Feed The Good Wolf

Tag: CPTSD

  • Emotional Numbing

    Looking back, it’s amazing how much people run away from things. My mom projected her fears and insecurities from childhood having never dealt with them. My dad never escaped his childhood, making everything about money. My sister hasn’t healed from her childhood either. I’ve done it countless times too. Having spent decades emotionally numbing, I know it’s not how you heal.

    I remember having a lava lamp as a kid and being yelled at for leaving it on for hours at a time. My mom would scream at me to turn it off, claiming it would start a fire. My mom’s anxiety did not surround the build quality of the lava lamp, she had severe anxiety. The kind of anxiety that demanded the toaster and the coffee maker always be unplugged unless they were in use. The kind of anxiety that made her question if the front door was actually locked after she already checked it multiple times. One time when using the fireplace, she even stood outside in the cold while it rained to make sure the roof didn’t catch on fire. Sufficed to say, the fireplace didn’t get used much.

    Today, during a call at work, someone brought up they had a kid that was now in intensive care at the hospital after slitting their wrists. It triggered me into thinking about the times where I was depressed enough to do the same. I never slit my wrists, but I had thought about doing so many times in the past. Almost as if on queue, I was mentally picturing myself with a razor blade against my forearm.

    It’s amazing how much time I’ve spent mentally running away from unpleasant times and unpleasant thoughts. I’ve eaten too much, I’ve drank too much, I’ve smoked too much, I’ve cleaned too much, I’ve bought too much, I’ve worked too much, I’ve watched way too much TV … all in the name of running away from emotional distress. The only thing was, I wasn’t solving any of my problems and instead just creating new ones (except maybe the cleaning). I gained weight, I maxed out credit cards, I blacked out. I tried to escape my problems by doing anything but confronting them, attempting to spare myself emotional distress.

    In therapy, my therapist and I discussed the work call and its effect on me. Discussed the first time I thought of suicide in fifth grade. My therapist instructed me to imagine what it would have been like to have had someone in my life back then. After inquiring why and expressing that this wouldn’t change what happened, she expressed that people tend to hold onto emotions, and this allows them to breathe and release. So I spoke about how nice it would have been if I had an emotional outlet back then. Having anyone in my life that I could have emotionally connected with would have made such an impact. Having someone stand up for me to a bully would have made a tremendous difference. Considering my parents didn’t do any of this (and even threatened to shave my head in my sleep), it really would have been nice. Maybe I never would have ended up with CPTSD if someone would have been there for me.

    After some discussion surrounding the negative headspace I was in back when I was contemplating suicide, something interesting happened. When my focus was brought back to the work call, suddenly it wasn’t so triggering and I wasn’t in so much distress. I faced my emotional distress, and it reduced. That was very interesting to my therapist and I.

    On the drive home, I thought of times where I had a strong negative emotional reaction to something and shunned my feelings. Instead of leaning into them, I ran away. Sprinted away from them as fast as possible. I never faced my demons. Instead, I just buried them by shifting my focus elsewhere – anywhere else – and usually utilizing maladaptive coping mechanisms to “feel better”. I was actively avoiding feeling emotional distress through any means necessary. They festered. It was just so easy to just look away, eat that comfort food, have that drink, or turn on the TV to emotionally numb.

    Looking back at my past, I know I’m ready to stare down all my demons, look at myself with grace and compassion and know in the bottom of my heart that I’m ready lose the emotional baggage that’s held me back from living my best life.

    “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything” – Tyler Durden

    #FeedTheGoodWolf

  • Brush with Death

    My sister and I were not close growing up. While we were both physically living in the same house, mentally speaking, we were living on different planets. It really wasn’t until after she graduated high school and went to college that I started seeing her blossom into her own person. I don’t hold any of this against her – we were both just trying to survive our childhood.

