After Kate cracked me open like an egg during our fourth session, she started helping me put the Humpty Dumpty pieces back together again during our fifth session.

We often have to demolish what was in our life before we can rebuild on firm foundations.

Step One is to figure out who we are beneath our masks and facades.

Kate suggested I use old photographs and magazine clippings to create a triptych collage.  A triptych is a piece of art in three panels which hang side-by-side.  Each panel of my triptych would represent one of these themes:

• The childhood I thought I had ~ the fantasy ~ the illusion
• The childhood I actually experienced ~ the reality
• My life now ~ who can I become?  Who is the phoenix in all those ashes?

Childhood, of course, isn’t just about our years before we reach the age of majority.  Some children are compelled to prematurely adapt adult behavior due to family dysfunctions.  And, many adults retain child-like qualities throughout their lives.  In some cases, this is expressed as playful delight.  At other times, it emerges as wounds which never quite healed.  And, we all know Peter Pan-type people who simply don’t want to grow up.

The goal of my therapy is to bring me to a place where I feel like the above graphic on a daily basis.

Mt. St. Helens in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State blew up the same day as my marriage:  May 18, 1980.  My father passed away on Bastille Day, 2005.  Bastille Day commemorates the storming of a French prison to liberate political prisoners.

During my fourth therapy session, Kate drew a volcano on her white board to depict my emotions.  On top of the volcano, she drew the steel dome which I delude myself into thinking will contain the pain.  The heat of all those emotions, however, is melting the dome.  When iron gets hot enough, it melts into liquid steel.

Kate pushed my “not good enough” buttons.  I didn’t explode.  I shut down.  Completely.

But, nightmares kept me from sleeping.  The dreams were filled with unexpressed ~ unexperienced ~ supressed rage and grief bursting out in hot plumes of steam.  It took me back to the rage and pain I felt the night after a particularly distressing experience of sexual harassment.  I desperately wanted and needed a job.  I had been interviewed by a man with substantially fewer qualifications and credentials, but I knew he wouldn’t hire me because I had refused to allow him to play tongue hockey during the interview.

It was the only time in my life that I became hysterical.  I had amazing credentials, but the only thing that mattered was whether I was wet and willing.  And, this wasn’t the only time an interviewer had made disgustingly inappropriate sexual advances.  It wasn’t the first job I’d been denied because I said “no.”

We didn’t talk about the sexual harassment that was prevalent in corporate America in the early 1980s.  We didn’t dare.  Women were getting raped at work every day by their bosses and pretending it was consensual sex.  Sure.  We could refuse.  And, end our careers.

I couldn’t buy a date on Saturday nights, but men in my professional life couldn’t and wouldn’t keep their hands off me.

In some respects, this was because I never learned how to bond ~ how to share intimacy in a healthy way.  This experience was violated by incest.  In other respects, it was a silent rebellion by men accustomed to a life of entitlement who wanted women to pay the ultimate price for daring to have professional career aspirations.

“Grandpa, will I grow up to be a good man or a bad man?”

“Well, son, that depends on which dog you feed.”

This is the story that began my third therapy session with Kate.  I was as confused as the little boy.

Kate explained that if we feed the wild dog within us, it will grow to be big and strong.  If however, we feed the puppy within, it will grow to be big and strong.  It is our choice.

Yet, there are times when we need to bring out our inner-wolf.  There are times we need to be as gentle as a puppy.  The secret, Kate explained, is to try to live as much as possible on the middle, moderate road.  This squared with my professional training which indicates “both” is typically the best choice ~ the space between “either” and “or.”

In essence, this is a lesson of the light and shadow aspects of all our personalities.  It is also about choices.  Will we become victims of circumstances?  Or, will we grow stronger in our ability to survive, thrive, and find joy?

What do we feed?  Do we feed our anger and thirst for revenge?  Do we feed our pain and humiliation?  Or, do we feel happy memories and a strong sense of self?  Do we eat junk or healthy food?  Do we think of ourselves as victims or victorious?

Therapy is very much like excavating an archaeological site.  We gently dig around in the dirt until we unearth buried treasure.   As we continue with our healing process, we naturally jettison the junk:  the unhealthy aspects of our personalities and lives.  We take out the trash.

After we take out the trash, we need to fill up the empty spaces.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  So, we need to replace the junk. . .to showcase the treasures we unearth with our digging. . .we need to replace the negative with something positive and valuable.

