May in a nutshell: learning about complex PTSD, working through Your Body Speaks Your Mind, slogging through old journals that eerily parallel my current situation at times, integrating my former selves into my True Self, having myself as a client.
I don’t know why, but April’s blog feels a lifetime ago, not just a month. It’s likely due to the ‘time travelling’ I’ve been doing while working on my book. There are so many parallels between my life experience in 1993/4 and today, that it’s a bit discombobulating (yes, that’s one of my favourite words 😉). I recognize on some level that I am completing the trauma response from 30 years ago. Part of the mind-game is that I didn’t know I was struggling with OCD and complex PTSD way back when. I barely recognized depression and a persistent discontent I referred to as anxiousness. Anxiety as a diagnosis wasn’t in my periphery yet. By early 1994, I considered getting information about depression, but I had no idea where to look. It would be another 3 years before I would receive proper diagnosis and treatment for depression (dysthymia). Anxiety had a much longer wait.
But it was this crazy-making thinking-and-feeling roller coaster that added to the chaos of that time. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough (part of OCD and cPTSD). I wasn’t enough. Reviewing these old journals is like reaching through a portal to a former version of myself who desperately needs the knowledge and compassion I can offer her now. While I can’t change the circumstances she was struggling with 30 years ago, I can offer her a safe space to process in the present. Like I said, a bit discombobulating. I feel for that younger version of myself much differently than I used to. I read her journal entries, and recognize the thought patterns and emotional upset that are part of the aforementioned diagnoses. I can break the shame-messaging and be gentler with that version of myself.
I can welcome her into my integrated True Self. Still a work in progress. And it is interesting to see how I am handling financial insecurity, work concerns, friendships, relationship issues, and family dynamics in this day and age compared to 30 years ago. The butterfly effect of April’s blog also seems to have shifted some things around in my internal framework. I see my younger self through my current framework/lenses; and she looks much different than how she saw herself back then. I’m not sure what she’d make of her future self. She’d be quite surprised, I’m sure. And she wouldn’t know what to make of the butterfly effect or a fiery Phoenix as it pertains to her sense of self.
It might have helped her to know she had an inner flame – that was hers alone – yet had the ability to attract male attention like moths to a flame. Given her lacking sense of self, male attention caused a lot of consternation. She had no idea she had a flame that could burn or singe. She had no coping strategies for emotional regulation, racing thoughts, obsessive thinking, or compulsive assessment of her existential state as a Christian. Through retrospection, it’s difficult to own and understand that I could’ve suffered less if only I had better mental health strategies and skills. I wonder how my life would’ve turned out differently if only I understood what was going on inside my psyche.
My healing journey didn’t happen that way, though. It took a much more circuitous route. I am still integrating past versions of my Self as I learn more and process what surfaces with new tools. I attended a webinar on complex PTSD that shifted my entire self-understanding. I’ve had the diagnosis of PTSD as long as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I didn’t receive any treatment for it. I would soak up whatever I could at every trauma conference and seminar there was to attend. So it wasn’t like I was receiving completely new information at this webinar. It was how it was presented and how I factored into that information. I related far more to the material as a patient than a practitioner; and it redefined my entire life experience.
Ergo, reading my journals through the lens of cPTSD, as well as the usual OCD, dysthymia, and anxiety (I also recognize early signs of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). My blogs about my father wound (Nov & Dec 2023) play heavily into this conception of cPTSD whose defining features are a sense of self that is consistently negative (or I word it as filling the void of no sense of self with negative perceptions because that is what has been mirrored/reflected back) along with never developing a sense of safety (aka trust issues). Previously, my self-esteem and insecurity issues were character flaws – something I had to build up as I went along in life. Now I know the two prominent features of my way of experiencing the world were part of a complex coping mechanism.
So, I am still working through the goo of the cocoon. I hope to emerge soon as a brave butterfly; but I sense more trauma response completion in my future as I continue reviewing my old journals, reaching through the portal to better understand my former self, pulling her through the portal into the safe space of an integrated True Self. If it sounds complicated, it is. I haven’t been my own therapist to this depth and intensity before. Being one’s own client is mind bending, but it is also creating a safe space within myself that was never there before. And the space where my sense of self should be is no longer being filled with only negativity. I am able to see myself for who I really was, behind the symptoms of all those future diagnoses.
I am beginning to see my own buried flame that will, hopefully soon, emerge from the “cocoon goo” as a Phoenix-like butterfly.
I had every intention of writing a blog for the month of March, but suddenly it was April 1st and the joke was on me. 😊 So here I am trying to compose April’s entry before May encroaches too closely on my space. I know, cutting it a bit close. But I wanted to wait until after the Kickass Women’s Day on the 27th before writing something. That has been such a huge event in my mind since I decided months ago to have a table to promote my counselling services. And before I began writing this blog today, I had a traffic ticket from October to contend with via a phone call…only to have it levelled-up to an in-person court date! Yikes! It’s beginning to feel like the never-ending traffic ticket that eludes resolution. This is the same ticket I mentioned in October’s blog.
