've left me struggling with how triggering some of my students' meltdowns can be for me.  I understand meltdowns from the inside out, and sometimes my level of empathy is too high in a situation.  I can all too easily find myself feeling the way that I have during my own meltdowns.  I work very hard to combat this, and the more I do my job, and the more therapy I do, the less apt I am to get caught up in my own stressors during an episode. Even so, no matter how objective I can be, the fear of physical danger for myself or others, can still trigger flashbacks from my own past filled with emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical abuse.  And the funny thing about PTSD is that you never know exactly what that trigger might be or what flashback will be triggered.

In the therapeutic work that I continue to do I have recently encountered a memory, a flashback, that was an absolute turning point in my life.  Oddly, after more than two years with my therapist this memory has never been in one of the "memory chains" that I have reprocessed.  Neither one of us is sure why, however I suspect that my own understanding of the event hadn't matured enough to actually deal with it.  I'll never truly know the answer, but I do know that I am at long last ready to face this point, and all of its ramifications from the past 25 years.

The memory is as vivid today as if it had occurred yesterday rather than two and a half decades ago, and this ultimately gives credence to the flashbacks I've been having about it for several months now.

The place, the colors, the smell, the sounds, the emotional distress come rushing in at full force, knocking the wind out of my already deflating lungs.  I am transported back to that moment when the line of before and after is drawn on the invisible timeline of my life.  I am watching myself be changed in an instant, and I have forever marked my time on earth as prior to that moment, and everything that has come since.

I am sitting in the basement of my grandparents' house, noodling with some project or other, the smell of leather and freshly cut pine fills the early autumn air that flows through the ground level windows around me.  I know that my mother has finally decided to confront my father and the tenant who is living in our 2nd floor apartment about the affair that we all know is happening.  I am waiting for her to return to me, to tell me that he has confessed, and that this madness will soon end.  I am waiting to hear the reassurance that I have been right all along, and that this nightmare is real.  I am waiting to know that my mother has put my needs, ahead of my father's wants.

But something else is happening.  My life is being thrown into a radically spinning change and at the eye of the storm is the calmest my mother has ever been in my entire life.  She is sitting near me, to my right, and we are not making eye contact.  She is telling me that the affair is real, that she has confronted them, that they have confessed.  I feel a flood of relief that this wretched time is about to end.  I ask her when, not if, he is leaving.  And the answer to that question will set the course of my life for the next 25 years, although I don't yet know this.  I have asked her when is he leaving, and she replies that he isn't.  She asked him to choose, and he gave some juvenile, puerile, thoughtless response about choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice creams, and that was that.  I am screaming in my head, and I am screaming at her, and I am completely unheard.

She sat there, unwavering.  She sat there, as though no other options had ever existed, or could exist.  She sat there, unmoving and unmoved to choose a life that could be different from this madness.  She sat there.  She simply sat there telling me that my future was forever altered, and that I could do nothing about it.  I was screaming, but unheard.

As I look back now I am struck by the stillness in that space.  I am shocked at the quiet.  I am dumbfounded by my mother's actions, or lack thereof.  Suddenly, this crazy woman with borderline personality disorder is acting the opposite of how I have known her my entire life.  There is a silent void that seems to be expanding, encompassing the rational words that could be spoken.  This created emptiness was as defining as the words that had come before.  And it would take me 25 years to be able to describe that emptiness without the screaming.  

In fact, for the next 25 years I screamed.  Sometimes I screamed at her, at my father, at my friends, at anyone I could.  Sometimes I screamed in my head, or finally cracked and screamed as I threw and broke my things.  Sometimes I heard her screams in the night, the night terrors ravaging her, and awakening me from my own troubled sleep.  Sometimes I even heard the darkness itself closing in around me, a silent scream that was louder than any verbalization I could have made.   

After I married, I screamed at my wife.  Later I screamed at in-laws.  Then I screamed at my children.   I have been blessed by G-d a million times over that they have all stayed true to me and waited for the Beast to stop screaming. 

