Being Present: Someday The Screaming Will End

Generally, I find there are two main modes of being present.

"Being Present In The Moment". The Pain.

Mode one: You wake up. You feel like crap-taffy. Your neck and lower back are all kinked up from stress that tormented half your brain with sleeplessness all night. Trying to recover, you give "noticing" the tension a whirl, and you burst into uncontrollable sobbing or a ten-minute pillow-scream before you can safely manage making coffee without scalding the cat. This is the more preferable mode.

Mode two: You try desperately to stay anchored to your sense of self and the now, feeling your breath, and focusing hard on your totem. But try as you might, you're blown out of your skin with your totem shattered to smithereens by a nuclear mushroom cloud of grief or rage that balloons inside you with infinite, unceasing energy. The memories and thoughts won't stop. After a max of ten minutes, you numb out and find yourself six hours later on your fourth pint of ice cream, your fifth bottle of Sky, your third bag of weed, your last working credit card, or fifth consecutive hour of Bioshock. You've missed a whole day of life. Because being absent felt better than being present. This is the more common option.

It sucks. When it's like this, you feel trapped. All you want is escape. You pray for freedom with desperation and shimmery puppy-dog eyes like that little girl at Christmas who just reeeaaallly wants that horse. You can feel hopeless, like your only choices are conscious torment, unconscious torture, or death. Many of us like choice three. If we ever chose it, we are grateful to have survived.

When being present is hard (splintery, shard-in-the-eye misery) like this, it's helpful (sometimes) to remember why being present matters. It's not just about noticing butterflies and bumblebees, and prancing like some blissed-out Snow White so la-dee-frickin-da happy to be alive. That's stupid. It's about finding your way out. Ending the torment.

Think of being present like holding the Maurader's Map. (Harry Potter fans, explain this.) When you pause and notice what's happening, all the paths appear. You can trace your own mental windings and dead-ends, you can follow your mental traffic. You learn your way around. You find the doors leading out.

But if you force it, crumple your map, pour Vodka or chocolate all over the paper or feed the sheet into your PS3 or bong, you ain't gonna find nothing. It stays blank (and probably silently laughs at you in some magical map kind of way, like a snarky Sorting Hat).

"Escape" through addiction or dissociation is a lie. All those blurry hours may feel like bliss, like freedom from life boiled in your own skin, but they actually trap you, simmering forever. Those silky voices luring you seductively back to your purple haze are really the voice of that skanky dealer offering you that "one last hit" from his track-marked hand. "It's just to get you over the edge so you can come down and get clean," the voice may say. And "Yeah, you can trust him," you may think. Then three weeks later you're back in the alley selling your flesh for one more hit.

Addiction, dissociation and avoidance keep you lost. They steal your map. They leave you no way out. So you're stuck there, forever. (Like Argus Filch. And who wants to be that guy?)

The only real way out is through the fire. Even when it's cat-scalding, coffee-spill-blister painful. Even when for yet another morning you have to sob-scream your way out of bed just to be able to tie your tie without strangling yourself to death.

You can get through. You can feel the feelings, think the thoughts, and get to the end of them. Every tunnel has its exit. If you just keep your eyes open and aimed at the light.

When you don't heal. Trauma Tiger 3.

"Putting yourself back together again." KanrieAnn

"What the crap?" we may ask ourselves when our emotional struggles persist. We go to meetings and therapy, we mediate and practice yoga, we eat only raw, vegan muesli, and consume libraries of self-help texts. But still, we're edgy and anxious, we snap at our mates and friends, we weep loudly over small hurts, and our addictions itch. Despite trying every wise and even sketchy recovery technique, we still don't feel better.

We may even be told we can't expect to feel better. All we can have is management of constant pain. In despair, we think, "Is recovery worth this? My drug really was my only comfort." Then we cruise up to our favorite bar, drive-through or pharmacy, and just look. Yearning.

But healing and freedom, they exist. The trick is knowing where to find them. (They're not in those bags, bottles and cans.) Often, they lurk behind our unresolved trauma.

I know some of you may think, with your eyes all asquint, "Trauma? I've never been traumatized. Other people are beaten, raped, have survived war or car accidents. I'm just a normal addict," or, "I've just got your run-of-the-mill dysfunction." Well, maybe.

But traumatic events are not merely happenings like, for instance, an asteroid crashing into your back patio as Bruce Willis shoots off your pinky toes while fighting radioactive snake monsters from space. Trauma really isn't an "event" at all. It's a condition. A state of being, potentially caused by any deep hurt.

In Waking the Tiger (see this and this for background), trauma psychologist Peter Levine explains it:

"The official definition [of ] trauma is that it is caused by a stressful occurrence 'that is outside the range of usual human experience, and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone.' . . . This description is somewhat useful as a starting point, but it is also vague and misleading. Who can say what is 'outside the range of usual human experience', or 'markedly distressing to almost anyone'?" 

