Dear Survivor, Still Struggling: Some Reasons to Stay Hopeful

Dear Survivor,

Yes, you. The one who's been through something terrible, has weathered the PTSD diagnosis with determined strategizing. You have been "working on yourself", with the diligence of someone trying to repair a malfunctioning car. You who've researched the effects of trauma and gone to lots of therapy and participated in self-hep groups and worked to improve your overall health. 

In the beginning, it was, if not easy, at least hopeful, right? You had a name now for the thing that was wrecking your sleep and flooding you with anxiety and making you feel defective and isolated. A diagnosis meant there were steps you could take, things you could try, specialists to consult.

But now you're wearing out. You feel like the many strategies you've tried have produced limited and temporary results. The nightmares are back, or you can't seem to function well in one or more important areas of your life. You may even be struggling with a brand new problem, like addiction. You consider that maybe in your initial optimism, you set the bar too high for yourself. You feel like a treatment or recovery failure. You wonder if maybe it's time to accept a different quality of life than the one were hoping for.

First, there's this: You are not alone.

Does this sound like a platitude?

I am not making a case here that you have a substantial support system, or that you don't feel alienated or adrift right now. What I'm saying is that you are part of a large number of people who've been at this same thing for a while, many of whom have felt what you are feeling about the difficulty and uncertainty of it all. The importance of that is, we can borrow one another's hope when our own starts to flicker. We can spell one another as we go.

So, dear hope-challenged and battle-weary person, I offer these few thoughts on why you should stay hopeful and keep striving for that quality of life that you deserve.

1) Treatment may still help, even if you feel like it hasn't before or you've hit a treatment plateau. Here's why: New research in areas such as neurplasticity and PTSD-specific treatments are showing that adverse functional and emotional changes caused by trauma can be reduced, reversed, and even eliminated. For instance, a new cognitive behavioral therapy called Image Rehearsal Therapy, or IRT, is proving effective in decreasing or even eliminating post-trauma nightmares, a serious and often highly treatment-resistant problem for many trauma survivors.

Remember, too, that therapy is a relationship, and the client-therapist fit is important. If you are feeling stuck in therapy and discussions with your therapist don't solve it, you may benefit from seeing a different therapist. Expertise is important, but personality and approach are, too.

2) Psychotherapy is not the be all and end all. Strategies which have proven enormously helpful to survivors I've known include exercise, meditation, engagement in creative/expressive arts, and connecting with supportive people. But the list of possibilities goes well beyond that. Experimenting with new, non-destructive outlets and avenues can pleasantly surprise you. If you have one or more children, they can help generate ideas. 

If PTSD is a condition, in part, of involuntarily and unhappily revisiting the past, new or novel experiences can build in other, more positive stuff. Kite flying therapy, anyone?

3) As the oft-quoted therapy adage goes, "feelings are not facts".  Feeling stuck doesn't mean that you are stuck, and ditto for feeling like you and/or your life are hopeless. This is true in many things, but for survivors, that perception vs. reality line can be especially blurry. 

For many survivors, the sense of profound discouragement about one's self, the world, and one's life can feel like trying to speed-walk through quicksand. Therefore, choosing not to accept these ideas as facts, but rather as ugly parts of the landscape which disappear when you look elsewhere, can be empowering and freeing.

Resolve to live the best life you can live, regardless of what you are thinking about at any given time. Behaving as if you know you deserve this will pave the way for that time when you actually do know.

Hey, you're still reading this-- that means you're still hanging in there with all this, still fighting the good fight. I'm glad, because I want that better, happier life to come true for you. And also because I know I'll need you the next time my own hope starts to waver.

We are not alone.

S.

Writing your way to hope

I am not sure people completely believe me when I say that creative writing (along with its twin, the reading of other people's creative writing) has saved my life on more than one occasion. Certainly it has been the thing to sustain me during some incredibly bleak times, to help me metabolize tough experiences and feel both my individuality and my humanity, my connection to others. Yet, I never really understood or articulated the reasons and ways it can do both of those things-- can be both a healing art and a connecting art-- until I came across some words by other people recently which helped me to fill in the blanks.

