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How I Healed the Phobia

Posted on April 17, 2020 by jenny

These are the last two paragraphs of my blog post from 2011 about the airplane phobia:

“Looking back at it, I can see better how it became so horrendous. Hypersensitivity to sound is a symptom of PTSD, but I still had no idea that I had been traumatized. One thing about an obnoxious and very loud sound, you can’t look away as you can from an ugly sight. Your only recourse is to go far enough away. Finding it impossible to live in your own house, in your own town, is depressing in itself. I felt hopeless and helpless. The planes were triggering flashbacks to a helpless, terrified infant.

“Healing from the phobia happened literally overnight. I had started taking Imipramine (Anti-depressant medication) in February and after a few months was beginning to feel better. I had started therapy with Dr. Cynthia Rankin in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. She was a specialist in mood disorders. I had been seeing her for several months. It was May and the planes were starting up. On Friday I had a session with Dr. Rankin. I asked her if it was OK to “white-knuckle it” through the noise. She said “Of course.” Then she said she had observed a pattern in my behavior. I would start a project that had several steps. I would do the first two steps just fine, but if I ran into trouble on the third I would conclude that I “couldn’t do it.” I would fail to see that I had already managed to do part of it successfully, in fact I would even define those first steps as failures. This was enormously interesting to me. I knew something about training dogs and that the principles worked for human beings also. I figured I could retrain myself about the planes. I would write down each one survived with white knuckles as a success, and see how many I could survive before I had to leave the house. Saturday was rainy, and I went to the first level Reiki training. I had the oddest feeling afterward that my immune system had “switched on.” I could almost feel a protective field around me. Sunday was sunny and I sat down with paper and pen, waiting for the planes to start. Each time one went over I would say “that’s one survived” and make a little airplane symbol on the page. By the end of the day, I had survived 13 planes, and I knew the phobia was over. Dr. Rankin had given me my power back for which I am eternally grateful. I still hated the sound, but I no longer freaked out, and gradually the sound began to fade into the background. Every now and then I notice a plane towing a glider and think “God! I suffered from that for 13 years, and now I don’t even notice them.”

More recently, in 2018, I realized that the process Dr. Rankin had identified was actually rooted in something my father said to me. “If you didn’t know how to do it, why did you even try?”

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Invalidating and Trivializing my Experience

Posted on April 17, 2020 by jenny

I have been reading my journal for 1986, and came across this entry about the noise phobia in November.

I had a bad time with anger yesterday. Feelings of rage kept surfacing, and I would let myself feel it, but that was painful because it just emphasizes that I am powerless to do anything about the noise, so then I would just stifle the anger which is painful in its own way. I don’t know what to do with the anger. I asked Dana but he couldn’t really help. He doesn’t have the same difficulty letting go of anger. I said something interesting, I said if it’s something real, I don’t have trouble letting go of it. I suppose what I meant by something real was a situation were I’m angry at a person who is close to me, not these impersonal situations where somebody is making noise that hurts me and I don’t know who they are. But what does it mean that I define one as real and the other as unreal. “Real” means there is something I can work on, a relationship or situation that I can confront and perhaps affect. “Unreal” means I have no power in the situation, it’s “all in my head”, so I should just stop fussing about it. What I’m doing is invalidating myself. My reaction to noise is not “all in my head”, it’s in my body too, I feel just as sick as when I’m down with candida poisoning. And I’m making it worse by being angry at myself, as though I had any control over my reaction. So I’m invalidating my own feelings, trivializing them, (you shouldn’t be angry), and angry at myself for being helpless. No wonder I feel so beaten. But I’m not being beaten by the noise so much as by my own feelings. The noise reaction is not unreal, it is a stress reaction, but I’m making it worse by being angry at myself, and by invalidating myself. I don’t know how to stop doing that, but I will at least try to become aware that that’s what I’m doing.

Reading this, my heart just breaks for myself. I didn’t have enough information, and I followed the pattern I learned growing up. That I “wanted to be miserable,” that my pain and my needs were irrelevant. No one understands what I’m going through because they don’t notice the sound. Someone even suggested that I go to the airport and find out that the people were really nice. I couldn’t even see a sign saying “airport” without my heart going off in what I now understand was a fight or flight reaction. People would say to me the same thing my mother said “Don’t be so sensitive,” as though I had a choice.

