Read an Excerpt
With My Face to the Wind
PTSD, Faith, and Lessons in Healing
By Linda Anne King
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Linda Anne King
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-6875-3
Chapter One
Thrown in the Closet
Journal Entry: early AM, five years earlier
Friends to catch me: I believe that the Lord set up an intricate system of people around me to catch me as I fell down into the depths of my emotional realities. UP until that time, I was dealing with the individual flashbacks. own WE showed caddie h ta kinow =======shuooioooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu own, suffering tin PT S D the best I could do to get past the memories that so rudely overtook my consciousness oft the incident, I can tryin if f s ideperatie. aIt is a dangerous ptopotswitom \
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This is my brain on PTSD ... Linda
Frustrated with not being able to speak without stuttering; unable to explain without breaking into tears ... I began to write.
Out came the realization that control and manipulation were used to keep me in check from the time I was a small child, twisting my feelings into guilt as I became a teen, and ultimately cycles of depression, fear, and panic as I became an adult.
Out came the feelings that had been too hard to bear and I experienced excruciating pain, and horror in finally remembering the details.
I began to realize that I had lived with symptoms of PTSD, thinking that it was normal to feel fear, anxiety, nausea, and confusion. But I always knew that it wasn't really normal not to remember names, dates, or the simple chores planned for the day. Deep down, I had lost hope that it would ever change. Frankly, this emotional and spiritual journey had more unexpected turns than riding Space Mountain at Disneyland upside-down and blindfolded, and I was tired of my season ticket.
Brain Freeze and Muddled Thinking
Geez! Was I a mess back then! Not only did I stutter, but the keys on my computer stuttered. I still cringe when I read the above excerpt. It only serves to remind me how difficult it is to concentrate when your emotions are all over the place.
Tuning out, staring off, brain freeze, depression, anxiety, and muddled thinking seems to be part of having PTSD. The normal ability to think clearly is muddled—just like that mud puddle you used to play in as a kid. I have included some of those jumbled sentences and wandering thoughts, so that you can see the difference in how my mind processed information at the beginning of my healing process—compared to the end. Those who have experienced emotional pain will understand the confusion; for those who haven't, well, I hope you will be patient.
Another classic sign of someone who has undergone abusive and traumatic situations is that they always perceive the negative about themselves—long before they can even believe the positive. Believe me, thinking negatively all the time is an art form which comes from years of practice. I say this in jest, but it is the truth. To counteract each new disappointment, it seems to me that it is easier to think the worst—first. Then, when the experience or emotional encounter is not as traumatic as expected, you have a sense of happiness and relief. Unfortunately, muddled or negative thinking leads you down the path of always second guessing the experiences of life and all its joys and pains. You actually feel neither to its fullest.
Take off your blinders
During the initial stages of my recovery, the Roberts family lived around the corner. Michael was a gifted lawyer, and Becky ran a busy household. They both enjoyed raising horses. One day, Becky told me to come by to see their new colt. When I did, I asked her husband Michael, "Why do all the horses have blinders over their eyes?" He gave me a lengthy explanation on how sometimes it is necessary to put blinders on a horse to train them, to protect their eyes from the flies and bugs, or to make sure they do not get distracted or jumpy around other animals.
I thought about this for a while, until this truth hit me. When one struggles for years with emotional pain, it's very difficult when you cannot see an end to your suffering. You, figuratively, "put on your blinders" so you don't see what is coming around the bend. Because you are afraid of repeating life's traumas, you require some type of defense mechanism for protection. But, the blinders won't do you one bit of good because they just distort your field of vision. Consequently, you can't possibly see the whole picture. And, if you can't see the whole picture, the danger is you will never see your way out of your emotional mess.
I think the process of taking off your blinders, lowering your defenses, or facing the familiar psychological reaction of being "in denial," is one of the most important things you will ever do in the process of healing: So, don't be afraid to take off your blinders!
Unresolved Issues
When you have struggled so long with unresolved issues, it also warps your emotional growth. You may be a grown adult, but if your traumas came to you as a child, you will always react, in some measure, as that child, sometimes never realizing it. You leave yourself wide open, as a child would do, and false security sets in. Adolescence is difficult at best with all the hormone changes and growth spurts but when you throw into the mix, abuse—in all insidious forms or specific traumatic experiences—it splinters your personality and scrambles everything else.
