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

Blam, Blam, Blam, Veteran Goes Off

Maybe not one of my better titles, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Another shooting incident, rampage, or mass murder has occurred, depending upon your political views and how you want to color it. A veteran took up a firearm and killed people for no apparent reason at the Washington Navy Yard. A location made at least a little bit famous by the show NCIS. I'm a fan of the Veteran's Administration (VA) medical care, but I don't particularly like their press release. The VA released a circle-the-wagons and hide-the-bureaucrats sort of statement that we, I believe, are fully justified in hating. "According to VA records, he[Alexis] never sought an appointment from a mental health specialist." Uh, does one just get up one morning and realize that mental illness has arrived like the flu?

In speaking with a sister I had not seen in many years, I found out that she has suffered two major bouts of depression. I was curious to know how she was first diagnosed, and found similarities with my own experience. At least from two examples the answer is: No, a person does not just get up one morning knowing that mental illness has arrived like a flu bug. Try calling Human Resources or a boss and using that excuse. "Sorry, I can't come in today. Mental illness is going 'round the family this morning. Two kids have come down with it and I'm pretty sure I have too." On the other hand, we have a fear.

This fear is brought on by some old Hollywood movies, more than a few B or C level movies, and the occasional novel (maybe more than occasional). In this scenario, a man or woman (more women in the C movies) arrive at some grim hospital and are given some sort of mental health examination. In the baser movies, the examinees are typically young and attractive women and the examination involves removal of clothing, apparently to check for some sort of mental illness tattoo in private places. The character is diagnosed with a mental illness and locked up forever in the Devil's Hospital for the Persecution of the Lead Character. Unfortunately, there is an historical basis for this sort of novel plot or movie script. Some hospitals and institutions for those judged insane or mentally ill in the past were true horrors, and thus we have this fear.

How do we fix the conflict between the stigma of seeking help for a mental illness, the fear brought on by the old stories, our desire to have a firm diagnosis and get well, bureaucratic blame avoidance techniques, and a citizen's protection from unreasonable search and seizure? From all of that, I can hypothesize without too much fear of disproval that there will not be an easy answer.

For veterans and the VA it is unfortunate that we have another story of a veteran going off to live down. For the VA bureaucracy, they will spend some time doing the bureaucratic blame/spin/avoidance game for a while. For Congress, they can form a committee and call in the VA chief to ask for his top or bottom end as a sacrifice. For all of us, we have many victim's families to pray for and comfort as best we can. Mr. Alexis' mother had perhaps the best reaction, in contrast to the VA bureaucracy, she apologized to the victim's families right away and noted sadly that she could not ask her son, "Why?" Many of us I think can sympathize with that last question. We have done the same in many other shooting incidents. As of yet, no definitive answer is forthcoming.

Due to the stigma or the fear, Mr. Alexis did not know to seek help for mental illness or was afraid of being locked up for it. He may have been ignorant of his condition since to diagnose ones mental illness with the very mental organ that is ill is difficult at best. I sought help from God in prayer. He responded with a piece of an advertisement in my home that said in large, red print, "Get Help!" I got the message and took a mental health status questionnaire into my family doctor. Others have sought opinions from close friends. Very close friends and in private, since mental health questions are not generally received with less than absolute mirth and hilarity in an office or locker room setting. If you broach the question at a party, try to do it after several drinks and use a big, goofy smile. Dr. Phil is another option, but not everyone gets an all-expense paid trip out to New York to meet with him.

Walking up to the VA clinic or a mental health clinic to ask for a mental health evaluation still bears a stigma. Those of us with some experience have worked to eliminate or mitigate it. Shame from those with no understanding (and complete ignorance) does not help those in need to seek out the appropriate help. Be alert for those who might approach you with a quiet, "Can you help me..." Accompany someone to the mental health clinic or professional. If you have overcome the stigma, tell everyone else the visit is for you and the person in need is helping you out. Yes, it is a lie, but imagine that person failing to get help and 'going off' as Mr. Alexis did on Monday.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself, Bucky

I Want to Pay Taxes Again!

