So, I spoke in the last post (http://cre8buzz.com/profiles/1097/blogs/7244/blog_entries/22690) about how the brain fragments all the pieces of trauma in order to help us get through it in one piece and how I was already trying to re-connect all of the pieces and wire them together correctly when I was 15, but that I really had very very few pieces to go on at that time.

When I had been out of the house for a few years, bigger and more insistent bits and pieces began surfacing. Now that I was safer, I could begin looking at the fragments and try to figure out how to wire everything together correctly.

Fast forward to November 2006. Tons of these pieces and fragments and bits of wire were damn near all I could see. I held myself together at work through sheer force of will and habit and respect for my co-workers. But as soon as I left work, the bits and pieces consumed me. I had put large chunks of them together finally. They seemed to make sense in a horrific kind of way. But I could not make any meaningful connection between the jigsaw pieces of STRONG emotion evoked from all the bits and pieces and how to cope with those emotions today. Fight or flight? Fight what? The ghost of a memory? Flight from what? Wanting to scream?

I was lost in a wilderness not completely of my own making and I could not problem-solve my way out of it no matter how damn hard I worked at it. The puzzle seemed unsolvable.

By the first of January 2007, the chemical cocktail in my brain (natural cocktail, mind you, no funny stuff added) had started to flood my brain until I was locked into a constant state of fight or flight. I had a hair's worth of control I could exert and that was it.

I was suddenly and very unexpectedly suicidal.

You have to understand, I am normally not a depressive person. The particular cocktail of brain chemicals that my body has chosen to produce just don't leave a great deal of room for any kind of chronic depression. I hadn't felt like this since I was 14 and 15 and first starting to grasp hold of some of these bits and pieces and wires.

To make matters worse, the brain chemistry my body was producing from all this work on trying to put the bits and pieces and wires together - this constant Fight or Flight feeling - had actually locked up my ability to think logically. It's as if the "normal" part of me was locked into a cell in a small part of my brain and watching almost helplessly as the rest of my brain FREAKED OUT. That portion of me did an amazing job continuing to talk to and reason with and plead with the other part of my brain.

I made a couple of trips out to a small local lake with the intention of drowning myself. Now, let me tell you ... if the rational part of my brain ever determines that suicide is a necessity - maybe if I get incurable cancer or something like that - drowning is NOT something I would choose. I suspect I know where this compulsion came from ... I suspect it's simply another one of the pieces ... it certainly fits with a big chunk of the story, but it's not a method I would have expected me to even glancingly think about.

I also made a trip out to Lake Michigan, again intending to jump in. I made the hour long trip. Drove around the unfamiliar city. Found a place to park the car and headed out to the lake.

This is where a moment of funny comes in. I'm from Texas, for those of you who haven't heard me scream this from the mountaintops at every opportunity. I love Texas. Well, as I went out to Lake Michigan in January or February of '07 with the intent to jump in and swim so far out I could not make my way back ... it never ever freaking occurred to me that Lake Michigan could FREEZE!

Who ever would have thought that the extreme cold this Texan hates so very much would actually save my life?

Eventually, I was able to talk about the suicidal urges and get enough help to get myself through that part of the rough patch.

Fast forward to November 15, 2007.
I was working with a therapist who specialised in PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and she realized that I'd done most of the intellectual work, but we were both having a really really difficult time find a way that I could do the emotional work I needed to do. Essentially, if I couldn't find a way to unlock the places where those emotions had fragmented away ... if I couldn't find how those sections of the brain had gotten wired ... if I couldn't get in there in a deliberate and conscious way, I would never gain control over those areas and they would remain able to seize up my ability to think logically.

A "back door" method into those emotions is a technique called EMDR. Essentially, it's a way that we can deliberately process emotion that is "locked up" ... frozen ... stuck. For me, it involved getting myself to "ramp up" the emotion. This meant that I concentrated on the worst picture-piece I had. That picture-piece and a particular locked memory always went hand-in hand - they were inextricably hard-wired together. Once I had ramped up the emotion, we used a combination of sound and feeling which somewhat mimics the brain-state achieved through REM sleep, when we often process such events and emotions.

We ran the exercise a few times and by the time I left that day, I could think about that event without being locked up in re-living it ... without being forced to feel all the emotions all over again.

It felt like when you're a kid and you've just lost a baby tooth. You know something's missing. Something that's always been there. Your tongue goes over and pokes at the hole ... and suddenly you remember ... that painful tooth had been there!

The session succeeded beyond mine or my therapist's expectations.

It was also Dad's 68th birthday, a fact that had slipped my mind during the session itself and might have been a portion of the reason for the extreme success.

Since that time, I've been able to recognize when those pieces and wires pop up ... and I can give them the attention they deserve now without letting them take over everything. It's like being able to tell a particular memory, yes, I see you, that was horrible, but I'm okay now and now is not back then. And the memory, like the wounded child it belonged to, is consoled and retreats as it should.

Fast forward to this week. Remember? I said this week had been absolute hell? (Go ahead and scroll back up to the top of yesterday's post and review. I'll wait.)

A friend is going through much of the same thing. The pieces parts and bits of wire are starting to engulf her and lock her brain into that state of fight or flight. Last Sunday night I had been exchanging emails with her until she could no longer communicate. Since she'd left the emails in such a way that I knew she was still staggering under the weight of the pieces and wires, I drove over to her house and simply held her as she let go for a while. Listened to her talk. We sat there in the dark house for probably two hours ... letting her talk when she needed to talk and to sob when she couldn't stop herself from that any more.

It was stressful, as it would be for anyone. But I was happily surprised by how well I was able to cope with the entire situation. My own ghosts did not rise up and begin demanding attention as I thought they might do.

And then, while at home, an innocent act resulted in one of my biggest prior triggers: I drew back a handful of someone else's blood. It was simply an accidental cut, but it was completely unexpected and certainly unexpected in the context of the act.

I withdrew a little this week to cope with two very triggering events. My ghosts began an attempt to dance once more, wanting me to believe that everything was dangerous and to be avoided, wanting to ramp me back into that fight or flight panic. I attempted to fight them back into their boxes instead of figuring out how to deal with them.

And then, Saturday night, the emails began flying again. And this morning came one which chilled me to the core. I realized that I, alone, could not help this friend find a stable ground this morning. So I did what I usually do not do - I called others for help. And we have all done what we could to help her regain her balance again.

It is in sharing that load and helping each other find our own balance that we find a balance more stable and grounded than any we think we have found on our own.

Sometimes that withdrawn feeling allows us to re-energize ourselves, particularly us introverts, but sometimes we need to realize that none of us do everything alone ... that we are who we are because of our community interaction and constant comparison of experiences and reactions with each other.

So this week has been hell for me. But it's taught me a great deal as well. Life goes on in community with others and my ghosts are not the most influential community any more.

And that's as it should be.