Michael Henry wrote, "Those who've endured difficult circumstances often feel that their world is hopelessly fractured, yet by writing-- stories, poems, memoirs-- they find a way to regain control over their experiences. Writing helps reconnect the shards, and the writer reaches a deeper understanding of self and the world around them."

This quote struck a chord with me as I reflected on difficult experiences that I once felt unable to recover from or "get over".  Various strategies and supports were of some assistance, but none so much as penning the deep truths of what I had experienced, either straightforwardly in journal entries of poetry, or dressed up as story. It was this writing process through which I came to feel that my memories belonged to me rather than that they were controlling me, so they could begin to take their rightful place in my past.

But while I have known for years that writing has enormous value to me personally, I saw it as primarily a private affair, something between me and a notebook and pen or me and a book full of another writer's words. It has only been recently, as I have spent time with women writers who were also using their writing not just as an artistic pursuit, but as a way of processing and communicating the challenges and complexities in their own lives, that I came to a new conclusion. I need the writing and the reading, yes. But I also need to interact with other writers who are working at this in a similarly personal, transformative way. I need to hear their stories, and I need them to hear mine.

Addiction recovery expert Bill White refers to relationships like these as "hope-engendering". He says that these kinds of relationships offer a kind of "kindling", as he put it, for hope.

In writing alone, as well as writing and reading in the company of people who value and practice writing as a type of self-care, a healing art as much as a creative art, I find hope. Sometimes, hope finds me. In community with writers like me, hope is contagious. I want both to catch it and to spread it around.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, and I'm not so sure I ever was...

"There's no place like home," Dorothy famously said.

But what if you are someone for whom 'home'-- that presumed universal sense of right place and belonging-- has been elusive? Is that a problem of setting, to be addressed geographically? A problem of self-definition or vocation to be discussed with a therapist? A social issue to be understood from the vantage point of fitting in (or not) with a particular group?

Someone recently said this to me:

"I have stopped looking for that situation where I belong, since belonging seems a non-option for me. I focus nowadays on other things. It's mostly ok, except for those times when I'm unrelentingly lonely..."

I understood that the type of loneliness they were referring to had nothing to do with the presence or proximity of other people.

Last week, I went to a weekend writing retreat, where I spent time with a fabulous group of people who were 1) also women, 2) also writers, and 3) also people who value emotional truth and meaningful communication. Leaving that context was like the Wizard of Oz film in reverse, with vibrant-colored scenery replaced by black and white.

Some of this, of course, can be attributed to general post-positive experience letdown. There is an inherent sense of loss when you switch from a weekend devoted to a favorite activity to a work week juxtaposed with permission slips, car maintenance issues, and laundry.

But there's another part. The longing to fit in, and the sense that I don't.

Do we unconsciously replicate our early experiences? Growing up, school was a disaster of wrong fit for me, while my sister inhabited that world just fine. In adulthood, I have gravitated to work settings and contexts where I have been an outsider. A hearing staff member among Deaf staff working with Deaf clients. A social worker among primarily forensic psychologists. The lone clinician working among Probation and Parole Officers. On some level, do I set myself up to feel different and apart?

On the other hand, could there be a location or context that is more "me" than the one I'm in currently? I have tended to land in one particular place or another for practical, logistical reasons. This town has affordable housing or a decent school system. This address puts me closer to family or a particular job. The idea of choosing a place for the place itself is new and holds some intrigue for me.

Whatever the solution is-- a relocation or some soul-searching, a change of scene or a change of self-- a keen observer might notice me clicking my heels together while I try to figure the whole thing out. You don't have to have visited Kansas before to believe it exists, out there or somewhere within.

And of course, a little magic never hurts.

Do not go gently into that good night (or out of your writing retreat weekend)

It is probably dramatic, perhaps a little grandiose, to compare leaving a weekend writing retreat to the experience of dying, or, more specifically, of fighting for one's life. But the other women who were with me at the Wellspring House in Ashfield last weekend would understand how leaving has felt, if not like a little death, at least like a threatened one.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to talk about all this back home," I told one of the women as we packed our belongings. "I'm afraid I'll cheapen it somehow if I try."