    After cutting my parents out of my life, I worked on connecting with my sister. While my sister is still on speaking terms with them, it has been a strained relationship that’s not built on a healthy foundation. My sister even went no contact with them for a few years after my mom threatened to throw my sister’s college boyfriend off a roof – all because he told my mom my sister’s feelings were valid. To this day she still morns the death of the relationship. He’s married to someone else now, and that remains an emotionally charged topic my sister struggles to discuss.

    I had previously gone no contact with my parents for a few years before coming back to them at the behest of my partner, claiming “You only get one set of parents,” pushing me to attempt to reconnect with them. Knowing this would not end well, I appeased by insisting parter in an attempt to quell any skepticisms surrounding my childhood. It wasn’t long until my parent’s character was revealed after lashing out at my partner that I went back to no contact. My partner no longer pushes for me to have a relationship with my parents, having observed their true nature.

    Cutting my parents out of my life wasn’t the result of a singular incident – it was the climax. I have given them more chances than they deserve, explained how they’ve damaged the relationship and they’ve still expressed they have no interest in changing. The only way I could foster peace in my life was to hold them accountable for the patterns of behavior they’ve habitually refused to recognize, and cut them out of my life.

    I got tired of being yelled at every time my parents saw me crying, being told I needed to “toughen up” and that “I’d never survive in the real world.” I got tired of playing peacemaker trying to end fights between my parents and my sister. I got tired of emotionally picking up my sister and my mom after every fight. Mostly I was tired of being bullied while being emotionally abandoned at home, preventing me from having healthy emotional outlets.

    Between being bullied at school and my life at home, I became sensitized to picking up perceived threats as they seemed all around me during most of my childhood. I was left to continually be the overcomer of obstacles and the peacemaker of arguments. Without a doubt, I was considered to be the peacemaker of the family. I wanted the fights to stop. Sometimes they were so loud, they couldn’t be drowned out with headphones at maximum volume, despite being on the opposite side of the house. Any time I brought up my parent’s behavior, I was mercilessly refuted and challenged as they could not see the forrest through the trees. I was told to reflect on how much better my life was than those starving and living on the street, reminding me that I was living under my parent’s roof and that I should be grateful. While I never feared physical violence at home, this was not the case at school.

    In additional to the emotional violence incurred at school, I was kicked, tripped, pushed, and even encountered a brush with death. One day in the gym locker room, two bullies approached me with a can of aerosolized deodorant and began emptying the can into my face. They raucously laughed while I recoiled, collapsing to the floor while I struggled to breathe. The assault persisted, adjusting the stream to meet my face in my new position on the floor. After some time the aerosol thankfully expired, otherwise my life would have.

    #FeedTheGoodWolf

  • A Vicious Cycle

    Throughout my life, I’ve been diagnosed by several mental health providers and treated for depression, anxiety, and bipolar II. These diagnoses served as stepping stones to eventually being diagnosed with CPTSD, or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

    Diagnosing mental health concerns is not as simple as taking an X-ray, MRI, or blood test to have a definitive diagnosis based on hard science. Mental health is a soft science. The willingness, cooperation, presence, and communication skills of the patient influence the diagnosis and treatment. Emotional damage isn’t always visible.

    Over time, the understanding of my diagnosis has evolved with my understanding of myself, my past, and emotions. The more I learn of CPTSD patterns, the more I see them within myself.

    When I was a kid, I recall asking my mom if I could speak with a therapist. My mom then went off on a tirade about the mental health industry, claiming it was all a scam. At the time, I didn’t understand why she was reacting this way. I later learned it was due to her parent’s struggles with mental health . Stemming from my mom’s unfounded beliefs on mental health, I was unable to go to therapy when I was younger.

    I managed to find myself in a school counselor’s office one day of fifth grade after an emotional breakdown. Suicidal thoughts had come up during recess, and I had become inconsolable. An adult saw the emotional distress I was in and walked me to the school’s counselor office, having been unable to console me, or even get me talking. It took a moment for me to have the capacity to respond to inquiries from the school counselor. It took longer still until I could stop crying. Being frightened of learning my mother’s reaction to these events, I didn’t tell the school counselor much.

