I am continually amazed by our humanness collectively and the desire to avoid exposing anything negative about ourselves, including fear, insecurity, errors in judgement, weakness, lack of knowledge, or just that we are uncomfortable. The length that we will go to to avoid feeling vulnerable is crazy. In taking a hard look at who I am and why (mostly because of trauma) proving myself has been such a focus for me at any cost, from a mental and physical health and relationship perspective. I find that the need is an innate desire to prove that “I’ve got this!”

The truth is none of us can say “I’ve got this.” Giving in and truly being vulnerable requires opening our eyes to the fact that any perceived control we think we have is false and a ploy of the devil used to distance us from the freedom that is available in Christ. Freedom comes in admitting the truth, admitting our vulnerability and embracing it while trusting in God, understanding that our perspective is limited by our humanness. Letting go of pride and the desire to lean on our own understanding.

Peace comes in accepting that we are not in control and truly letting go and leaning on God. Trusting that he will use the hills, cliffs, and valleys in our lives for His glory to reach others with His love. Trusting that one day the growth and closeness that we have gained through struggle will shape us into the truest version of ourselves, much like as a mom watching the struggles in your child’s life teach them and help them grow into better stronger versions of themselves, God is watching us hoping that we choose to learn and grow and draw closer to Him through our struggles.

The catch (for me and those close to me) is that from the outside your behaviors might not look that different. We should all give and serve, putting ourselves out there in whatever way we can using our gifts for His glory. The change is internal. I learned with the busyness of the last month or so that I am working just as hard but the change is in the level of exhaustion and type of tired that I feel. When I was “hustling for worthiness” (Brene Brown) the internal dialogue was alway negative, “you messed up here, you should have…., you didn’t finish this..”. at the end of the day I was exhausted and then added to that exhaustion by beating myself up. Picking myself up out of bed to do it all again knowing it would never be enough. Today I am tired, but the internal dialogue is “God, thank you for using me and allowing me to rest in you.” There is joy, not from everything going perfectly or anywhere close to mistake free, but instead from knowing that I made myself available and vulnerable and God was able to shine because I wasn’t so worried about shining myself. No more hustling for worthiness, thank you Jesus!

I’ve been looking deep into my core beliefs, what are they, why are they there? Have I absorbed them from my childhood, tv, America’s culture, mentors, the Bible??? I have found that some of the core beliefs that I make decisions from are never really uncovered completely….so do I even really know what beliefs are at the core of who I am??

There are some that are obvious to me and others I have had to dig for and I don’t always believe the belief that I find. (Weird I know, but hang with me…). 

As a Christian, one who has struggled with hard questions, been challenged internally and externally….I still choose Jesus as my Savior and on a deeper level now than ever before. However, I am still human and very influenced by what I see, hear, and experience. Therefore some of the beliefs that are at my core aren’t of Christ and can sometimes be the opposite of what the Bible teaches. 

The past 2 years have been about really unraveling who I am and what drives me.

Truths that I want to keep at the forefront of my heart and mind are:

1. We are saved by faith through grace. A gift extended to everyone.

2. This world is not as it was intended to be and it is not all there is. Thank goodness!

3. Love is a gift from God to be cherished, and true love is sacrificial. 

4. We all have struggles and we all have gifts.

5. Purpose of Life:  Personal growth and Glorifying God 

6. Forgiveness is free.

7. All emotion was created by God and serves a purpose in personal growth. 

8. There is a spiritual war occurring and there is evil in the world. 

9. A calm mind allows peace and joy to enter.  A busy, loud mind drowns our peace resulting in anxiety and chaos.

10. All people are complex and shaped by their experiences and beliefs, it is our job to love them.

False Truths I have found in my heart that have cause pain, loss, and misery:

1. Perfection is attainable. I’m just not dedicated enough, strong enough, good enough, etc.

2. I can control how things happen and don’t happen if I stay vigilant (hypervigilant) and in control. 

3. Achieving=worthiness & Failure=worthlessness 

4. Happiness as the world defines it is the goal of life. 

5. Mistakes cannot be forgotten or forgiven, we just have to ruminate on them constantly and drag them everywhere we go. 

Its amazing when when you sit with your thoughts and analyze what is truly at the root of them how many lies you find.  That is the devils best trick. There is power in learning that all our thoughts aren’t true and that often they are grounded in lies that we have blindly stored as truth in our hearts. 