Some of us have been raped, shot, overdosed. We can look back to an event and say, "This is what happened. This is why I hurt." But others of us just don't know what's with us. We've never seen ourselves as "traumatized," but for a while we've felt off. Some mysterious cloud of hurt chases us. And we have tried hard to get over it. We worked our Steps, shared it in therapy, wrote letters we then burned or sent flying skyward on balloons. But still, the hurt stays. We still feel scared, angry, sad. Stuck.

These are signs of trauma. According to Levine, traumatized people can have widely various experiences that cause their injury. Surgeries, falls, the sudden loss of a parent, child or spouse, the disastrous injury of a dear friend. Anything that triggers your primal trauma response will do. The unifying thing is the symptoms:

"traumatized people. . .  are unable to overcome the anxiety of their experience. They remain overwhelmed by the event, defeated and terrified. . . . Unresolved trauma can keep us excessively cautious and inhibited, or lead us around in ever-tightening circles of dangerous reenactment, victimization, and unwise exposure to danger. We become the perpetual victims or therapy clients. Trauma can destroy the quality of our relationships and distort sexual experiences. . . . The effects of trauma can be pervasive and global or they can be subtle and elusive." 

And that's the big giveaway. Subtly or globally, we feel overwhelmed, unable to overcome. Traumatized.

Healing starts when you can accept that, if you are traumatized, your feelings are "physiological as well as psychological." Your pain, fear, sadness and anger, they aren't shortcomings. They're wounds, even if you don't know what caused them, like the inexplicable bruises and scrapes that appear on your shins somehow. And you heal them, partly, in the same way. Hear Levine:

"we all have the innate capacity to heal our traumas. . . . trauma represents animal instincts gone awry. When harnessed, these instincts can be used by the conscious mind to transform traumatic symptoms into a state of well-being."

You wouldn't pick at those seemingly spontaneous bruises and cuts, slapping them around as signs of your malignant self-pity. You'd bandage them, allowing your body to heal. Similarly the best way not to heal trauma is to try to disgorge it, blaming yourself for a "pity party" and refusing to "wallow." (If this old timer's experience is worth one nugget of truth, it's that that ain't going to work.)

What works is admitting your trauma, aiding it with as much TLC as you can muster, and helping your mind relearn health. You may need some new forms of professional assistance. But you wouldn't decline the ER in favor of an everyday band-aid if you sawed off a finger, so it's probably unwise to deprive a metaphorically bleeding brain, right?

And then, one day, if you feel better, and along the way you recalled something like, "Oh yeah, I guess that one time my grandfather did punch me in the face," or, "I guess Mom did drive away and never come back," you'll know you were never a weepy masochistic. Your hurt was never your fault. And instead of punishing it with more pain, you helped.

Mental illness: Laughter in Crazytown.

Mental illness can feel like being trapped in the movie "Labyrinth." You swear you're walking straight ahead on an undeviating path. You look at the walls around you and they seem flat, sturdy and sound. Every once and a while you stop and talk to some sentient rodent who seems, while unusual, reasonable enough. Sometimes you take their queues on the way you should go. But then if you could see yourself from above, you'd know you were swirling around in an endless corkscrew of constantly shuffling walls and talking to mischievous sock-puppets operated by your own imagination.

The worst is the confusion. In your paranoia you absolutely believe, without any shadow of doubt, that klutzy barista Sharon throws scalding lobs of mocha at you in an attempt to make you feel shame. In spasms of post traumatic stress, you are entirely convinced with histrionic certainty that your assigned work shadow Brian is really orchestrating a plot to get you alone and assault you. Your disassociation invisibly splits your mind into raucous versions of "Crossfire" in which you and another you both attest with equal sincerity that you really are a Republican traditionalist who just wants to go to work, and you are also an anarchist hippie twitching to chuck all your things in a van and move to Venice Beach tonight. Then you wake up the next morning sleeping in the van in the kmart parking lot curled up on a pile of fifty cent stuffed animals and you have no idea why. (It's not as fun as it sounds.)

And don't even get me started on the medication. There are pills that give you a "safety net" but replace the whispering voices of sinister evil with a constant ringing in your ears that makes you want to bust your ear drums with booming Rastafari just to get some peace. Then there are the pills that temper your highs but make you feel like some rubberized prisoner in that moment when Ben Stein drones "Beuler. . .  Beuler. . .  Beuler. . . " and you can barely move your legs to escape because every part of you feels like it's swimming in lukewarm pudding. And then there are the pills that make you slightly less convinced that everyone you know wants to kill you, but simultaneously make you gain forty-two pounds and have untoward "leakage" that none of those previously murderous friends can ever discover.

Sometimes you feel your only choices are a disease that is a whirligig of interminably conflicting inputs and swings through bliss, terror and despair, and a recovery that is a parched desert of grey-tone faces,  muffled voices, dulled sensations and drowsily stumbling thoughts.

