Tag: anxiety

Ears & Parts & Brains & Hearts.

Please keep in mind that all I can speak to are my own experiences, reflections, and ponderings; these are things that ring true to me.

Before we get to ears, let’s talk about what’s between them – that big, beautiful brain that just got bonked. Mental health HAS to be one of your considerations in recovery because it simply cannot be unaffected (which isn’t to say that a hit to your mental health is always going to be obvious). You’ve literally injured your brain, the seat of who you are. You’ve wounded it physically, chemically, and psychologically. We are holistic creatures, which means that the overused cliché is also completely accurate: mental health is health.

After dozens of concussions and years of therapy, I only just grew to understand that trauma is trauma, regardless of the form it takes. Head trauma (brain injuries) and heart trauma (mental health injuries, if you will) are both trauma, and as such, it has served me poorly to not apply concepts for addressing one to the other as well. In Brain Blame Games, part two., I shared about how reframing my perspective, particularly regarding deficits and limitations, made “such a tremendous difference”, and that absolutely still holds true (6+ years later!). However, it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized reframing my thoughts wasn’t the only change that transpired; what allowed for healthy, lasting change was moving from desperation to eradicate to striving to integrate.

Earlier this week, I was conversing with a wise man I am honored to count as a friend. In addition to being a top-notch human, he’s also a skilled counselor. I asked about a book I saw on his desk and was introduced to We All Have Parts, an excellent book on “healing trauma with internal family systems.” It’s a profound yet unintimidating book, and there are lots of lovely things I could say about it, but suffice it to say that the book made an impression on me. This elegantly simple little book helped me realize that the real shift was from a mission of eradication to a desire for integration. After years of fighting to eradicate the scars and marks of trauma, I was finally introduced to the concept of integrating the messages my somatic system is trying to send into my responses.

Here’s how I see eradication vs integration:

Eradication says that trauma responses resurfacing mean you’re already drowning; integration says that trauma responses resurfacing mean your system is trying to keep you afloat for as long as possible.

Eradication provokes fear and establishes negative connotations; integration provokes self-reflection and establishes positive connotations.

There’s no real choice to be made.
Logic demands it; acceptance and partnership are key.

Consider this: my ears ring all the time now, sometimes soft like the bell on a kitten, sometimes overbearing like an 8th century church bell. It used to make me angry; suddenly, it felt like work to listen. Eventually, begrudgingly, I detected patterns and accepted that my ears aren’t ringing to piss me off – they’re ringing to get me to listen up, to pay attention.  Something is wrong; my brain’s warning light has come on, so to speak.  I learned to appreciate the tinnitus and it has become a tool I can’t live without – I have a gauge for my brain wired into my ears! Instead of suddenly sputtering to a stop, I can now better calculate my current and forecasted capacity. It buys me time and helps me make informed decisions…or at least the best, most informed decision my broken brain is capable of making at the time. I have grown from getting suddenly stuck to understanding how to use the tools I have to efficiently maintain momentum and forward motion.

It turns out my integrative response to my tinnitus should also be the modality I employ on behalf of my mental health, too. The concept of integrating these somatic messages makes perfect sense. It also makes obvious that choosing eradication has inadvertently left me unprepared and caught unaware when trauma resurfaces. As someone who craves efficiency and always strives to make informed decisions, integration then becomes the only worthwhile choice. I’m trapped in a symbiotic relationship with this brain for the rest of my life; I may as well make sure it’s effective, because it’s clearly not going to stop trying to help (whether I like it or not)!

Sensory sensibility, part two.

ILLUSTRATION BY ALOIS DI LEO

Part one concluded with us walking around a corner together…right into the middle of all of this. My brain is starting to power down as a result of overwhelming stimulus; in addition, it is also inducing anxiety, a less-than-subtle cue to the rest of my system that something is really wrong.

So what do we do?  We find a safe place.

