When your brain won't brain like a good brain should
Hey folks,
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve been dealing with burnout, anxiety, autoimmune bullshit, and a whole lot of resurgent c-PTSD for the past few years. And menopause, and cancer treatment. And you know *waves hands at the dumpsterfire of the world*,
Wow, that’s a lot when you type it all down.
Anyway, something amazing has happened in the last few months—some of it I think mediated by figuring out some of my dietary inflammation triggers and giving up a few of my favorite foods entirely (SOB) and some of it probably a natural result of getting further away from cancer treatment and some of it is probably the menopause train moving along the track and some of it is the PTSD treatment and some of it is, frankly, getting farther away from the worst of the pandemic and signs that global fascism might be starting to crest? though it really ain’t over ‘til it’s over and some of it is probably the various tactics I’ve been using to beat the menopausal insomnia and get more sleep and some supplements I’ve been trying—but I feel like my brain is back.
I still have all the memory holes and difficulty creating and maintaining coherent narratives of my life that people with c-PTSD are prone to, but I can hold a whole novel in my head again and feel how it’s supposed to go. Which is amazing, because since 2015 I have been writing on technical skill and craft and endless, endless revision. And I miss the ease I used to feel of being able to jam, to feel how the story was meant to flow.
But the inside of my head feels cleaner and sharper than it has in ages. I want to do things I was dragging myself to for years with the knowledge that once I got there I would enjoy it, but getting there and finding any focus was a tremendous struggle. I want to ride, I want to write, I want to play guitar.
It’s good. It feels like coming up a hill out of a fog and being able to see the whole valley ahead.
The only way out is through.
I’m reading Stephanie Foo’s memoir of her own c-PTSD diagnosis and treatment, WHAT MY BONES KNOW, and as I mentioned on twitter it is both triggery and resonant. I should probably stop reading it before bed, as it’s not helping me fall asleep, but I’m also very engaged and want to read it, and that’s my usual reading time.
So much of what she describes—the ingrained self-loathing, the self-abnegation, the particular kind of dissociation that keeps you a fragile layer of ice away from the trauma so you can still function—is so familiar to me. As is that feeling of anger and grief about who you could have been, and the fear of the irrevocable damage done.
She mentions that her ACE score is a six and talks about the health and emotional consequences of that—that statistically a childhood like hers or mine takes twenty years off one’s life expectancy, lowering it to around sixty. (My ACE score is an eight, so… yeah, I feel that fear. Especially as somebody who is fifty-one and has already undergone cancer treatment. But all you can do is what you can do.)
Her description of EMDR is making me curious about trying it—it’s a treatment modality I haven’t attempted, because the general information I had was that it wasn’t particularly effective for complex PTSD. But she seems to have gotten quite a bit of benefit from it, and I mean, what the hell. So I’m going to talk to my therapist about that.
And maybe look into the yin yoga thing she talks about as well. (I’ve been practicing yoga since I was about 16, when I was looking for anything that made the room stop spinning for a minute, and I have a meditation practice that is sometimes more honored in the breach than the observance, but I haven’t tried the modality she talks about—guided yin yoga and restorative yoga.)
I might someday get into a psychedelic treatment program, if I can find one locally. I don’t know if there’s actual peace out there anywhere… but every incremental bit of healing makes me a better friend and a better spouse and a better parent to myself. It’s hard to be good to anybody else when you don’t feel like you deserve to exist. It’s hard to acknowledge your own power to harm or help others, your own value to those who love you, when you feel you have neither value nor power in this world.
I’m almost a year out from my first stellate ganglion block, and I’m thinking I should schedule the recommended booster soon. It’s made a difference: I didn’t get the swift, immediate relief that some people report, but over the course of the past ten months my symptoms have definitely eased and it’s been better inside my head. I can tell, oddly enough, when I’m healing because I get more clear and painful memories of terrible things that happened, rather than it all being down there buried under a layer of emotional Novocain and dissociation. The memories are clearer, but the reactivity is lower.
And the emotional flashbacks are fewer—that plunge into helpless fear or rage or self-loathing caused by some kind of trigger that calls up all the behaviors and feelings of a child in crisis with nowhere to turn.
Manually adjusting my brain chemistry, and all the other self-care, hasn’t hurt either. One thing that works well for me is a sport that’s physically and mentally difficult enough that it requires my total focus. Horseback riding provides that. Rock climbing used to, before my tendons started misbehaving so badly. I’d love to get back into that if I can manage my PsA—which reminds me, I need to chase that new rheumatologist some more. (Ah, trying to get a specialist appointment in the modern age.)
Anyway, there’s a small point to this besides self-indulgence… which is to say, if you, in turn are struggling with mental health, with fatigue, with trauma, with a brain that just isn’t doing what it ought to do… there are steps you can take and resources to help you heal. They probably seem exhausting and unattainable, but even one tiny step makes it easier to take the next.
You are not alone.
Best,
Bear