Plus, without your disease, in recovery, you can feel completely un-anchored. You may have been convinced that the voice in your head, who told you your place in the mystical architecture was eternal, penitent punishment, was God's. If that voice disappears, does God vanish too? Maybe you never lived one day not impelled through frenetic busywork by mania. How do you fill your hours once you're calm?

And who do you connect with? It's not like you can just go up to the guy in the lunch room and say, "Gosh you know, sometimes it is just so hard to stop crying in the morning in time to get ready for work, right?" 'Cause it's not like he'll, perchance, just back away slowly and maybe pull the fire alarm or anything.

You feel isolated. Like it's just you, and your disease, alone on a wide grassy plain with nothing else but crickets. It's scary.

But you're not alone. A recent article showcasing three people who got better from severe schizophrenia and depression highlights that, to stay well, they:

Have fun. And connect with others.

Often, we who bear mild to extreme crazies feel as though anyone who might discover our inner Wonderland would go running screaming into the night. We can also feel excessive shame. Sometimes the only people who feel safe are those suffering like us. And there are few more healing remedies than laughing with someone about that time you taped the windows shut against night daemons, and how it's not as funny as when they nailed the door closed to keep the giants out.

Just listen to these guys:

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it." ~ Bill Cosby

"No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor." ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Some of the most ill of us are wiser, stronger and braver than the sanest of the curmudgeoney sane. Despite our struggles and brain-kinks, we can sometimes offer more to each other and the world than could someone who's survived less. And we gain huge relief from our illness when we can treat it like some cross-breed of David Bowie and a Boggart. (Just picture that for a second. Dita Von Teese? Anyone?) Our disease may never leave us. But its weight upon us and power over us will decrease significantly if we can laugh it out with friends. 

Don't be Simon. Be Oprah: Survivor shame.

While we do grasp that we couldn't have expected ourselves to kick away the guy who jumped us in the parking lot (we're not quite Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian), we still feel weak. We do get that it wasn't truly because of personal ineptitude that we received quite so many timber-jack blows from our drunken father (we were six at the time). But we still feel stupid. And yes we know it isn't necessarily true that our preborn cruelty is the great torture of our helpless mother's life (despite all her many weepings that such is so). Nevertheless, we still feel ashamed.

We accept all these rational absolutions of our guilt, in some hazy outer-region of our minds. But no absolution feels true. What feels true is this:

These extracts of rape survivors' personal shame and guilt come from Pandora's Project (a.k.a Pandy's), a resource site for rape and sexual assault survivors. Their shares are posted to show their grievous commonality and promote empathetic connection between survivors. It's as if (and I'm just guessing here) all we trauma, assault and abuse survivors are so Hulk-with-the-shirt-busting enraged about our injuries that we even hate ourselves for feeling them. We'd each gladly be rid of ourselves just to revenge ourselves on the pain we contain. Worse, we feel resonantly alone. We are too weak, too guilty, too bad to be heard. If someone knew what we'd allowed, and how we felt about it now, they'd flail backwards in disgust, throwing books and armchairs to pad their escape. They'd hate us. And their hate would confirm our self-loathing. We couldn't bare it.

But hearing that someone endured what we did, and felt as we do, makes it all seem less terrible. Seeing these people like us embraced with love, at least by someone, also mitigates our fears. Broaching our pain becomes more possible because of their example, less like a nightmare that drags us naked on our fat day to bawl "I Am Beautiful" in front of Simon Cowell off his meds, and more like a scary but doable risk.

Shame researcher Dr. Brené Brown calls this kind of empathetic, vulnerable connection the antidote to shame (if you want, skip to 2:55 for the point. Hi Oprah.):



Unfortunately, much of the time, people aren't helpful. (Don't even get me started.) Also posted on Pandy's is an excerpt from After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back that discusses how others (like, perhaps, masses everywhere) so often fail survivors (or, say, bulldoze them like Roger Rabbit under Christopher Lloyd's psychopathic glee). Also exploring this is Gift From Within, a nonprofit serving PTSD sufferers:



Effectively, survivors think something like, "Okay, even if I couldn't Arnold-sword-hack that guy off of me, or rabidly bite through dad's wrecking-ball arms, or dispel mom's mania with a tidal flood of love, at least I should stop hurting now. I should be strong now. I should be smarter, braver, better now. And everyone agrees. See how they react. They and I think this is all my fault. I wish I were dead." (Queue violent sobbing and funnel-in-throat pour of favorite drug.)

We don't deserve this. But we don't believe that. Not yet. Not without much strong, smart, brave self-love.

Slipping: There's no such thing as fairy dust.

We all know that place. Where we teeter on the edge of the decision. To cut ourselves. Call that dealer. Drink that beer. Go back to that website. Eat that cake. It would be like sliding off a cliff. All you'd do is drift one foot leftward, and you're falling all the way down.

And at the edge you believe you're weightless. You feel no gravity, see no horizon, no earth far below. No consequences. The choice seems so easy. Restraint is so hard.

