The King Steps Down

Happy Halloween to you! A pretentious statement maybe, but I am the king of self-shaming. Many will claim this royal title, and indeed this is one very long throne. We gain this crown through the words and actions of parents, teachers, and other authorities who enter our lives for a season or longer. These authorities teach us to shame ourselves through the simple fact that not all of us can be first in every race or situation. Soon, many of us came to that day in our past when we said, "I'm no good" in so many words deep in the heart. Thus began the long road to crowning ourselves kings of self-shaming.

The documentary on the Navy Sea, Air and Land team training perhaps says it best with their little motivational barb, 'second place is first loser.' This is one of many absurdities in military training, for even the highly selective Seal teams want to graduate more than one new operator out of each training class. Anyone who graduates to the Seal trident can hardly be called a loser. The difficulty of basic training programs is to get the stupid mistakes out of the way in training. The problems come later when some of us hold on to that first bit of training, the breaking down bit where everyone is shamed for the slightest error or failure. We begin to carry around the voice of the drill instructor or training chief or whatever with us to shame the self for perfectly normal errors nearly everyone makes the first time something is attempted. Some may develop a social anxiety because of this negative perfectionism we learn.

The social anxiety grows from the I'm-no-good thinking to the self-shame of negative perfectionism until finally the person cannot but run from social situations where we are the least bit disadvantaged. Seeking a new job, opening a bank account, a government function, or any other circumstance that turns us into a supplicant or grants us the weaker position from ignorance and lack of experience becomes difficult to overcome. A buddy in Beirut, Mike, often used the saying, you think you're the best thing since sliced bread. What is the opposite saying? I guess we come to the plate thinking that we are the worst thing since powdered eggs. Maybe someone out there likes powdered eggs, but we had them like every day in Beirut and I can't stand that taste to this day. The battle is joined!

This blog entry is a great example. I have doubts about what I have written. Who am I to say what is what about PTSD or anxiety or whatever? That is the negative perfectionism I have referred to. If I can't do it perfectly, then I want to quit. I am in a disadvantaged position because I don't know everything about PTSD and I don't have the services of a professional editor for this writing and I will post it without a week to review and rewrite it. Time to flip it over! Who does know everything about mental illness? If there is one, he or she had better quit goofing off and publish the cure. A blog is a blog because it is personal without benefit of professional editing and time-sapping rewrites. I can write something that will help others who suffer similar problems in social situations. This entry probably won't win any prizes in the perfect essay contest. I could spend a year doing research and rewrites, but people need help now. Even if I can offer nothing more than a sympathetic, informal writing that lets someone out there know that he is not alone in suffering, I need to think well of myself and get it out there on the web.

There is the key, I think, to our rebuilding. We need to stop the self-shaming and begin thinking well of the self, including our performance and ability. No, I won't do everything perfectly, only God is perfect. Flip over the bad thoughts that say you and I are no good, or first loser, and think of the good we have to offer. You survived another day with PTSD, a victory! I went to a new place and bought a newspaper, said hello to the clerk too! A clear victory over the urge to stay home. It is time for the king of self-shaming to abdicate! Record every accomplishment, no matter how small you may think it is. Wait a couple of weeks and look back over those daily accomplishments, and we may be surprised how far we have come. Constant vigilance! as Professor Moody advised Harry Potter and his classmates, we need it too in eliminating those negative, perfectionistic thoughts that cause quitting or not starting. It almost seems sappy, but start looking in the mirror and telling yourself how talented and good you are. Where has that other thinking got us?

Bucky

Getting There IS The Battle

The 30th anniversary of the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut arrives on October 23rd. On my Facebook newsfeed, I noticed that some veterans made reservations, purchased tickets, and completed other preparations necessary to attend the reunion, but then faced the real battle - getting there. I don't mean hitchhiking or seeking an overbooked plane flight, but the battle of the mind we face in making the trip as the anxiety grabs the heart and guts with a nasty twist. As a veteran of Grenada/Lebanon, I can sympathize with that particular agony.

This anxiety is not your run-of-the-mill nervousness most folks feel when going away for a weekend. This is more like the onset of the stomach flu. That time before eruptions have begun, but you know something is very wrong down below. The guts seem to twist around themselves into a Gordian knot, and then they reach up and give the heart a tug, or a push, or something that just feels, well, like you're going to die.

I forgot to count how many times I have got up on a Sunday morning, showered, shaved, breakfasted...you know the drill. Dressed in my church clothes, I sit and wait like a good Marine vet, prepared well ahead of time. Then, the thoughts begin, followed by the feelings down below. Head call, potty break, whatever you want to call it, one after the other. It would just be easier to not go, and often that proves my only option. Immediate relief? No, often the symptoms require hours or an overnighter to burble on back down to a more normal level of tension.

Don't eat the day before, so the guts have nothing to twist on? Tried that; add hunger to the awful feelings churning down below. That combination reminds me of the prep for surgery; not exactly a remedy for calming the nerves and placating the mind. Problem solving helps, and it is an activity the non-sufferers love to engage in, God bless 'em, but listen up now: sometimes we lose the battle of getting there.