Heathy Food as an Antidote to Depression

Of course, with this metaphor, Kate was also gently reminding me that I literally have to feed my body healthy food.  I need to jettison my habit of not eating until 10:00 or 11:00 at night and then stuffing myself with whatever is readily available. . .which tends to be junk food.  It fills my belly, but it doesn’t fuel my body, mind, or soul.

I don’t like to eat.  You’d never know it to look at my obese self.  I have a very bad habit of relying on adrenaline and coffee to power through a day without eating or taking a break.  My employers rewarded my workaholic tendencies.  But, as I age, my body is rebelling.  My adrenal system is shot.  My cardio-vascular system is clogged.  Years of Complex-PTSD episodes are eating a nasty hole in my esophagus which is causing sinus infections and will in time morph into cancer.  And, my junk food diet leads to malnutrition which causes periodic bouts of deep depression.  Who knew?

So, I need to change my bad habits.  My gastroenterologist prescribed medication which makes me physically ill if I don’t timely eat breakfast and dinner.  I’m on a mission to find appealing food that is healthy and simple to prepare.  In the process, I’m discovering that I have substantially more energy on the days after I eat healthy.  This increases my energy to exercise which helps me get a good night’s sleep.

Dr. Henry B. Head told me decades ago that the best antidote to depression is to:

• eat healthy
• exercise
• get a good night’s sleep

He’s right, but the trick is to find a place to jumpstart the cycle when we are profoundly depressed.  I have discovered that I can start with a breakfast of fiber-rich cereal and berries.  In a few days, I’m able to add a dinner of grilled protein and salad.  A few days after that, I’m feeling like taking a walk.  In about a week, I’m sleeping through the night.

Recommended reading and diet:  The South Beach Diet

In the midst of a PTSD episode, we often feel abject powerlessness.  Everyone seems to have control of our destiny but us.  How do we effectively ask for help. . .especially when our life’s pattern is that nobody shows up?

Last week I was at a domestic violence event.  The host remarked about human nature:  people will abdicate their responsibility to render assistance unless they believe we might perish absent their swift intervention.  It sent a chill down my back.

So, what do we do to motivate folks to step up to the plate when our lives are in crisis?

My therapist Kate has an amazingly extensive bag of tricks.  For example, she can glide effortlessly from uber-intellectual concept to tarot cards to make a point.

She suggested I approach folks within the system who are being paid to help me like the Queen of Swords.  Huh?

Look at the card.  You probably didn’t know that tarot cards were devised to keep religious messages alive for illiterate people during various periods of religious persecution.  Each card is all about faith and empowerment.

The Queen of Swords conveys one of four aspects of a fully empowered woman.  She wields a sword with one hand while her other hand beckons.

I still didn’t get it.  So, Kate got down and dirty with hand gestures and a wicked smile on her face:

You swing the sword around in the air to terrify the hell out of them.  At the same time, you tickle their balls like a seductress.  They won’t know what hit them.  A part of them will be terrified of you and the other part will be drawn into your realm.

Quite frankly, I thought she was a bit crazy or nuts.  But, I tried it.  And, it worked like a charm.

Recommended reading:  Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts:  Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World by Regena Thomashauer

My first session with Kate was appropriately on Midsummer’s Eve:  the day of women’s empowerment.

I knew instantly that I was in the right place when she said her role was to serve as my enlightened witness.  An Enlightened Witness is an adult person who acknowledges for a child that abuse is inappropriate behavior and who attempts to shield the child from further abuse or neglect.   The concept was developed by Alice Miller, who has written extensively about child abuse.  She maintains that children who experience child abuse need an “enlightened witness” to serve as our guardian angel.  Enlightened witnesses tell us that what is happening is wrong, and they help us to appreciate our worth.

The therapist I visited shortly after the judge put a gun to my head and threatened that he could kill me “and get away with it” told me that abuse wasn’t love.  Well, duh!  Several sessions later she suggested I learn to reparent myself.  Say, what?

For years, I embarked on a quest to ferret out the definition of healthy love.  I finally found it in an ad:  “respect is love.”  Oh!

But, the notion of reparenting myself remained illusive until I met Kate.  She stated the obvious:  we need to have a viable role model.  Obviously, it wasn’t my birth parents.  Was there anyone in my family tree or circle of family friends?