When you're trying to stay clean it can feel like you have two warring selves. One you floats at this cliff in a bliss-bubble. The other you stands outside the bubble screaming and pounding on its crystal surface like you're Dustin Hoffman trying to stop the apocalypse. You want to scramble after whatever cord powers your suspension of sanity and yank it hard with a zeeoowww that would send your other self hurtling, informed, onto the safe high ground.

But you can't. You stay stuck outside, watching helplessly as the floating you drags you both over the edge, with a blissed-out smile on its face.

Weirdly this is a learned skill.

Pain rolled over us once. To survive, we may have whipped out a mental pop-up tent into which no pain or fear could enter. We hid inside. Left reality. Dissociated.

In Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation, psychotherapists Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele and Onno van der Hart describe some physical aspects of this strange dissociation:

"There may be times when you feel spacey, foggy, or fuzzy. You may lose a firm connection with the present without being aware of it, and only realize afterwards that you were not very present. . . . You may have times when you are aware of your actions, as though you are watching yourself, but do not feel you have control over them."

They also describe dissociation's result from trauma:

"If we consider a continuum of trauma-related disorders, with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) being the most basic, and developing in the aftermath of a traumatizing incident at any age, then complex dissociative disorders are a more pervasive developmental accommodation to trauma...."

Trauma hits. You're shocked and scared. You hide. You fly around like Peter Pan in Wendy's sheet-bunker for hours. You try to come out, but when you do you're hit with overwhelming fear, shame and anger. So you hide more. You fly around for months, maybe years. And every time you try to emerge, "smack!" Overwhelming pain. So you never come out. And in time your hideout expands like a glowy ethereal Blob, no longer shielding only trauma but blocking every unwanted feeling or thought.

Meanwhile all that fear, shame and anger sits alone on the outside, waiting for you to come back. But you never do. And while you expand your hideout, the earth between you cracks. And the crack spreads into a cliff-edged canyon, with your two selves stuck on opposite sides, miles apart.

And then one day you find yourself all grown up (or trying to be), with that fearful, shameful, angry self boasting a 12 Step program (or two or three), and fighting hard to stay clean. But frickin Peter Pan on the other side of the canyon won't stop leaning over the edge.

So what do you do? What Peter did. Sew your fearful, shameful, angry shadow back on. And refuse to fly away.

We'll check in with Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation again to talk about how.

Ohio rape case special: Zombie warfare.

The news attacks with another story of kidnapping, imprisonment and rape, and our buried nightmares reanimate like zombies that will chase us bloodthirstily for a week.

First we're numb. We try to not click the news links and we palm back the zombies' lowering faces without looking. We mute the news-flashes that cut through our pretense that nothing exists in the universe besides Bruno Tonioli's hyperbolic frenzy for foxtrot, and we look straight ahead as the zombies murmur, "braains," in our ears. We dodge whispered conversations, hearing only snatches of, "It's so awful, so unbelievable. Wouldn't someone know?" and we duck into bathrooms feeling queasy, with the zombies behind us pointing back to the fading words.

By the end of the day we're twitchy. The night seems darker. The zombies trail us as we walk, seeming to move closer. Then closer.

By the end of the night we're shrieking in the tub like Janet Leigh clutching her shower curtain while dozens of zombies of all shapes and sizes pile on us to infect our brains with panoramic terror.

The world is a trigger bomb. Is there any escape?

Yes, there is.

Escape route, step one: You want to scream at those whispering people by the water cooler, "Yes these things happen! No, for the love of Albert freaking Einstein, it is not 'unbelievable'!" (strangles imaginary air-neck) "And yes, yes!, dear merciful death from above!, someone probably did know!" And then you'd kick over the whole 1982-ish Crystal Springs mechanism with a big sploosh!

This is okay. This is not wrong. Your residual trauma-related anger may be triggered and trying to work it's way out. Feel free to fantasize about various splooshings for at least a good half an hour. Maybe buy one of these. Or be like this brilliant child:



This may help you avoid actually kicking anyone in the head. That's really the main point of step one.

Escape route, step two: Your trauma memories spring from your pores like you're a Wes Craven Chia Pet and you're sort of choke-drowning in grief for those three Ohio women like one of those CGI extras in Titanic.

This is also okay. Remember, you were a victim too. Deep trauma leaves scars. And empathy is a virtue (even if it makes you like Leonardo DiCaprio who can't get on the door sometimes). You wouldn't ask those poor women in Ohio not to cry. Don't ask it of you. You can create a safe space to vent your feelings without doing harm to you or others (see brilliant child again).

Also know that (brace yourself) most enabling bystanders are scared too. Feel free to air-punch me from wherever you are for saying this. "Enablers are vampire-daemons from the Place Beyond Doom. They allow our hurt." Yes. True. But sometimes it's helpful to notice motives. Inside anyone who may have seen any strange perversity in that Ohio house, and overlooked it, is probably just another broken person who fears the truth. This could also be true for those who overlooked you. Accepting big hard truth is a feat of strength. If you can accept truth, and those around you can't, know this means you're stronger than them, and try to have mercy.