Pausing to really look into your heart and mind to find false beliefs is hard and humbling but can immediately take the power of those lies away and replace it with peace and intentional living.  The hard part is that replacing the habits associated with those false beliefs is a much longer process, but so worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

The stages of healing from trauma are complex and most definitely don’t occur in a straight line. However, turning the corner to post-traumatic growth is a big step. Growth comes in lots of forms.  Using your story to help others is one way that growth can occur.  Acceptance of your story without shame attached when sharing it is a big step.

The part that is more difficult is identifying the habits, both emotional and cognitive, that are automatic. At one time these habits/coping strategies were important and served the purpose of survival, but once you have faced and moved through the process some of these become stumbling blocks.

I am am discovering that there are more stumbling blocks than I ever realized. Each time I uncover one and chase it all the way back to the source/origin, and inevitably find shame. It’s amazing that as much as you uncover and work on areas where shame has been overpowering, there always seem to be more to uncover. It is overwhelming when you realize all the tiny cracks and crevices that shame can hide in and disguise its self as other things. Trauma isn’t just this big hole in your heart like I thought it was.  It’s more like a cancer that sneaks into all areas and once you think you’ve uncovered and killed it, it shows up somewhere else. I am beginning to think that “healing” from trauma requires something like maintenance chemo. Staying aware and being intentional about self care, genuine introspection, time of prayer and reflection, and talking with those close to you is the prescription. If I am not intentional about that daily then the shame creeps into cracks and crevices so very quickly.

However, it is vital to hold onto the truth that God’s love is capable of penetrating deeper into all those cracks and crevices than shame ever could.  It’s there that His love can replace shame with His blessings of joy, peace, comfort, and worthiness. Spending time with Him and truly taking time for Him to refill your cup is essential. I often feel like my cup has cracks in it so it takes more time and more diligence to keep it full and if I am distracted it can become empty without me even noticing until I hit bottom. This still happens quite regularly.

Balance in life is essential for everyone, but the importance of balance and mindfulness when healing from trauma can be the difference between success and living in the darkness of the shadow of trauma. 

 

 

 

Perseverance 

Perseverence is exhausting, but so worth it. When approaching anything in life giving up is a sure way to derail progress. When healing from trauma perseverance is key. Not only does it take perseverance to survive during the period of time that the trauma is occurring, it also takes perseverance to stay committed to the healing process.  It is easy to slip back into old habits and feel a pull to stay there where it is comfortable. But the unlocked freedom, clarity, and joy that is on the other side of healing is worth all the ups and downs you have to push through to get there.   It’s a daily, sometimes hourly, choice to continue on the healing journey when everything in you wants to stop.

Perseverance is a loaded word, it means falling, failing, backsliding and choosing to get up and try again. For me it means forgiving myself when I fall back into a depressed, paralyzed state and finding the energy to get up and try again over and over. The cool part is that each time I start again, I get back to a stable place faster. It is something I preach in OT to parents that watch their child regress with skills due to a seizure, growth spurt, illness, etc., once a skill is learned, even if regression occurs it’s much faster each time you have to relearn. 

I have learned that healing from C-PTSD is a constant cycle of regression, relearning, and regaining joy. It’s not easy and it’s extremely disappointing when you take steps backwards but deciding life and those you love are worth the process of  relearning again and finding joy.  

I think this is not only hard on the one doing the healing but also on those standing and going on the journey with them. Those that support you are kind of experiencing the trauma by-proxy and when there is a regression it is a sort of trigger for them that illicits fear…fear that things will be bad again, fear that you will give up, and just an overwhelming nervousness for the future.  

Letting those around you truly express their fears and disappointment with any step backwards is hard.  Your fighting a shame battle so discussing what you may view as failure is a trigger for the shame cycle that those with C-PTSD are often stuck in. But it is unfair to assume that those riding the rollercoaster with you aren’t going to have difficult times and negative emotions. Perseverance also means weathering the storms relationally that come from the rollercoaster that is healing. 

Learning to hear criticism and not retreat to a place that shame usually takes you to, a place of self hate and withdrawal, takes lots of perseverance. Being real with yourself about how your journey impacts those you love is a huge part of the journey. 

Imperfection, regression, mistakes, and causing pain are all a part of the healing journey that require us to get to a place of forgiving ourselves for “not healing fast enough or hurting others with our pain and length of the healing journey.”