    It wasn’t until college I possessed the ability and privacy to be discreetly seen by a therapist. I was quickly asked if I was open to medication as an assistive aid to ongoing therapy. I was not able to articulate myself well, as emotionally opening up to someone was unfamiliar and frightening to me. My introspection abilities were very limited at the time and I struggled to express what I was really going through.

    A tricky thing about the effectiveness of mental health treatment is that it’s influenced by emotion. – After you’ve fortified yourself behind an emotional wall, only the screams of your emotions are ever truly heard. Years after discontinuing use of the antidepressants, I ended up downing a bottle of pills with the intention of ending my life. A friend helped me check myself into a hospital for treatment. After two weeks of intensive emotional treatment and therapy, I was released with a diagnosis of Bipolar II and a commitment to healing myself and regularly seeing a therapist.

    Healing has involved a lot of holding, exploring, and expressing feelings – many of which are still uncomfortable to think about, let alone discuss. My current therapist has caught me unconsciously holding my breath from a sense of danger presented by my sympathetic nervous system. One of the ways I’ve attempted to ameliorate emotional distress over the years has been through the use of various maladaptive coping mechanisms.

    I recognize eating food as for emotional comfort is a maladaptive coping strategy. I’ve done this countless times though, originating in my childhood. My mom said “Eat, you’ll feel better” as a means of regulating my emotions, instead of addressing them. Endocrinologically speaking, while it is possible to trigger a spike of the neurotransmitter Dopamine through eating, this simply isn’t a healthy way of addressing emotions, especially in the longterm. Hearing “Eat, you’ll feel better” influenced me enough to develop characteristics of disordered eating.

    While I’ve accepted that food is fuel for the body and should be nothing more, I’ve also found myself utilizing food to ease emotional distress – when I’ve become distressed, I’ve eased my distress with food, and gained weight. This maladaptive, self-destructive coping mechanism led me to weigh 435 pounds (197kg/31stone) by college graduation.

    Without healthy emotional outlets in my childhood, food was used to ease emotional distress. This coping mechanism only served to fuel the fires of emotional distress stemming from being overweight in the first place through bullying. The cycle continued and I ended up significantly increasing my weight.

    When the college graduation robe I was sized for was found to be undersized for graduation day, it ruined any pleasure I might have felt from graduating. I felt deep shame. Day of graduation, my mom escalated my emotional distress by conversing with my therapist and learning about my treatment plan.

    #FeedTheGoodWolf

  • The One You Feed

    For as long as I can remember, emotional dysregulation has been a part of my life. The volume of my emotions has been so deafeningly loud that I’ve resorted to unhealthy mechanisms to turn down the volume. I have binged, I’ve purged, I’ve drank, I’ve recklessly spent money, I’ve cut myself, and I’ve downed numerous pills with the intention of ending my life. I have been in therapy for well over a decade and have recently started EMDR as a methodology for addressing my CPTSD.

    It started a long time ago when I was ruthlessly bullied at school while being emotionally neglected at home. A coworker I’ve opened up to about my history has said, “anyone [would’ve] been left in bad shape given those circumstances.” Having described enough of my home life, my therapist has described my parents as “toxic.” They have not been part of my life for quite some time now

    I have spent decades deconstructing and demolishing the self-destructive and self-limiting thought patterns laid out in childhood.

    I have heard time and time again that writing about trauma can assist with addressing it. To that end, I will be writing about my experiences and their intersection with an affirmation inspired from a Native American parable involving two wolves: “Feed the Good Wolf”.

    One day an old Cherokee man sits down with his grandson to teach him about life.

    “A fight is going on inside of me,” he says to the boy. “It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is full of rage, jealousy, arrogance, greed, sorrow, regret, lies, laziness, and self-pity.”

    He continues, “The other is good – he is filled with love, joy, peace, generosity, truth, empathy, courage, humility, and faith. This same fight is going on inside the hearts of everyone, including you.”

    The grandson thinks about this for a few minutes, and then asks his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

    The old Cherokee simply replies, “The one you feed.”