What I needed was for someone to say “What you’re dealing with is ‘hyperacusis,’ a possible consequence of PTSD. Will power won’t change it.” When I first got here to Kendal, I had trouble with a lot of the noises that I heard when I was here in this apartment. I remember being very scared briefly and then remembering that if I knew what it was I would stop reacting. Also, my reaction was nothing like the fight/flight I experienced with the airplanes. By this time I’ve stopped noticing a lot of common noises. There is a set of new noises which are catching my attention: people’s voices, both outside and in the hall. I’m pretty sure it’s people having to talk louder because of social distancing. It is distracting, but fortunately I don’t go into fight/flight.

I talked to my therapist about it this morning, and she said I had learned to talk to myself like a good parent. “Once you know what the noise is, you will stop being so bothered by it.” I started to feel wonderful.

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I Can Trust MYSELF

Posted on April 16, 2020 by jenny

from my journal for Thursday, April 16

3rd cup. Dandelion tea. Richard Rohr says that real hope rests on a deep knowledge and experience of God. Because I have such a deep distrust of “God,” I see that my experience of being able to trust myself, to trust that deep within me there’s one who picks me up and goes on when I can’t, deep within me there is one whose wisdom has been leading me — to journal, to astronomy, to stonehenge… to Kendal — even when I did not appreciate that wisdom at the time. O but the Universe also sends messages, hints, leadings in the form of synchronicities, birds or rabbits appearing — I heard the wild geese this morning — “announcing your place in the family of things.”

I’m also reading Tattoos on the Heart, and Father G spoke to me in stories of the homies.

“Fabian… wasn’t all the abuse he had endured. He was something else, astonishing and glorious.” p103

From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation for today:

We might make the following observations about this other kind of hope, which we will call mystical hope. In contrast to our usual notions of hope:
1. Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.
2. It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.
3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. . .

March 17 my notes from talk with Erica:

The news feed not consistent. “I’ve been through another cycle”
baby can’t trust parents its life dependent on
untethered — my earliest intelligence —
my process has gone brilliantly
I’m in freeze, that’s why walking dog, doing dishes work
go on & do the next right thing
I couldn’t do my usual coping — puzzles, type
my system is saying I don’t want to check out
I want to come back into coherence
and back into grounded connection
I can trust myself! [I say with surprise and tears]

in post for March 18

My therapist pointed out that I had somehow done just the right things to bring me out of it. The state I’m in is FREEZE, because a baby can’t flee or fight, and the default in that case is “freeze.” So just moving helped. The fact that I couldn’t do my usual coping activities: digital puzzles, typing journal, reading, was because I knew I couldn’t check out, I had to stay present. This hadn’t been conscious, it came from deep within. But it was the opposite of reaching for a drink. I said to Erica, in tears, “I can trust myself.”

I gathered these pieces and planned to write a summary bringing them all together. But my writing capacity is nil right now, I’ve fallen into a place of despair, my neo-cortex is offline. I’m triggered by overwhelm, by too much news both bad and good, I can’t handle anything right now. So, dear reader, you get to make sense of this collection of fragments, or not. I’ll just post it in the faith that if it doesn’t make sense, perhaps you will have a better understanding of how trauma affects the brain.

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Noise Phobia

Posted on April 11, 2020 by jenny

From my journal for January 6, 1984 I am just beginning to experience the noise phobia. It will continue until 1997.

