Saturday, November 30, 2013

Resolution

Saturday, November 30, 2013


It appears that I might soon experience some form of resolution to an ongoing issue with a local organization that has been steadily grinding on my heart and mind since this past June.  Yesterday I received an invitation to attend a meeting of the Executive Committee of this organization this coming Thursday, December 5th.  I hope to finally address the harassment I have experienced in a way that will bring closure to the subject through a just and kind result for all concerned.  Am I completely confident that this will take place?  No I am not.  But I hope to finally ensure my voice is heard and honored.

It is no surprise that this issue of harassment would so trigger me and dredge up painful aspects of my earlier life.  Having gone through (yet again) a very difficult process in which I attempted to hold my father accountable for his poor choices that seriously affected my development during this past August and September (and having achieved nothing of any substance in that effort) I felt quite raw due to that experience.  It was thus quite painful to have other issues bubbling in my life that I found not only quite provoking but also challenging in that a suitable resolution seemed ever elusive.

Nothing unfortunate happened yesterday morning when I made my way to my current residence to retrieve some of my belongings.  I did have the pleasure of witnessing one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen in my life.  I found myself marveling at the colors in the eastern sky as I neared my destination.  It was a sweet and amazing distraction from the demands of the morning.  I later met with a friend and chatted about my current circumstances and how the imprint of my earlier years of life is something I continue to address in the best way I can.  I also submitted a brief note to my primary care physician via my online medical record to document what seemed to be something like a flashback I had yesterday morning.  In the event something really harmful should happen to me in the coming weeks (something that I can or cannot easily foresee) I want to ensure that documentation exists as a way of protecting myself.

One of the themes that arose yesterday in my conversation with my friend Tom is the issue of what I will call intergenerational trauma.  It is my opinion (based on my personal life history as well as conversations with friends and reading) that trauma can impact not only those who experience traumatic events directly but also their friends and families.  This observation is borne out in some of the literature I have read on the subject of trauma.  When parents do not deal with issues in their own lives it seems quite natural that the unresolved issue will 'percolate' in their own psyches with the potential unfortunate result being that it impacts how they raise their own children and how successful they are in doing so.  I believe an excellent example of this lies within the realm of fathers and their sons.  I have been pondering this in my own life.

It is my sense that my father had unresolved issues with his own father.  Conversations that sometimes ended in a heated way between me and my father are but one reason I believe this.  And when I attempt to imagine what might have transpired between my father and his father in the immediate days and weeks after my father was nearly murdered I tend to wince because I suspect what I imagine likely happened is what did happen.  I know essentially nothing of what transpired after my father's parents learned that he had been nearly killed.  I suspect my grandfather did not reach out to my father in a way that my father probably deeply needed at the time.  And thus there would have been planted a seed of resentment.  I imagine my father was in deep pain (physical and emotional) during those days he was in the hospital in recovery.  My intuition is that he felt disappointment with how his father responded to him in his time of pain.  And thus does it make sense that my father would do the very same with me when I disclosed my PTSD to him this past summer.  As my father could only (easily) do for me what his father did for him it seems perfectly natural that my own father would not be available to me in a way that I needed him to be.  And so do the issues of our families translate down through the generations.

What I am attempting to render here is an image of the family system that shows the complex nature of interrelationships within families.  I have attempted to look at my own father with the eyes of compassion.  I have wondered about his own pain and how he dealt with it at the time when he nearly died.  I believe he did not deal with it very well.  But then again it would not have been easy for him to do so considering what skills he learned from his own father.

For today just holding myself and everyone and everything I encounter in the light of compassion is enough.







Friday, November 29, 2013

Creating A Safe Prison

Friday, November 29, 2013


I woke up early this morning to prepare myself to do something I was really hoping I would not have to do. I went to the place I have called a home these last eight months and retrieved some of my personal belongings. I called for a police escort to wait outside to ensure that nothing happened which I could not deal with. I no longer trust my landlord nor one of the organizations he sits on as a member of their Board of Directors. I do not know what will happen in these coming two weeks but I am not looking forward to it. Even the best potential outcome is still going to be stressful for me at a time when I am already under a lot of stress.

I did not feel safe throughout large stretches of my childhood.  I imagine that much is clear to those who regularly follow my blog.  Current events are reopening these very old wounds. Even though I am in treatment for PTSD (which developed as a result of childhood trauma) and improving I am concerned about what current events are doing to my ability to continue to heal. I am thus documenting what I am experiencing so that friends know how I am doing.


Shortly after I nearly lost my father to the horror of murder I would ritually go around the house and double and triple check that all the locks in the house were engaged and functional. It was an obsessive and ritual behavior that I utilized as a means of working through some of my anxiety. It gave me some degree of comfort. I was that traumatized by the violence that nearly claimed my father's life and that fearful that something more would happen to harm me or him. I feel that same fear I felt all those years ago. And I feel so sad that old wounds can stand so large in their power so many years later.
I may be a grown man but there are days (like today) in which I feel the burdensome legacy of all the trauma I experienced as a child and had no ability to escape. I pray for the best possible outcome today. 

It's strange to think back on the nine year old I was and realize how so many days when I would venture out into the world I was feeling such a tremendous amount of anxiety that I would be harmed...deliberately or otherwise. It's strange to think that the ordinary life I was living each day felt virtually heroic. Isn't that the definition of a hero...namely someone who lives his life with courage despite whatever fear he is feeling? But here is the rub...in my view nine year old boys should not be required to be heroes...nine year old boys should be able to be nine year old boys.  I didn't have a sufficiently carefree atmosphere in my home to be able to be a normal nine year old boy.

I feel this immense sadness today as I sit in the first few hours after recalling this house security ritual I methodically and obsessively performed as a child.  I was attempted to create a safe prison.  As I recall the feelings of immense anxiety I felt so much of the time I feel this immense amount of grief for the burden I was under throughout much of my childhood.

The good news is that my awareness of how the past influenced me is continuing to deepen.  And as my awareness sharpens I expect I will be able to continue to improve my self-care skills.  I will also be able to continue to heal and move forward.  So it appears I am on the right path even though the present moment is very painful indeed.


Thursday, November 28, 2013

Applying a Gratitude Attitude

Thursday, November 28, 2013


Thanksgiving is a holiday like Christmas in that it offers us very vivid and emotionally charged themes with which we can explore our own lives as well as the world at large.  In a time of challenge such as what I am facing now it is often a vital practice to regularly remind myself of what is working in my life and what I do have that I can be very grateful for.  You could call this the practice of applying a 'gratitude attitude' to your own life.

These are the aspects of my life I am grateful for this year:


  • The opportunity I enjoyed to visit with my mother and my mother's family in Germany in May of this year.
  • My health care providers.  I currently enjoy the assistance of a therapist, a primary care doctor, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor and the services of Pathways Health Crisis Resource Center here in Minneapolis.  The system I am able to collaborate with to take care of my own health is one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of being able to use.
  • My health insurance.  My insurance is making it possible for me to heal from PTSD in the face of a litany of challenges.  I am very grateful that Minnesota has such an excellent health care system.  I am also grateful for those people in this nation who actually believe that health care is a universal human right and are committed to working to move this country in the direction of a more just and humane system of healthcare.
  • My health in general and my immune system in particular.  I am blessed to have a fairly healthy body and a good immune system.  Not everyone can say that.  There are many individuals who are immuno-compromised and must live with a heightened level of mindfulness on a daily basis to ensure their health is not put at undue risk.
  • My friends.  You are far too numerous to count on my hands.  Your love and support are proving vital to me at a time like this.
  • My family.  Despite the strained relations I have with certain members of my family I am nonetheless grateful for their past loyalty and generosity.
  • My willingness and ability to work.  Many people throughout the world contend with disabilities on a daily basis that limit it not completely impair them from being able to do work that contributes to their communities.  I am fortunate to now be healthy enough to be able to work once again.
  • Food.  I live in a country in which it is still relatively easy to find food that will nourish my body and mind.
  • Safety.  I live in a nation that is not currently riven by such conflict that daily life would present itself with additional complications.  There are places in the world that are currently war zones or beset by such conflict that it is difficult not to live and develop a case of PTSD.

