The Origins of Fear and the Memory of Trauma

 

In exploring some of my unprocessed trauma from the various health problems and close calls in family, I've discovered some interesting things.

I have discovered that I remember Dad coming into my room to tell me the OPP had called and Mom had been in an accident. I remember the entryway into the Almonte Emergency. I remember seeing Mom with all the fresh traumatic injury, bruising, broken bones, blood, and bones sticking out where one should never see them. I remember the team of docs all up and over my Mom trying to get the bleeding from her nose stopped to prevent exanguination while keeping her breathing.

What I don't recall is the drive in to Ottawa following Dad in the ambulance that night. I don't recall the hours waiting while she underwent emergency surgery or the conversation with the surgeon. That just seems not to be there or isn't accessible.

I remember taking care of Dad's leg for four months while Mom was in the hospital. I remember dealing with the dressings for the gory leg 3-4 times a day. I remember the pain that went on and on and nothing touched, the pointless trips into Emergency in Perth and the trips that didn't happen because of despair and the agony, and I remember being asked several times to get a gun for Dad so he could end the misery. And looking back, I remember never being able to cry or breakdown because he needed me, but being so heartsick and wounded by how much pain he was in and how helpless I was to do anything much for him.

I remember how the infections and the pain would trigger his heart and everytime he had a bad bout of chest pain, you didn't know if you needed to take him to the hospital or it would just end right then and there. I remember the dread and not being able to allow myself to breakdown from the horror of it because I was needed. I remember the helpless, hopeless feeling and the fear of losing him, of Mom losing him and then probably going herself, and of me being alone.

Even writing this few paragraphs, trying to be strictly factual, I can feel the tears lurking at the back of my eyes, the iron fist squeezing my heart, the tightness in my chest, the shallowed breathing, the nausea, and the churning in my stomach. It's not easy to even briefly revisit or touch upon, let alone to actually open up and process.

The fear of being not able to cope in a big, cold, lonely world is with all of us to some extent. For my part, I never had any siblings. My Mom had to have dual mastectomies when I was maybe in grade 3 or 4 and she had about a 10% chance of making it outside of six months. I remember having to be strong about this, but I believe I was in shock and that shock simply masked a great dread and fear. I never had a role modelling of how to experience and process the fear, the sense of loss, the deep grief, and the fact I'm probably non-neurotypical and process emotions more deeply as a Highly Sensitive Person (neurologically, I'm not claiming any special gift of emotional sensitivity for the most part) meant I really needed that sort of guidance more than most.

Then, as a teenager, social situations were so uncomfortable (as in the sort with girls) and I was a four-eyed, uncoordinated chubby kid with acne, sweaty and stinky to boot. So I just sort of retreated into books and science and fiction and other sorts of things. I've never went to a dance with a girl or woman. I've never went to a prom or dance with a female with whom I've been in a serious relationship. Sometime at University I realized I had an interest in the fairer sex, but realized how retarded my development in the mechanics of pursuing this was. I also realized I was busy failing out of my chosen life-path, so I really wasn't in any position to offer anything good to anyone else. So again, I shrunk back. So I was alone in one very significant sense through some of the most traumatic parts of my academic career.

As an adult, I dated. But my passage through the work world has been a bit bumpy; I work hard and do good quality work, but I've let myself work too hard and burn out. I've failed to push back on excessive overtime demands and I've sacrificed myself for an illusionary "Team" as portrayed by HR staff. So even here, I wasn't in the best place to be starting successful relationships. Some were fairly lengthy, but that just made the trauma at the end worse. In a bunch of cases, it was someone picking another co-worker over me after a time (good for the self-esteem) and in the last and most heavily emotionally invested case, it was someone picking no-one over me (self-esteem Hiroshima).

During these times, my folks were going through their health crises too. And I was left alone at nights, very lonely and miserable, with plenty of time to do nothing but think about the prospects of having to face the next grinding day and fearing I would not have the energy because I was pushing myself too hard because everyone seemed to need that from me. I also had to face that I was growing old alone and that people were choosing loneliness over me. That fed my already existing fears of ending up alone and desolate.