Now that's just crazy talk. If any more proof of my mental illness were needed, that title should provide all that is necessary. I stand by my statement. I want to pay taxes again. First, you may need to try going without a tax burden for a while, as I have, to experience what it is like living on the ragged edge of financial disaster. In 2012, I paid with my final credit card the outstanding tax due on my January 2011 401k withdrawal. We complain about our amount of taxes more than actually paying them in America, and a final 401k withdrawal is a good way to realize what is meant by tax burden. I owed no income taxes for 2012 or thus far in 2013, because I have no income. Before 2013 comes to a close in a little over 3 months, I have decided that paying income tax is a better way to go than earning so little (or none at all) that I do not have to pay. This is not a purely financial decision.

The Social Security system is supposed to be a good investment. The removal of the investment amount from the paycheck without asking is a different matter, and I'll leave that debate alone for this blog. However, we pay income tax to purchase government services, including helping those who through unfortunate circumstances cannot pay their own way for a time. We pool our tax money and the government provides defense forces, judicial systems, regulatory authorities and a myriad (it seems) of other stuff we may need. The government also sometimes adventures overseas in various ways and pays off the occasional dictator, but that too can be set aside for now. I served as a part of those defense forces, and in a couple of those military adventures. However, I did not in the four years of my service expect that was nearly enough for a free ride for the remainder of my little life. Medical care, sure, especially if they poisoned me through the drinking water on Camp Lejeune, but a free ride, no, I want to pay taxes again.

Taxes can sound like a dirty subject in our popular repartee. We do not want to hear about paying more taxes, and sometimes we think it would be nice to not have to pay them. I am guilty of that last bit, and I got the chance to experience life without paying. No income = no income tax is not an equation a person wants to find himself living, please take it from me. Paying taxes keeps roads under the truck tires, prevents enemies from overrunning our nation, and allows the printing of a truly prodigious Code of Federal Regulations. What would we do without our dear government? Some folks have an answer to that, but I choose to get back in the system and help out in my small way. Easy words, how do I translate them to action?

PTSD limits my access to some jobs. The job of emergency services in most places involves responding to many auto accidents. This service includes EMTs, police, fire and rescue, dispatchers, and hospital medical staff. Serving in any of those capacities might not be a good idea for me. A person in dire need of medical attention from a car accident does not want to hear his first responder ask for a timeout to deal with PTSD symptoms. I can understand that. Such a thing may not happen, but why take a chance with a person's pain or life? Cross some jobs off my list. Check. Other jobs may require too much hypocrisy. Cold calling, or what is known as outbound telemarketing is not for me. Any job where I feel trapped by the situation may trigger ol' Petey. Basement offices, windowless cubicles, a shift job where I cannot leave, all may trigger the symptoms of uncontrolled anxiety. Of course, schools or restaurants with their noise and racket probably won't work for me. But, still, I want to pay taxes again.

All that and there are still jobs for me. Just need to find one in the remote wilderness of Colorado. I may indeed be a proven nut, but bring on the income tax, I'm tired of living poor!

Bucky

O Seeker of Attention, How Dreadful Your Burden

In the introductory posting, I noted that part of my problem may have grown from a seeking after attention in the wrong ways. Today, that thought occurred to me once more, and so I thought a little beating up on the ol' self is in order. After all, who is here to beat up on me except myself? If I suddenly shrunk down to mouse size, the cats would cheerfully beat the stuffing out of me, as they do with their toy mice. Other than that rather remote possibility, I am currently low on bullies in the immediate vicinity.

Actually, I have been moving upstairs to get out of what appears to be a toxic environment down in my dankish basement. A little rest for my weary and ill body may help this afternoon. Moving bookcases is among the more labor intensive of activities. First, unload all the books onto something else, and stop to wonder why I am keeping some of them; then, move whatever is in the way of where the bookcase will go, move the bookcase, and reload it with books kept and books from the next bookcase to be moved. Finish unloading the next bookcase... and so on, until the old injuries, age, weight, and other factors demand a break. This is the third day of this sort of thing, and a break to write up a blog sounds pretty good right now.

While the aches and pains built up to a crescendo of anxious thoughts, I recalled how we as PTSD sufferers tend to make things bigger. Many persons deny the early warning signs of heart disease or cancer. Anxious folks, on the other hand, tend to have an indication of dreaded diseases each and every day. The problem is that part of me wants to have some dire event so that I can get some more of that attention thing I enjoyed back in the day. This is especially strange given that most of the time I can't stand to be noticed and get anxious about even the possibility.