It wasn't until later that the irony of my statement hit me. So much of the weekend was about the illuminating quality of translating experience into words. The power of language to chisel into something until the gem of what is truest about it has been found, excavated, polished, and fully appreciated.

I had arrived for the weekend in considerable disarray, having rushed around, neglected some tasks I wanted to have completed before the weekend, and even taken a rather humiliating tumble down some cellar stairs on the morning of my arrival. I arrived on the verge of being late, with scabbed and swollen knuckles and chin. (Read this, I arrived a hot mess). The women, half of whom I had never even met, took me in and gave me a homeopathic remedy I had never heard of called Arnica, and asked me not about the facts of what had happened to injure me, but the story. What went through my mind? How did I feel, then and now? What did I notice about the situation and myself? The combination of their concern for my physical well-being and their genuine interest in my experience of an event made me feel quickly safe and seen and at home in a way that is not typical for me, but was precisely the welcoming in that I needed to do work that was both creative and personal. It was the crucible within which the weekend's magic could happen.

While telling about the different aspects of the weekend does little to describe or explain the whole, I want to comment on some of the key ingredients in what for me was a rich and deeply meaningful experience.

The women. (And it had to have been all women!) There were seven of us (nine, if you include our facilitator and her wife), representing two different states of residence, a wide variety of ages, writing backgrounds, personal histories, and current circumstances. The common denominators were a shared love of writing and reading and a commitment to creating and maintaining a safe space to both create and share new work.

In the past, if I had been asked to choose a writing group of all women vs. a writing group of people interested in the same kinds of writing, I'd have chosen the latter. Certainly my experience of writing amidst both men and women in grad school was rewarding and valuable. But. During this retreat, we wrote and shared about many things that could only really be described as women's issues. From the first hour of my arrival, I both recognized and felt the importance to me of spending the weekend with just women.

The facilitator. Well, I've only recently started working with Chivas, but must say that her commitment to craft, to the creative process, and to the importance of a safe and supportive space for women writers set and held the tone for our weekend. Whether she was presenting a cohesive craft lecture or passing around the designated roll of toilet paper for tears-catching or giving us writing prompts or guiding our sharing and discussion of our writing, her gentle, supportive, wise, and compassionate leadership was felt. (Do not think for a moment that she is not equally skilled at invoking the sense of fun. But, what happens at the dance party, stays at the dance party).

The place. The Wellspring House in Ashfield, intentionally geared toward the inspiration and quirks of writers and other artists, is a book-filled, art-filled residence atop a mountain in Ashfield. There was a meditation room, a rock garden, and an abundance of lilacs. There was also no cell phone reception. After the panicky feeling of i-phone withdrawl left me (breathe, Susan, breathe), that, too, turned out to be something I needed.

The writing and the sharing of writing. Having been swept in a whirlwind of anxious activity before my retreat weekend, I was skeptical about my ability to relax enough for any substantial amount of writing. Boy, was I wrong! During the course of the weekend, a new novel chapter, several poems, and a couple of loose-form essays tumbled out of me.

After writing sessions, which we went off to pursue alone under trees, in the rock garden, on the porch, in our beds, we reconvened to sit in a circle in the living room and read aloud to the group whatever portion we wanted to share. I don't really know how to explain it, the sense of my writing being deeply heard, considered, felt. The poignancy of listening to other women's beautifully penned and deeply personal writing.

Often, the feedback we gave one another took the form of just repeating a sentence or phrase from the person's writing what was especially meaningful or impacting to a listener. I don't know how to explain it adequately, the gift of such deep listening. The act of going inward to find and write one's truth, and then have it heard, appreciated, and reflected back by the same writers whose own words just wowed you. The extent to which we women "got real" about our feelings, our demons, our lives, our concerns.

The laughter. Lest I have made it sound like the retreat was an extended group therapy session, it's important to note that we laughed. Uproariously. A lot. Enough to make various face and stomach laugh muscles hurt a little, in a very good way.

The dancing. Oops, I said I wasn't going to go into detail about the dancing. Let me just say that after a lot of intense, hard writing and sharing work on Saturday, many of us engaged in the freest, most un-self-conscious dancing that I have ever personally experienced. Motown, anyone? What a release, what a bonding experience, and what a blast!