I’m having an extraordinarily hard time lately. I’ve been oddly sick, up and down, for about two weeks. Sore throat, cold, fever, nausea, lack of energy, lack of appetite. At one point I got badly dehydrated and when I started drinking a lot I began to feel better physically. But mentally I feel just awful. At first very depressed, not seeing any reason for doing anything, can’t get in touch with what I want. Doing something like washing dishes seems to require a huge effort, is joyless. Read some books about the Holy Grail. That work was fun and meaningful and very exciting. Then began this awful harassment by noise. The Car crusher down the street was running for three days, somebody’s been running a snow mobile in Whitney’s woods, there have been chain saws nearby, or maybe not nearby, I can’t tell any more I’m so freaked out. All my muscles are tense and my stomach in a state of nausea. Every time I hear a renewed snarl, a renewed shot of adrenalin throws me into spasm again and then I seem to go on tingling and vibrating for a long time. Every time I think of the Taylor’s logging their property, the same spasm shakes me. How will I live through it? (Well, I lived through Whitney’s logging, but we weren’t living here then and we were doing our own cutting) Well, I have chosen to increase my tolerance to noise, and to come to terms with the part of me that is causing this thing with noise to be such an issue. I’m sick of being so overly sensitive, sick of being thrown off balance by such little things. And thats another thing I do to myself is judge myself harshly for letting such a little thing upset me so. Forgive, forgive. Forgive them their noise and forgive me my weakness.

I feel utterly overwhelmed and utterly helpless.

Some kind of very delicate balance must be found, between the resistance which gives it energy and the passivity which allows it to flatten me. Some kind of taking a stand, some kind of robust strength within myself.

In the margin of the printed version is a note: “Dear Jenny, it’s called “hyperacusis” and it’s one of the symptoms of PTSD. May 2008″

January 24
All my life I’ve been overreacting to things, taking them as personal insults, getting upset about something that hasn’t happened yet. And it didn’t seem odd because it usually seemed justified: trouble with a boyfriend, money difficulty. But now, with something as trivial as the noise, I can see that I have been overreacting and I can work on this discipline for being more tolerant and robust, not so sensitive and nervous. I can also see that I’ve been expecting in some childish way that the world should be arranged for my comfort. It seems unfair that I should have moved to the country only to be harassed by noise. But that’s the condition of life in this industrial age. I want to live in a world in which people value the beauty of nature and don’t deface it by noise, smells and pollution, but cherish and enhance it by appropriate building, gardening and forestry practices. That’s my vision for the world.

Here I am taking responsibility for the symptoms of PTSD. “I’m sick of being so overly sensitive, sick of being thrown off balance by such little things.” Exactly what it feels like to live with PTSD. Imagining that I am creating them for some sick need, since my efforts to change don’t work. I have no idea how big and overwhelming is what I am up against. It will be 13 years before the phobia ends, as a result of anti-depressant medication and an astute therapist.

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Good Friday

Posted on April 10, 2020 by jenny

Richard Rohr:

I believe that the cross is an image for our own time, and every time: we are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering. Amidst the devastating spread of COVID-19, the cross beckons us to what we would call “grief work,” holding the mystery of pain, looking right at it, and learning from it. With softened hearts, God leads us to an uncanny and newfound compassion and understanding.

Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water, p 307

“He did say that he believed the fair Lord of life had accepted a death so shameful by deliberate intent of love, so that nothing that can happen to the body should cause any man to feel himself separated from God. … fearful though the sight was, it was not what he saw that made him weep. It was that the Lord of heaven, giving himself into the hands of men, that is to say into his hands, to do with what he would, had by his hands been broken.”

Today is Good Friday, and I have a lot of memories. Probably the most important was the time that I was in a house of friends, I was very severely depressed, and hanging on their wall was a picture of the head of Jesus on the cross. His head was bent to one side, and around it was the crown of thorns. I looked at it, and I thought that in the whole pantheon he was the only god who knew what I felt like.

Some background. I was raised Episcopalian, but stopped believing in God and church as a teenager. In college, I took a course (required) in biblical history, literature, and interpretation. It gave me a critical appreciation of the construction of the gospels, and a sense of the life of the man Jesus. I have come to appreciate Jesus as a person, and feel much closer to him than to “God.” I continue to struggle with the question of whether the Universe is friendly or not.