If you are suffering from feelings of confusion, anger, sadness and the like I encourage you to consider making a gratitude list today as a way of reframing your reality such that you can more effectively focus on the blessings you do have in your life.  Just doing this one activity this morning has significantly altered my own frame of mind; I am now looking forward to the day and the many people I will be blessed to spend time with today.  I can honestly say I no longer feel overwhelmed by everything I am coping with at the present time.  Somehow I will find my way through the thicket of challenges before me now.

Have a beautiful day!






Wednesday, November 27, 2013

High Anxiety - Awake at 4:30 A.M.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013


I woke up unexpectedly early today.  I have not been able to fall back asleep since waking up over an hour ago.  The world beyond my windows is still pitch black; no early rays of sun greet me in late November at this latitude I live in.

I am feeling a lot of anxiety due to the circumstances I find myself in.  And the more I look fairly objectively at the circumstances I have been living in since April of this year the more I feel appalled by what I have been enduring.  I am not overly obsessing and analyzing the situation I have been living in but I nonetheless cannot help but wonder what I was thinking this past spring.  But then again when I think back to that time I realize that I was not aware that I was still walking around in the world with a case of (at that time) untreated PTSD.  The choices I was making and the manner in which I was thinking about my life were taking place within a different frame of reference.  Now that I can see more clearly I can make better choices and strive to create a healthier life.

I have been thinking about one particular issue regarding the current situation with my landlord.  I have been wondering just how safe I was all along during the time I have lived with my landlord in his house.  I specifically have been wondering about one of his dogs who bit me early on in the time I began living there.  I was appalled and annoyed to later discover (inadvertently I might add) that one of his dogs is listed on a list maintained by the City of Minneapolis.  The city apparently keeps a list of dogs that are prone to aggression and occasionally has an animal control officer go out to the homes of their owners to check up on the dogs.  At this point I do not know the full details of what the implications are when a dog is listed on this listing.  I hope to find out a bit more later today when I call the City of Minneapolis Animal Care & Control division.  It will likely prove to be relevant information to have on hand as I deal with my landlord and his decision to evict me at the end of December.  In my opinion it was unethical for my landlord to fail to disclose the fact that one of his dogs is on a list maintained by the city.

I feel heartened by the fact that I can attend a Transitions support group today which I was originally referred to over two weeks ago when I completed the Partial Hospitalization program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.  I continue to need a lot of love and support.  Such support is making my current circumstances much more tolerable.  I am going to discuss the landlord issue in the group and request input from the facilitator.

In other news I successfully scheduled a consultation appointment with Sister Kenny Psychological Associates.  The less fun news is that the appointment was scheduled for March 20th due to the fact that they are booked out that far in advance.  I might be able to slip into the schedule sooner if someone who lives outside of Minneapolis should cancel their appointment at some point this winter in anticipation of a coming storm.  I am hoping I will not have to wait four months to get seen.  I have felt as if my life has been on hold for far too long.  I scheduled this appointment in the hope of determining whether or not I am experiencing any harmful consequences (now) as a result of the accidents I experienced earlier in my life in which I hit my head.

As I have had to do at other moments in my life (especially recently) I am continuing to do my best to focus on what is positive and functional in my life.  In those moments when I feel really consumed in the darkness and grief resulting from the impacts of my earlier life I simply must redirect my mind to focus on that which is good and wonderful.  And I do truly have much to be thankful for!

Here is one simple truth I can be grateful for: I now experience a minimal amount of pain in my body.  This was not true this past summer.  I am healing.  I am moving forward in my journey towards greater wholeness.

Enjoy your day!




Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Where are the Adults?

Tuesday, November 26, 2013


In the last twenty-four hours I have been asking myself the question "Where are the adults?"  When I pose this question I mean to reference not just people here in Minneapolis but also America as a whole. I am currently ensnared in a situation in which my landlord has served me notice of eviction.  I do not know his full reasoning for his decision and I doubt that I would find out even if I were to ask him directly.  Unfortunately the situation is quite complex.  And I am convinced that his motives are much more murky than he would admit to.  It's a stressful, disgusting situation and I am vowing to myself that this will be the last time I ever am compelled to deal with such a horrible landlord.

I have been wondering where the adults are because I am convinced (and I feel rightly so) that the eviction is being precipitated in part by my decision to publicly disclose the dysfunctional behavior of a local arts organization in which my landlord serves as a member of said organization's Board of Directors.  Last month he indicated his intention to evict me in a sudden burst of words that lasted no more than a minute.  I couldn't even take the time to discuss the matter more thoroughly with him because he had to go off to work.  I later apprised myself of my rights and learned that verbal notification of eviction is not legally valid; a landlord must provide written notice of eviction for it to be valid.  I thus decided to let the issue go because I (wrongly) assumed my landlord actually was aware of the laws that govern how he should conduct himself as someone who rents out part of his home in a major city.  I assumed incorrectly and yesterday I learned that I had.

So now I find myself in yet another maelstrom of chaos and am faced with the challenge of deciding how to proceed.  Given the conduct of a number of members of this arts organization, as well as the difficult position I feel I was put in due to my landlord's conduct, I decided I would publicly share the statement I recently composed and submitted to the organization expressing my severe displeasure and upset with how I have been treated since I made a complaint about the group earlier this year.  So I posted my statement on Facebook.  In my statement I acknowledged my diagnosis of PTSD from earlier this year.  And yet despite the fact that I made it very clear just how severe my challenges have been in recent months I still received disrespectful messages from two separate members who are active members in the organization.  One came from a man I considered a good friend.  That relationship is now over.

I assume there is some prevailing sentiment among members of the organization that a sufficient quantity of harassment will eventually cause me to cease and desist, turn around and run away in fear.  But I only feel more emboldened to publicly expose the extreme dysfunction within the organization as the insults and cruelty mount.

I find this situation especially painful because it reminds me so much of much of my childhood in which I did not feel safe in my own home.  Only this year did I finally awaken to the anxiety I was feeling day after day, week after week and month after month while growing up with my father.  To deal with the pain I dissociated from my body.  I did not realize until recently that I was experiencing something of a partial out-of-body experience for protracted periods of time.  Now that I am becoming fully conscious and feeling myself in my body much of the time I am aware of this horrible amount of pain I was trying to cope with by not feeling it.

As I became aware of the pain I was carrying around (but not fully present to) I simultaneously began to feel enormous grief that I was so consciously unaware of the pain I was carrying around for so long.  My awareness of my grief is still a much more recent phenomenon.  And so now I am faced with the challenge of addressing the grief I feel while simultaneously coping with the coming holidays, my lack of employment and now, as of yesterday, the issue with my landlord.

As I began to become more deeply aware of my pervasive grief I quickly began to ponder what options exist for me to move through my grief.  I came to conclude some time ago that there is no "right" way to grieve.  As I have felt at times overwhelmed by the experience of so much lost time in my life I have found myself at different moments feeling almost paralyzed by grief.  And thus it seems the antidote I naturally created was movement.  In the last week I have been a bit of a gym bunny.  I have come to the YMCA (where I am sitting now to compose this) more days than not and gone swimming, done physical therapy, run around the track and so on.  Today I did twenty-two laps in the pool with the assistance of flippers.  I feel much better after doing so much "movement therapy".  I can think more clearly and concentrate better than I could earlier today.  I am continuing to take my medication and I feel that there really is nothing I can be doing that I am not already doing.