It is common knowledge that traumatic events experienced without an outlet to release them, become deeply embedded in your subconscious only to resurface when the right set of circumstances presents itself later. As I explained above, you might go forward in age and in life, but emotionally you stopped growing at the point of origin of the trauma.
This is what happened to me. I was truly not aware I had brought so much baggage with me, especially into my marriage and my immediate family. Sometimes you are in "la la land" and feel very little. There were times I was just not there for my family—stuck in a dark labyrinth, a fourth dimension of time and memories—my private little Twilight Zone. I believe that this emotional stupor (which is not evil in itself) can be used by the Devil to quietly lead you down a path of numbness and misery; because, he does ... not ... want ... happy families.
Let the "flashbacks" begin ...
Until I underwent therapy, allowing the mental and emotional walls to come down, I never knew I suffered from an acute anxiety disorder, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, for over 40 years. I can tell you the time, the day, and the experience we were discussing when I came to the realization I was in the middle of a PTSD episode. Sitting in the chair of my therapist's office, I felt as though I was transported back in time, back to my childhood, as if hypnotized. Once again I was reliving and experiencing the event—in every single way.
I was back in surgery, 5 ½ years old, lying on the cold table, afraid and alone being prepared for a tonsillectomy. Nobody prepared me for the fact that they put you to sleep with a gas mask. I lay on that table and tried to push the mask off; they tied my hands to the table and secured my head. I could feel myself being paralyzed; I thought I was dying. And, even more bizarre, I did not completely go to sleep and could hear what was being said throughout the procedure. (This is known as "Anesthesia Awareness.")
Momentarily, I was back in the present. Then, whish! Ding! I was catapulted into the next hospital stay, age 7, this time, with appendicitis. Reliving the details, I remembered being afraid and once again alone, in a children's ward of six to eight beds. I remembered being sick to my stomach, throwing up on myself, the bed, and the floor. A big, bad nurse scolded me profusely for throwing up and causing her to have to do more work. I was so scared that the next time I got sick; I got out of bed and began to clean up my own mess. I was crying my heart out petrified that she would hurt me, and she did later....
Whomp! I was back in my therapist's office, in the chair, shaking, stuttering, and crying. I was doubled over so I wouldn't really throw up—because I smelled the puke rise up my throat. The realization hit me. I sat up straight and looked at my therapist, Mark Casey, and said: "I am in the middle of a Post Traumatic Stress episode aren't I?"
"Yes, you are," he responded calmly, extremely concerned. Well, how else was he supposed to respond to a 53 year old woman in the middle of a full-blown PTSD flashback?
It was interesting, because the "recognition" of having a full-blown flashback actually brought me back to reality. I just sat there staring at him, slumped in the chair—stunned. There was finally a name to what had been happening to me for all these years. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) defines it:
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that can develop PTSD is a sometimes debilitating mental health disorder that typically develops in a small percentage of people after exposure to an event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. People with PTSD may repeatedly re-experience a traumatic event through flashback episodes, nightmares, or frightening and intrusive thoughts, especially when something reminds them of the trauma. PTSD is not a condition that is merely "in people's heads": we know from research that the biological response to danger or threats — the so-called "fight or flight" response — malfunctions in people with PTSD, leaving them unable to turn off the intense emotional and physical sensations. They feel they are in danger even after it has passed.
While most of the symptoms of PTSD begin within three months of the original event, for some, the NIMH site explains, they may not manifest themselves until years later as mine did. Even as I try to explain this to you, my emotions are all jumbled together, and I am reacting psychosomatically; my stomach is getting nauseated, I am finding it hard to breathe. It is even difficult to concentrate, because my mind is jumbled—blanking out. I am watching myself react just like the articles described—damage on the four levels— emotional, cognitive, biological and behavioral. I am now, on a regular basis, having what the NIMH site calls: "panic attacks."
Panic disorder is at real illness that frequently accompanies PTSD: Panic attacks can occur at any time, even during sleep. An attack usually peaks within 10 minutes, but some symptoms may last much longer. Panic disorder affects about 6 million American adults and is twice as common in women as men.
Panic attacks often begin in late adolescence or early adulthood, but not everyone who experiences panic attacks will develop panic disorder. Many people have just one attack and never have another. The tendency to develop panic attacks appears to be inherited.... People who have full-blown, repeated panic attacks can become very disabled by their condition.