Somewhere around this daunting feeling is the general aim of step two.

Escape route, step three: Do good with your pain. Don't let the perpetrators win by turning you into them. Don't hurt others because it will make you feel better. And maybe, if you feel strong enough, use your experience to help others. Walk back up to that water cooler (after a hearty wail-out on your car's back seat) and engage them. Tell them that one out of every four women, and four out of every one hundred men, is molested or raped at least once in their lifetime. Maybe hand them this terrifying RAINN stat sheet (perhaps emphasize the last two sections):

If the water-hoarders walk away even slightly more informed, congratulations. You've completed step three. 

Then after all of that, if you've processed the kindling-bundles of rage, fear and shame, passed through uninformed, water-starved masses everywhere, and come out the next morning okay with yourself, knowing you survived, you know truth and you do good with it, then be proud. Rick Grimes has nothing on you.

B-movie villains can't bite.

by Belathee Photography

So there is this monster that keeps attacking you. It's this four-armed, four-legged, two-headed blob of a sorta-human with two voices and four eyes each looking crazily at you from different directions. It wobbles toward you and reels back, screeching like Skylla, waving all it's arms, scaring the bumblebees out of your craptrap.

This is the person who triggers you.

He or she is this freakish conglomeration of their generally humdrum self and your worst nightmare. Flouncy Nancy in the print dress has your demeaning step-mom's face growing out of her neck. Jittery Frank in the hipster bolo has your child-molesting uncle's hirsuted arms flapping out of his coat sleeves. Nancy says, "Hi Bob," and you hear a caterwauling mixture of that and, "You ugly bastard! Nobody wants you!" Frank calls, "S'up Diana," and you get a squealing, reverbed, "You little slut."  

And usually you can't escape them. Nancy's your cube mate. Frank's your best friend's boyfriend. You're trapped. Your first impulse is to run, quit your job and dump your friend. But then your new boss is billowy Barbara with your step-mom's eyes staring out her forehead, and your sister gets engaged to chubby Charles with your uncle's drawl coming out a hole in his throat. 

The monsters keep attacking. Because they live in our heads.

Hear me out. Admitting our "trigger-monsters" aren't real is one of the scariest, hardest, most humbling recovery tasks. And one of the most healing.

It's hard because trigger-monsters feel real. We feel really attacked, just like we did back then when we were traumatized, abused, neglected, overdosed, raped. We feel cornered, demeaned and alone. Admitting the monsters' unreality feels like admitting the trauma was myth too. We feel blamed for our hurt by any implication that the triggers spring from the still-wounded crevaces of our minds. The suggestion makes us want to Bruce Lee somebody's skull.  

But the admission is also healing because it de-merges the past and present, at least a little. It's like moving a projector beam off the person blocking the screen. If you can accept that Nancy's over here, in the present, and your step-mom's face is over there, in your memory, the movie of your step-mom's screams may stop playing at you from Nancy's talking face. If you can allow that Frank just sits over there in that goofy hammock chair, and your uncle's gross arms died twelve years ago, the action sequence of your uncle's attacks could stop running in 3D surround sound. The traumatic memories may cease grabbing at you from an undulating phantasmagoria. They'll still exist. But at least Nancy will be just Nancy. Step-mom recedes back to 2D. Frank's just frank. Uncle fades to black and white. 

If the new perspective reveals Nancy as, truly, a triggeringly terrible nag, and Frank as a flirty sleaze, at least you can now deal with them as just them, and no longer space-monsters from planet Hades. And while step-mom and uncle will never be your favorite memories, their mind-daemon claws cut far less deeply from across the reach of the past. 

The banshees can't steal your floor.

Drawing by Kim Schrag, from Unbound Art, Embracing Life

What about those mornings when you want to shave your head and strip naked because your hairs and sweater collude in a malicious itch attack on your face? And then the cushion beneath you condenses into a rigid plank in some kind of proletariat protest against your bourgeois glutes. And then your legs decide to secede from this unhappy union with two petulant swoons into perversely numb uselessness. These are the mornings when life is a yarn-ball of discomfort.

Your mental banshees decide today's no ceasefire day, so instead of greeting you with their usual DMZ kabuki of non-hostile animosity, they fly around your skull rafters, toppling your cognitive filing cabinets and triggering your parasympathetic fire alarms. You can't get comfortable. You feel angsty for no reason. Your muscles tense. You want to scratch your skin off, and dear-pistachio-and-peanut-farmers-everywhere your spouse better not give you any dubious looks for a good hour and a half.

These mornings are hard. They can set everything askew, making any attempts at peace and serenity turbulent.

One good trick for diffusing these crackling lightning storms of "I hate you wool fibers, get the Frederic Fekkai off me" irritation is grounding to your felt sense of self.