I can't say exactly what the fear has cost me directly. The fears, the trauma, some of the behaviours stemming from this, and the enervation of energy as a result of all of this have definitely cost me some success at work (the success I have had has been perversely limited by how hard I've pushed myself getting there), in relationships (bringing fears and an emotionally unsettled mindset to a relationship tends to unfairly burden a new one) of all sorts, and has cost me money and health because of depression and just not having enough energy left to cope with necessary things (bureaucracy particularly sucks the life out of me).

I've learned that once you are in a fragile state, everything takes far more energy to initiate. Fears make the prospect of even opening a tax folder or calling RevCan for some critical piece of paperwork a huge effort because first you have to overcome the nausea and the panic. And then when you do reach out for help, like to an accountant, and they can't or don't bother to understand your difficulty, you've expended so much energy even to get that far and it collapses, you tend to not be able to face that file again for a bunch more time because you just can't muster the courage/energy/whatever. So things languish and the situation worsens and you don't respond to things and so it goes in a spiral and the people who are supposed to be helping you get mad too because you aren't able to meet the same expectations as everyone else.

I have simple taxes, yet I struggle to get them done. I don't understand them and my accountants have been little help; They may be good accountants but in terms of managing to meet my needs (email communication or phone calls, no snailmail, having them do mostly everything including talking to RevCan for paperwork, etc...), they have been a disaster. But giving them the boot and finding a new one... I've tried several times by asking others for some recommendations, and that too has failed. And thus, things languish. It has never been about the money. It's about the fear and ignorance and the massive effort it takes just to reopen this file each time.

I have many loving friends, but at night, I'm still alone. The touch of another human being, even just to hold hands or for a hug, makes a huge difference. We all have this sort of need, but due to the fears of abandonment and being alone and due to the years of being so awfully alone, this is a huge thing for me. It makes living alone a real trial. However, that said, being in that state makes any relationship a trial since other people can't be accountable for meeting your emotional needs; That sets up an unfair pressure on them but also it establishes a dependence. So that's something that needs a lot of work, but doing that work when fighting that deep aloneness daily is slow, hard work.

I can and do perform excellent work. But I need to not be exhausted, not be afraid, not be stressed out to the point where a little work stress leaves me wiped out or willing to do anything the employer wants just to avoid uncomfortable situations. The fear of being alone from watching parents fight and from the near-loss experiences and the anxieties about that constant risk has bred a critical aversion to fights, even necessary ones, and I've allowed myself to be used as a doormat and to be exploited at work. The employers may have had some responsibility, but I allowed it to happen because the anxiety of the conflict to stand up for myself was too great because of that awful trauma and fear lurking inside.

Now, this all sounds really awful. I know that. In one way, if you look at the years gone by, the places I stumbled or wasn't able to succeed, the ways I beat myself up for every failure far more extensively than any external critic could, etc. then you might say it is pretty awful. But what was awful was being in the states of fear, stress, loneliness, heartbreak, and exploitation without having any idea why or any idea that it could be fixed to allow life to continue in a whole-hearted fashion that was healthy and sustainable and to know that there are ways to defuse the fears.

That knowledge makes a huge difference. It's the difference between hope and hopelessness. It's the difference between judging yourself as a not worthwhile person and a failure and understanding that you went through awful times that scarred and damaged you and the face-plants you did along the way were inevitable consequences of that damage, rather than a judgment on your worth as a human being. That difference is the difference between being in the deepest, coldest, loneliest blackness and being in a room to which you know there is a door from which you can see fragments of light and hear happy sounds and which you know you can walk towards, feeling better as you go.

I have two friends in a life-long fight with Post-Traumatic Stress. Their stories make mine seem positively trivial. I would not have survived what they have endured and certainly would not be doing as well as either of them are today. They both go through periods of doubting themselves, of two steps forward/one and a half back, and of feeling poorly about themselves and being unkind to themselves. This is some of the legacy of the sorts of things in their past that did them harm. They sometimes can't see that every day they are on their feet and functioning, even a little bit, is a victory of large importance. They sometimes can't feel that they are as incredible as they are. But to me, each day I struggle with my stuff, I look to their example.