Perseverance is truly the main thing between you an healing fully. Don’t give in to old patterns, it’s worth it keep going! 

 

Strong and Fragile

Ever since I can remember people have told me, “You’re so strong.”  I guess in some ways I am, but in other ways I’m extremely fragile. It’s a very complex mix of two extremes. My strength has always come from a desire to fight, my definition of life was a big fight for many things including success, independence, worthiness, stability, safety, etc. Today though, I define strength differently. Strength is no longer defined by a fight but instead a peace so deep and unwavering that the need to fight is non-existent.  Strength isn’t something gained through fighting daily through life, but is something that has always been present and just needs to be quietly exposed.

My fragile side is most often only exposed in private, and not for long because the truth of my own fragility scares me.  Lately I have learned to sit with it longer and longer. What I have found there is a need for Christ and a volunerability that is both freeing and terrifying. This weekend I have had time to sit with the fragility of my own emotional and spiritual healing. It’s so important for me to carve out time for self care and time to spend with God. The past few weeks Work and life have overshadowed all of the things I know to be necessary to maintain healing. I have prioritized everything over my self care and it has left me with the familiar feelings of paralysis and numbness. It’s scary that my body still defaults to that so quickly, thus the fragility of healing.

When you start feeling better it is easy to want to be “normal” to drop all of the boundaries and controls that you set so you could heal and resume the busyness and distracted lifestyle that the world (Satan) calls us to. Trying to maintain boundaries and other self care activities is hard, and the devil knows that slowly chipping away at them is the best strategy to take you back to feeling numb and paralyzed emotionally.  That is where he wants me. When I am there I am easily irritated, angry often, and lonely. I am incapable of seeing the big picture and I’m irritated by all the details and overwhelmed by all the dysfunction. I hate going back there. I hate that the neural pathways that I default to are so deep and easily accessed. I dream of a time that emotional and spiritual health won’t take so much effort. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe self discipline, boundaries, and Godly priorities that reflect an eternal perspective aren’t supposed to come easy.   Maybe the fragility of spiritual and emotional health isnt just true for those who have experienced trauma, but maybe it’s the truth for all of us.

What is interesting is that when I finally accept that I am fragile and that because of that I need to be diligent with the safeguards of boundaries and self care, I then feel strong. I want to encourage everyone to embrace their volunerability and fragility, find security in Christ, and as a result find their strength.

 

 

TRIGGERS

C-PTSD has ways of popping up when you least expect it. The simplest of things can be triggers. They can come just about any form.  For me, mine have included:

1. Gentle rubbing of my arm or a hand on my shoulder

2. Men older than me getting too close or being alone with an older male

2. Laundry rooms

3. Sports cars

4. Phone ringing

5.  Hand bells in a traditional church service

7.  Certain smells-musty houses, foods, etc

 

There are more but I don’t like trying to recall them all. When I am triggered the first thing that happens is my heart rate and breathing increases and my mind goes to a panic disorganized state.  Flashbacks come to me in pieces and flashes. In the beginning, I would trace the flashback and find it’s origin buried deep in my memory. It would come out in nightmares or fragmented memories. This was in the beginning of my healing journey. It was important to me to know what I had repressed and to explore how those things affected me and why I have the coping strategies and habits of self protection and perfectionism that I have.

But there came a time that these details no longer mattered to me. I knew enough, and I was ready to start healing, not just remembering. I asked my therapist if it was necessary to uncover everything to fully heal, because I really had no desire to dig further. She said it’s different for everyone, but I knew I was done digging.

 

Now I had identified what was stealing my joy (C-PTSD), why I had it in the first place, and now I was ready to take my life back. It became a battle to become my authentic self. The self that wasn’t damaged, that wasn’t scared, and was most importantly whole.

 

Once that became the goal, things happened fast with regard to my healing. I had wayyyy fewer flashbacks, and when I did I saw it as saying F-you (only phrase strong enough) to the devil when I used strategies to stay present, control my breathing, and not let the flashback cause me to dissociate or steal my enjoyment.  Then saying F-you to the devil became addicting.  Each time my new strategies worked I stole more and more power from the C-PTSD and aquired more power for my new “whole” authentic self. As this repetition happens, neurologically speaking we develop new neural pathways. This is the basis of what I do as an OT with kids, help them develop and through repetition solidify new neural pathways for motor, sensory, emotional, and behavioral responses to stimuli. I knew this worked, I had seen it over and over in OT practice so I was excited each time I had the opportunity to deepen my new neural pathways by not letting my old strategies surface when triggered. It became self perpetuating, the more I did it the better I got at it and the more confident I became that I could have my life back.

