Closed Doors

My therapist said, “This is the you that you are without the trauma.” This is the person that I am now. It is a strange feeling. I notice myself reacting calmly to what once upset me.

It’s been twenty-four hours since I heard those words, and I find myself mourning the past, and wondering about the changes that have come about. It is a gift that I want, and yet I find myself asking the question: Would I change it if I could go back in time? That door is closed because I’ve been formed by life events. I’m a stronger soul for it. The trauma has vanished, and though I’ll know of what happened, I won’t feel the pain of it.

If the work around the trauma is deep and well thought out, the result is that it leaves our lives, and in its place a calm and quiet comes into being. I’ve not had this type of peace in my life… ever. The adjustment is mind-blowing and surprising to me.  

As I thought about things last night, after my client sessions were done and the dishes washed, that is when I let myself relax into the newness of what is happening to me. The soldier really left the battlement because I told them to go. The therapist keeps checking in with me, and at first I thought, why is this being done? I do this work. And I didn’t think it all the way through when it came to myself. It was the past talking. I’ve changed. In the beginning I told the therapist that I was presenting myself as a person who needed help, and that I was going to be the client/patient in this situation. I tried to leave the therapist at the door. Maybe I left just a tad too much at the door. I’m glad I did. I’m grateful that I didn’t try to become a therapist in my own therapy sessions. I believe it made all the difference.

The above doesn’t mean that I had not done much of the work before I entered the therapy process to discharge what I shouldn’t be discharging without guidance. You know the saying “Physician, heal thyself,” or the one about a lawyer defending themselves? Well, I’m not a fool, and I know better than to think I can see it all and be aware of everything. And so, I left my therapy hat at the door.

Some people who are receiving ketamine therapy for the treatment of depression say that they can’t remember the depression. They know they deal with depression; it feels as if it was never present. I’m not certain that I’d argue that depression in and of itself is traumatizing. On the other hand, I can argue that psychosis is traumatizing, and that being in a hospital mental ward is traumatizing.

The closed door that separates those on the outside from those struggling to relocate themselves can be traumatizing. When the brain tells us that our reality is off, and we know that the “off” thing is not supposed to be that way, it can get very confusing and scary, and the trauma of the inside ward might not be such a bad place for someone—if debriefing is a part of the after care. I’ve learned this truth from listening to my husband and others. Clearing trauma is the same way: debriefing is needed.

Jon and I had more than one conversation about the trauma associated with a psychotic episode. He shared with me the horrors of what happened to him during the single episode, and his recovery from it. He was never hospitalized. At the end of his life, he wondered if he should check himself into the hospital for a short stay. It didn’t happen.  

This brings up the question of whether it helps to seek hospitalization. Sometimes, the depression is so debilitating that the person needs to be in the hospital, and then process the results of the stay with renewed energy and insight. The risk is that, when the person is discharged, they have the energy to carry out a plan. When you can’t get out of bed, you can’t think well enough to formulate the way forward. That door is only open when energy is available for that type of thinking. A good discharge plan can serve to help someone through this phase. Remember that suicide happens when the resources run out. Two things that lower the possibility of suicide are a feeling of a sense of belonging somewhere, and resources that can help to support the needed issues.

Living without the trauma is new, and so, like someone who is getting good treatment for depression, good post-trauma work should include the adjustment phase of the process.

So why bring all of this up in a post about healing from trauma? Trauma alters lives and minds go to strange places, and while I’m celebrating the strangeness of it all, and moving forward in my life, someone else might not choose to cope in the same way. I can see how someone could become overwhelmed by it all. Now what do I do? I spent years stuffing it all down. I don’t need to do what I once did to cope. I understand how someone might feel a wee bit out of place in their world.

Accepting new things and new ways of being can be challenging for people, especially if you don’t like change in your life.

I sit here with my mind free of what was. I wonder where all this newness is going to take me. I remember the past life, where the trauma came to greet me so often, and I realize that the timing was just right for me to do the work I needed to do. What an open door.