I don't look to that example because they don't have bad days. I don't look to that example because their every decision is some fantastic ideal of success or progress (unrealistic as such a thing would be). I look to their example because they both face the world with kindness, compassion, and with the intention to try to heal and to get back on the best footing they can without giving in to anger and without giving up. Bad days go with their sort of experience, but the miracle is the days they manage that are good and the way they keep moving ahead, growing, learning, and working to be whole again.

That's where I find my inspiration.

I will have bad days, I will not be the person old patterns still try to convince me I should be (an unrealistic one, people-pleasing, trying to meet all external needs and expectations, ignoring my own needs and limits), and I will have times the fears make me sick to my stomach. I will have times I feel really lousy about what a lousy friend I've become or lousy child of aging parents. All this is true, but I can still move forward despite the failures, I can still heal, I can still try to build a better life inside me and outside me and with the people who care enough to understand and come along. That's a powerful source of strength.

A friend once said to me, and I hold it to be very important:

Those that Mind don't Matter, those that Matter don't Mind.

Confronting Hobson's Choice

On January 7th, my father was admitted at 0600 to the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Before noon, the surgeons had removed the right leg below the knee and stitched him up. This was done under and epidural because of his assessed high risk under a general (stroke risk, poor heart, bad lung, infection, etc.). The surgery went, according to the vascular surgeon, well. Nonetheless, Robert had one less foot and lower leg by mid-day.

This truly was a Hobson's Choice - antibiotics being ineffective, infection growing, with the possibility of necrosis not that remote, versus a surgical risk, the challenges of learning to walk with a prosthetic, the risk of stroke, and the challenges of healing at 78. Not the sort of choice anyone has to make.

I found myself unable to make a recommendation as both choices seemed perilous and uncertain. My father faced the choice with a certain sans peur sang froid. His calculus was that chronic wracking pain made life not worth living and this offered some remote hope of surcease and some quality of life, however challenging, in the future.

Father is home now and we're into dealing with the day-to-day impacts and trying to get him well and the pain controlled and the house fully adjusted to his needs. That's a big challenge, but I'm hoping we have some luck because he was brave enough to face the surgery and lucky enough to get throgh it unscathed (well, down a lower leg and foot, but that was the plan after all). If we can get his pain moderated, the sutures healed, I think he may well walk again on a prosthesis. He's a tough old bird and so is my Mom who is his support and who enables him to carry on.

He is human enough to have been worn down by the chronic pain, to have fear of this operation and losing his leg, but that was only a few moments and passed. He faced the whole process with an aplomb and courage that I honestly would be hard pressed to match.

At times like these, your mind tends to look for mechanisms to deal with the worry, the stress, the fatigue, and the possibilities. Mine took me down the line of thinking of what I might say at a eulogy for my Father. Grim stuff, but when you can't sleep, sometimes your mind makes up its own course rather than heeding your direction.

I may yet write out that eulogy, both as a preparation and perhaps to let my Father see what I would have said.

My father is no saint; He has flaws and shortcomings and views with which I vehemently disagree in some particulars. Yet, at the same time, he is the man who defined for me the words Integrity, Diligence, and Honour. (In my teens and early twenties, I might have added Intransigence, Provincial Mindset, and Rigidity, but I'm older now and think that assessment at least a significant exaggeration).

My mother has lives her values: Honour, Professionalism, Personal Responsibility, and Compassion. From her, I learned to care about people and to be willing to work hard and do a creditable job of whatever task I attempt. I learned and integrated the credo of personal responsibility. And I learned about Honour over Opportunity and Doing The Right Thing.

But from my Father, I learned about Integrity and Honour in an even deeper sense. By example, he demonstrated that the corruption prevalent in parts of our society, although too large to defeat, can be opposed. His actions showed that because others abuse a trust, even a public trust, to their own benefit, that does not justify you doing the same.

Personal Gain is nowhere near as important as personal ethics and the value of your Word and your Commitment. I often wonder how he resisted the opportunities to become corrupt and profit when it was so easy and systemic, but that is part of the core of his personality.