 

Life has a layer of spiritual warfare happening all around us that we are not always aware of. The devil will take note of our struggles and try to keep us distracted by the pains of the past. My battle with C-PTSD is a spiritual battle and through deepening my relationship with Christ, spending more and more time with him in prayer and meditation on His word, I found the power I had from God to fight the evil in my own life with wisdom and self control. The importance of alone time, time with God, and self care was TREMENDOUS. God gave me this in a very strange way. My physical health was not good,  likely due to the emotional stress of C-PTSD and some physical issues I was having that were unrelated.  This resulted in time out of work and lots of time alone.  This became a blessing that allowed time for true healing emotionally and physically.

 

Trauma shapes us but it doesn’t have the power to define us, we can choose to take the power back and weaken it to the point that even when it raises its ugly head we can say F-you, stay present, and enjoy the present without the past stealing our joy.

 

I still have times that the triggers will alter my mood temporarily (a few hours now) but they no longer cause me to dissociate, panic, or have physical responses like chest pain, diarrhea, etc. I’m now on a mission to keep them from even altering my mood and making me grouchy. I’m hoping that once they don’t have any power at all they will disappear completely, because the frequency of their occurrence now is minimal. But my goal and prayer is that they will be extinct!

 

If you are experiencing your own battle with C-PTSD, please know healing is possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have always gone through life like a bulldozer for as long as I can remember. However, I was also a procrastinator, but for very specific reasons. I didn’t want to start something if I didn’t have time to do it perfectly and complete it in one sitting. You can see how these guidelines would lead to everything piling up. So it always did. Then once the pressure of the list got to be too much, I would be like a bulldozer and do it all at once leading to many, many all nighters. Then I would crash from exhaustion afterward and start letting things pile up again. I was never able to ration the work and do a little at a time.

Yes, this is somewhat personality driven but it is also common in those who have experienced trauma. I was never good at pacing. My expectations of myself were that I get it all done perfectly or not at all. This can be paralyzing! This is one of the examples of how all or nothing thinking ran my life.

I was also also pretty good at making snap judgements about things, bulldozing my way through relationships.  At the time, putting  people in categories almost immediately kept my world simplistic enough to manage while having the chaos inside of me.  If someone hurt me, made a poor choice, criticized me, or overtly challenged me then they weren’t to be trusted. I didn’t push them out of my life necessarily but I was just really cautious and kept them in the not to be trusted category. Well that’s a problem isn’t it? All people have fallen short and are in need of forgiveness. Not just from God, but from those in their day to day lives. Trust is a fragile thing, but for those with a traumatic history it is almost too fragile to touch.

Because of my past, I despised people who were dishonest, selfish, made poor choices that hurt others, and had no self control; so if I put you in that category for any reason it was next to impossible for me to see anything but the bad. But the truth is that very few people are truly as sick as my father was and I have learned not to so quickly put others in that box, or any box for that matter.  I have had to learn to look at the whole person and determine if the mistake they made was a part of a pattern of behavior or one singular event.  If it was just a mistake and not a pattern, then I have learned to see the whole person, their good qualities but also reminding myself that they are human and will make mistakes. This has opened my world to the true complexities that make up people. In addition to taking my blinders off and truly looking at others, I have also done so looking at myself. It’s amazing the pieces of ourselves that we can’t see when we are avoiding hard feelings, especially shame, and in ‘self protection at any cost’ mode.  Through looking hard at myself in therapy I have uncovered my own complexity as a human-the good, the bad, and the ugly. The difference is that now the imperfection does not illicit SHAME, instead I give myself GRACE and in turn I can more freely give grace to others.

As a part of my healing journey, I pray that God will help me continue to take blinders off when looking at myself and others, leading to a new level of gratefulness for the gift of forgiveness, grace, and mercy and that I will wholeheartedly accept these gifts that were given to me freely through Jesus instead of rejecting them through insisting on carrying my shame.

 

Living with C-PTSD lends to a lot of coping strategies that help one to survive, but also can be detrimental to relationships and emotional health. I want to share some of mine.