The year after I graduated from College, I went to Europe with a friend. In April, 1965, we were in the tiny village of Naoussa on the Island of Paros in the Aegean. We were in the house of the rich man of the village, Frankie, who had worked all his life in a filling station in Chicago, and retired on Social Security of $25 a week. It was the night of Good Friday. We were playing a card game, when we heard sounds in the street. When we looked out, we saw some priests carrying tall candles, followed by the flower-covered coffin of Jesus Christ, followed by the women of the village, dressed in black and wailing. I realized that this was an opportunity for each woman to mourn the husband lost at sea last year, the child who died years ago, in fact all the losses of their lives were being communally mourned.

Another memory is of a statue of Jesus that I saw when I was traveling in Brittany. It was part of a sculpture showing a series of scenes from the life of Jesus. I remember that the Last Supper was being enacted by men with heavy Celtic faces wearing medieval Breton clothing. One of the scenes was a big fish with its mouth open and small people inside. Facing it was a large figure of Jesus. I was told that the fish represented Hell, and the scene was Jesus going down into hell during the three days before he rose again. The face of Jesus really struck me. It was so compassionate. I thought that just seeing that face could bring you out of Hell. I took a photograph, but alas it didn’t carry the same feeling.

On Good Friday I remember that a dark-skinned man, citizen of an occupied country, was executed by the Empire for teaching revolutionary ideas like helping the poor.

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Making the Choice for Love

Posted on April 9, 2020 by jenny

from Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for April 9:

Giving up control is a school to learn union, compassion, and understanding. It is ultimately a school for the final letting go that we call death. Right now, as we face social restrictions, economic fragility, and the vulnerability of our own bodies, is there something deeper that you can surrender to, that can ground you in disruption?

Surrendering to the divine flow is not about giving in, capitulating, becoming a puppet, being naïve, irresponsible, or stopping all planning and thinking. Surrender is about a peaceful inner opening that keeps the conduit of living water flowing to love. But do know this: every time we surrender to love, we have also just chosen to die. Every time we let love orient us, we are letting go of ourselves as an autonomous unit and have given a bit of ourselves away to something or someone else, and it is not easily retrieved—unless we choose to stop loving—which many do. But even then, when that expanded Self wants to retreat back into itself, it realizes it is trapped in a much larger truth now. And Love wins again.

Richard Rohr’s message today spoke directly to my central concern.

I am very concerned about my health, which is generally good for someone in her 70’s. But I have some details that I realize I spend a lot of time and energy on. I keep trying to control my morning headaches by keeping track of them, they happen on the average every other day, I thought they were because of dehydration, but my efforts to consistently drink enough water have not resulted in success. I have a similar problem with my gut. I’ve suffered from constipation all my life, due to PTSD, and there’s colon cancer in my family, so gut health is important. It’s hard to let go of trying to keep things even day after day, which is a ridiculous perfectionistic agenda. Thinking I can control a phenomenon that is the result of a combination of factors is impossible and frustrating. If I can look at it another way, that I am at least being able to keep my body in a manageable range, maybe I can let go of trying so hard. But I don’t intend to give up and stop doing all the little things that I hope are helping. Just if I could find a way to do it with more relaxation.

I remember a choice I made back in 1996, during the Summer from Hell. I had been to a retreat with Deena Metzger, and I was driving home. I don’t remember now what led to my thinking process, but I remember wondering if the God of Love or the God of Power was stronger. I didn’t really believe in God, even now that’s still a struggle, but that was how I phrased it. I realize that today, watching the people who are coming together to help others through this crisis, and how the Federal government, let by the Predator in Chief (Eve Ensler‘s term), is using the crisis to consolidate the power of the rich and corporations who value money over people. Watching these two forces at work, I see that I still oscillate between fear of power and hope in love. I now know that the Summer from Hell was a post-traumatic reaction to a horrific experience on Paxil. But I didn’t know that then. I thought that I was the world’s worst coward. But even with all that, I made a choice. I said “Even if the God of Power is stronger, I give my allegiance to the God of Love.” I meant every word of it. I am amazed, looking back, at that 54-year-old woman who made that choice in the teeth of traumatic fear.

