SHEsaysWITHaSMILE.blogspot.com

HOUSE CLEANING for (me!) sandra, tvgp ORIGINAL POST 11/18/2009

need to get a few things out, so i can write my spider scream story

first.. i am reminded, in the exchange of a few paragraphs on facebook w/my 1st ex-husband, how time puts all human editors to shame.

fascinated with how we can summarize decades of our lives in just a few sentences...

the one lesson of value, from my 1st marriage, in regard to PTSD.. is that at the time, word from therapist was.. " ignore her fears."

my husband was told to ignore my fears, so the fears didn't win. (years later i learn... while he thought he was helping... i thought he was an incompassionate asshole)

let me scatter about to make a point. it is confusing after all.. when to override fears, and when to honor them

eric kandel's work explains this best -the difference between habitization and sensitization (somewhere in my blog archives)

so for example..

and this is a true story. long ago and far away, i was water skiing. during my ski, i went wrong somewhere.. over a wave? over the wake? i don't know. what i do remember, is whatever i hit wrong, i hit wrong hard. i went into an immediate spin.. the rope nearly strangled me, the ski nearly killed me

i returned to shore battered and bruised and quite shaken

the next morning, my uncle, and family/friends insisted i ski again.

good call. it was, under those circumstances, very important the fear didn't win. and reluctantly i did ski again.. and regained my confidence.


but the complete opposite is true when it comes to being kidnapped at gunpoint and raped, and threatened with a cocked gun at your temple...

it turns out, under this circumstance.. to re-expose yourself to an environment similar to the one in which the trauma took place

well, it does not grow your confidence. rather,

it is like taking a sun-burnt person with blisters on their skin, out into the direct sun, to "toughen up their skin"


i don't recommend it.

i always, always, return to the oprah show, where there was a family who had adopted a traumatized dog

i'm slippery with the details, but the dog had been traumatized in a cage? left in a cage?

in any case.. there is a direct correlation for the dog between trauma & cage.

so the family.. rather than flying to the oprah show -which made sense time/money wise

did not want to re-traumatize the dog by putting it in a cage, and so drove i don't know how many miles instead

i think it is safe to say EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the oprah audience agreed the family did a compassionate and great thing

no one seem to think that if the dog was put safely in the cage by a loving family... it would overcome the trauma... grow its confidence... change its mind... transcend the trauma

but!

people do this to traumatized people all the time...

get back out there! don't let the fear win!

which is stupid.

and very counterproductive. but the knowledge was not available 20+ years ago, so i hold no one to blame.. hold no grudges, etc.

i'm just very happy we are smarter about this today.

posted by SHE @ 8:56 AM