It interests me to go back and read my old journals. They remind me that I’ve been through an enormous amount of pain, and even managed to heal some of it. I suffered from the noise phobia for 14 years, and it took an astute therapist and medication to help me change it. At that time I didn’t even know that sensitivity to noise is a symptom of PTSD.
When I got here to Kendal, I discovered that I was still sensitive to noise, and that it helped a lot once I knew what caused the noise. My reaction was nowhere near as bad as the one to the planes.
From my journal for September 3, 1994
Sun on the front of my desk, a thin streak on my page. Mountain pale in gold-colored mist. A beautiful morning. We’ve been concerned because the bear ate most of the apples on the Duchess tree, and broke two branches and left claw marks in the trunk while doing so. I’m torn, I love having the bear around, but I don’t want the tree damaged and I don’t like the danger to Shenanigan. It’s chilly out there.
Shenanigan was our dog, an Irish Terrier.
I got up early because of Dana’s snoring. I woke at 6:30, was tired enough to sleep some more, but couldn’t because of the snoring. So I tried to listen to it, be curious about it. But all I wanted to do was scream and run away. I tried to create spaciousness, to soften around it, I tried to figure out what I needed to be able to relax and listen to it, but nothing helped. After 15 minutes it was as irritating as ever so I got up. It’s very frustrating. I haven’t a clue as to why I find it so awful. I wonder if my frustration itself is a clue, the frustration of “not knowing” what I have to know to be able to control it, make it go away. Then there’s the frustration of being tired and unable to sleep, and the frustration that I love Dana and yet can’t stand the noise. I tried to eliminate some of the frustration by deciding that I was going to get up anyway, so I might as well see what I could learn. I tried to “be curious” but I simply couldn’t relax and open enough to do that. And I see that I was trying to make myself be something that I’m not, trying to make myself “relax and be open” when I wanted to scream and run away. This smacks of anger and invalidation: “Whaddayou mean you can’t stand your husband’s snoring? What’s the matter with you? You’re too sensitive. Shape up.” Then there’s the conflict between wanting to poke him to make him stop and not wanting to wake him up. Well, that’s a lot of conflicts, a lot of double-binds. I guess there’s “good reason” for my discomfort. I sure don’t know what to do about it, except to try not to be angry at myself for being so sensitive. Can I love myself for being so sensitive, for agonizing so much about a harmless and not very loud noise made by a person that I love? And I feel a gush of warmth for that poor woman, with her hypersensitive nervous system, and her habit of anger at herself.
Second cup of tea. Dana just left for Montpelier. I’m tired and not looking forward to this day. There will of course be airplanes: it’s Labor Day Weekend. After my lack of success with Dana’s snoring, I’m a little afraid of not being able to handle it. I will try to not be angry at myself for being so sensitive, to treat myself like a hurt and frightened infant. I will try to explore the sadness, despair and fear that overwhelm me when I hear that sound.
I had a good talk with Eleanor yesterday. I had been sitting upstairs with Dawna’s book and spent about 20 minutes trying to hang out with the feelings the planes make me feel. (Yes, I know it’s technically incorrect to blame the planes for triggering the feelings that are already in me, but it mostly feels like they do it to me.) I had no more success than trying to hang out with Dana’s snoring this morning. I did find an image of my body stretched taut like a string and then plucked and vibrating. Then Eleanor came up for some tests and we talked about “Why go on.” She had to take her rent check to the people in Dr. W’s office, and they wouldn’t look at her. She thinks they’re angry that she’s on welfare when they have to work. She said she felt like there wasn’t any point in going on when she had nothing to contribute. “I’m not getting anywhere, I’m just sitting here by the side of the road with all this pain and sadness and despair and terror inside.” I said life wasn’t about “making a contribution” on the economic level, or even making people happy. I said her life was the most difficult life I know, that it was worse than that of a Vietnam Vet in a wheelchair, isolated in a village of people who hate him because they don’t want to face his pain. I asked her how it would feel to him if someone were to come and sit with him in his pain, not try to fix it, but just be with him, wouldn’t that make it easier to bear? Then I said her pain inside was her job, her piece of human suffering that she needed to be with, and that that was her “contribution”, not making it better for other people. I think it helped her a little, but it actually helped me a lot, I was listening to myself as I talked and acknowledging that the sadness, despair and fear inside me were my job, and the twanging and jangling calmed down.
Eleanor is my friend who lives with PTSD, having been horribly abused by her parents.
I’ve been reading Dawna Markova’s book No Enemies Within, and trying to identify my “enemy”, which is being hard. I’m also starting to feel strung out & vibrating like I did yesterday. What needs are hidden behind that unpleasant feeling? Needs for safety and validation.
My enemy (the different levels of):
1) Noise
2) Sensitivity to Noise
3) Anger at myself for being sensitive
4) Invalidating the pain.I see that (3) and (4) are easily projected onto (1) in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. I thought at first that (3) and (4) were in conflict but in fact they work together. I invalidate the pain by saying 1) Nobody else is bothered by it, 2) your childhood wasn’t bad enough to justify continued pain now. Then I get angry at myself that I can’t make the pain stop.
Well, what if I am “gifted” with an extremely sensitive nervous system and the pain really is that bad. Nobody would pretend that it wasn’t a lot of pain to sit in a dentist’s chair all day and be subjected to 3 minute rounds of drilling occurring without warning and without novocain, roughly every 15 minutes. [To be a direct parallel to the planes, the drilling would go on longer, but the actual pain to the nerve would be about 2 minutes.] I think most people would not want to be subjected to that, would not choose it unless there were very great benefits to be derived from it, and it would be understandable if they began to find it intolerable toward the end of the day. And what if they had to face it again tomorrow, and the next day, off and on for six months, with no obvious benefit to be derived from the process that was causing so much pain? I think most people would be excused for deciding this was intolerable torture and wanting to kill the dentist.
I need to validate that the pain I experience as the noise pierces me is real, is intolerable, and that I don’t know what to do to make myself stronger so I can tolerate it better, on what to do to be able to live with it. I am in intolerable pain and I don’t know what to do.
Reading this journal entry, I see how much I invalidate my own experience, and how much trouble it causes for me. My parents invalidated me on a regular basis, in fact I don’t remember them ever validating what was going on for me. Not knowing what causes the phobia is a big part of the problem.
Another part of the problem is that I am a “Highly Sensitive Person.” It makes it harder to deal with overwhelm. It didn’t help that Mother kept saying “Don’t be so sensitive” as if I had a choice.