So even though I've relived this nightmare more times than I can count, I've never been able to ascribe deeper meaning to it than not being worthy enough to have my needs met.  But as I've lived through these students' meltdowns and hears their words, and their fears, and their needs to be heard, I have seen my own memories and meltdowns in a new light.  I have been trying to be heard.  That what I have to say matters, not just what I need, but that my words carry weight and can change outcomes.  That my words can save my life, save my sanity, and stop the madness that swirls around and within me.  

So, for 25 years I have felt unheard.  I have felt that my words, and the meanings behind them, were valueless, and consequently, so was I.  But all that incessant screaming never got me what I truly wanted.  It never made me feel that I had any more value than before I began ranting.  All the screaming ever did was keep others from hearing me, and after awhile, no one wanted to listen to the screaming either.  

Through writing, I've learned that a quiet voice speaks many more volumes than a wild-eyed Beast ever can, even when he's been shouting for hours, days or weeks.  I've also uncovered that so many of my life choices, have been about being heard.  My academic pursuits, my career choices, my professional speaking, my deeper desire for power and authority have all been driven by a need to feel heard.  It is a tough reality to acknowledge, but by naming it, just as I have named my Beast(s), the power of the darkness is diminished.    

Now that I can see parts of this truth, I know that I can begin the process of change, so that I can be heard.  And more importantly, so that I can be heard without screaming.  My life can be my words.  My actions can speak for me.  My ability to communicate rests in my ability to believe that my own words have value first, and then when it is time to speak them, it will not matter if others agree with my words or not. I will know that my words were ones of conscience, morality, integrity, and truth.  And if I can hear that, then I will never believe that I am unheard again.


Thank you for taking the time to listen to my words.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari 

Of Weakness, Kindheartedness, and Tikkun Olam

Hello My Dear One,

It is the end of January, with February and March close at hand, granting us nearly three months of icy cold winter in New England.  Months filled with snowstorms, darkness, and introspection.  We have little else to do in this climate during this time of year but to examine what has been and what is to come.  We are insulated by the deep, deep snow outdoors, and the heavy handmade quilts inside.  There is an inherent hush in the spaces around us, and like the Roman god Janus whom we name that first month after, we too look both ways at the years before now, and the years that will be.  A deity whose sole purpose was of beginnings and transitions, over 2000 years ago, still leads us into each new year.  I am no more immune to this than anyone else, and I take this time for introspection with a sense of reverence for who I was and who I long to be.

Of course the Beasts of Mental Illness that I live with play huge roles in the process, most usually as embarrassing regrets about the years behind me, as well as prayers that they will be less intrusive in the coming ones.  They are pariahs, attached with a deadly grip, attempting to suck the healthy blood from my system, leaving me depleted of natural resources.  But I am still the host, and I can ignore them as long as I remember that their needs do not trump my own needs.  My mind is stronger than their fervent cries.  My body can withstand the physical side effects of their attacks, and of the medications I must take to help me fight them more consistently.  And at the end of the day I am the one who has the final word.

Yet, with all that said, sometimes I am weaker than I wish to be.  Sometimes the battle takes a greater toll than I can handle, and I must return to a smaller, quieter, safer space in order to reset myself, and center within my relationship with G-d.  Sometimes this can be a fairly easy task, achieved through meditation, prayer, sleep, and my pillow.  Sometimes this is a far deeper one that requires something as drastic as an inpatient stay at a mental health facility.  Thankfully, I have not needed this intensive therapy for over fifteen months, and I keep close watch that I will not need it any time soon.

Within this introspection of course I continue to work, play, and strive to be a true partner in my marriage, a strong role model for my sons, and a man of integrity in my career choices.  This means that often the time that I want to think about the deeper questions of the heart are instead filled with questions about laundry, dinner, bills, and homework.

But those are also the times that can bring revelations that I might not have otherwise seen.  By living as fully humanly as possible I find that the world engages me more than I can engage myself.  As much as I would love to be able to read, and write, and entertain myself, I cannot live within a vacuum when the world is forever pressing me to act in response to its needs.  And by "world" I mean not only the literal sphere, but the many realms of consciousness that surround us.  There are millions of  microcosms that we navigate daily, from our own bedroom to the latest tragedy in a country that is thousands of miles away.  We are a global community and this pushes us to see ourselves in new constructs, both exciting and terrifying.