I have been praying for a long time to find solace, healing and a way forward from the darkness of my past that has haunted me for so long.  Perhaps that path is about to open to me and I do not yet see it.  Perhaps I am already on it but I cannot clearly discern I am on it because I feel so consumed by the pain and chaos of the current moment.  What I do know is that I am doing everything I can humanly do to move forward...and yet as I become more resolute and committed to moving forward no matter what  it seems that the scale of the obstacles grows in proportion to my own determination.  It seems so surreal. If I have any readers who have ever experienced such a weird phenomenon I would welcome hearing from you to learn more about what your own experience has been.

When I experience this apparent increase in "opposition" to my own determination I then find myself wondering if I am just creating a story in my own mind that has no objective basis in reality.  And it also seems more than a little bit harsh that we would all be living in such a world where an extremely deep intention and commitment to heal would ironically be met with more massive obstacles in the way of that goal.

I cannot overstate how exasperated I still feel with so much of my life though.  I feel as if I live in an entire nation governed by many, many people who behave with the maturity of five year olds.  Witnessing the behavior of our illustrious Congress last month as the federal government partially shut down for a period of time was just one example I cite here of how we no longer seem to be a nation of adults who actually behave as if they are adults.  I can see that another aspect of my own grief is the feeling of not being able to be a child when I actually was one.

I will shortly be venturing out into the dusky evening and chill winds to meet a friend at the local Aliveness Project.  I am grateful for all that I still have in my life.  I pray that one day I will be the person I wish to be and be living the life I wish to live.






Monday, November 25, 2013

What Happens When We Are Not Present

Monday, November 25, 2013


Today was yet another one of those days in which the end of the day did not resemble the beginning of the day in any way whatsoever.  I started out feeling exhilarated and very encouraged.  I went to the gym early, completed my core conditioning class and then swam in the pool.  My friend Arlene then picked me up and I went to see my therapist.  I had a productive session recounting what I experienced during an amazing shamanic soul retrieval session I had this past Saturday.  At some point in the near future I hope to recount at least some of what I experienced.  For now I am keeping the experience close to my heart.

My heart feels quite tender now considering how the day concluded.  Upon arriving home I became ensnared once again in an ongoing issue with my landlord that I thought had subsided.  Instead I found myself reading an email in which I was asked what day this coming weekend I was going to be moving out.  I found myself feeling the way I have previously when receiving a very unpleasant surprise namely dazed, irritated and exasperated.  My landlord knows about the existence of my PTSD.  Yet that seems to have no bearing in his own thought process.  It all seems very weird to me.

I concluded long ago that one of the worst things we can do in our lives is not be present to what is actually around us.  So many of our problems can begin when we aren't paying attention to the world around us.  As I come out of a long, long period of unconscious dissociative behavior I appreciate all the more how vital it is that we pay attention to our lives as they unfold, second by second, day by day, week by week, month by month.  There is so much we can miss when we do not pay attention.  When we move through the world in a state of preoccupation, dissociation or the blurred vision resulting from trauma we aren't really present to what is unfolding around us.  And if we aren't where our bodies are then where ultimately are we?

As time passes and I awaken to how much I was actually not present I see the world in the present moment in a vividness I cannot recall regularly experiencing on a daily basis.  And so I now find myself experiencing many, many moments (usually at least several times every day now) in which I suddenly look around myself and marvel at the quality of the world.  I see sunlight falling on someone's hair.  I feel the wind blowing against my back.  I hear the sounds of leaves long since withered away still clinging to nearly empty branches and blowing in the late autumn wind.  I see the character of people as rendered in the lines and smiles of their faces.  I appreciate the subtleties of light and shadow playing on a church wall or filtering through a set of stained glass windows.  I look about me and see an amazing world.  And then I find myself asking myself where I have been for so long.

I realize it is quite natural for human beings to dissociate when we are exposed to sudden, intense pain or a long period of persistent pain in which there seems to be no end.  A person has limits beyond which they cannot be pushed without potentially serious consequences.  We all have pain thresholds.  Once we are pushed beyond them it seems we find automatic ways to cope that we may eventually no longer consciously notice.  I realize that this happened to me.  As a little boy watching my mother descend into schizophrenia it was only natural I develop a means of coping with the pain of the horror and sadness I felt.  It seems perfectly natural to me now that I would start to dissociate and that I would eventually forget what I had begun doing.  Such can be the power of coping mechanisms we use in times of immense stress.

I am committed to living a life of being present now.  I want to live my life to the fullest.  It's not always easy but I never want to feel as if I have died inside.  I see that I am continuing to heal each and every day.  I will not allow anything to subvert this process if it is within my power to prevent it.




Sunday, November 24, 2013

Silence

Sunday, November 24, 2013


As the beauty of fall quickly fades in preparation for the more monochromatic tones of winter I find myself spending some time each day seeking to ponder what is beautiful about winter.  I do not dislike winter but I also can honestly say it is not my 'favorite' season.  I do not even know if I have a favorite season.

One interesting quality of winter is the nature of its associated sounds.  Because the quality of the atmosphere changes (the temperature profile in the lowest layer known as the troposphere becomes cooler) the behavior of sound waves changes as well.  Have you ever noticed how much difference there can be in the sound of an airplane taking off on a warm, humid summer day as compared to nightfall on the coldest nights of the year?  Because there is relative silence outdoors in winter (due to the hibernation of most of the animal and plant world) it seems as if the sounds we do hear are all the more magnified and sharp.  For example, as I type this I am noticing the sound of crows outside my window.  I often think of autumn as the season for crows, ravens and the like.

One blessing of the winter season is this relative silence.  The background noise of the world (both outdoors and inside our own homes) softens and mellows.  It becomes more burdensome and thus less appealing to stay outdoors (at least for extremely long stretches of time).  Granted the lovers of the winter season prove to be the exception to my generalization.  But overall I feel my observation is correct.  As the exuberance of the natural world's peak season of summer becomes a fleeting memory we find ourselves offered the opportunity to utilize the pervasive stillness to look within ourselves.

I am looking within myself now and leafing through my interior archive.  One way I am finally more deeply honoring myself is acknowledging the appeal of the trickster archetype in my personal psychology.  I have long found the trickster archetype fascinating and I recognize my fascination is due in part to my identification with the major qualities found in the trickster.  In the coming weeks and months I intend to continue brainstorming a vision of my future work and life.  As I undertake this process I invite the power of the trickster to inform my evolution!






Saturday, November 23, 2013

Who Am I?

Saturday, November 23, 2013


Early last month I came across an article entitled "Great Betrayals" in the New York Times.  As I read through the article I became increasingly enthralled by the subject matter.  Psychiatrist Anna Fels writes about the impact of suddenly revealed lies upon those who committed them as well as those who were misled by them.  The article can be found at the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/great-betrayals.html

I found the article such a captivating read in part because it succinctly describes how I have been feeling lately regarding my own father.    I felt profoundly humiliated and angered when my father lied to me in my childhood regarding the circumstances of my stepmother's attempted murder that nearly claimed his life.  I was hurt in part because I suspected the truth but was told a different version of events; it was not easy to lie to me when I had also been a victim of abuse in his second marriage.  Despite my father's deceit and our subsequent interactions throughout the course of the years I still lived at home I found it in my heart to forgive my father's behavior.

As an adult I have sensed my father remains committed to taking the easy way out.  By that I mean that despite the horrific consequences his lies caused to me he seems inclined to lie or at least hide the full circumstances of unsavory circumstances or events if he believes doing so will somehow keep the peace.  It doesn't seem the suffering he caused to me due to his deceit made a sufficient impression on him to prompt him to change his behavior.

When I contacted my father this past summer to inform him of my PTSD diagnosis I was holding out a misplaced hope that he would show more compassion than he did.  I was hoping he would be more available to listen than he was.  I was nursing a hope that he would be a man different from the one I have known for so long.  In short, I was deluding myself.  The scales eventually had to fall from my eyes.  And fall they did.