"Grounding" is standard practice in somatic therapy. The goal of grounding is to find inner sensory resources and distance from overwhelming stimulus. The "felt sense of self" is a "pre-verbal sense of 'something'" (thank you Wikipedia) comprising you, an "inner knowledge or awareness" of your whole being. It is "experienced in the body" and is "not the same as an emotion." The quick and dirty is, grounding in your felt sense of self can improve your feeling of calm, stability, boundary and strength.

So let's give it a whirl. (Curse you mind-banshees, curse you to Customer Service at T.J.Maxx.)

Grounding to the Felt Sense of Self  

(Note: If you suffer from severe PTSD or similarly overwhelming disorders, it may be best to attempt this only in the company of a trusted professional.) 

1) Sit in a comfortable chair in a safe place with your feet flat on the ground.

2) Notice the floor beneath your feet. Notice it supporting you. Scrub your feet around if you need. Notice any comfortable, supportive feeling associated with your awareness of the floor.

3) Notice the sensation of the chair supporting you. Feel the fabric or material. Find any comfortable, supporting feeling associated with your awareness of the chair.

4) Notice any other comfortable sensations in your body. Focus on them. Are your knee muscles relaxed? Notice that. Does your chest feel open? Focus on that.

5) Try to expand these feelings of awareness all over your body. If you feel any physical or emotional discomfort, return your focus to the comfortable parts of your body (the supportive floor, those loose knees, that open chest) and keep your focus there. Try to expand the feeling again until you can do so without predominant discomfort. (It's okay if you can't do this comfortably. If you can't, allow yourself just to notice where you are comfortable.)

6) Try to expand this feeling all over you, including your parts beyond your body, like your mind and your soul, etc.

7) Rest in this awareness until an all-encompassing feeling of your "sense of self" forms in your mind and body. Rest in that as long as you want.

And you're done.

Hopefully, at this point, the banshees will be Ritalined back to bed, the hairs and sweater will have relaxed into more Gandhian compassion, and the cushion, glutes and legs will have reformed a more peaceful union. If so, wonderful. Go have a blessed day.

If not, then God help us all.

Trauma Tiger: Part Two. The bully with the breastplate on.

Shame is like armor. And not that invincible spider-thread Kevlar kind of armor that could take an infrared missile to the chest and keep going. We're talking medieval armor, made out of lead, that's hot, hard-edged and heavy. It weighs you down. You try to trot around on your horse fending off invading enemies, but you just jangle crazily like your bangle-wearing grandmother driving a tank through a construction site. And your horse looks up at you with that "Dear Mother of Mercy why?" look only horses can have. 

Shame tells you it's protective. It's realism. It's clear-eyed acceptance of the sad, inevitable truth. Acceptance that will keep you ready for doom, so you're prepared. But shame is really fear. Fear pretending it's not, like that biggish kid at school who cries when his father yells at him so beats up everyone else at lunch. He's afraid to admit he's afraid, but he can't just poof! his fears away the way he wants, so instead he protests that all his fears aren't fear at all, but truth. And then he smacks you around with this "honesty": You are not afraid that you're bad. You are bad. You are not afraid of why you've been hurt. You deserve it. You are not afraid of why you've failed. You're a looser. You are not afraid of why your parents treat you the way they do. You are worthless.

Shame is fear of fear, and it cements your fears into your worldview. This kind of fear that mutates into these twisted craggy Slip-'n-Slides of self-disgust often stems from trauma, from entrenched addictions that frazzle our neural receptors, or from mental illnesses that can warp our perspectives like some cosmic string theory event. 

In Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (see Trauma Tiger: Part One for kicks), Peter Levine offers a good metaphor:

"When confronted with a life-threatening situation, our rational brains may become confused and override our instinctive impulses.... [It's] similar to what occurs in your car if you floor the accelerator and stomp on the brake simultaneously. The difference between the inner racing of the nervous system (engine) and the outer immobility (brake) of the body creates a forceful turbulence inside the body similar to a tornado."

So basically the "Oh my sweet carrot sticks! I'm going to die!" trauma energy gets stuck inside us and spins into a neutron bomb of terror that can't easily be "faced and conquered" without a hearty dose of Clozapine.

Addiction and mental illness are pretty much the same. Years of active addiction can reprogram the brain into thinking it's essentially gone without water for a week and a half when the abused substance is withdrawn. Addiction can also tangle emotional responses into hyper-sensitive feedback loops that spout upward into traumatically tumultuous torrents of anger or ecstasy before crashing into deep waves of depression or apathy. Likewise mental illnesses can trick sufferers into thinking they're on the brink of death every day.

