Map Your Healing Journey

I wrote this entry about healing on my Facebook page on February 28, 2020. I like to post stuff like this on my social media pages (along with other, lighter, more fun things) because they get organized into memories that remind me how far how I’ve come in this journey.

When I saw this in my Facebook memories, I wanted context for this. I thought it might be during my personal PTSD Remediation work, but this was long before that started. I thought it might be during the meaty part of the pandemic, but this was just before that started, as well.

There is no context. That’s not how trauma and PTSD and CPTSD work, anyway – they don’t care about context. THERE IS NO CONTEXT TO THE SYMPTOMS. And that’s part of what makes PTSD and CPTSD *terrible* to live with.

Before I did my PTSD Remediation work in July 2020, I was having upwards of two to three very large triggers a week. Granted, I was working through a ton of stuff – recent divorce from a toxic (to both of us) relationship, meeting my now-husband, moving jobs and homes. Grief that activated my trauma. Digging into the deepest parts of myself to heal.

If you are in this place of pain, it DOES get better. There is NO WAY EXCEPT THROUGH. You can do this.

The *great* part about reading this entry is – as I said earlier – seeing how far I’ve come. NO PTSD triggers. NO PTSD symptoms. This helps *A TON* with digging through the underlying trauma responses and past grief to integrate all of the parts of myself.

This is literally why I do what I do.

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February 28, 2020

Healing is no joke.

Day 2 of Really Big Triggers. Weird dreams, emotional flashbacks. Feeling every age I’ve been, every hurt and heartbreak, feeling the pain course through my veins. I hit a wall with my fist – I’ve never done that before; I hit it with the meaty side of my fist, the side that looks like a footprint when dipped in paint and stamped onto paper, with little dots along the top for toes. I hit the wall as the rage filled me up, the rage that had nowhere to go for so long, not violence. Energy. I learned how to hit like that, with the meaty part of my hand, in a self-defense class. My instructor also had ptsd, and he said, “Make noise! Be LOUD!” as my fist pummeled the black vinyl.

broken ceramic white hand put back together with gold as with the kintsugi tradition

Today I stood in the hallway and hit the wall with the meaty side of my fist. I yelled and screamed and cried and almost threw up from the emotional pain. Then I laid in the fetal position, toes curled and fingers clenched in hands held over my heart.

Healing is no joke.

People like me don’t want to die. At least, I don’t. I don’t really want to die, but I think about dying sometimes. That is scary to say, to admit, to confess. One of those secrets we all share and know but don’t talk about.

I get so tired of the pain. I get tired of feeling pain and processing pain and managing pain. I get tired of feeling like a failure at doing all of that. I get tired of the shame and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. I get tired of never knowing when it will overtake me. I get tired of emotion that feels like it will drown me. I get tired of trying things that may work or kinda work or don’t work. I get tired of telling myself that I matter and fighting so hard to believe it on those days where that phrase feels like a lie.

Healing is no joke.

“Why were my parents so mean to me? Why did they yell at me all the time? Why did they hate me?”

That’s the thing about being a kid who is abused by her parents. That kid – that little girl who still is with me, in me – stored up all of those feelings that she couldn’t express and waited until they could come out. Kids don’t abuse themselves, but they blame themselves, to preserve the parent-child bond. For survival.

And those feelings store up like poison in the body while the brain says, “Just survive, babe” and makes all of these adjustments that, once the danger is truly gone, turn into a mindfuck.

Healing is no joke.

I read inspirational memes that talk about falling apart so that the pieces can come back together.

Nobody talks about the pain that comes from falling apart, of feeling the flesh of your heart rip so the poison can flow out, so it turns into energy that gathers in the meaty part of my fist that thuds into sheetrock, leaving only vibrations behind.

Healing is no joke.