One unfortunate aspect of catching someone in a lie is that it can take a tremendous amount of effort, faith and patience to rebuild trust with the person that has failed you.  It thus is all the more appalling if you should discover later on that you have been lied to again.  Deceit, and most especially repeated deceit, undermines the foundation of a healthy relationship.  This happened between my father and me. And I am not sure anything can ever be done to repair it.

The following words taken from the article impress me the most in regards to my own situation:

In this situation, therapy can be one path to reclaiming your past. Creating a coherent narrative of one’s life has long been seen as a central goal of psychotherapy. It provides the internal structure that helps us predict and regulate future actions and feelings. It creates a stable sense of self.

I am currently doing my best to create a coherent narrative of my own life as a way of moving forward. But I feel tremendously shaken.  Due to my father's past actions in which he has lied to me I cannot help but wonder if there are other instances I am not even aware of.  When a snake-oil salesman has deceived you just once it can be very difficult to open your door again to someone you thought you knew.  And it can be at least as difficult to open your heart and mind to strangers.  The practice of being open to new relationships and new possibilities can come to feel both scary and stressful.

I have long held a theory that my own father has a case of PTSD.  It makes perfect sense considering that my first stepmother attempted to kill him.  But now I can't help but wonder if there is even more in his life history that would have caused him to develop a traumatized disposition.  As a young man my father served in the Army.  At one time he was stationed in Korea.  Sometimes I have wondered if he endured some hardships or unexpected stressors and never disclosed them to anyone.  Other times I have wondered if he was abused while attending Catholic school as a teenager in Arkansas.  With so many reports of abuse by priests emerging in the last decade here in the United States it is easy to allow such reports to undermine your faith that your own parish is not plagued by such secrecy and dysfunction.  There is plenty regarding my father's life history that I do not know much about.  And I am beginning to suspect that I will never know.

In my darkest moments of fear I have imagined that my father had a case of PTSD when he first met my mother in Germany.  I have wondered if something happened to him in the Army that he never told anyone due to shame or fear.  And when I have found myself in those darkest places I can conjure with the (mis)use of my own imagination I then find myself immediately leaping to the implications of such a narrative within my own stream of thoughts.  If it is true that my father indeed had PTSD before I was even born and if it is also true that he never sought out any effective treatment for it then it would seem to follow that the man I grew up knowing as my father was a man whose character was distorted by a case of untreated PTSD.  It would seem that the model of manhood I received first and foremost from my father would thus be deeply interwoven with trauma.  And so then I ask myself these questions: Did I ever really know my father?  Have I ever seen my father present his authentic self to me?

These are difficult questions to even allow myself to imagine asking.  And they are likely even more difficult to answer.  I don't know that I will ever find an answer to them that will satisfy my curiosity.  And if I never find satisfying answers (or any answers for that matter) I must then decide how to move forward with my own life and create a life and associated narrative that meets my own needs.

Doing the work of grieving is not for the faint of heart.  I wish that my relationship with my father could be something other than what it is.  But I have come to the conclusion that it is in my best interests to cut ties and allow there to be immense space between us.  I have always loved my father and I still love him even now.  I just don't know if the person I have loved is very representative of the person he actually is.






Friday, November 22, 2013

The Strangeness Of It All

Friday, November 22, 2013


Winter made us aware of its growing power yesterday as temperatures plummeted and snow began falling across Minnesota.  The snow accumulation was by no means impressive; while venturing out in the evening to pick up a prescription at Walgreens it appeared that the world had been covered with a thin (in some places nearly transparent) frosting.  I suppose it could put you in the holiday spirit to see much of the outdoor world covered in what you would expect to see on holiday sugar cookies.

Despite the cold and enshrouding darkness I found myself awake and relatively alert today before 6 a.m.  It seems a bit ludicrous to be up at such an hour if you don't have to be.  And yet there was no mistaking it when I awoke this morning that I truly felt sufficiently rested to be able to stay awake and even start being sufficiently productive such that I could do some writing.

It's a bit strange to be me these days.  A certain backwardness seems to prevail.  This past summer I found myself unexpectedly consumed with a whole litany of efforts to improve my health.  I found myself feeling nearly perpetually overwhelmed; my diagnosis came at the high point of the cycle of the seasons...only four days after the Summer Solstice.  Thus began my quest to address my interior darkness at the time of most intense light.  As summer matured I maintained my focus and committed to my recovery regardless of how difficult it might prove to be.  I imagined my feelings were a bit like that a farmer has when he casts seeds in his fields with the faith that his efforts will eventually bear fruit.  July and August came and went in a blur.  In late August I finally no longer felt truly depressed.  I felt anger, frustration and sadness but the depression waned.

My progress has continued ever since.  My improvement has certainly not moved in a straight line.  I have good days and bad days.  But the trend of my trajectory is upwards.  Now five months later I can honestly say I feel fairly good much of the time.  It still feels weird to recognize how much I feel in my body so much of the time.  This is still not a feeling I am accustomed to.  In time I believe that will change as well.  Exercise and a Minnesota winter are effective ways to put one firmly in touch with how the body feels.  The time of greatest darkness in the wheel of the year is now approaching.  I feel that I am doing amazingly well.  And I will continue to use my light box, exercise, medication and therapy as major tools in my journey of healing.

Tomorrow I will meet with a local chiropractor who also does shamanic healing journeys.  I am excited to make this journey and feel it will further aid my healing process.  I obviously cannot know what I will think and feel during the process nor how I will feel once I am on the other side of the experience.  I only know I am eager to move forward and confident that the practitioner I am scheduled to see will work well with me.  I was referred to her by my therapist.

Tomorrow I will also meet with my fellow contestants of the Mister Minneapolis Eagle contest.  It's been an interesting week of coming down (slowly) from the high I felt last weekend.  It will be fun and informative to debrief on how we have all been doing.

Aloha!

Thursday, November 21, 2013

The Great Archeological Dig: Descending Into Another Layer

Thursday, November 21, 2013


I have yet another appointment scheduled for next Monday designed to assist me in continuing to restore my health.  There have been moments when I wonder if I am going a bit overboard and being virtually neurotic about taking care of my health.  The antithesis of neglect is something I suppose you could call 'over-care'.  I do indeed believe there is such a thing as being obsessive about your health.  If every minor pain or irritation prompts a whirlwind of anxious and pessimistic thoughts you have to wonder if perhaps you have a streak of hypochondria.  I do not believe that is true for me though.

Later today, after first composing some of the content for this posting, I forwarded a listing of all the head trauma I can recall experiencing to my primary care doctor.  He quite promptly responded to my email with an offer to refer me to a local traumatic brain injury clinic.  Feeling it wise to review this aspect of my health I asked for the referral.  And now I am feeling quite anxious.  I am doing my best to keep myself busy so I do not think too much about what I will experience next week.  So I now have one appointment scheduled for cranial sacral therapy.  And I am waiting to hear back from the local traumatic brain injury clinic after my file is reviewed.

It's a little unsettling when I think of how suddenly the incident of falling down the stairs returned to my conscious awareness.  It leaves me a little perplexed and leads me to wonder if there are other incidents I mindlessly blew off that in actuality affected me more than I first felt they did.  I am not expecting any sort of deep, dark, life changing news next week.  But then again I was not expecting to be informed of a PTSD diagnosis in June.  Surprises of that sort can have the effect of seriously deflating enthusiasm.  But I will continue to march onwards and remain committed to the path of healing I am charting for myself.  I simply have no idea where walking this path is going to lead me over the course of time.  I feel like I am walking into a dark and unknown territory with only my own wits and the strength of my friends and family to support me.

I continue to regularly experience moments of feeling very much in my body and then other moments when I feel as if I am doing a bit of something that has the quality of disassociation.  Every day I wake up is a new adventure!  I cannot easily predict how I am going to feel, what I will experience, what 'new' people I am going to meet and where the path forward will lead me.  This time is exciting, exhausting, exhilarating, scary, weird and surreal.