 

DEFENSIVENESS and DISSOCIATION

As an OT, I have a pretty good understanding of sensory defensiveness. I think maybe one of the reasons I was drawn to the field was due to my own struggles with defensiveness.  With C~PTSD, one of the ways sensory defensiveness shows itself is through body memory flashbacks. I am a very touch oriented person when it comes to showing love to friends and family and in daily interactions with women and kids. Intimacy, well that’s something else entirely. I have spent a lot of my life fighting a battle in my head and with my tactile receptors every time I’m touched with an attracted energy behind it. It usually results in a fight or flight response that ends in my body saying one thing and my mouth saying another. For a long time I depended on straight willpower to lock up those feelings that say “RUN” and tried to appear ok.  I wasn’t very good at it, no one is because once in fight or flight mode the rational logical part of your brain shuts down.  I had scripted phrases that I could say, but they were just that, ‘scripted.’ I wasn’t ever present and sometimes I felt I was betraying myself and other times the shame would overpower me causing me to hate my body for not being able to truly embrace what God intended for good. Most of my relational interactions were with my mind trying to overpower the tears that were surfacing.  Then I got more and more able to continue in spite of the conflict going on inside me, this is called dissociation. It’s the only way to continue on and not run. You are physically there but not really mentally or emotionally present. I had a spouse that I should have felt safe with, and the guilt of hiding the truth of my defensiveness and dissociation was too much.  I started sharing pieces of the fear (at least what I understood of it at the time) but immediately followed those conversations consumed with guilt and usually making promises about the future that I knew I couldn’t keep.  That is until now, I have a new peace gained through truly processing all that I had endured and breaking free from its power. Now the devil no longer has the power over my physical relationship with my husband. I picture pissing him off with every experience that I enjoy without even having the slightest urge to dissociate.  Healing is possible!

 

TROUBLE APOLOGIZING

This was a big issue for me that was based in the screwed up concept of worthiness (see previous post.)  I could not allow myself to admit imperfection because of the intense shame that followed. Luckily I’m a fairly intuitive person and highly verbal. For years I ran circles around people verbally until they eventually truly felt whatever it was that had happened needed an apology from them NOT me. NOT GOOD. Marriage soon highlighted this and it was one of the first major breakthroughs in my journey. Now I view owning my mistakes as symbols that I am winning in the battle for my emotional health and truly gateful for forgiveness.

 

HYPERVIGILANCE

This is where I lived for so long. My heart rate, my mind, and my body were always at mock 90. I was analyzing all things around me, always on guard waiting for something bad to happen. My mind was always so active that I often just chalked it up to ADHD. Well I am hyperactive, but hypervigilance was also present. Hypervigilance leads to exhaustion.  When my father was able bodied and able to drive, I had put controls in to protect myself.  I changed locks, made sure I was never alone completely, wore clothes with firm boundaries to any unwanted touch, made sure my girls were safe and that they were in pants not dresses.  I was aware of the cars on the road. I made sure teachers were very aware of who could and could not pick up my kids. I was ambiguous about their schedule and mine when talking with or around him. It was a years before he was accidentally made aware of where they went to school. Then the hypervigilance went overboard. Once he started showing up at our church it was awful.  I made sure I knew where he was at all times so that he wouldn’t take my kids out of their Sunday school classes. But the hypervigilance didn’t just happen about him, it bled unknowingly into other areas of my life and especially when I felt stressed for any reason. It becomes an automatic response to an increase in cortisol. Through my dads death, knowing the threat was gone for good, and with lots of therapy I finally have a quiet mind. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known and it’s amazing. Each minute feels as if it has lengthened. The days feel longer in a good way. It’s like I’m on a leisurely walk through life taking in all God’s beauty and His quiet voice is finally something I can focus on now that the chaos of hypervigilance is not there.  I’m starting to take smaller conflicts, mistakes, and hardships in stride and have a more logic based barometer for what is truly something to freak out about.

One of the important parts of healing is discovering who you are without the coping mechanisms that have both kept you alive and stolen your opportunity for peace.  Once the need for them is gone, finding life without them is an amazingly freeing experience. It’s like once you really convince yourself you don’t need them anymore the feeling of freedom that comes is almost addicting.

 

 

 

ºWHO AM I???

One of the main reasons I hesitated in blogging my story was that others would see me as “the girl who has this traumatic story.” That is not who I am, nor do I plan to live my life with that shadow over me.

