Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Today marks an unexpected and amazingly important milestone in my recovery process from PTSD. I had an appointment with my therapist this morning. We focused partially on re-assessing me for PTSD. Though I do still meet some criteria for PTSD as listed in the DSM V I no longer currently meet enough criteria to be clinically diagnosable for it. I now score as 'sub-clinical'. This development is huge! It marks a major milestone in my journey to full recovery. When I will meet no criteria for PTSD is not something I can easily predict but at the rate I am going I would not doubt if I make a full recovery by the end of 2014 as I am intending to do. It might even happen much sooner than that!
It is nice to have a bookend to define the day I knew clearly I no longer could score at a clinical level for PTSD. While I can define an endpoint to that period of my life defining a beginning point for the disorder is much more challenging. And it is so challenging due largely to the fact that I believe the beginning is shrouded somewhere in the earliest years of my life.
EMDR therapy has helped me to remove the sharp, hot, painful edge to some of my earliest memories in which I was an unwitting witness to my mother's descent into schizophrenia. I can now recall those memories without the attached emotional charge that once could easily overwhelm me. I would certainly guess that my PTSD began no later than when my parents divorced and my mother moved back to Germany. I can't easily recall the exact time of those events. I only know that it was very early in my own development. Trying to find a clear answer to the question of when my PTSD began is something akin to searching for something within a thick fog...it's a bit challenging.
As I made my way home today the world around me looked much as it would shortly after those first sessions I underwent using EMDR therapy: vivid, engaging, exciting. Though today is one of the coldest days of a winter that has felt plenty long already my excitement about my recovery suffused my body and mind. Were it not so brisk outside I could imagine going out and shouting "I'm sub-clinical, I'm sub-clinical!" But then some people might think I am clinical in another way...such as being manic! The coming of spring and a new cycle of life is still many weeks away but this encouraging news today gives me such a needed boost at a time when I have been feeling a bit weary. The bitter cold of this winter has been a lot to manage. I cannot imagine how I would have put up with such enduring cold if it had happened last winter when I had first moved to Minnesota. Thankfully the remaining days of this winter will be even easier for me to manage now that I have confirmation that all the work I have been doing on myself is paying off...and paying off well!
Now that I am sub-clinical it is, however, important to note that my personal journey of healing is not over yet. I have in a sense graduated into a different pool of people throughout the world. I would not consider myself at high risk of a relapse into clinically diagnosable PTSD given the great variety of habits I am cultivating to make a better future life for myself. Yet it is important that I not waver and slack off now. My progress is something akin to a patient being given the news of remission of cancer; I am moving in the direction of wellness. And I intend to keep moving in that direction.
Cheers!
Today marks an unexpected and amazingly important milestone in my recovery process from PTSD. I had an appointment with my therapist this morning. We focused partially on re-assessing me for PTSD. Though I do still meet some criteria for PTSD as listed in the DSM V I no longer currently meet enough criteria to be clinically diagnosable for it. I now score as 'sub-clinical'. This development is huge! It marks a major milestone in my journey to full recovery. When I will meet no criteria for PTSD is not something I can easily predict but at the rate I am going I would not doubt if I make a full recovery by the end of 2014 as I am intending to do. It might even happen much sooner than that!
It is nice to have a bookend to define the day I knew clearly I no longer could score at a clinical level for PTSD. While I can define an endpoint to that period of my life defining a beginning point for the disorder is much more challenging. And it is so challenging due largely to the fact that I believe the beginning is shrouded somewhere in the earliest years of my life.
EMDR therapy has helped me to remove the sharp, hot, painful edge to some of my earliest memories in which I was an unwitting witness to my mother's descent into schizophrenia. I can now recall those memories without the attached emotional charge that once could easily overwhelm me. I would certainly guess that my PTSD began no later than when my parents divorced and my mother moved back to Germany. I can't easily recall the exact time of those events. I only know that it was very early in my own development. Trying to find a clear answer to the question of when my PTSD began is something akin to searching for something within a thick fog...it's a bit challenging.
As I made my way home today the world around me looked much as it would shortly after those first sessions I underwent using EMDR therapy: vivid, engaging, exciting. Though today is one of the coldest days of a winter that has felt plenty long already my excitement about my recovery suffused my body and mind. Were it not so brisk outside I could imagine going out and shouting "I'm sub-clinical, I'm sub-clinical!" But then some people might think I am clinical in another way...such as being manic! The coming of spring and a new cycle of life is still many weeks away but this encouraging news today gives me such a needed boost at a time when I have been feeling a bit weary. The bitter cold of this winter has been a lot to manage. I cannot imagine how I would have put up with such enduring cold if it had happened last winter when I had first moved to Minnesota. Thankfully the remaining days of this winter will be even easier for me to manage now that I have confirmation that all the work I have been doing on myself is paying off...and paying off well!
Now that I am sub-clinical it is, however, important to note that my personal journey of healing is not over yet. I have in a sense graduated into a different pool of people throughout the world. I would not consider myself at high risk of a relapse into clinically diagnosable PTSD given the great variety of habits I am cultivating to make a better future life for myself. Yet it is important that I not waver and slack off now. My progress is something akin to a patient being given the news of remission of cancer; I am moving in the direction of wellness. And I intend to keep moving in that direction.
Cheers!
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