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Cultivating Light in the Darkness of Impending Winter

Wednesday, November 20, 2013


I have yet another full day ahead of me.  Though that full plate of issues is finally becoming much more manageable it is still all too easy for me to feel overwhelmed at times.  Even the most winter tolerant Minnesotans can find this time of year especially challenging.  Darkness and cold are growing.  Thankfully I am using my light box I was prescribed earlier this month.  Between that, my Vitamin D supplement, my support groups and my ongoing personal therapy I feel I will emerge from the coming winter much better off than I did from the last one.

Today I will be reaching out to manifest more support as I continue to 'upgrade' my life.  I will be meeting with a job coach this morning, attend a transitions support group at Abbott Northwestern Hospital late this morning and then attend my men's group tonight.  What follows is a reflection I wrote yesterday.

I found the opportunity to compete in Mister Minneapolis Eagle 2014 very appealing for a number of reasons. One reason is that the leather community appeals to my German cultural roots. Just today I received my copy of Leather Folk in the mail. I am looking forward to reading it.

As I made my way through my very busy day today I realized that my active entry into the local community is actually one way I am also doing another type of work that is important to me. I am doing grief work right now related to my family of origin. It is a deep process...certainly not a cakewalk! By showing up this past weekend and presenting my deepest self to the community at large I was taking a decisive stand for myself and what I believe in.

Through the recent work I have been doing I have also come to realize that I am seeking to recapture a developmental phase of my own life that I did not get the chance to live in a healthy way when it actually came around. That phase is adolescence. One of my favorite books on the subject of astrology acknowledges that it is indeed possible to find a way to develop a part of yourself that was truncated during the time that it 'should' have happened. Consider the following taken from Erin Sullivan's book called Saturn in Transit:

(The author is speaking here about the period of life between the ages of 45-52. Though I am five years out from reaching this period myself...it is telling and timely to read it now)

"The initial stage of the Saturn opposition can also give one the courage to shrug off social expectations and pressures. That the period has been called 'the second adolescence' clearly shows that childhood and adolescence can be revisited. People who had extremely difficult childhoods, or had their adolescence cut short in some way, find that they can recapture their lost years. There are many ways one can 'lose' one's childhood or adolescence. An abused child (whether that is sexually, emotionally, or physically) is never a child; a child or teenager who has to care for an ill or alcoholic parent never experiences childhood; a teenager who becomes a mother or responsible father loses her or his adolescence. There are many examples of people who need to recapture a period in their life which was truncated or never lived at all."

The TRUTH of what Sullivan observes is so spot on true to my experience. I feel that there is indeed a whole section of my own life that was truncated early on. I could not be a carefree child because I was either worried about my mother as she suffered her schizophrenic breakdown or worried about my father and his bad choices. It's a little disconcerting when you realize that you are waking up to the fact that you have suffered from an anxiety issue for about three DECADES. And all the past treatment I underwent never seemed to fully help me to heal. But now I am trying different means of addressing my root issues...and I am beginning to see amazing progress.

Do you know what I did yesterday? I ran with the carefree ABANDON that a child runs with when he is so young that his mind has not yet developed so fully that he is perhaps likely to get trapped in his head. IT WAS EXHILARATING. I was able to run and not worry about the condition of my body. It was so lovely to run and feel my lungs pumping, my heart pounding...to feel so amazingly ALIVE.

And today I did just about everything you can do in a gym. I lifted weights, did some physical therapy exercises, swam in the pool, sat in the hot tub, walked and basked in the sauna. My legs felt like slabs of granite after emerging from the pool. But it felt so good to feel so tight, so alive...as if I am finally waking up from the bad dream of PTSD.

I have heard a range of opinion in regards to how open I 'ought' to be regarding my early life experiences, PTSD and so on. And most everything I have heard has come from the lips of people I know genuinely care about me. I am not going to let shame or fear color my judgment and decision making however. I feel very strongly that the obstacles I have faced and overcome are such that nobody should have to go through what I did. And I feel that way knowing full well that there are many, many, MANY people who have it much worse than me...like the people in countries such as the Philippines who have lost everything in one storm, orphans, those injured in war, those losing their nations to climate change, etc. We're all interconnected and I believe we all should offer one another a certain measure of compassion due to the simple reality that we are all human. I want to work with others to create a more just and compassionate world.

I want to thank all the men here in the local leather community who have inspired me. Prominent among them are Ryan BrownBrent FourreDerek HarleyJason Bribitzer-StullTim Holden and Tommy Rosengren. I really enjoyed meeting the judges Nick J. ZukoCarol WatsonThib Guicherd-Callin and InternationalTrainer Don this past weekend and getting to know them a bit. It was so nice to hug Andy Cross and see him smile. And of course I honor my fellow contestants Jason LittleIvan E Nunez and Tim Hotchkin! Enjoy your MME year Jason!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Remembering Yet Another Old Trauma

Tuesday, November 19, 2013


I went to a class today at Pathways Health Crisis Resource Center.  The class focuses on the amazing power of conscious breathing.  I have previously done breathwork workshops, a week long intensive training and even a 'vacation' on the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i in which I enjoyed the beauties of the ocean while doing daily breathing sessions with breathwork practitioner Christian de la Huerta.  It is indeed amazing what we can unleash through the power of conscious intention.

When I arrived this morning I did not have any particular intention in my thoughts to use as a focus for the class.  Because I am currently doing intensive therapy to build a new life and new identity for myself (one that is free of the influence of deep trauma) it is perhaps true that other painful material from my past rises to the surface of my awareness much more easily.  That would be my educated guess as to how to describe part of what is happening to me.

This morning I found myself recalling an upsetting incident from my childhood.  I once fell backwards down the flight of stairs in my home.  It is scary enough to fall down a flight of stairs and actually see what you are rolling into.  It was even more frightening to fall backwards; I couldn't even see what was happening to me.  I could see where I was falling from rather than where I was falling to.  I do not recall that my father took me to a doctor or chiropractor to get medical care after the incident.  I do not even remember now if I told my dad about the incident.  But what I did remember more fully today, many years later, was the pain and fear I felt in those seconds of the actual descent I unexpectedly made down the stairs.  From what I have read of trauma it is not unusual for people to perceive the passage of time in a very different way when a traumatic incident is unfolding.  A perception that time is suddenly moving very, very slowly seems to be a not uncommon experience.  I still don't recall how I sensed time passing when I was falling down the stairs.  But it was amazing to remember how much fear and even terror I felt.  I can recall worrying that my fall would be broken by something that might also break my own head open.

The condition of my head and neck has been on my mind recently after my most recent massage sessions.  My massage therapist mentioned that cranial-sacral work might prove of benefit to me as I continue to engage in my healing process.  I have had more than one physical accident in my life that could have adversely affected my brain function and/or the alignment of my cervical spine. X-rays taken in 2008 revealed that I have a reversed cervical spine curvature.  I don't have films from my early childhood to compare them against but I would not be surprised if the curvature in my neck is a result of the accumulation of traumas in which my head was affected.

As I moved through the breath session today I plunged down into the fear and pain I felt that day I fell down the stairs.  It's obvious to me that the pain of that experience had not fully healed because there it was today bubbling up into my conscious awareness.  So I am going to address this incident in two ways.  I am going to ask my therapist to use EMDR to help rid my brain of the traumatic memory and associated emotions.  I am also going to seek out physical therapy at a local alternative medicine clinic in which the care will be covered through my insurance.  Such care will help to address any ongoing structural issues.