Untreated panic disorder is disabling, I can attest to that fact. You experience sudden attacks of terror, nausea, chest pains, a pounding heart, sweatiness, weakness, faintness, or dizziness. In other words: you feel like a sumo wrestler is sitting on your chest.
Family background
At first glance, it would seem that I was born into the typical American family. My mother was born in the early 1920's, in upstate New York near the Finger Lakes. Her father was Director of General Electric for the northern section of the state and served on numerous boards of banks and businesses. He had also been a World War II pilot. As an aerial photographer for the Army, he provided pictures of France, Italy, and Germany so that maps could be drawn and campaigns planned. His parents migrated from England; his dad was instrumental in perfecting the electric turbines used in power stations; his mom was an avid painter, seamstress, and gardener. I am very much like her, and am named after her.
My maternal grandmother was an educated woman, a concert pianist brought up by well-to-do parents who owned a great deal of property in Binghamton and Syracuse. Mom frequently lamented that her mother's life centered on her music, her brother, and her status in the community. Even though she endured a lot of childhood illnesses, my mother graduated from high school a year early at the top of her class. After WWII, as a Cornell graduate with a double major in English and Psychology, she moved to Miami, Florida, to take a job as a psychologist at the VA hospital.
My father, one of two sons, was a native Floridian born in the mid 1920's. He was proud of his hard working parents. His father, who quit school after sixth grade to bring money into the family, joined the Navy at age seventeen, and became a successful builder and master plumber. He traveled around the country modernizing homes with indoor plumbing. Grandpa settled in northern Florida, and soon fell in love with my grandmother. Consequently, the handsome Yankee bachelor married the very, Southern young woman. Seventeen years her senior, grandfather encouraged my grandmother to develop her artistic talents into a business because he knew he would probably go before she did. After she had my uncle, they moved to Miami where her business flourished in the 1940's and 1950's, and peaked in the 1960's. Encouraged by their parents, my father and uncle both went on to receive college degrees. Each, in their own right, became brilliant engineers.
My parents met and married soon after dad got out of the navy. Mom and dad loved to dance, loved to party, and I think, loved each other when they first married. My mother, who was three years older than my dad, says that she encouraged him to go to engineering school, and sacrificed her Master's degree to see him graduate. After I came into the world, she gave up her VA job to take care of me and subsequently my twin brothers, a fact, which she never let me forget. For a while, as dad moved up the corporate ladder, she continued to work out of the home writing newspaper articles and doing psychological evaluations for local physicians. All of that stopped when I turned eleven, and the family dynamics changed drastically.
Maintaining my Cover
I have talked about muddled thinking, negative emotions, and family history, so don't get me wrong, and assume that all of your emotional problems stem from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. All of us try our best to sow truths on good soil and nourish it. Lots of people get through horrible things, heal quickly, and miraculously go on to live loving and purposeful lives.
Fueled by my childhood hospital experiences, my PTSD symptoms were more intense because instead of coming to grips with my past experiences—I just buried them. Deep inside my psyche, underneath layers of other emotions were—the events and experiences—I-did-not-want-to-remember, nor admit that they were still affecting my day-to-day actions. I thought "maintaining my cover" was enough, but Freud will tell you it is impossible to do.
I coasted for many years, married a good man, and had three beautiful children. I was happily doing the "chauffeur mom" thing to soccer, football, dance, music lessons, and plays, while staying involved in the Parent Teachers Association (PTA). I wrote the curriculum for music and cultural arts in elementary school and taught grades K through 6. I worked in the office of our small business, conducted training meetings, and was active in my church serving in leadership positions. By attending church, being active in the community, and raising my family, I thought all the traumas carried inside of me—would just "magically" dissolve, and dissipate into my system ... Kind of like red Jell-O in hot boiling water: Poof! Can't see them—gone forever!
Erroneously, I assumed, I would never have to tell anyone about the threats on my life, the near strangulation and suffocation, my mother's repeated suicide attempts, the 90-100 mph car chases down the Florida Turnpike, the road rage incident that nearly caused me to ram through a store front—or the fear that these people would find me and hurt my children years later.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from With My Face to the Wind by Linda Anne King Copyright © 2012 by Linda Anne King. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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