I am a CHILD OF GOD, His loved child. There are many stories that make up who I am, stories of great love, wonderful memories with my mother and siblings, beautiful friendships, college experiences that shaped who I am, dating and marriage memories with my husband, experiencing motherhood for the first and second time, and loving relationships with clients and their families.   What’s awesome about my healing journey is that I can clearly see those things now and they overshadow all the other negative, traumatic stories with such brightness that I don’t even see the trauma.  That is why the joy I feel now is so strong. Opening up and truly working through my traumatic experiences has released my ability to feel again.

What happens when you are numbing emotions out of self protection is that you can’t only numb the bad emotions, you have no option but to numb them all. (Brene Brown’s research exposed this truth to me.) The sucky thing about being numb is you don’t realize that you are not present and this makes it hard to recall memories. You are literally missing out in your life. That is another cool thing about healing. I am able to be truly present. No longer lost in the self-sabatoging cyclical thinking that causes the numbing escape.

Worthiness. Such a powerful word and concept.  God through Jesus satisfied the question of our worthiness. I have learned now that basing my worthiness on performance and perfection is like someone giving you a gift that you don’t return but you choose not to use, even when they are present. It looks a lot like wastefulness, or unappreciative self-centered egocentric thinking bordering on narsisism. That might sound like quite the jump, but I don’t think it is.  I now think of it as if God gave me the most amazing gift and my refusal to embrace it not only brings Him sadness, but says something about my pride. Do I really think that I’m capable of perfection, am I saying that my expectation of perfection is achievable? If my measurement of worthiness is perfection then yes on some level I think Christ-like perfection is possible for me.  And even further, if I expect it of myself, but not of others what does that say? That is CRAZY, but it took this journey to figure out how prideful and arrogant that is.

In my position of leadership at work, this has been a HUGE lesson that has tremendously changed my leadership style. I now purposely expose my mistakes, my struggles, and my inadequacies. Not in a ‘let me say negative things about myself so that you will praise me’ kind of way. Just a true transparency that reminds me and others that I’m human-your human and we all need grace.  Modeling grace and love does a lot more for a work environment than modeling this false image of perfection.

It’s like now I think oops, sorry Jesus, I need that mercy or grace card now, ask for forgiveness from all involved parties and then I move on. It’s such a freeing thing. What’s really bizarre is that doing that now brings me joy from knowing that the devil no longer controls my thoughts or worthiness with the lie of perfectionism.

Worthiness and parenting, shew that’s a hard one to swallow when you realize what you have modeled to your children in the from of performance based worthiness. You are either saying be like me and earn your worthiness or no worries honey that performance based worthiness is only for me, you aren’t capable of achieving that.  Ouch!

So needless to say the transparency has carried over on the parenting front as well. The change i saw in my oldest, the perfectionist, was almost immediate.  What’s cool is kids can implement change without much effort because they model our behavior.  So as soon as I changed, she changed. My youngest didn’t get the perfectionist thing to begin with, so she somewhere in her soul knew worthiness was a gift from the beginning.

It’s working so well that my great example of imperfection came up in conversation with my 11 year old, going on 16.  She asked if she could get her driver’s license early, because if she got it at 15 that would be less than 4 years away. Scary thought! I said, “no honey that is called a hardship license and you don’t have a hardship.” She said, “yes I do, Mom. You are my hardship.” (Referring to the many times I am super late to pick her up or just completely forget to get her at all due to losing track of time at work.) That has now become one of my favorite stories to tell. It reminds me that imperfection can also bring us laughter when we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously.

This worthiness lesson was one of my first HUGE breakthroughs and what a difference it has made in every area of my life. Old habits die hard, so the journey to fully internalizing this was long but so worth it!

 

 

 

 

I never really had a desire to blog before now.  I am not computer savvy and prefer paper and pencil expressing myself by drawing, but today I felt a pull to go public with all I am learning.  The past 2 years have been like none other for many reasons, but the personal growth that I have experienced has been life altering.

So where to start???   It is hard to decide where to start, but how about a summary of my childhood as I remembered it prior to the last few years.