For about a year, perhaps more, people often asked after my health. Not the shallow 'how are you doing' greeting that we all get in hallways and parking lots at work, but actual concern and interest in the latest surgery or healing. The carnal fellow inside kind of thought that he could get used to this attention thing, and he wanted more of it. Unfortunately, it was in the time immediately after the accident when gifts and cards rolled in - Christmas gift-getting that year lasted from about December 4th to around May - that the fellow deep inside that wants and likes, and doesn't know stop or reciprocate, learned to like attention of this type in a big way. His suggestions for how to get more of this gifting and asking with interest was in the wrong way of injuries, hospitals, and other imagined disasters. The body that must suffer these things along the way to the good part was not asked for its opinion.

Obviously, a body in this life cannot continually suffer auto accidents of the magnitude I suffered or one day, in rather short order I should think, the body will not get the chance to do the rehab and recovery thing. Gifts in that case are usually donations to some charitable fund that the honoree does not get to enjoy. This desire of seeking after attention is a dreadful burden. I work on stopping those anxious thoughts before the imagining makes me hurt again. If the attention-seeking imagination would just take a moment to remember the pain of that catheter in the emergency room, he most certainly wouldn't want anything to do with another visit to that place! However, trying to remember pain is probably not the best solution to anxious visions.

Some days it seems that in the anxiety-depression cycle there is never room for nice visions. You know, the daydreams we once had before the trauma made every day a struggle? Some of those would be nice for a change. No, no, not the idle ones about the attractive classmate in fourth period biology. Those daydreams tend to cause trouble of a different kind. Put down the video game and make one up. If you like fishing, make up a nice fishing vision, and leave out the parts about rapids on the River of Death, or the mugger with the .75 caliber recoilless pistol. Stick with a nice imagining; it may take some practice to regain this skill for those of us with PTSD. Just remember not to live in your vision. The real world is a tough place, but we do need to operate there.

Praying and hoping that your struggle is victorious. God bless you!

Bucky

Ah, The Terror of Checkups

Yesterday they caught me. I had used cover and concealment, tried a little camouflage, and ran as fast as I could, but the nurse caught me. I think not seeing me for more than a year is thin enough reason for another blood draw, but it is part of the annual physical. I speak metaphorically of course. Once caught on the magical VA computer, I am obedient to come in for my annual physical or other checkups that the medical folks like to do. That does not mean, unfortunately, that the terror leaves me alone.

My guts churned and shook. I felt a strong urge to run home and call the whole thing off. I prayed, sang songs, and did physical motions to distract myself, but the appointment still arrived at the appointed time. The dratted things tend to do that it seems. Of course, and this is the good news side of PTSD, the actual blood draw was and seldom is as bad as the anxiety that whoops on me beforehand. The remainder of the physical examination amounted to a life sentence, as in "You're gonna live." Then came the question: Have you ever had thoughts of suicide?"

Has anyone suffered chronic depression, anxiety, or PTSD, and not heard the occasional whisper of a thought go by regarding that option? I suspect it would be dishonest for me to say that I had never thought of what may appear to be an easy way out of my problems. What is barely controllable or uncontrollable in mental illness, may at times compare favorably to the perceived control of a suicide. If a person does not think that anything comes after this life, then the answer may seem obvious, selfish though the act may be to those left behind. For me, I believe that God has much in store for me in this life, much more in Heaven, and I do not for a moment want to report in to my Lord having just ended the life He has given to me. Besides, I have found that I love persons. Just now and then, I have trouble with groups of people, or places where I think there may be too many people, or even totally imaginary situations that never occur. God gave me a great imagination, but why do I seem to beat myself up with it so often?

The VA checkup was in a small clinic. No mobs of people to fear, and the two primary providers were a nurse and nurse practitioner I met last year. I also got signed up for some more psychotherapy sessions. I know they don't call them that to us, but what the heck. Therapy for psychos, I can understand why they would think I need it. They snuck in an extra needle too, and that one kind of smarts a bit today. Hopefully, they did a good job neutralizing the bugs and I won't come down with the very thing they are trying to prevent. Every year I think someone tells me that the flu vaccinations are some government plot to give people the flu. In a way they are correct, but not in the way they are obviously trying to get my anxious imagination to believe. This extra needle was for pneumonia, I still have the anti-influenza needle to face later this year, but let's leave my imagination out of it this year, you fear mongers you!

Have a wonderful day and may your PTSD be under control,

Bucky