There are moments in my ongoing process of recovery in which I have what I would call 'self-pathologizing' thoughts.  One of the shadow aspects of being a Virgo is Virgos can become borderline obsessive in their dedication to their health.  One little symptom can spark a virtual tidal wave of anxiety as an 'overly Virgo mind' seeks to find the cause such that a cure can be found.  I find myself worrying less and less as I continue to feel better and renovate the basic structure of my life.  And I believe it is also important to recognize that some degree of anxiety is perfectly normal as a person engages in a deep and lengthy healing process. Indeed, even though I am no longer clinically depressed (I haven't been for probably at least two months now!) I do still feel a fairly significant level of anxiety. But thankfully the quality of the anxiety is changing.  More and more the anxiety I feel is a positive form of anxiety that a person would typically feel when excited by the prospect of exciting and healthy developments in life.

There are essentially no leaves left on the trees now.  Winter will be announcing itself with impressive vigor quite soon; snow is in the forecast with temperatures Saturday night possibly dropping below 10F.  It's a bit confusing that as the darkest days of the year approach I feel lighter and lighter.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Emergence!

Monday, November 18, 2013


It is clear to me now why I felt so overwhelmed this past summer.  I was confronted with my still unresolved issues from childhood and also health issues in that recent present time that I was not expecting to be faced with.  It was a layer cake of trauma...there was so much to deal with and I felt as if it appeared in such rapid fire succession that I simply could not adapt well to what was happening.  But then, gradually, I found my way out of the morass; eventually I could see the light at the end of the so called tunnel.  The winter solstice is now a mere five weeks away.  At that time darkness will be at its greatest strength.  Then the light will begin to return.

I am beginning to return to me.  That may sound strange.  The exiled pieces of me are beginning to return home to the contours of my body and to the expansive realm of my mind.  And as the pieces of me that were so long dormant begin to reawaken I feel myself becoming the man I have always wanted to be.  I am immersed in the darkness of not knowing where I shall ultimately go in my life.  And yet I feel so alive now in this present time that the liveliness within me feels like it's fed in part by the emergence of so many beautiful points of light in the vault of the sky above the dark landscape I first found so desolate.  It's as if I am sitting on a dark plain and suddenly I can see the sky above...and the sky is no longer so empty.  And these stars, these points of light, symbolize the many beautiful people in my life.  For I see that I am very truly blessed.  Where once I felt myself encircled in an unremitting darkness I now find myself impinged upon by light coming to me from all sides.  There truly is beauty everywhere.

I met with my therapist today.  We did a reassessment to determine how I am doing.  It was encouraging to learn that I no longer score as clinically depressed according to a depression inventory screening he gave to me again.  But I do still register as having PTSD.  Yet the good news is that the symptoms are much improved compared to this past summer.  I am thus moving in a good direction!

Yesterday I wrote about the idea of irreversibility.  I feel I have stepped through a door that I cannot move through from the other side.  My interior life is now something a bit unfamiliar to me; I have never felt so present in my body before.  Each and every day brings a new adventure!



Sunday, November 17, 2013

Irreversibility

Sunday, November 17, 2013


I had an amazing time last night as a contestant in the Mister Minneapolis Eagle contest.  I didn't win the title but I do feel the four of us who competed all emerged as winners of something perhaps more difficult to define.  I feel like I am a more authentic man now.  It isn't exactly a daily occurrence that you can wake up and find yourself able to truthfully proclaim that.

Going into the contest I felt some fear that my decision to compete might actually exacerbate my PTSD rather than help me continue moving in the direction of deeper healing.  I realize that fear can be healthy in certain situations and we are wise to always at least acknowledge those moments of intuition, excitement, fear, exhilaration and so on that often serve as some of the most useful signposts we encounter on our unique life journeys.  There are healthy fears as well as unhealthy fears.  I made the healthy choice of consulting with my therapist before performing last night and dressing in the way that I did.

Rather than cause me harm my contest experience further grounded me in my sense of self.  I realize how deeply I enjoy the leather community or 'scene' and how much I wish to explore it more.  And my motivation to explore is based in part on my fascination with the cultural connection between the leather community and German culture.  I know relatively little about this connection but would enjoy the opportunity to learn more.  I am motivated to learn in part by my desire to honor my own ancestral heritage.  My fascination with heritage dates back to my studies at Naropa University when there existed a satellite campus in Oakland, California.

Last night symbolizes an event with irreversible consequences for my life.  I cannot even now name what all those consequences are.  I will leave that to the journey of self discovery that brings us new material each and every day to mold into a never ending new variation of self-awareness.   I have made a decision to close the door on one aspect of my life that had previously served me but now no longer does.  I decided to resign from a local chorus whose organizational politics I find more than a bit odious.  I have not found the compassion and integrity within that organization I was hoping to find.  And I did not feel my expectations were unreasonable.  But expectations are themselves a tricky animal.

Singing in gay choruses appealed to me for many reasons.  One appeal was the deep need I had to find a means to not only have fun but also deepen my personal capacity to express myself in a grounded and mature way.  It seems that I have done the work I needed to do and could expect to do within that particular context.  I also loved my 'chorus life' because it gave me a place to play and enjoy the creativity, campiness and enthusiasm of other gay men.  But I can find that in other outlets.

When I woke up this morning I felt so profoundly different.  I also realize it's important for me to put the past behind me in the best way possible.  I will continue to do work with my therapist and explore how I can honor all my relations, all my ancestry and all my gifts in the most holistic way possible.  That is my great desire now.  This shall now be my overriding focus.

I have a motto I coined once I got knee deep into therapy.  And that motto is this: "Feed the boy".  I gave my boy a giant helping of life energy last night.  Though the events of the evening are now a blur the general memory of exhilaration will stay with me a lifetime.  And that by itself made competing for Mr. Minneapolis Eagle an amazing and unforgettable experience!



Friday, November 15, 2013

And Now For Something Positive and Exciting

Friday, November 15, 2013


Today marks the beginning of a weekend I am sure to never forget...unless I one day develop Alzheimer's.  I have a vivid and somewhat dark sense of humor (due in part to the trauma I have experienced in my life no doubt) so it is easy for me to imagine dark scenarios.  The challenge in healing from something like PTSD is to not get stuck in something like an automatic loop and continually imagine that the future has to or will look identical to the past.

I am competing in a contest this weekend called the Mister Minneapolis Eagle 2014 contest.  I am finally allowing my interest in leather and the leather community to lead me in a new direction of exploration and discovery.  I am quite excited by the journey; some days I feel like I have opened Pandora's box and will never be able to close it.  But that isn't necessarily a bad thing!  Whatever happens this weekend I feel like I am going to emerge on the other side as a profoundly different person.  I'm going to reveal more of my self and take the immense risk of experiencing the response from what will likely be hundreds of people while standing on stage.  I am feeling both trepidation and excitement.

I have noted in recent posts how I am beginning to feel much more in my body than I have in a very long time.  My greatest fear in revealing more of my core self this weekend at the contest is not so much any disapproval I might experience but rather that the experience might be so jarring or overwhelming that I will feel a little traumatized by it and somehow emerge from the experience feeling worse for wear.  I don't want to do anything that will seriously risk my own healing process.  And I don't sense that will happen but it certainly is a reasonable fear that has passed through my mind more than once.

It's a beautiful Friday morning here in Minneapolis.  It's a bit cold outside but nothing extraordinary for mid November.  It was a very wise choice I made to take a Vitamin D supplement throughout the year...and most especially during the darker half of the year.  I continue to feel better and better and am optimistic that I will heal more fully in good time.  It is a process that requires patience and strength.  I have not felt as strong as I do now in quite a long time.

I intend to write in my blog tomorrow (and maybe even Sunday).  If somehow I run out of time and cannot write tomorrow you can be sure I will write again on Monday.  And I intend to share details of this weekend.

Cheers!




Thursday, November 14, 2013

A Landscape of Atomized Selves

Thursday, November 14, 2013


So as fate would have it I am riding another wave of upset while simultaneously preparing for the Mr. Minneapolis Eagle contest this weekend.  Timing can sometimes be a real nightmare...and this current moment most definitely feels like one of those.  I would prefer not to have such sadness and anger simmering inside while I focus on what might be the most fun weekend of my life.  Somehow I have to find a way to maintain my balance and move forward in the midst of feeling such incredibly contrary emotions.  It feels something like floating out at sea and dealing with waves coming at me from opposite directions.