I was blessed with an amazing mother, a warrior of a woman with an ability to survive an unbelievable journey.  I watched and modeled myself after her in strength, dedication, work ethic, and passion for people.  I realize now that her sacrifice and dedication to us, my siblings and I, is the foundation that taught me that bad things happen but they don’t have to define you.  I draw from her strength daily. I was always successful, primarily because of this drive inside of me to prove myself.  I had HIGH expectations of myself and was determined to accomplish my goals, period.  I am super social and a performer at heart.  I could always go into performance mode and escape there.  I think I lived there for a long time.  I always had a determination that came from somewhere deep inside.  That determination was good in that it made me successful and independent.  However, I didn’t realize until the past few years that not all people fear imperfection to the point that their worthiness is tied to their performance or to such an extent that all emotional, spiritual, and physical signals tell you to stop, but you can’t for fear of the shame that would follow.    I didn’t put that together until recently.  At that time I just knew the level of panic that would set in if I stopped, and that was worse than any amount of exhaustion.

This performance driven lifestyle was doable in high school and college, and even at the beginning of my marriage.  But as the responsibilities of motherhood, career, marriage, and building a business piled on the expectations were so far out there that I found myself exhausted, with a failing body, and an even more chaotic, self sabotaging mind.  I failed in my eyes constantly, this brought a sense of panic that I had never experienced.  After my first child, I experienced what I call “post partum anxiety on steroids.”  Now not only did I have to achieve all those unattainable expectations, I had to do so with my crutch of performance mode crippled by anxiety.  I managed to pull it off or so I thought.  Enter the second child……the struggle to keep up got even harder, I managed, but not without beginning to destroy my body and my marriage.  My self hatred was so hard to control.  It is hard to love well when your mind is constantly belittling you.  FEAR………fear dominated my thoughts.  I could no longer hold together all of my responsibilities, so as many of us do I let go of what I could.  I couldn’t let go of my performance mode completely so I became an OT and a mother, and my husband got what was left which was very little.  I disconnected from regular interactions with friends and family as well. At this point I didn’t understand the why to all of my struggles.

You see, I had become my father’s primary caregiver at 18 years old.  I knew the stomach aches I would get when he called, the fear/anxiety and anger that I felt when I had to take care of him in the hospital or nursing home, but I couldn’t place exactly why it was so extreme.  I knew that when my parents divorced, he started replacing my mother with me, viewing me as his wife and owing him the attentiveness that he thought he deserved.  He was very inappropriate with me but stayed just under the line of what I considered sexual abuse.  In my eyes he was creepy and wanted from me things that a father should never want.  I struggled as he got sicker because the guilt for not taking care of him was just as bad as the feeling that I had if I did.

This sent my ability to hold my world together to a whole other level of impossible.  My marriage struggled even more, my self concept hit rock bottom, and performance only lasted when I wasn’t home and if I was home I was ASLEEP.  Sleep became the escape, performance no longer provided an escape-it was just REALLY hard work.  Sleep became my goal.  Then came the guilt that I was avoiding living, my kids were suffering, my marriage was as low as it had ever been.  My husband never gave up on me and continued to help me build my dream-my business even though he was not getting much in return for that generosity.

Then it happened……my father was finally dying, something I had felt guilty for praying for for years.  My brain subconsciously decided I was ready to know the whole story.  I started having flashbacks, lots of flashbacks.  His death was only a few weeks away when the memories flooded back.  The feelings when I had visited and cared for him finally made sense.  He had sexually abused me throughout my childhood.  I barely brought myself to attend his funeral, my mother and my sister did all the work with the death and all that goes with it.  I didn’t visit him in his last days.  I couldn’t.  I was shocked that the mind could really hide things from you.  My therapist says that once the medical side of me knew his death was eminent, my mind was able to release the memories.  I never would have been able to care for him without being blinded to those memories.  I had heard of repressed memories but I wasn’t sure how much I really believed this could happen.  I believe now.

Through the last 2 years I have spent hours upon hours healing.  I have an amazing trauma therapist, a supportive family, an amazing husband, and two little girls who gave me the motivation to heal, truly heal.  I no longer have flashbacks and I have found a joy that is deeper than anything I have ever felt.  I also have purpose, a new purpose not dictated by outrageous expectations, but a purpose that gives me energy instead of robbing me of it.  It is because of this new joy, this new life that I have started this blog. This blog will be a place where I share my thoughts, breakthrough moments, and the internal work that was needed to move past Complex-PTSD and regain hope and joy in my life. My hope is that I can be of help to others experiencing a similar journey, for I have been learning that sharing my story is a huge part of post-traumatic growth. I want to scream from the mountain tops that HOPE CAN BE MENDED.