Erase My PTSD

Recently I’ve had the remarkable fortune of witnessing someone I’m very close to ride the drama-coaster.  I am not immune or unable to ride it myself, so that is not a judgement, just an observation colored in with my own life’s flavor.  Just hearing a little about the drama is enough to make me scream or break something.  Of course drama seldom comes in small doeses, instead drama usually shows up in a family size container that never seems to be empty.

What causes me to want to scream and run from 2nd hand drama?  Why am I so full of wisdom on how she can stop the drama in her own life and why do I feel so passionate about STOPPING IT NOW!!? To answer this question, we must first answer a more basic question.  What is drama ? I am not a Thesbian so you’ll have to settle with my brown-paper sack definition until you decide to create your own.  Drama is the superimposing of a personal or collective fairytale upon actual events through time.  Now if that didn’t sound like it came right out of your 8th grade science textbook I don’t know what would.

Another less lofty version of my personal definition is this: Drama is what each individual fills in or adds to a real-life picture in order to bend that picture in such a way as to have it mean what they believe it means, instead of simply seeing real life as it is.  I’m certainly not trying to replace the mystery of the universe with my brand of empiricism; however my definition takes into account that the director of any drama (that’s you or me or anyone else that entertaining drama)is aiming not at the mystery as much as the misery.

It is my observation through decades of plain old living that brings me to the current conclusion that the inspiration of drama is pain.  Pain shows up in all kinds of forms: fear, hunger, anger, sadness, numbness … .  We manufacture the drama to manage the pain.  We replace genuine fulfillment with a masterful distraction.  And what does this have to do with PTSD you might ask?  Great question.

PTSD is the exaggerated, burnt-into-your-nervous system big brother of drama.  Before I understood even the little bit that I know now about my current dysfunction, when I felt unsafe, when my PTSD-button got pushed, I would have to summon up an equally scary response to try and balance out the equation in a futile attempt to regain equilibrium.   Another way of saying this is that I would have to become as threatening or scary as I felt threatened or scared. The PTSD logic was that the world is ALWAYS a dangerous place and I’m just not predatorial or dangerous enough to survive.

I’ve clarified drama, now lets compare it to PTSD.  One aspect of PTSD is the reaction to current events based on non-current experiences.  You are standing on the street corner sidewalk and a bus drives by a bit too close honking it’s horn and suddenly you are also re-living the car wreck you were in where large objects were colliding with you, making gastly noises, creating unimagineable pain in your body and filling your mind up with immense fear.  Your sudden reaction must be equal to the unresolved and terryfying not-here-and-now traumatic memory.  Even as your PTSD grid gets lit up a part of your mind is trying to reconcile the honking bus with the traumatic cellular memory of the accident.  Unfortunately the trauma memory is so much bigger than life compared to the here-and-now experience of a PTSDer that the living moment is swallowed by the traumatic memory.

What comes next is the focus of this post.  My reaction.  Your reaction.  The Reaction.  That bus’ proximity and honking horn has alerted your mind that you are in perilous danger and you will NOW experience flight or fight.  Perhaps you turn to nearby pedestrians and usher them away from the curb with a commanding voice or even physical contact trying to protect them from the danger that only you are experiencing.  Perhaps you are more in control than that and you simply yell at a loved one or tell them how stupid they were for insisting you stand on the side walk (in danger).  The Reaction is as unique to the individual as their shaping trauma(s) were.

What do we do?  What are we always doing with our minds?  We seek out potential threats, we are scanning for the danger that the trauma-memories insist are all around us RIGHT NOW! In most instances we are looking for something that is not there.  We are relating to conditions, people, events and circumstances that aren’t necessarily here and now.  Even in a story told by someone else.  My loved one that has been riding the drama-coaster has unknowingly been taking me with her.  I must board the coaster to check for personal dangers to myself.  We are all hypersenetive to various forms of truama.  In the PTSDers mind oftentimes drama gets translated as truama.  When you tell me a dramatic story I can always find the vulnerabilities and dangers that lay on the surface or hidden in the drama.

Each of us is at his or her own place in the healing from PTSD.  Right now, for myself I am learning how to create new behaviors and choices and surrender the old trauma-reactive ones up to my history.  This blog is part of that process.  What is required to turn the honking bus back into a bus?  How do I absorb the cause of my trauma in such a way that allows me to eventually release it and move on?  I don’t know.  I’m learning but I still have much to learn.

Bruce

Suffering from mind breaking PTSD for over 44 years.  I just want to be free.