I have decided to "throw in the towel" and completely give up on my association with a local chorus I joined at the beginning of this year.  The unfortunate truth as I have experienced it is that this chorus is by far one of the most dysfunctional organizations I have ever had the eventual displeasure of associating myself with.  I joined it back in January and had looked forward to the opportunity to sing with a group of men and have an outlet for my playful and trickster-ish sense of humor.  And yet what began as a source of joy ended as a source of pain.  I am going to do my best to learn from this experience though.  And one pattern within myself I clearly see more than ever before is that I allow people into my life too fast.  I am going to find a new way to relate to the world at large such that I can create and maintain healthy boundaries.

The seminal issue that the recent chorus problem has re-energized is the pain I have carried around due to experiencing so many people throughout my life history who are so preoccupied with themselves that they cannot see very well beyond themselves and actually bear witness to and be available to me in times of pain.  And so in a sense the pain I already am feeling due to loneliness, fear, frustration and so on simply becomes magnified all the more when I find myself surrounded by self-absorbed people.  And therein lies one of the greatest tragedies that we can find ourselves caught in: living in a world in which people are so distracted, preoccupied or in pain that they cannot see beyond themselves to the world at large and actually engage with it in a healthy way.

This landscape of atomized selves is one I am intimately all too familiar with.  I inhabited it as a child and had no means of escape.  I could not look to my mother for love and support in the earliest years of my life because she was collapsing into her schizophrenia.  And I could not look to my father to be present because he was so consumed with dealing with my mother.  And I have never really been able to go to my father with my own pain or grief in all the years since my early childhood because he has what I would call a pathological fear of confronting the darker side of human life.  He cannot acknowledge or own his shadow in which reside his self-destructive and self-negating tendencies.  He would rather not look into his shadow.  And therein lies his greatest failing.  He lives in his shadow and yet he does not see it.  Nearly dying did not "cure" him of this pathology.  I don't know that there is anything that could supposedly "cure" him.  It's so incredibly sad.  And it is also so incredibly clear that I now need to let him go and drop any and all expectations or hopes or fantasies that he will one day be a more functional person.  Perhaps something will change one day.  But I doubt it.  I will no longer nurture false hope.  It is time for me to grieve and then move on.

The chorus I previously sang in appears (in my estimation) to be just another landscape of dysfunctional, atomized selves.  Yes, there were indeed good people I found in the organization.  I am still friends with some of them.  But there is also the unfortunate dark side.  And like my own father some of these men simply cannot be present to me and my legitimate pain.  They have their own lives, their own stories and their histories.  And I can respect that.  What I cannot respect is an organization in which the leadership is so blind and incapable of objectively addressing issues that it disenchants and upsets members to the point that they decide to leave the organization.  This is sad and most unfortunate.

I could tell how upset I still feel regarding the ending of my affiliation with the chorus when I first began to wake up this morning.  I could feel within myself the anger and sadness churning around.  And there were moments when I felt a strong desire to jump out of my body.  I simply did not want to fully feel what I was aware of.    I felt my body very subtly tightening when I allowed my awareness to focus on the grief and anger.  I would then do my best to breathe and allow myself (as much as I could) to be present to the anger and pain.  I do not want to push it away and bury it nor do I want to embrace it to the point of unhealthy wallowing.  I need to find the middle path.

I have finally awoken to the sad reality that so many of the men of this nation's culture are quite inept at feeling and expressing their "darker" feelings.  Perhaps there is a genuine epidemic of self-loathing, confusion and pain among men.  It would not surprise me.  I myself need to find healthy people to associate with.  Anything less is less than I need.

These last four months have been such a difficult time for me.  I feel the need to be very cautious about the associations I create in the future.  I am going to make a commitment to myself to honor my own needs and intuition as much as I humanly can.  Such a way of living takes skill, intention and practice.



Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Growing Season

Wednesday, November 13, 2013


The growing season here in Minnesota is now definitively over.  The hardiest of annual plants that can survive a night when temperatures drop to 26F to 28F do not do too well when it reaches 10F.  But at least the wind is finally calming down before bringing some relative warmth back in the coming days.  As I walked around outside today I could witness the carnage of the very hard freeze we had last night; wilted flowers could be seen on many blocks.

Having grown up in north Texas (where some freezing weather typically occurs in the winter months yet nothing like what is normal in Minnesota) it is indeed a bit novel to live in a region with a 'genuine' winter season.  I have lived in northern climates and their associated winters in past years but nothing as severe as what you can expect in Minnesota.  The term 'growing season' is obviously most relevant to those who pursue agricultural activities.  Once the growing season is over the orientation of your daily focus naturally shifts to a season of hibernation and eventually to preparations for the coming year.  As darkness grows and the days grow cold and brief it becomes an ideal time to look within your own home as well as within the confines of your own body.  It is now a good time for other projects.  It is a good time for exploring the terrain of grief.

I attended a class focused on grief and the holidays yesterday.  During my brief introduction of my background I mentioned the sadness I felt (both past and present) that this past summer became a time marked by adjusting my life to the reality of the diagnosis I was not expecting to receive.  Dealing with such a development in the time of summer's power felt contrary to me.  Indeed if illness could be correlated to a season I would wager it would be winter rather than summer.  We typically are inclined to associate summer with warmth, light, pleasure and ease.  Winter is the time of cold, darkness and hibernation.  It is a time (outside of the tropics) when the world grows silent in its slumber of hibernation.  Silence and darkness correspond very easily to qualities of being you would associate with illness; when we are sick or suffer it can feel like the equivalent of being silenced or existing (rather than vibrantly living) in the darkness that confusion (due to how illness can detour our entire lives and future) may so easily generate.

Even for winter hardy Minnesota natives I suspect winter is not always an easy experience.  Once the energetic whirlwind of the holidays passes by we are faced with approximately three solid months of cold and snow.  It could be easy to want to disassociate or daydream about the warmth of the coming summer or fondly remembering the warmth of summers past.  And yet if I really want to live in the present (the only moment where I can truly actually live) it seems doing this too much is not the healthiest way of living in the circle of the seasons.

My recent experience of the day treatment program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital was helpful in many ways.  I enhanced my life skills and was able to gain some significant perspective on my own challenges as well as the much larger challenges that many others often face.  One important bad habit I was reminded of is the habit of collapsing the past, present and future into one moment.  Many days have enough demands in them that just living in the moment is more than enough to fill our plates.  So it becomes quite clear (unless your thinking is muddled or clouded) that thinking about the past, present and future in the same day or for many days at a time can be not only exhausting but fruitless and lead to a feeling of ongoing overwhelm.  And I realize that in the past I have tended to do that too much.  I believe it is vitally important to our own health that we find a way to cultivate not only gratitude for that which we have in the present but that we also do our best to be present in the present.  When we constantly mentally drift off to other places and times we effectively vanish from the evolving stream of life full of so much possibility.  The only place where life actually unfolds is in the present.  Everything else is either memory or fantasy.

I am preparing myself now to compete in a contest this coming weekend here in Minneapolis.  I have not kept my diagnosis a secret.  Shame can debilitate the strongest of us.  I hope that somehow by transmuting the darkness of my painful past losses into wisdom that I share with others here in my blog I will be able to find some healthy closure and move forward into the light of a much brighter future.  I feel I am moving in that direction as fast as is possible.  And taking comfort in the strength of my commitment will help me through the winter that stands before me.




Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Gripping Cold

Tuesday, November 12, 2013


I am going to attend a class today that focuses on the issue of grief and the holidays.  It is being offered at Pathways Health Crisis Resource Center here in Minneapolis.  I discovered Pathways this past summer when I was first seeking out therapy for my diagnosis.  I have come to think of Pathways as a pleasant way station for those seeking support during a time of difficulty.  It's something like a rest stop along a highway or a sauna you might find at a very well equipped airport.