The Goddess (aka The Sappho). She was the faceless, full-bodied, broken and repaired, just-weighty-enough and substantial sculpture we passed around when we were about to read from our own work. Before long, she was as much a personality among us as any of us were. Also, it became fun to hold her in one hand like a newly-announced Academy Award recipient, so we dubbed her "The Sappho" (as opposed to The Oscar).

Now, my weekend is behind me. Now, I return to the hectic and mundane, to work tasks and laundry and parenting, to people, for the most part, who do not hold dear the things that meant so much to me this weekend.

This morning, light bulbs burned out in both my kitchen and my headlight, a passerby waving me down to alert me of the latter as I dropped off my daughter before work. Is it because of the weekend, its vibrancy and energy and reverence to detail, that this feels so symbolic?

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

My mission now is to stay alive, to keep the weekend alive in me. And if that all sounds a little dramatic, well, so be it. I am a person with strong feelings who yearns to live my life authentically and fully. There are several women who get this about me. And it's all ok.

That was the gift of the weekend.

How to get back on the horse when it matters most

We've all heard the old adage about the importance of getting back on the horse after a fall. We know it, we get it-- perhaps we even tell it to our kids. But sometimes the fall is particularly hard, and let's face it, when you're badly bruised, that horse can look especially  tall, your horse's movements can seem particularly spastic and untrustworthy, and the ground can seem like something better to keep your feet planted upon than to view from what is perhaps an unreasonable height.

The truth is, getting back on the horse can be incredibly difficult. Here's why, and how to improve your odds

1) Our brains are wired to tell us there's a danger, but not so much to tell us that the danger's over. We survive, at least in part, by etching the details of a dangerous situation into our brain, so that the close call we had one time won't cause our demise the next. This means that our level of fear should not automatically be considered a measure of actual risk. If we know this, we can use self-talk to remind ourselves that the fact that we're scared doesn't mean we'll get hurt again.

2) We may need to re-assess, rather than avoid, the horse and our riding, in terms of what we really value and want? Is getting back on the horse truly necessary and important to us? Maybe horseback riding gives us an incomparable thrill that is worth whatever it takes to try to get back in the saddle. On the other hand, maybe the horse is unpredictable, and there's a safer horse to be riding. Or maybe you want to deepen your bond with a particular horse, and it isn't about the riding at all-- in which case, getting "back in the saddle" is now a metaphor for maintaining and improving your relationship with an animal. The more you understand about the particulars of your own motivation, the more you can feel confident in your decision-making despite a certain level of fear.

3) In order to face a particularly intense fear, it's in our interest both to seek out our support system, and to be our own best, kindest, most enthusiastic friend. It is easiest, of course, to just avoid what we are scared to deal with. At least in the short run. But if the thing we are avoiding will bring us something we truly value, then what's at stake from our avoidance is boredom, dissatisfaction, and unrealized goals and dreams. So, when we face something hard, we should do it with all the support, compassion, and good will that's available to us. And then some. So don't be afraid to throw yourself a party (actually or metaphorically) to cheer yourself on. Positive feedback is motivating. Cultivate it in large quantities to face that one thing which seems scariest to you.

Happy Imperfect Mother's Day

There are mothers scattered around the world who woke up today feeling blessed, proud, and secure in both their parenting and their place. In addition to having surely had a certain amount of that thing we call the luck of the draw, they have likely worked hard, on their parenting and on themselves, to be where they are today.

This post is not for them.

Nor is it for the scores of others who don't recognize or celebrate Mother's Day, because it doesn't apply or it doesn't resonate or they think the holiday is frivolous, exclusive, or painful. Many have no connection to the occasion and/or have excellent reasons to opt out.

Instead, today's post is for you. You know who you are. The mom who will get the lump in your throat when you receive your child's school-assigned, handmade Mother's Day gift, and you'll hug your child or children close and mean it, and all the while you'll feel like an imposter or a fraud because on somewhere deep down, you're thinking, I know I'm not cut out for this. I know I'm not doing a good enough job.

