I am a rip the band-aid off kind of girl; so, straight to the point. I have PTSD. It is related to me almost dying in December. It doesn't manifest itself in the typical ways that PTSD would because it wasn't necessarily new trauma. Because of that, it doesn't present itself the way that you imagine what PTSD looks like (with flash backs, anxiety about the event reoccurring, overprotectiveness, paranoia, etc).
Mine comes from a pattern of self-blame and a sense of failure that I have had in other areas of my life from a long time ago. I survived the surgery, and as I sat in my hospital bed with a catheter, a shit bag, a pain pump, a drain tube, a heart monitor, and about 4 different antibiotics flowing through my IVs, my surgeon told me I was going to have the colostomy bag for 6-12 months.
My first thought was that it was all my fault. I had a colonoscopy three weeks before my hysterectomy. And although I called all of the doctors involved to ensure this would be ok, the fact that this happened was clearly my fault. I shouldn't have scheduled them so close together. Somehow one was related to the other and if I had been more responsible about the timing, I wouldn't be sitting there mostly dead in the ICU.
In addition, all of the plans my husband and I had made were put on hold. We were working on our project house and we were due to be finished in March or April. Just in time to put it on the market in the spring when there are a lot of buyers. Instead, I wasn't even going to recover from the surgery until March. The recovery from the sepsis (though I didn't know it at the time) would be even longer. Putting in the long hours on the house while working my job full time was not going to be possible. For a long time.
But it wasn't just the house. The house was supposed to be a catalyst for us being able to move out west to Colorado where we would like to live. We were going to take the profit from the house and make the move happen. "You'll probably have the bag for 6 to 12 months," was a very short sentence that ended all of that. To me it almost sounded like a prison term.
The doctor left the room and my husband held me while I cried. I was alive. I was very sick, but I was alive. But everything we had been working for over the previous year and a half was just swept out the door with the rush of air as the doctor left.
And to me... it was all my fault. If I had scheduled the procedures further apart. If I had recognized I was sick and gone to the hospital sooner. If I had just been more proactive and finished the house sooner. Should've, could've, would've.
But the burden of blame I took for myself. It didn't matter how many times my husband (or anyone else for that matter) told me it was ridiculous, I blamed myself. And it wasn't just my fault, it also meant that I had failed. I had failed to get us to Colorado like I wanted, like I had planned to, in the time line I had set to do it.
My therapist has started working with me using EMDR therapy for the PTSD. It is hard to explain. Basically, you are taken back through reliving traumatic memories so that you can actually process the emotions. In general, when you experience a trauma, your left brain and right brain stop communicating with each other. The emotional part of your brain "checks out" entirely (for self protection) and the logical side is just going through the motions to keep you alive.
The disconnect is where the trauma sits. You never process it. You never allow yourself to feel or understand your emotions and work through them. And so you spend the rest of your life trying to forget the overwhelming emotions you had that made you uncomfortable in the first place. Sitting in the discomfort and fully allowing yourself to experience the emotions without "checking out" gets you to the other side. That is where you can find recovery from them.
I have been minimizing my PTSD because I don't have the typical symptoms. I don't feel it looks like the PTSD you would see with someone experiencing a new trauma because I don't have flash backs, or the same level of sudden emotional responses. My PTSD involving anger at myself for perceived failures is a very old emotion for me. It seems less important, or less like trauma, simply because it is already familiar.
Part of EMDR therapy is identifying where in your body you feel certain traumas. For example, when the surgeon said the words 6 to 12 months, I felt like I was going to throw up. And when he walked out of the room, I can only explain the feeling in that moment as being like grief. Like that tightness in your chest that feels like a thousand rubber bands wrapped around your heart.
My therapist asked me in my session who in my life besides my husband had previously provided me comfort or advice in adverse situations like this. Of course, I thought of nana because she was always very free flowing with her advice (whether I felt I needed it or heeded it). She asked me to walk myself back through the experience of the doctor telling me I would have the bag for so long and immediately in that moment have a conversation with what I thought nana would say to me.
After walking myself back through the experience the second time, with nana and her advice in it, my therapist asked me if there was any difference in what I felt in my body. I described tightness across my shoulders. When pressing me for why it had changed, I knew it was specifically related to nana.
Nana died in 2007. Since 2007, I have had a knot in the muscle under my right shoulder blade. I have been to massage therapists, orthopedics, physical therapy, a chiropractor, you name it. Yet it is 10 years later and I still have a nana knot. I have actually joked with my husband that it is where she lives.
I never thought of it as being literal until now. When nana was dying, there was a point where she was no longer lucid. I felt she still knew I was there and could hear what I was saying. She was dying, but having a really hard time letting go. I felt like it was probably from worry: worry that we wouldn't be ok without her.
Nana was always the caregiver of my dad's side of the family. No matter what it was that we needed (or wanted for that matter), she tried her damn best to make sure we had it. As she aged and moved into a phase of life of being on a fixed income, and particularly when she got sick and went on dialysis, I think that was the hardest part for her. She wasn't able to take care of everyone and everything as well as she wanted and used to be able to.
In a moment in the ICU alone with her, I told her she didn't have to fight anymore. That she shouldn't worry about us. That we would be ok. And that I would take care of them. I would take care of my dad's family the way she had. And all of the weight of the family obligations and needs transferred directly from her shoulders to mine. In a more literal sense than I even thought.
I didn't even remember saying that to her until I was working through all of this with my therapist this week. Despite the fact that I have spent the past ten years doing my best to do just that: take care of all of them (not just dad's side of the family, but mom's as well). Although I have tried my best, there is some part of me that still feels like a failure in this regard. And that failure sits right under my right shoulder blade.
"I am a failure," is a pretty heavy belief to hold about yourself. Most people would probably look at different pieces of my life and call it successful. I think most of that typically lies in envy to some regard. Someone may perceive me as more successful because they think I make more money than they do, or go on more vacations, or have a better relationship with my husband, or a better job, or more talent, or whatever it may be that they *think* I am more successful at than they are.
But the core belief I have about myself is one of perceived failure. For a lot of reasons and in a variety of ways. I think it originates with really high expectations that I was held to as a child by different family members, as well as myself. I also think it relates to responsibilities that I took on earlier in life than I probably should have (or should have had to). It certainly is linked into my struggles with my body.
But the origin of it is less important I think. The important part is changing this belief because it is only founded and justified by me within myself. No one in my life is constantly telling me I am a failure, but me.
Unlearning a lifetime of beliefs you have about yourself (true or false) is not an easy process. I know this is only the beginning of the work I need to do. In some odd way, I feel like what happened in December had a purpose after all. It forced me to face some pretty big fears, and in light of that has set me on a path of healing really old wounds.
It probably would have been a far greater disappointment to be living in Colorado right now, still having some sense of unrest/unhappiness about life, and be completely clueless as to why.
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