The sad part is we're actually supposed to feel this way, kinda. Hear me out. Hypothetically we should be allowing ourselves to break down into these sobby panic-stricken states of universe-ending terror, so the energy creating them can flow out of our systems. This is the "not stomping on the brake" part of the process.  But we have a really hard time doing this in a way that releases control. Queue Levine:

"Many war veterans and victims of rape know this scenario only too well. They may spend months or even years talking about their experiences, reliving them, expressing their anger, fear, and sorrow, but without passing through the primitive 'immobility responses' and releasing the traumatic residual energy, they will often remain stuck in the traumatic maze and continue to experience distress."

Basically, even if we want to work through it, we want to do it with our talking, reasoning, big-kid helmets on. And if perchance we let ourselves slip over the edge into the quaking vulnerability quivering under our shielding, we get self-judgy. Al la Levine, we "tend to judge this instinctive surrender in the face of overwhelming threat as a weakness tantamount to cowardice."

And there's your shame. Fear of fear. The armor that keeps you pinned to the floor under a hot iron plate of histrionic self-loathing. And underneath it all is an adorably biggish kid who just needs to collapse.

Trauma Tiger: Part One

One of the most evil phrases ever spoken is, "Just let it go."

This erudite (and helpful!) instruction is often issued pushily by those who've never actually been gripped by the said "it" the letting go of which they propose. These pushers aren't trying to be evil (usually). They just sincerely think their experience of, say, not getting their dream first car, translates easily into your experience of being raped when you were five, or of being barfed on by your black-out drunk mom, or of being beaten with a dictionary for your whorish interest in Party of Five.

"You just have to get over these things," they might say from across the table, while you secretly shred the napkin in your lap into tiny, dismembered threads. And weep inside.

And they don't know that their (however-unintentional) suggestion that you are at least partly at fault for your pain (such suggestions are embedded at the slimy cores of all "let it go" nuggets) spirals you into compulsive fantasies of how you might feasibly get away with hitting this helpful friend in the head with a baseball bat without any baristas noticing, or hours of  scream-crying just to avoid actually acting on the violent urge.

They think their gripe equates your trauma. But it doesn't. And neither does "normie" healing equate trauma recovery.

A normie coping strategy can often be easy peasy, accomplished by saying something like, "Oh well, I guess I should focus on happier things," and followed up with a bit of retail therapy (I love Home Depot as much as the next hipster).

Trauma healing, on the other hand, is typically a scosche more complex, often featuring desperate, strung out struggles to just not geyser out random spasms of unspecified rage at the grocery store, or not shrivel up into black, cavernous hair-cloaks of self-loathing at work.

One of the best books (IMO) ever written on the unique nature of trauma healing is Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma.

In his prologue, he underscores what differentiates trauma from ordinary pains:

"...the body reacts profoundly in trauma. It tenses in readiness, braces in fear, and freezes and collapses in helpless terror. When the mind's protective reaction to overwhelm returns to normal, the body's response is also meant to normalize after the event. When this restorative process is thwarted, the effects of trauma become fixated and the person becomes traumatized."

Notice, he says here twice the body. Not the brain. Not the character. Basically, he's saying trauma is a not a head game. Healing trauma is not a mental decision. Failing to recover or recovering slowly is not a moral failing, or a sign of obstinacy. Trauma can not be disgorged at will.

Even if you've never had a bruise or a scar (though many of us have), trauma is a physical injury, something like a blown circuit breaker, or fried surge protector, or over-heated hard-drive that won't shut down squirreled away in the nooks of your hypothalamus. Healing trauma is thus also a physical process.

So let us return for kicks to the untoward table of "just let it go" despair, and flip things: Your friend feels bad because he or she can't lose weight. Well, what does any sound-minded individual say, but, "Just let it go." 

"What?" your friend asks, looking all askance at your scategorical response.

"What?" you say in reply. "Have more will power. Just let it go."

Yeah. Because will power incinerates fat internally. Just ask Susan Powter.

Assuming that fat can be evaporated at will from the lovely love-handles we all accumulate (because vegan peanut butter brownies are that nom), is as logical and kind as assuming trauma can be processed the same way. If ever anyone suggests to you that you are somehow at fault for not "letting go" hard enough ("squeeze it dammit!" they may scream), know it's not your fault. Know it's a process. A process that, ironically, just has to be let go.

Nanobots are cursed.

Craigslist can be an excellent way to clean out your juju.

Have you ever had that moment when you walk into a place (ex., your cube, your bedroom, your parent's house, your car, etc.) and all of a sudden it seems as though a squadron of nicknack shaped nanobots are on a covert spec-op to suffocate you to death? 

"What's wrong?" your mother asks when you come for dinner. Oh nothing, just that lamp from alcoholic aunt Barbara. Just abusive Grampa's old watch. Only that picture of me and (insert name here) who got me drunk and dumped me after sleeping with my best friend. 

"Are you okay?" asks your well-meaning but gossipy cube-mate. No, sure, I'm fine. It's just this pile of papers from that manager who screams at me, this email from the stalker in the copycenter, these running shoes I left here to self-motivate but haven't used in seventeen months (but which still manage to smell). 