I could detour here to writing about societal underpinnings. How we simultaneously say that mothering is all-important and that it is unimportant. How we expect mothers to know how to do this most complex of jobs, since "maternal instinct" clearly comes with an internal blueprint for what to do when your child hates school, or can't sleep, or gets anxious or depressed, or has some strange but mysterious symptom that specialists can't figure out. This is all true and real, but it is not where I'm going with this blog post today.

Instead, I'm speaking directly to you, oh self-doubting and self-critical mom who probably has a whole range of complicated feelings about this day. I'm speaking to you directly, with three important messages about today.

1) If, before you became a mother, you struggled with low self-esteem, with questions about your place and your worth, motherhood can amplify the hell out of that. It's like handing your negative self-talk a megaphone. Your insecurities will hold large, unruly parties without your permission. This might leave you feeling quite terrible at times, in general and on various special occasions, including Mother's Day.

2) Feeling like a bad, insufficient, or unsuccessful mother on Mother's Day does not mean the feeling is a fact. It does not "prove" anything about your parenting.

3) Feeling bad about yourself is one thing. Failing to address it is another matter altogether.      There is no one path to healing from depression or low self-esteem or post-trauma symptoms, but a sustained effort to do so (which may or may not involve counseling, self-help measures, lifestyle changes, soul-searching, and so on) is of vital importance. 

And what if you are, in fact, "failing" at some aspect of parenting in some fundamental way? Maybe you fly off the handle sometimes and say terrible things to your child that truly harm him or her emotionally. Maybe you are physically present but emotionally absent as a parent, and your child feels alone. I'm not making the case that we shouldn't assess our own parenting, regardless of self-esteem, and seriously address any ways in which we could be harming or failing our children.

But I truly believe that when you want to change something, whether it's how you feel about yourself as a parent or how you parent, being harsh toward yourself will only hamper your progress. We do not grow or change optimally in a hostile climate.

So try to celebrate you today. You're not perfect, no, but you care, and you're trying, and that's half the battle. It's a challenging job, but you're probably not as bad at it as you think.

Happy imperfect mother's day to you, and to us all.

On the matter of mattering

"A painter facing a blank canvas, a writer facing a blank computer screen, an actor facing a cattle call audition, a researcher facing a mass of data all face this postmodern question: 'Do I or my efforts matter?' "  - Eric Maisel

Practically everyone I talk to recently seems to be struggling with questions about who they really are and whether they are doing what they "should" be doing with their life. Maybe I just have a particular radar for it right now, because I have been grappling with questions myself about what I want and need in the short and long run, and which of my pursuits, (when it seems clear lately that something has to give) are worthwhile.

But it's more than just a question of, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" (or as I Grow old!) Over and over I hear the theme that resonates so strongly with me: People who, like me, don't just want to be and do. They want to mean and matter.

One friend told me recently: "Everyone I know has someone who is the most important person to them. But I am not that someone for anyone."

Another said, about their long career in an unsatisfying but well-compensating line of work: "I could do this until the point I'm physically unable to work. Everyone expects me to. But all these hours of mindless existence, all that tuning out to get through the workday-- I'll never get those hours back, you know?"

With whom am I really close and connected? What actions, what accomplishments will give my life meaning, in my own view, as I look back?

Of course, plenty of people don't grapple with such questions. They do a job because it fell in their lap or it's a career they chose decades ago and now they know it well, so why bother to ask one's self if the fit is still right. They stay in a situation because it's familiar, or they leave someone on a whim. There are times and ways in which I even envy those people. How freeing it must be not to assess and reassess, to dig deep and soul search as an extension of being who you are.

As for me, I will continue, I'm sure, to grapple with questions of meaning and mattering. But I will also try to see examples of them in the things I am already doing, the cast of characters I am currently sharing the stage with. Surely even as I try to figure out, say, my work life or the creative writing project I'm working on, there is meaning in the way my daughter squeezes my hand as I walk her upstairs to put her to bed. Surely I am helpful to some clients some of the time, which matters hugely to me. And maybe even this blog post matters somehow, the writing of it and perhaps even to somebody reading it.

Sometimes I think we are all fireflies, scattered apart and only blinking faintly, intermittently. Nevertheless, our paths do cross, and our light does shine. We might not always know for sure that our faded blinking matters for anything. But we don't know for sure that it doesn't matter, either.

