The job of the person with PTSD is to find a way in communication with other human beings with whom they feel safe to understand what has happened to them and to be able to have that diminish or fade enough – not go away, not as if it ever happened – but to fade enough so they can rejoin the present.
My father had two very distinct personalities. The same father who tenderly gave me café au lait on a spoon and fresh-squeezed orange juice in a baby glass, who listened to my childish sentences with such pride and pleasure, who worked all of his life to give me the best of everything … that same beloved father had a monster living inside him. And that monster was as frightening to me as the other side of him was beautiful. And that monster grew stronger with each drink he took.
Oftentimes, clients arrive at my office in their mid-thirties feeling that something is missing, that they have a sort of inner wound that isn’t really healing. Traumatic memories are often getting re-stimulated when clients again attempt to enter intimate relationships – where the very attempt at deep connection brings up old unresolved pain around intimate/family relationships.This is what PTSD is: pain from a previous trauma is emerging days, months or even years after the fact in a post traumatic stress reaction.
We think of the capacity of the mind and of attention like a flashlight that you can direct at will…and that capacity can be useful if your mind tends to move that flashlight in directions that aren’t that useful.
I made many attempts to control my using but they all failed, so I decided to quit cold turkey. I lasted a year, but eventually my disease tricked me into thinking that since I had things under control, I could successfully use again…and that was probably the dumbest thought I have ever acted on – I had awakened a sleeping monster and that monster was hungry.
While in treatment, Dr. Tarman, Renascent’s Medical Director, gave us a presentation on the neuroscience behind addiction, which described exactly what I was going through: my addled brain was trying to heal, and it was slow and argumentative. Accepting that this disease polluted my thinking and caused me to dwell on my resentments gave me insight into how the tools of the program work: the slogans, daily meditations, routine step study with a sponsor and clearing away my negative reactive behaviours.