It took me a long time to figure out what a safe place for my melting brain should look like, or even that it needed one. I knew something was up; I would come home from a long day at work and my mind would just be done. Sometimes that felt like I had a cement block in my skull; other times, my brain was like a puppy surrounded by squirrels – getting it to focus on anything seemed an insurmountable task.

Recognizing that my brain was overwhelmed and exhausted, I would curl up on the couch in front of the TV – what’s more mindless than television, right?! No matter how mindless whatever I was watching was, I was still unable to quiet my mind and manage my anxiety. I was perplexed by the obvious contradiction: my brain needs a break, yet even with the TV to zone out to, I would still find myself tinkering on my phone or multi-tasking in some other way, as anxiety and restlessness coursed through me. It was a relief when I finally realized a direct correlation between anxiety and stimulus…but if I couldn’t figure out how to respond to sensory overload, I would not be able to actually manage my anxiety. If tinkering on my phone in front of the TV while my leg bounced up and down wasn’t cutting it, what would? What would it take to calm my brain and body, giving both the break they needed? From the beginning, I had looked at the problem purely in terms of numbers: lots of stimulus is bad, so less is good…right?

It took a while, and I stumbled across the solution by accident, but I finally learned that for my broken little brain, it needed a break from unreconciled stimulus. My brain was being drained not so much by the stimuli themselves, but by constantly having to identify each stimulus and figure out where it fit. My brain didn’t want to be placed on a timeout – it just wanted one engaging thing to focus on, and an opportunity to tune everything else out. It may sound simple enough, but identifying this was HUGE. I started off thinking I needed to find a “safe place”…but it turns out that knowing what my brain needs means I can make a lot of spaces safe, giving me one more way I can feel a sense of freedom and control in my recovery process.

I’ll be sharing in another post some of the tools I have found to manage the stimulus and subsequent anxiety (and therefore my brain)…

Sensory sensibility, part one.

ILLUSTRATION BY ALOIS DI LEO

Stop for a moment and take in the scene – really look around. For those of us accustom to city life, it looks pretty normal, right?

Now start adding the layers.

Look closer at all the movement. Everyone and everything seems to be moving, but none of those movements seem abnormal, right? To the average person, it’s just another day in the neighborhood. Add in the smells: dog, smog, cement dust. Getting a little more real, but nothing too bad, right? What sensations do you feel? A light breeze, the feeling of the concrete shaking beneath you, maybe warmth from the coffee cup in your hands. Now for the sounds: an airplane…then a helicopter. A dog barking at the birds chirping from their nest on the stoplight. The crying baby near the musicians who continue to play on despite the jackhammer next to them. The traffic cop blowing his whistle at the cars that are noisily zooming by. The woman on her cellphone in the car next to you – you can hear her talking, but can’t quite tell what she’s saying over the sounds of an idling bus and the rambunctious children it contains. At this point, can anyone even pick out the sound of the steelworker hammering, or the noises filling the work site the crane is at?

Go back and look at the picture again.  Now what do you see?

Perhaps you now see what I immediately saw: commotion and (relatively controlled) chaos. A few years ago, being in this scene would have invigorated me; now, my brain doesn’t know what to focus on – there’s simply too much happening, so my brain begins hemorrhaging power.

Imagine we are walking down this sidewalk together – we’ve just rounded the corner and stepped right into the middle of all this. Our conversation stops because I can’t seem to come up with more than one or two monosyllabic words, which come out in a flat, dead tone. You say my name a few times, and when I do finally realize you’re saying something, I seem dazed and a little confused. My face and affect are flat, my eyes wide. You reach out to touch my arm, and I startle (and, knowing me, likely spill the coffee in my hand). My anxiety increases as my mental capacity decreases; my brain is completely overwhelmed! I can’t focus well enough to tell you what I need; in fact, it was only a few concussions ago when I realized that all of this is being driven by stimulus.

So here we are, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by the sights/sounds/smells of life (including my coffee-drenched sleeve). I look at you, my face blank and absent; you look at me, uncertain and concerned.

So now what?

*Stay tuned for part two*