When choosing your focus, kind-hearted kids and azaleas are a good start

Someone made an unkind remark about me recently, unaware that I was in earshot.  Luckily, having just given my 7-year-old a speech about the importance of a thick skin and using her "ignoring skills" when people say mean things, I knew exactly how to handle it. I decided swiftly that the world is full of mean people, took the comment completely to heart, and proceeded to plan my relocation to another part of the world, perhaps a small, uninhabited island someplace. On account of being a grown-up and everything.

In truth, nowadays I am capable, at least some of the time, of letting something like that roll right off my back. On days when things are going reasonably well and I'm feeling ok, I know not to dwell on something so minor in the scheme of things. Still, on this day, the words made their mark and brought me back to times in my life when I didn't fit in and knew it, when I felt inferior. Surprising and unsettling, how fast and how deep something can get under our skin.

Yesterday, I ran a therapy group in a corrections setting, and we were talking about risk factors for substance abuse. As sometimes happens during these discussions, we would start out talking in generalities (such as, "experiencing or witnessing domestic violence might be a risk factor for substance abuse"), and then someone will cite a specific instance from their own life, as in, "I remember I told my mother that my stepfather was abusing us, and she didn't believe me and beat me up for 'causing trouble'. Could that be related to substance abuse?" Yesterday, in one of those kinds of stunned moments, I found myself thinking, Whoa. The world really sucks.

Sometimes life's cruelties and atrocities seem mammoth. Sometimes the uglier aspects of life that I hear in my work as a therapist blends with my remembering or processing of some of my own ugly experiences. Sometimes I am paying so much attention to those things that I see the world as a mine field I have to traverse whether I want to or not.

But if I really look, there's so much of the good stuff around us, too. Just last weekend, I had the pleasure of watching my 7-year-old throw candy in a parade-- twice, I watched her run from our parade group to personally hand candy to the one child in a small group who didn't scramble fast enough to collect any. Her kind-heartedness often stuns me as she navigates her young life.

A recent Facebook posting sought to locate a cat's owner to say the cat had been hit but was rushed to the vet by the passerby who posted. The person wanted the owner to know that everything possible was being done to save the cat.

Walking  toward my office today, I stopped to study and smell a gorgeous azalea bush overflowing with enormous purple blossoms which were hidden within tightly-closed  buds the last time I passed by.

And so today's blog, with what must be the oldest message on earth. In this life, there are many good things and many bad things. We magnify whichever part we focus on. It feels infinitely better to appreciate azaleas and smile when your 7-year-old is on a candy mission.

As for the rest of it all, I release it from my preoccupations, if not from my awareness, in the moment I finish this sentence. In the instant I press "Post"...

Freely and recklessly make new mistakes

I recently blogged about the stuck place I landed in recently while working on a creative writing project. In writing, as with life in general, it's troubling to find that you are suddenly spinning your wheels or have become lost in a dense fog.

When I found myself unable to forge ahead, I went into logic mode. Surely the problem must be some kind of technical error-- a wrong turn, a writing craft error or deficiency-- now I needed only to diagnose it properly, apply a cure, and I could be on my merry way. I started reading reference books about story construction, scene vs summary, creating and rendering characters. I armed myself with tools and knowledge, and guess what? My anxiety about the project worsened. My spinning tires sank deeper into the mud.

I realized that whatever technical problems may be responsible for slowing my progress, my anxiety itself-- that feeling of urgency that I was messing it up, doing it wrong, would not be able to figure out how to get it on track again-- had become the biggest problem of all. I came across this quote by Brenda Ueland this morning, which drove the point home for me:

"...you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes-- in writing or in life-- and do not fret about them but pass on and write more."

Freely and recklessly make new mistakes. I want to write this phrase in calligraphy and send it to everyone in my literary and artist coaching world.

We can't write freely if we're trying too hard, analyzing too much, setting the bar too high. Yes, writing is work, but it is play, too, and the play aspect is important, not just for keeping it enjoyable, but for breathing life into what goes on the page.

My goal today is to dive into my writing-in-progress with curiosity, spontaneity, and abandon.