My paternal grandmother.  Based on family tales, my hunch is that she wasn’t the best mother.  But, she was an awesome grandmother.  My hunch is that this might be true in many families.  Perhaps it takes time and distance to master parenting skills.

Kate sent me home with the assignment to recall valuable life lessons I learned from my grandmother.  And, she advised that when life threw me a curve ball that I assign my adult self the role of being loving grandmother to the terrified child within.  In essence, this is a way we can serve as enlightened witnesses for ourselves if nobody shows up to protect us from abuse.

During my lifetime, my grandmothers, godmother, and aunts failed to protect me by holding my parents accountable or by serving as my enlightened witness.  Yet, these women were sporadically there for me.  I have discovered that I can draw upon those fleeting moments of nurturing for strength when I’m in the valley of despair.

Recommended reading:  In the Meantime:  Finding Yourself and the Love You Want and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up:  40 Days and 40 Nights Towawrd Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth by Iyanla Vanzant

Therapy for Complex PTSD (multiple traumatic events) is more shot-in-the-dark than science.  Mental health professionals don’t have viable treatment protocols for PTSD (one traumatic event), and most are totally clueless about treating Complex PTSD.  Sadly, too many still think, for example, that EMDR is effective.  It isn’t.

Most of us with Complex PTSD are disabled.  We don’t have access to competent mental health professionals, and we can’t pay for the therapy we need.  The silver lining of my most recent PTSD episode is that I have found a wonderful therapist named Kate who seems to know what she’s doing.  She practices hypnosis which I have heard is highly effective.  We aren’t there yet.  I still have major trust issues.

In reading other PTSD posts, I realize that many folks with PTSD might benefit by being allowed to go along on my therapy ride.  We’re all navigating uncharted waters until the Veteran’s Administration’s research comes up with viable treatment protocols that will hopefully trickle down to the general public.  After this post was published, I discovered Right Health’s annotated list of blog posts dealing with Complex-PTSD treatment.  There’s a wealth of information available at their site.

Kate and I didn’t start out at the lighthouse, but we were there last night on the beach for a Healing Ceremony for Puget Sound.  I think that’s a good place for us to start this journey together.  In my next “Kate’s Couch“ post, I’ll share what I learned from our first therapy session.

Healing ceremonies are a Native American tradition.  While I didn’t understand everything that happened yesterday, it was totally cool.  I’ll explain it as best I can and apologize in advance to those of you who are well-versed in these traditions.

We gathered at the beach a few hours before sunset.  I think you could probably do this anywhere in Nature that speaks to your soul.  You could do it by yourself or with a group.  You might feel a bit awkward at first, but the folks at the beach seemed to be quite envious of our experience and curious about what we were doing.

Fortunately for me, Kate organized the event.  She brought sea shells, empty cups, songs to chant, meditations, drums, firewood, and food.  The healing ceremony was for the ocean and creatures within it.  But, I think the ceremony is a great place for us to start our own healing too.  So, I’m going to digress a bit from what Kate did and add some of my own New Year’s traditions.

First, find a place in Nature that speaks to your soul.  It may be a beach or a nature trail in a park.  It could be a mountain top or desert or prairie.  It could be a pond or a waterfall or a stream.  It could be as simple as a tree in your yard or a flower pot on your porch.

Second, decide what needs to be healed.  What painful memories do you need to jettison?  Write each one on a slip of paper.  What are your healing intentions?  Write each one on a slip of paper.

Third, get yourself a small drum.  A traditional Native American drum would be perfect, but an empty oatmeal cannister might do the trick.

Fourth, bring along firewood (if it will be safe to have a fire at your destination) or a small votive candle and an ashtray.

Fifth, write your own meditations and lyrics for chants or research them on the Internet.

Sixth, plan your healing ceremony.  I’ll share with you what we did yesterday to give you a guide.

Kate had us write on small Dixie cups what we wanted to heal in the ocean (whales, fish, kelp, water, etc.).  We placed a rock in the bottom of each cup to keep them from blowing over and filled them with water from Puget Sound.

We gathered in a circle, and she lead us in chants and singing to the air, the earth, the ocean, the sky, etc.  We repeated them facing north, east, south, and west ~ four times.  The idea is to connect with Nature on a soul-level.