As I contemplate grief I sometimes visualize my current process as a person engaged in a search and rescue effort who is scanning a lake or ocean below him in search of survivors.  The water symbolizes grief.  The helicopter and all related rescue gear symbolize the tools we may each work with to journey through the shadowy world of our grief.  I'll be taking a dip into the grief later today.  Who knows what I will find as I make the journey.  But I do hold strongly to the belief that the benefits of journeying through the terrain of grief can be many.  It's a continued voyage into the unknown.

As predicted the temperature outside this morning is about 10F.  I didn't feel ready for the season of darkness and cold earlier this year and I still do not feel all that prepared for it now as it confronts us with its growing power.  I am fortunate to have been prescribed a light box by the psychiatrist who works with patients at the day treatment program I was attending the last two weeks.  I have been using my light box since this past weekend.  I expect I will have an easier time this winter because of my dedicated efforts to mindfully care for my health.  When considering last winter I suspect I was experiencing a low grade dysthymia much of the time.  I was putting myself through unnecessary hardship with the choices I was making.

As the world outside begins its long winter hibernation I will remain steadfast in feeding the fire within me.  As I have said to my friends winter represents an ideal time to look within and explore grief.  The darkness in the large world beyond our windows is a perfect milieu to encourage exploration of our deepest shadows within our own psyches.

As I continue my therapeutic journey I find myself able to articulate my experiences in my youth in countless slightly different variations.  I realize part of my fundamental issue was quite simply my father's inability or unwillingness to be an explorer of those darker terrains.  He could not acknowledge his own shadow and was thus something of a prisoner to it.  And I felt held hostage with him.  It makes perfect sense to me now that I felt as I did.


Monday, November 11, 2013

Lengthening Shadows


Monday, November 11, 2013


Despite the bright sunshine we had this afternoon it is very clear that winter is fast approaching.  A cold wind blowing in from Canada is sending temperatures tumbling; it will likely be about 10F tomorrow morning.  I went for a brief walk this morning made all the more brief by the chilly wind.  It is interesting how the wind blowing through trees sounds so different when all the leaves are dried up, brittle and dead.  The sound is something akin to the sound of sleet bouncing off car hoods.  The sounds of nature going into hibernation are all around us now.  I heard them again when I went for a walk this afternoon.  There will soon be a scarcity of green hues outside.  Only evergreen trees will be showing off their splendor when Christmas arrives.

Put in a more morbid way the time of death is here.  Darkness recedes late and comes early.  Soon the ponds and lakes will be freezing.  At moments when I feel discouraged I remind myself that a day will come again when the outer world will be filled with life and green.  Until then it is the time of looking within and allowing for the darkness to teach us its own wisdom.  And there is most definitely much to learn.

I just met with my therapist this morning.  At my request we did another EMDR session.  We focused specifically on my feeling that I am too sensitive to the needs of other people and not sensitive enough to my own needs.  This proclivity is rooted in my own childhood experience in which I was expected to live in the midst of significant illness and not feel overwhelmed or sickened by it.

My predominant feeling today is one of confusion.  I am confused by aspects of my past and also confused by what I might experience or be able to create in the future.  My confusion is also due to my current circumstances regarding my career.  Despite my ongoing efforts to secure a job I continue to not receive invitations back for a second interview or a job offer.  I interviewed with REI last week and felt confident I would be seriously considered for the position I applied for.  Yet again I was wrong.  There are moments when I feel very stuck.  Then there are other moments when I feel very confused or even lost.  I cannot know when this phase of my life will end. 

Living in this immense uncertainty can take a toll when it drags on for a long period of time.  Such has been my personal reality for some time now.  This has also been the reality across the United States for years.  There is so much uncertainty.  The only thing I am certain about is that my future cannot look anything like my past.  I need to undergo a personal transformation similar to what you experience in adolescence.  Thankfully I have begun to create a support network.  Yet the process still feels quite grueling on many days.

I have long passed the point where I can easily turn back and forego doing more deep inner work for my own future.  And yet the path forward now feels very surrounded by a darkness which symbolizes my own uncertainty regarding what will unfold in my immediate future.  As painful as it can be the challenge for me now is to maintain my commitment to moving forward in the midst of this immense uncertainty.




Sunday, November 10, 2013

Reentry

Sunday, November 10, 2013


Yesterday was such a profoundly rich experience for me that I decided to recount it on a Sunday.  I hope that one day my writings might prove of some value to the existing (and I assume growing) literature on PTSD.

I began my morning visiting a friend at a local coffee shop that also sells leather gear.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The concept isn't exactly foreign; similar establishments can also be found in St. Louis and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Having lived in San Francisco for a few years I can say I am not surprised by this.  San Francisco offers something for everyone.  I used an outline of my hand as a focus for coloring with crayons.  It was fun!  And I was also reminded that carefree play is not something I did very much as a child.  I was often consumed with too much anxiety due to circumstances beyond my control.  It is clear that I need to add more play to my life.

In the afternoon I made my way to an event focused on the local leather and kink community.  I took two buses to reach my destination.  As I waited downtown I occasionally struggled a bit to maintain my focus in the present moment.  I caught my mind wandering.  So I focused almost exclusively on breathing in a conscious and relaxed way.  There were moments when I felt aware of an immense sadness I have carried for far too long.  I tried to neither exclusively focus too much on the sadness nor avoid it.  Just being present to it was enough for the day.

I feel sad partly due to the fact that I am experiencing what I would call reentry.  I have been realizing that I have been living partially outside of my body for much of my life.  I simply could not tolerate the anxiety I felt on a daily basis for years at a time while I was growing up.  So I (unconsciously) developed a coping strategy in which I would not allow myself to fully feel myself inside my body.  This is not an uncommon response to trauma.  When it becomes simply too painful to be present to your life it can be adaptive to find a way to disassociate.  Of course this adaptation eventually becomes problematic when circumstances change and it actually becomes a pleasure to be in the present moment once again.

I suppose the EMDR therapy I have previously done with my therapist is but one reason I am feeling so much different (better) than I once did.  It definitely feels as if I am re-patterning my brain such that I will think and act in much healthier ways.  I long ago (as I noted in an earlier post called 'Now Entering Uncharted Territory') left the familiar interior landscape behind to venture into a realm of new possibilities.  Venturing into this new realm can itself be an anxiety provoking experience.  Thankfully I have found a number of ways to attend to my anxiety and manage it.  Over time I believe I will continue to feel better and heal.  Yet exactly when I will have some magical 'Eureka' moment is unclear to me.  I wonder if I will even experience such a moment.

I enhanced many of my self-care skills in the two week day treatment program I recently completed at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.  And I can confirm that one particular aspect of improved health is something I am already feeling.  As I have exited this unconscious pattern of disassociation I notice that my capacity for both immense sorrow and immense joy has grown.  My affect is no longer flattened by the burden of depression or the grief I had carried for so long.  Sometimes this change is pleasurable (as in cases when I am experiencing joy) and other times it feels a bit overwhelming (when I walk into the opposite polarity of the darker side and feelings of life).  Throughout the whole process it remains a challenge for me to not label what I am feeling as 'wrong', 'bad' or 'unusual'.  The process simply is what it is and will unfold as it must.

The holiday season is now fast approaching.  This season often brings its own challenges for those with complicated or dysfunctional families in which consistency or stability was a rare treat.  I know I have my own ambivalence about the holidays.  I can find great joy in them.  But I also can feel immense sadness as well.  Again I understand this is not unusual.

Re-entering my body is such an amazing journey.  My own recovery process is filled with such rich experiences thus far.  This is but one reason I feel very drawn to documenting my journey in this blog.
I hope it is giving consolation and encouragement to those who read from it.

I welcome your positive comments!