I knew my prayer had been answered when I got home to find that my husband was in the midst of a crisis. We had not been able to have sex for many years — I thought at the time that it was my fault for being selfish or defective, but now I know it was PTSD. When I got aroused, my reptilian brainstem sent me into freeze. My husband has become attracted to a woman who was giving him a massage every week, and he asked her to have sex with him and she refused. He was practically catatonic. I did my best to comfort him. A good friend, who was living with us, told me that she thought I had been amazingly loving, and somehow I’ve been able to hold on to that, despite my firm belief that I am an unloving person.

I continue to make that choice, almost every day. What helps the most is the lovingkindness meditation for all beings, and tong-len when I’m able to do it. Recently I’ve been too triggered to be able to breathe in fear, but I will get back to it. I will sit at the bottom of the pit with the terrified baby and tell her that I’m not leaving. I know I can do this.

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Gratitude

Posted on April 8, 2020 by jenny

I have been concerned lately about what are the things I would really regret not having done if I died tomorrow. That was the push to get me over the hump to actually write gratitude letters to people I had always meant to write, but kept putting off.

Slightly edited version of what I wrote in my journal this morning.

Once again Erica turned things upside down. I had written my letter to Laura, but was afraid of sending for fear it would be the wrong thing. Erica said when someone remembers something you said, and holds it in their heart for a long time, it gets “seasoned” and more valuable. When you give it back, it is a great gift.

I know the truth of this because I remember when Meaghan came and threw her arms around me and said “Thank you for teaching me that I could learn to dance.” The way she expressed it, that she could learn, it was an ever bigger gift than if she had just said “teach me to dance.” I had helped her overcome some inhibition, perhaps even the result of painful criticism. Learning to dance had done more for Meaghan than just acquiring a new skill, it helped her express her feminine side. When I first met her, she was a “tough dyke,” [please understand that I use the term affectionately] short hair, blue jeans, chain saw. When I saw her at Dance Camp — by that time she had moved away from Franconia and started her own dance circle — she was wearing a long dress, her hair was long and wavy with blonde highlights (absolutely not artificial). I had been watching her and thinking it was wonderful how Circle Dance had transformed Meaghan, when she came up and threw her arms around me. That was how I learned that I had been part of the transformation I was admiring. [Giving expression to her feminine side did not change her sexual orientation, which would never have been my agenda.] But she took the ball I gave her and ran with it. This woman, who had never been out of the country, got herself to Argentina to learn from Friedel Kloke-Eibl who is perhaps the greatest “grandmother” of our sacred circle dance. Freidel came from a ballet background, and her choreographed dances tend to be more graceful and flowing than many traditional dances. I watched Meaghan teach some meditative dances at Neskaya Dance Camp, and her movements were exquisite, her face completely absorbed as though in prayer. My heart feels warm just thinking about it.

So now I puzzle over how did this wonderful piece of feedback get through the dissociative barrier to being able to feel good about myself? [which my mother called “thinking you’re so great”] I remember the time in Karen’s office when I was excitedly telling her about something astronomical, and I saw the words go by, as though drawn by an airplane, “… think you’re so great…” I immediately spoke back to that voice. “I don’t think I’m so great, I think the universe is great.” And I got it that Mother’s attempts to shut me down happened not because I was bragging but because I was enthusiastic about something that excited me. Now I’m thinking that my ability to detach my mother’s words from my feeling of being judged, was at least partly due to Karen. I think of all the times, when I spoke about myself judgmentally, Karen would look around the room and say “How’d she get in here?” And years before that, at a women’s weekend retreat, when I shared about keeping a journal, and then got hugely embarrassed about it — feeling that maybe I shouldn’t have said anything — and the leader asked the group and they said they had been inspired. I remember saying, in tears, “You mean it wasn’t bragging?”

What a long journey I have been on. So much help along the way. I’m sitting here feeling wonderful, my heart is warm and open, I’m feeling gratitude for all the help, and for knowing I have helped others.

Some further comments:

The letter to Laura was a letter to a circle dance teacher to thank her for her teachings, and especially to thank her for something she had said to me at a hard time. My fear that I would somehow say it wrong is a basic fear that I have about saying almost anything directly to someone unless I feel very safe with them.

Laura Shannon has also written an article about her own experience of Trauma Healing through Communal Dance.