Next, we each took a stick (you could use a slip of paper).  One by one, we stated our healing intentions and added our sticks to the bonfire pile.  In unison, people standing north, east, south, and west lit the bonfire.  We did more chants and meditations.

After the fire was blazing, we started drumming and singing joyfully.  I was stunned at the power I felt on a soul-level.  I felt profoundly connected to Nature, and my intentions were literally drummed into my soul.  The drumming was very healing.  I felt the pain lift from my heart which allowed me to commit to healing.  Kate asked us to make a commitment to the healing for which we agreed to be responsible.

When we finished drumming, we took the Dixie cups and gently tossed the water back into Puget Sound while re-stating our intentions.

My sense is that it would work equally well to burn one-by-one the slips of paper containing your painful memories.  Each New Year’s Eve, I write on slips of paper what I want to jettison from my life and what I want to invite into my life.  At midnight, I burn the slips of paper one-by-one and ask the Universe for help.  It helps me let go.  And, it helps me focus my own intentions for the coming year.

In essence, it sets my priorities for the year and seals my commitment to them.

The ceremony was complete and a very healthy and delicious potluck dinner was served just as the sun started to set.  It was a perfect ending to a lovely weekend.  I woke up this morning ready to meet the challenges of the week.  My day was highly productive, but I didn’t want it to end before I shared my experience with you.

May God bless you and heal you as you navigate your way to a safe harbor.

All photos courtesy of Carole May © 2009.  All rights reserved.  You may purchase Carole’s photographs at WhalesandSails.com.

I’m not going to kid you, folks, complex PTSD is no fun.  It typically takes me a month to recover from a bad episode.  

What is PTSD?  Post-traumatic stress disorder was called “shell shocked” after World War I and “battle fatigue” after World War II.  After the Vietnam War, it was further sanitized to “post traumatic stress disorder.”  Complex PTSD  (C-PTSD) is diagnosed after a person has experienced multiple life-threatening traumas.   

Approximately 160 million people have PTSD.  Some have been involved in an accident.  Some have experienced rape, incest, child abuse, domestic violence, sexual harassment, violent crimes, etc.  People with PTSD tend to go to extreme lengths to avoid similar experiences in the future.  

Unfortunately, the medical response to PTSD is more trial-and-error than exact science.  Hopefully, the research being done for returning veterans will prove fruitful for the rest of us.  Many people with PTSD benefit from having service animals like my muse Bitzie.  And, I stridently believe Artist’s Dates are especially crucial (see 3/04/09 post) to our healing and recovery.  

Good nutrition, vigorous exercise, and a good night’s sleep will help prevent a PTSD episode from deteriorating into suicidal depression.  

When I have a severe episode, I go into what I call Sound of Music mode:  I try to think of my favorite things and happy memories as an antidote.  

I give myself time out.  It has taken me a very long time to accept that I am disabled by C-PTSD.  I didn’t want to acknowledge that my normally brilliant self can barely function when I’m having a bad episode.  I have had to learn that I need to take special care of myself in order for the impact of the episode to diminish and for the healing and recovery to begin.  

My favorite things are my flowers which I can see as I work on this site:  

My squirrel and stellar jay visitors:  

Listening to music.  

My friend Carole May manages Grammy nominated pianist David Lanz’s web site.  He participates in the annual Ten Grands concert in Seattle and Portland, OR.   For someone who loves piano music as much as I do, the concert is a dramatically awesome experience ~ especially when all ten pianists play together.  The stage is set as beautifully as the music is played.  This copyrighted photo of this year’s concert in Seattle is courtesy of John Carnathan.  

©2009 John Carnathan

George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is my most favorite symphony.   My lifelong dream has been to hear the piece played in a symphony hall.  I’ve heard it frequently played outdoors at Grant Park in Chicago and at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, IL.  But, I very much wanted to capture the experience akin to watching George Gershwin play it in a movie I saw a long time ago.   

In the midst of this PTSD episode, I was blessed to have front row tickets with my dear friends Elena and Yury to hear Kevin Cole playing it with Marvin Hamlisch (be still my heart) conducting.  Music critics and the Gershwin family believe Kevin Cole plays Gershwin like the composer himself.  I doubt Gershwin had as much fun or enjoyed it as much.  I was further blessed to get this post-concert photo with Kevin Cole.  It’s an afternoon I’ll never forget.