Inner Worlds

I was listening to NPR while I was running errands in Subie this week.  The program was about war veterans and the effects of PTSD.  I didn't hear much but what I did hear was quite profound.  The presenter was explaining how people who suffer from PTSD differ from those who do not.  He first talked about how people without PTSD generally function saying that their emotional experiences are for the most part linear, that they move from one moment to next being present, committing each to memory as they go.   They then move on to repeat the process over and over again.  Next he explained how people with PTSD function, saying that instead of being linear, their emotional journey is actually circular.  He want on to say that they do attempt to experience things in the present, much like the other group, but that instead of staying present they often get triggered sending them back in time to their trauma only to loop back again to the present.  My way of understanding it is it's very much like being a passenger on a toy train set, one that continually goes round and round the track stopping only when the electricity is cut.
I'm a survivor of acute trauma, much of which I have blogged about in the past; but I have never been able to understand my emotional experiences in such a simplistic and yet very profound way.  Leave it to me to use the analogy of a child's train set to explain my inner life.  In a very real way though it's true.  In recovery I've been able to understand that it's the traumatized child in me who is in control of the train when I ride the circular track.  It's the traumatized child in me who controls the lever, deciding when to turn on and turn off the electricity of my PTSD.  It's also the traumatized child who both controls the train and rides it simultaneously.
 I have more than 11 years of recovery around my trauma and a few more years around my stuff generally; yet hearing this presenter has effected me in ways I am still coming to terms with.  I know intimately that my trauma loves to tell me that I am stuck on the train forever, that I'll never be able to get off, and that I am powerless to effect any change.  Then just as intimately my recovery self speaks, telling me that I can step off the train, that I can do it anytime I want, and that I have, in fact, gotten of the train many many times.  I have come to realize that I actually have spent more time off the train than on in the last couple of years or so.
I was called for jury duty recently, always a trigger for me.  It was off duty police and sheriff deputy's as well as family members who were responsible for the most brutal of my experiences.  So for me to be near a cop is problematic, being in a court room, in the Hall of Justice, an ironic name to be sure, is very difficult indeed.  Thankfully, the last few times I have been called it has been for the Superior Court and not the Criminal one.  I received the letter well in advance of when I was to serve and I was unsettled leading up the sunday in which I had to check in.  That child in me so wanted me to board that train and at times I had one foot on and one foot off; but I didn't get on.  I made a conscious choice not to.  Instead I chose to make phone calls to some very dear friends, talk about my emotions, and connected to my spiritual practice, all because I knew what that child in me wanted; however, I also I knew what I needed to do instead.  I had two choices,  indulge the insanity of my trauma or back away from the train.  I chose the later.  It's not to say it was easy, it wasn't.  In fact I can say with all honesty that it rarely is.   This process of knowing how to step back has come at a great price.  I've had to work very hard just to see the train, the tracks, and the station.   I've had to purposely get on that train in order to do the grunt work of my recovery, the work of getting to know every inch of that journey, very rail, very tie, and every turn in the path.  I've needed to feel every contour of the hard wooden benches, worn and pitted from decades of use, look through every grimy window of my youthful experiences, smell all of the sooty smoky residue of my trauma, all in order to knew when to step back, when to live more in the present.  I'm profoundly grateful and humbled at this knowledge and awareness but I also know that my journey in recovery is not over, nor will it be in my lifetime.  This is an ongoing process, a process of self discovery, healing, and ultimately self care.  However, it is also about having boat loads of compassion and empathy for that child in me who has an ongoing love/hate need to play with trains.