Avoidance of situations happens. It is one of the symptoms of the malady. There is no shame here, or at least there shouldn't be any, but sometimes we fight that too. There are times that I even lose the battle of writing about it. Surely that should be a time free of anxiety? No, I suffer less physical symptoms, but the maelstrom of the mind doesn't always shut down so easily. I wish that I could give every PTSD/anxiety/TBI/separation anxiety sufferer, veteran or civilian, a pill that immediately stopped the churning, fearful feeling we face so often. But I don't have one yet.

I once faced some hard words at my workplace after I almost made it to the airport for a work assignment, but then had to turn around and go home when the symptoms overwhelmed me. The loss of money from the plane ticket and other non-refundable deposits they could compute and see on the spreadsheet, and the company was not happy about it. The PTSD problem I don't believe they ever understood. Words they tried and spoke, but over time the PTSD cost me, of that I have no doubt. Does it cost me in getting another job? Sure, the same problems I have getting to church or struggle with in going to a reunion assault me each and every time I think about applications, interviews, and other such jobber things.

Some nut from back in the old country, Nietzsche, if I'm not mistaken, once said: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Well, that psychonut was full of horse manure. That which did not kill us can make us truly miserable the remainder of our earthly lives. Praise God it doesn't happen all the time, and at times we do win the battle of getting there. When the trip comes and one of us gets mugged by the beast on the way and must return home, let us gather to support and not condemn. Those without the PTSD will condemn with looks and ledgers, but let us defend our fellows. And, I'll keep looking for that miracle pill.

God bless and defend you,
Bucky

Is Fearless The Right Answer?

Confusion reigns! I watched a movie yesterday in which an actress plays the role of an actress playing a role before interviewers in order to pad her acting resume. But that wasn't the thing that alarmed me. In the role, the actress claimed to have been a victim of extreme fear until she committed suicide and was revived after five minutes of death to "come back" fearless. One of the interviewers leaps up to call her a liar and strip the mask away. Very dramatic, and I'm glad the writer or director of the film stopped that nonsense before we watched a real horror begin. Imagine the trauma to the world if such a thing was reported to have worked. News cameras and their little talking heads covering thousands of victims of extreme fear lining up to be killed for a few minutes in order to return fearless...not good. Extreme solutions to our problems may sound good in a movie, but let's not go there, please.

Is fearless the answer to our problem? At first glance, to cure a fear or anxiety disorder via taking away all fear fits the bill nicely. However, fear is not always a problem. When we speak of fear as a caution, such as not fearlessly placing a hand on the hot burner of the kitchen range, then we have a fear that we want and need for our survival, or at least the survival of the skin of a hand or two. I once fearlessly placed the end of my finger into a car cigarette lighter. I had watched my mother do it before that, in case you asked. Adults know how to skim a finger over a surface quickly to avoid a burn, kids do not. Of course, the lighter 'lit' the end of my finger, though not enough for me to smoke it. I calmly placed the lighter somewhere on the floor of the car, exited the vehicle in a slightly anxious manner, and made it to the kitchen sink after running over one cat and taking the screen door off its hinges. As I ran cold water over my still sizzling digit, I got chewed out for dropping a hot cigarette lighter on the carpeting in the car; the vacuum of my departure evidently failing to clear the hot little beast from the car entirely.

Another kind of fear is closer to the point. The fear played on in the horror movies I watched yesterday that is, or fear of the uncanny as C.S. Lewis named it. Supernatural fear or fear of the ghost in the next room is what I speak of here. These days, thanks to reality television, some of us run in fear from a report of a ghost, others run to see it. The reason such a thing is uncanny is that a ghost should not be seen at all. A thing that does not exist should have the courtesy to not be visible to us. If the thing reflects light and is seen by the naked eye - clothed eyes being somewhat difficult to see with - then it exists. If the thing is 'seen' by our mind or soul, then why do our eyes (or camera) need to be pointed in its direction? And for that matter, why should it be more visible in less light? Uncanny that. I'm not sure we can cure that sort of fear, but it may bear a likeness to the fear we do want to remove.

The fears that arise from mental illness are phantoms in their own way. Anxiety shows us future visions that never come to pass. PTSD flashbacks show us visions of what was and is no more. Certainly, to be fearless of these sorts of visions is a goal worthy of achieving. A flash of vision back to a combat situation should not be freighted with terror for us, but it is. A view of some circumstance that is unlikely at best and impossible in most of our anxious visions should not cause avoidance of an event that should be a time of pleasure for us, but that too causes extreme fear. The vision of the mind is not real, but is it reality?

The body may rest in bed, but if the mind is walking a trail in Afghanistan, Iraq, Beirut, or Vietnam then reality is what the mind says it is. In the moment of the flashback, and the same with the intense daydream of the anxiety vision, the reality is where the body believes it is and the reactions to the fear are real. Severing the mind to body connection might provoke undesirable consequences, so that probably isn't the solution we seek. (There's your "D'oh!" for the week.) Can we make the vision fearless then? Has anyone found a cure for a nightmare?

As long as the mind drags the body along for the ride, I don't see how we can make it fearless. What we are left with is eliminating the vision, or modifying the reaction. If practice alone provided the answer, then all of us would now be experts in flashback effect modification or anxious vision reaction suppression. Unfortunately, my body continues to react to the phantoms, and fearlessness remains a dream for the movie scripts.

Bucky