I was unable to find information about Freidel Kloke-Eibl that was not in German, so here is a YouTube video of a dance she choreographed.

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Hijacked

Posted on April 6, 2020 by jenny

Van der Kolk “The big issue for traumatized people is they don’t own themselves any more. Any loud sound, anybody insulting them, hurting them, saying bad things, can hijack them away from themselves. And so what we have learned is that what makes you resilient to trauma is to own yourself fully.” Interview with Krista Tippett, in Becoming Wise, p88.

Yesterday, while walking my dog with a friend walking her dog, and doing our best to stay more than 6 feet apart, I totally lost it. We walk the dogs in a large park where we can let them off leash. Usually it works fine and gives them a chance to get more exercise. But Mocha got interested in another dog, and went up toward the highway, ignoring my calls. My friend called her dog, who came right back. But Mocha paid no attention. Sometimes if I walk away from her fast, she’ll come after me, but yesterday she was paying no attention to me at all. I got totally freaked out and began to cry. I could feel that all the strength drained out of my body. When Mocha did come back, I just kept crying.

I think this is the “collapse phase” which happens when the organism has concluded that death is imminent. The fifth stage in trauma: Alert —> fight —> flee —> freeze —> collapse It happens to me when I feel so completely helpless. Even though death doesn’t seem reasonable, after all I’m healthy, have a safe place to live, there’s nothing dangerous in my immediate environment — to a baby, because it’s helpless, when it’s alone death is always imminent.

My friend keeps telling me that I’m not firm enough when I call Mocha. I know this, and occasionally I can do it, but often even my best try sounds tentative rather than firm. It’s like I don’t feel that I have the right to command my dog. I think this is what Van der Kolk means by “not owning” myself.

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Today

Posted on April 4, 2020 by jenny

From my journal:

Headache. Tired. Sad. Slept late. I’m disappointed with myself for feeling sad again, and then I realize that it’s sadness for all the people who are scared and suffering right now.

I look at the pictures of my great-nieces and nephews on the fridge and I think — they will live through this, and they will be part of the new generation of global citizens who will change everything. Sooner, if we manage to take back the government and pass a Green New Deal, later if the Republicans hang on for another four years. I don’t think they can hold on past that. Those old white men will die, and the paradigm will shift. If we have four more years of Trump’s idiocy, things will get much worse before they get better. Of course, it’s always possible that we will kill the planet. It wouldn’t be an initiation if we knew we were going to survive.

Then I have a sudden vision of all that’s going on that we don’t know about. All the invisible spirits and forces that are also making things happen. All the butterflies flapping wings in Africa and Uzbekistan. Nature regenerating faster than we ever could imagine once we changed our behavior.

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“Shelter in Place”

Posted on April 3, 2020 by jenny

Because of COVID-19, I am getting scared on a regular basis. If I can find either my grief or my gratitude it will help dissolve the fear. But it’s a wild ride. I also have been getting together with my siblings on Zoom. Aren’t we all grateful for this online tool?

I realize that because of the difficulties of my life I have not been in regular contact with my siblings, and I have lost a lot of friends because it was too hard to keep connected when our lives diverged. For my siblings, I went through this blog and sent them the links to events in my life that might help them understand what it has been like. Such as “Getting on Medication”

One post that I found while looking around was one called The Core of Trauma. After I read it, I went on to the next post. (At the top and bottom of the post are links, the one on the left to the previous post, the one on the right to the next one.) This series of posts seemed very significant to me. One surprise was that, for almost the first time in my experience, I read how it was so much worse four years ago, and realize that I have done a lot of healing.

Caught in Traumatized Baby

The Five Gates of Grief

Grief has turned out to be a very important force in my life. Most of my life, when I was sad for “no reason” I made myself wrong. “What do you have to be sad about? You have enough money, etc etc…” So it was a revelation to be given Francis Weller’s book and find that there are things you were supposed to get and didn’t that were a reason to grieve. As a result, and despite a lot of terror, I went to a workshop in California with Francis Weller. The most important result of this was that I discovered that if I allowed myself to grieve, I no longer got depressed.

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