"Are you crazy?" you ask yourself when you walk in your front door, and your shoulders tense and you suddenly feel all barfy because your amygdala caught a glimpse of the mug you got on that binge trip to Tijuana eight years ago, or the blanket you used to cuddle in with your ex, or the coffee table you inherited from your pedophiliac uncle. 

Humans create sacred spaces. Usually our sacred spaces are filled with objects. Objects with comforting, inspiring significance. Take this dreamy pic I snagged while creeping some random person's public Pinterest: 

It's like living here would transform you into this super suave, Bond-ian person, who knows how to surf, and has an epic art collection, and is (still) a voracious bibliophile, and yet somehow makes orange shag carpet look like the most wondrous thing anyone could ever have. 

However, the weekly trauma of Hoarders also proves we're awesome at creating unsacred places. We build swarmy nests cobwebbed with reminders of regret, anger and pain -- Or so clogged that the voluminous passels are injuries all their own (these pictures give me the heebyjeebies).

We have this habit of thinking something like this: "Her feelings will be hurt if I toss that Lisa Frank sweater she gave me in seventh grade," or, "What if he finds out I sold the necklace," or "I bought that car at my high. It doesn't matter what I did with it." 

But it does matter. And it's her business if her feelings are hurt, not yours. And if you're scared of him, why would you keep something he gave you? 

For some reason it's a crazy-high hurtle to surmount, believing you have the right to control and build your own space. To make it someplace that's good to you, and good for you. To believe you're allowed to remove what hurts. 

This is especially hard if you've endured abuse. Because people who push you down make you believe you deserve it. They're just doing what's right. It's wrong of you to say no.

Life will never be painless. But we don't have to say, "Thanks, pain, that's so sweet," and then dust off pain's memento and put it on the mantlepiece. 

We do have the right to cleanse, and create. And it is worth the effort. When the nanobots don't attack, all of a sudden you may feel safe. Maybe even, sacred. 

~~~

Note: An awesome, hardly-used lamp and clock set is on sale on Craigslist now!

Infinite brain candy.

So Mondays right? Blech. Who's tired? This one, right here, for sure.

If you're at all like me (and you know you are; don't be frightened), some days suck more than others. You know the days I'm talking about. The ones where you want to curl up like a snail in your shell, shriveling oozily into warm dreams of rotting fruit (that's what snails eat), and hoping that if your fragile, snoozy carapace is crushed by busy life as it trundles over you, at least you'll dream right through it.

That's Mondays for some, I'm guessing.

Life's hard when you're recovering. When you struggle to cope with disease, addiction, trauma, loss and pain, your insides can feel like they're cracking open, all the time, everywhere. The base of your skull can throb like a pulsar. Your trapezius muscles can seem as if they're strangling you to death. And when this break, the brokenness inside you, bleeds out like this, it can take every ounce of will and courage just to breathe spasmodically yet consistently through the shuddering breach.

And you're supposed be someplace at 9 a.m.? With a suit on? And with prepared thoughts, about things no less, things irrelevant to anything seemingly consequent, such as "Where the hockey-puck is my Prozac?" and "Why the fudge-ripple-in-a-can must I jog down the block just to smoke?"

On days like this I cling with desperation to the wisdom of "Infinity." And no this is not some new yogi mantra... though it may already be an old one. This thought-provoking painting by Jerod Kytah is a good illustration:

Infinity, watercolor, by Jerod Kytah

I like this painting because it literally shows what is meant by "the wisdom of infinity" (I like to imagine this echoing in the voice of James Earl Jones). In each of us there is a part in the shadow and a part in the light. One part hurts, really bad. And another is okay, knowing everything will be all right.

Living successfully in recovery requires cycling through these parts. Like walking. One minute you're on your left foot. Next you're on your right. You don't get very far hopping along on one foot only. If you try, you could get numb-footed, half-atrophied and, eventually, bloody-nosed.

The same goes with life. You can't thrive only in the part that's "okay," tight-fistedly rejecting any hint of the more shadowy part (or, at best, assuming the shadowier part can fix itself just fine without any uncomfortable assistance from you). Nor can you thrive only in the dark. Perpetual, purgative catharsis is no good (believe me, I've tried). Just give pulling on flowers a whirl. No matter how well-intentioned your yanking, it aint going to make them bloom.

This is where brain candy comes in (mmm yum for serotonin). We have to wash our faces, do our jobs and meet the world with some semblance of self-sustainability. There's no getting around it, unless we are blessed with a complete, financial support system. On days when our spines crack with grief and woe, our shadowier sides have hard times of this. They need help -- help that does not come in the form of self-harm (a.k.a., insert your addiction of choice here). And what better help is there I ask you than web memes that make you smile?

Buzzfeed has this good one, but it's old. So queue this adorable article I StumbledUpon this morning, listing children's definitions of love. The last is my favorite:

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. 

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. 

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. 

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, 

"Nothing, I just helped him cry."