After the phone call, I composed an opening paragraph for April’s blog that I was pleased with; so I selected the appropriate icons to engage the Save process—only to have my laptop crash while selecting where to save it to. Sigh. While the laptop was rebooting, I made a pot of loose-leaf tea…without the requisite strainer…and proceeded to pour myself a cup before I recalled my error. Only a couple floaties for the first cup, note to self for the second! But at the rate I’m going, I might forget again.
Recognizing I needed a pick-me-up before things got really out-of-control, I started playing my “Be Good To Yourself” music playlist. Scrolling through Facebook with my floaty cup of tea while waiting for my laptop, I see a post with a delightful frog perched upon the classic polka-dotted mushroom declaring: You got this, Fuck Face (not for everyone, but it tickled my fancy). At which point, my music mix was playing Trooper’s “Raise a Little Hell.” Well, who could stay discouraged long with that particular blend of aural and visual stimulation. 😊
And with simply recalling the last hour or so, suddenly I have consumed half the space for a blog when I had so much to say about this month! I suppose I could delete the previous paragraphs, but then you would miss a little of what it’s like to have a “Barb moment” 😉 – which actually brings me back to my original blog and what happened yesterday that prompted my busy brain to process. At the risk of “too much information,” I will share a mind-body connection that I know I am not alone in experiencing.
I have been in a lot of pain since helping my parents move into a senior’s apartment in their small town, three hours from mine. My brother drove out from Saskatoon, so I was looking forward to spending some time with him. He arrived before me as I had a 4-hour, multi-person, work-related meeting in the city on Sunday; and knew I would need Monday to recuperate. He spent Monday and Tuesday with the parents; and I showed up around suppertime Tuesday after the volunteer movers and shakers had left. Good timing, eh? 😊 The move continued Wednesday and Thursday also involving unpacking and organizing in the new apartment. Met some wonderful people and had good conversations with my brother and a cousin who came out with her husband to help.
Not unexpectedly, I was very stiff, sore, and exhausted by the time I was home Thursday night—and maybe a little grumpy. 😉 I knew the next few days would be challenging physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was in such rough shape, that I moved my massage appointment from the end of the week up to Monday. But the pain wasn’t letting up, even if my brain and energy were somewhat revived. I spent the week doing as little as possible to help my body recover so that I could reasonably function at the Kickass Women’s Day promoting my counselling services. By Saturday I felt I could manage if I kept everything to a minimum. The day went well, but not life-altering in any obvious way; and I committed Sunday to doing very little.
After walking the dogs Sunday, I journalled a little of what I was experiencing; but felt I was still a little ‘dissociated’ or checked out. Withdrawn into myself. Cocooned. At any rate, I hit upon something as my intestines and colon experienced a thorough cleansing without any indication of tummy ache or indigestion of any sort. As this has happened before, my brain suddenly clued in that something needed releasing – which my body was able to do even if my brain was a little slow on the uptake. The mind-body connection. We are multi-faceted creatures, we humans. It’s all interconnected. So my journalling had hit upon something that prompted a physical release. Now to get my brain on the same page. My persistent back pain also eased up after this cleansing. It worsened again overnight, so I am taking care of my back with heat again and gentle yoga stretches. However, the pain is now localized to one spot making me curious about what that part of the body represents emotionally. I will look into it.
My Facebook scrolling this Monday morning prompted some musing while walking the dogs that built upon yesterday’s concept of cocooning. How to condense 10 pages of journalling into a few paragraphs for a blog? The meme stated: “If the Universe is making you wait…Be prepared to receive much more than what you asked for.” A concept that prompted an internal conflict between excitement and dread. Sitting with the dread generated the multi-page journalling.
It’s no easy task processing what surfaces when you realize you’d rather remain in the messy goo of the cocoon than emerge a beautiful butterfly. (I might have to rewatch “A Bug’s Life” after this. 😊) I will spare you the goo to get to the conclusion: I need to release all the previous negative experiences of being a butterfly and acknowledge that this rebirth as a butterfly will be on my terms, not anyone else’s. I will have “new and improved” self-protection skills and awareness – of myself and those around me. I am not responsible for how others react to my “butterfly-ness” – only for how I react, respond, or disengage from those others.
I have to release those memories of being taken advantage of, admired then discarded, contained in a butterfly cage, swatted away out of annoyance, or had my wings damaged, clipped, or even removed. And I have to rework what it means to “butterfly” this time around. My internal conflict sees the “more” that the Universe is offering as an expectation to do more, be more, try harder, push myself farther. Yet, it is the exact opposite. Emerge. Fly. Go where the wind takes me. Weather the storms. Luxuriate in the sunshine. Rest in calmness. Feed my soul. Share when I have excess. Replenish when running low. There is nothing to accomplish or achieve or prove. Just live one moment at a time as it unfolds.
Breathe. Trust. Relax. Much like a real butterfly. Share and replenish. Repeat. I need to do better at replenishing – which now makes sense of the trend in social memes that have caught my attention lately.