He sets a high bar of expectation from those with whom he deals (and that included me, to be honest). He expects them to do what they say and follow the terms of an agreement. But he will not cheat someone, even if it were an option and they were naive. His sense of Fairness and Rightness extend to dealing equitably with others as long as they too will do the same.

I've loved my Father and Mother for all of my life; Love is the natural state of a child for the parents. As I have aged, I have cultivated a more balanced, warts-and-all perspective on both of them as people. In doing so, I have come to greatly respect each of them for the things they have done, the stands they have taken, and for the way they have carried themselves in situations where it would have been far easier to do the wrong sort of thing, the easy and possibly profitable thing. But they did not.

And thus, in addition to my Love, they have earned my lasting Respect. And above and beyond that, they have become my Friends. I am very fortunate to have both around and to benefit from their advice (even Mother's reminders 'it's cold outside, better put on some mitts!' and the like). I'm also incredibly fortunate to have had two such exemplary role models to measure my own character against.

I may have inherited Stubborn, Intransigent, Independence from both sides of the family, along with the "Gift of the Gab". But along with that, I inherited a firm sense of Integrity, Duty, Responsibility, and Compassion.

I'm no angel either, as my parents before me, but whatever I am, I owe to them. And I'm very, very glad to still have both, in whatever decrepit form, around to share their wisdom with me.

My cup runneth over with blessings and I try hard to remind myself of this while tossed too fro on the Sea of Troubles. Most people will never have such good fortune at any point in their lives.

Have a good weekend. Hug the people who matter to you - never take them for granted. our spans are finite and our duration unpreditable.

Mother's Day at the Homestead

A late arrival caused by some shopping challenges encouraged a late start to dinner. After 2 solid hours of preparation an early cooking stages, the meal went into the 'simmer for two hours' phase.

The final meal was:

• Garlic and Butter Mashed Potatos
• Steamed Asparagus
• Tomb's 3B Guiness Brazed Beef (3B = Beer, Beef, Bacon!) : Included bacon, carrots, celery, onions, bay leaves, thyme, Guiness (in my case had to add a little gooseberry ale since I was about half a can short on the Guiness), a splash of port, a wee bit of salt, pepper, montreal steak spice, flour and canola oil (for searing the beef), fresh minced garlic, beef stock, and (in this case) a cubed round roast of beef - with a four stage cooking process.
• Desert was a Panna Cotta with a Blueberry and Peach Compote : Didn't make this one - President's Choice, comes in individual portions you have to unthaw and attempt to decant without disaster - and it is the first cousin of a Creme Brulee since Panna Cotta is cooked cream.

All in all, an excellent meal.

While the meal was simmering, I walked Mom through a bit more of the 'Computers 101' course - she has some awful trouble keeping the cursor from moving away from her text insertion point - I think it may be touch pad related. I may have to disable the touch pad and go for an external mouse or at least disable the tap-to-click aspect of the trackpad. Getting a more visible cursor set may also be necessary.

She tried to send out her first email and did so, albeit with some pretty painful stages. Think yourself privileged, Douglas! I know she plans to try to respond to Alan, Toni, Kevin, James, etc. as she is able (that may yet be a while). A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, but it sure takes a while to come to an end. :0)

Anyway, a good time visiting the parents. A good day. Mom didn't have to cook and Dad could eat with his dodgy teeth. So a general win, although I made no progress on my table construction project this day (much like many other visits recently).

On the side of concern, Dad is going in for Dental Surgery Tuesday. I'd be lying if I didn't say my anxiety level is uncomfortably high. I just don't seem to be able to batten down the uptight feeling I have about this and it is rather unpleasant. It needs done and the GP has given her go ahead, but he's the only Dad I've got and I want him around for a long time more. Of course, I want him not to be suffering and he needs to get some teeth fixed.

So if you are the sort to pray, say a few for my Dad. If you aren't the sort to pray, at least think about it being a positive outcome. I'm not sure we can impact the universe in such ways, but it is always wise to hedge your bets....