So, about those revelations, I had a doozy of a one a week ago.  It happened when my sons had two neighborhood boys spend the night out our house.  It began with the premise of only one of the boys sleeping over, but the younger sibling cried at the thought that he couldn't come too.  And this is where the big softie comes in to the picture.

You see, I am a big softie, a sucker for a good kid who needs a little boost in life that will hopefully help them turn out to be better than his/her parent(s) who've made unhealthy choices.  Basically, I want to give kids whose moms and dads just can't give them the love and support they need to grow, those things, even if it means sacrificing resources of my own.  I want the kids whose home lives really stink to experience what a loving family can be.  I want them to know that they have intrinsic value and worth, they are beloved children of G-d, even if I never utter those words.  They are here, no matter how they got here, and now they have the opportunity to bring their gifts to the world.  I want to facilitate that process of discovery and self awareness within them.

So, I, in a moment of "weakness" decided to allow the second child to stay the night as well.  They were after all siblings, and home was right across the street, and I couldn't bear the thought of the youngest being left out.  Well, joyousness resounded through the land and two boys came back across the road, clothes in plastic shopping bags, smiling as though they had just won the lottery.  Even though I knew that my wife was not 100% behind me on this one, I felt confident that it would all be ok.

Naturally, the reality of 4 boys aged 8, 8, 9, and 10 on a Friday night, all in the house expecting food and fun was not as fantastic as I had hoped.  I too was hungry, tired from a long week, and a little cranky about my self-inflicted routine change.  Needless to say, at some point I got angry with my loving wife over something small, and it turned into something large for no reason.  That is so often the way of anger, a misunderstood hurt becomes a battle of wills instead of an opportunity to hear another person's viewpoint.  At any rate, I was hurt by her use of the word "weakness" and how I interpreted it.
I found myself in the fetal position in bed, crying over this perceived attack on my character.  At first I did what any good man would do in this situation, I wallowed in my own self pity until I felt even worse.  Then I remembered a technique given to me by my therapist to somatically deal with emotional pain.  And despite my desire to keep hiding, I did it.  And I had to work really hard through those burning tears as I thought about what it meant to be weak.  Or, to be seen as weak by the one person I trust most in the entire world.

With the tapping technique I have learned from my therapist, I separated out weakness from kindheartedness.  I discovered that weakness to me was a true failing because of the weakness my mother had when it came to my own safety.  What I was doing was an act of protecting and loving, it was not an act of weakness but rather an act of kindheartedness.  It was an act of Tikkun Olam, of repairing the world, two children at a time, or maybe four, as my own sons learned the value of loving your actual neighbors as you love yourself.

But there was another revelation that came, albeit a week later, with the word weakness.  Another of the word's meanings refers to a special desire or fondness for something.  I myself have a true weakness for homemade dark chocolate peanut butter cups.  And I'm sure that there are many others like me.  And that's where I can find a power within the word weakness itself, because children who are in need of extra love and support are my weakness.  Out of my own needs for love and support as a child, I have been able to transform that pain into a kindheartedness for the kids who are often the most unlovable.

Importantly, I have been able to do this primarily through the acts of Tikkun Olam I perform every day at work.  Each student I work with individually has a harder than average time getting their needs met, and for six hours a day I try to help them learn better ways to do that.  In the process they teach me how to love the world more fully.  They teach me that my old behaviors, the ones I let the Beast run wild with, can be shaped into something better.  Those horrors can be used as foundations for where I can continue to rise up from, lighting the darkness as I go.  And I can love the Beasts I live with as much as I love the children who challenge me the most.  

So, here I am preparing for the next rounds of battle with others' beasts and with my own as I try to repair the world with my own weakness, and my own kindheartedness.  I pray for the other children of G-d as we face ourselves, our beasts, and each other.  I pray that we can repair the world by repairing ourselves, one little bit at a time.

Thank you for helping to repair the world, and for having a kind heart for me.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

- Ari