One of the issues that I had to sit with in the goo was that of being caught, captured, constrained as a butterfly. How would I handle that differently? I thought of various actions that seemed insufficient to the task of being overpowered as a fragile butterfly when my mind fixed upon the image of the burning Phoenix. And suddenly I knew how I would protect myself as an exposed butterfly: I would tap in to my fire as a Phoenix forcing the hand that held me to let go. And all that will be left in their hand is ashes.
I am not powerless, even as a fluttering butterfly. May I emerge from this time in the cocoon as beautiful, brilliant, and brave.
If you follow my Facebook page, you will already know that I’ve had a “rough go” of it for the last little while. After making some tweaks and allowing myself to rest, I think I’ve turned a corner. I’m on the mend. To provide some background, the month of January was bitterly cold and slow with clients (only 4). So, I decided to take the hint from the Universe and start writing my book – and working on my trust/anxiety issues with daily reassurances that the Universe is limitless and has my back, my needs are provided for.
I started writing my book 10 years ago, but didn’t get farther than an opening paragraph. Since then, I’ve been collecting thoughts and ideas, making notes, reading memoirs, and getting a general feel for it. This past January, it felt like the Universe was telling me: okay, enough research, time to start writing. I also felt brave enough to open my old journals and revisit my past as I perceived it at the time. I knew I could finally embrace that younger version of myself with compassion instead of keeping her at arm’s length with a sense of shame.
It became a tandem exercise: writing what I could remember of my childhood and adolescence while reading my initial forays into journalling in my early twenties. And then processing what I was reading in my current journal! At some point, I decided to transcribe my old journals into the computer for easier access should something be pertinent for my book. What I didn’t realize, but my body did, was the drain this processing and writing had upon my emotional, mental, and physical reserves.
I first noticed the setback at the end of January, but couldn’t explain it as I hadn’t done anything physically exhausting to explain a typical Chronic Fatigue Syndrome ‘crash’ – which takes about a week to recover. Instead, my symptoms and level of functioning continued to decrease to the point that I spent more time in bed or on the couch than I did actively doing anything, including sedentary computer work. I simply did not have the brain capacity to keep words and concepts together (otherwise known as brain fog).
I would have to check my journal to determine the exact timing of the realization that the regression of symptoms (it was more than a crash) was rooted in revisiting my childhood and adolescent trauma. While my brain and psyche may have processed quite a bit of my trauma, evidently my body hasn’t released all of it yet. Hence why generational trauma is a legit concept. Trauma is not only passed down through the generations via learned behaviours, it is also stored in us on an inexplicable cellular level.
The histories of our ancestors are as much a part of our lives and our stories as it was their own. While they experienced it firsthand, we are storing it and re-experiencing it on a different level – genetically or otherwise. And our descendants carry on the stories while creating their own as well. In that case, I am grateful the buck stops with me. I have no living children nor nieces nor nephews. However, my cousins do. And I wonder how much of our shared histories are stored in their biological systems. Stories they are unaware of.
I am a bit of a genealogical junkie (whether it’s a person or a place). I love watching shows that explore genealogical clues. I have done some exploring of my own and discovered crazy stories hidden in the details that get recorded. One has to sit with the data a bit to discern the trail of bread crumbs; but the details are telling. I suspect I could write a book that is just a collection of genealogical anecdotes. My latest passion has been exploring my namesakes up my family tree. The very first one is a Barbara born in 1753 in Prussia; and she has quite the story that I hope to share in my book someday! Life wasn’t simple at any time in history. There is no such thing as the ‘good ole days.’
Not only do I have my own experience living as Barbara, but these former Barbaras are also written into my genetic code. So far, the ones I’ve researched a bit haven’t had easy lives. Some of my generational trauma has been passed down through cultural conditioning, some of it from shared experiences as women in patriarchal systems. Can I live up to the strength and courage these namesakes exhibited? They all made tough decisions to make the most of their situations.
In that sense, I have too. I wonder what they would make of my choices? From the data, I have a sense that that very first Barbara would not only understand my choices, but celebrate them. Some of the more ‘recent’ ones would have a hard time with my decision to divorce my husband or my limitations with a chronic illness (productivity being the Mennonite raison d’être). But different times call for different actions. Their stories are remarkable for what isn’t said as much as for what is known.
I, in fact, didn’t know I had namesakes until 2016. See previous blog. That is also part of the generational trauma stored in my body. To explore my story is to resurrect theirs. They will not be forgotten. Wow. That hit me on a visceral level. For my next thought was: unlike my mother. My story is also my mother’s story and all the women before us on that family tree. For my book, I will be limiting it to the accessible Barbaras on my tree.
How to end this blog? I began simply reflecting on the past couple months and finally having the wherewithal to write a blog entry. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t write anything this year. I went from giving a ‘heads up’ that I have been unwell to generational trauma and ancestral stories. Not what I was expecting. So, as I leave this blog to either transcribe my old journal entries or research namesakes, I encourage you to embrace all the stories held within your physical body: the past versions of yourself as well as all the ancestors that have contributed genetically and experientially to your story, your being. Celebrate you today!
