This entry is going to have more to do with my development as a person and less to do with pure existentialism, even though existentialism always finds its way into my personal development somehow.
Okay, I’m done writing and this is quite lengthy and probably could have been several entries. If you are new to this blog, I wouldn’t recommend reading this post first.
C-PTSD Imposter Syndrome
Lately, I’ve watched a couple of videos on Islam by Genetically Modified Skeptic (links in the references). He offers a compassionate criticism of the religion, which I found enlightening. When I was a little kid, I was being raised in a very Christian family and there were kids across the street who were being raised in a very Muslim family. We got along well and I developed a positive association with Islam, as perhaps they did with Christianity. But looking back, what I liked were my friends and their values, which I now believe could be found outside of religion. After all, although I may not know much about what they believed because I was a little kid and didn’t think to ask, they liked my sister and me and our religion was definitely toxic. They liked us even though we had an unhealthy religion. So just because they were wonderful people doesn’t mean that their religion was wonderful. I’m sure there are manifestations of it that are great, just as there can be with virtually any other religion, but to say that Islam itself is somehow better than Christianity is a stretch in my opinion.
Until I watched GM Skeptic’s videos and read some of the comments, I didn’t realize just how rampant it is for ex-Muslims to receive death threats from their own families. Of course it’s not everybody everywhere, but a lot of people described going through this. It made me question whether my own trauma was legitimate. My family has totally rejected me and pathologizes everything about my actual true personality, and the only times they can accept me are when I put on a mask and hide the real me. But to actively go out and try to kill me? I can’t even imagine them being interested enough in me to entertain the thought. And if not interested in me means not trying to murder me, I’m thankful for their disinterest! It really makes it hard for me to believe that my trauma is real, though. Some people have to flee their entire countries and learn a new language in the midst of trauma and completely lose their entire families including extended family (I have some awesome extended family) and somehow start their lives from the ground up when they can no longer maintain the façade that they believe their religion. Ex-Muslims who don’t go through that probably have less incentive to post comments on YouTube. Generalizations of people groups almost never apply to every individual in that people group, but it definitely seems like leaving Islam is often much more traumatic than leaving Christianity.
Now, my doctor always says that it’s not useful to compare trauma and that everyone he’s ever worked with that had trauma doubted whether their trauma was legitimate. He even says that my doubting that my trauma is legitimate is itself a sign of trauma. I just wish that there were a way that I could help other apostates who lost their families, just as I lost mine. First I have to heal myself. But if you are reading this and your family has pathologized you for any reason—religious or otherwise—I hope you can feel the warm embrace that I wish I could send to you. It’s not your fault, no matter how sure they are that it is. Nobody would ask for their whole immediate family to hate them, ever.
Grief
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on here, but my doctor took a different job and will be leaving the hospital next month. I am distraught. It’s very rare for me to actually find a provider to be helpful, and he’s been very helpful. Now, every time I meet with him, I feel like I have to make great strides and if I’m dissociated and can’t be productive, I freak out at having wasted a day. I feel like when he leaves, I’m going to lose all my progress. Most doctors oversimplify things so much that they do a lot more harm than good. I adore my social worker and if at least she’s staying, and if I could just only talk to her I would be fine. But I feel like I’m going to have to go to bat against invalidation, victim-blaming, toxic positivity, and all sorts of meme-worthy destructive pop psychology every single day when I get a new doctor. It’ll be a transition from someone who was actually extremely helpful to someone who hopefully won’t be too far below neutral.
I know that this is one of the five stages of grief, but I feel like I’m locked in this belief that somehow, maybe he will change his mind and not really leave. The fact that I know that this is not true doesn’t stop me from constantly feeling the pain of the burn wounds that that the spark of hope leaves on me. He suggested that I write about it, but as soon as I allow myself to really feel the grief, I dissociate. I can no longer think in complete sentences, and I feel an unnatural fatigue that’s more like a coma. It’s hard to process something that your mind is not yet able to process.
What I can process
As impossible as it may be for me to process my doctor’s resignation right now, I probably do need to be reading my PTSD Workbook (citation in the references). I had been putting off reading it because it always stirs things up and I don’t feel strong enough right now, but my doctor pointed out that there will never be a safer time to do it than here in a locked unit. And I have my awesome social worker who is not leaving. So, I’m trying to get back into it. The chapter I’m on is about avoidance. I’m finding it hard to buckle down and read it because my subconscious comes up with umpteen means of avoidance that I don’t even realize I’m doing until an hour has gone by and I haven’t started reading yet. So the content matter seems appropriate for my symptoms. I really do want to get better and get out in the world and have a job and a husband and beautiful children, but with menopause approaching in like 10 years and me nowhere near where I want to be, I have no time to waste on improving my mental health. But there are definitely a lot of obstacles, and I’m looking at three of them today.
Obstacle #1: I still have to improve my self-awareness
I was complaining to my doctor about someone who is consistently annoying. I thought that she was doing it on purpose. But my doctor explained that, according to a statistic he read, only 10%-15% of people actually have self-awareness and understand the effects they have on others. (See link below and citation in references.) His point was that most people are not my mother, who probably does indeed manipulate people intentionally. He agreed that it’s really hard for people who have the kind of trauma that do, to not feel like everyone else in our lives is calculating, even when they probably aren’t. This was helpful so I asked for the article and he said he had found it on PubMed. He wrote a cryptic note that said “Tasha Eurich” and “organizational psychologist.” My social worker tracked down an article that she thought was probably the one and found this:
https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it
Lo and behold, according to the author of the article, Tasha Eurich, “Even though most people believe they are self-aware, only 10-15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.”
This is a problem, first because I really want the people in my inner ring to be self-aware, and also because I wasn’t sure if I was even self-aware. I asked my doctor today and he said, “I think you’re introspective.” He clarified that I’m good at “mentalizing” (AKA figuring out other people’s perspectives) from an emotional standpoint, but not from a cognitive standpoint. So I can usually tell what they’re feeling but not what they’re thinking. I took away from this that I needed to work on mentalization and both the forms of self-awareness in the article, but especially external self-awareness. For example, my gut reaction to being called “introspective” was to berate myself and feel extreme shame for being a navel-gazer. But I forced myself to consider that maybe that wasn’t what the doctor was thinking.
The article was written for people with leadership positions in the business sector and not exactly for me, but when I re-worded things for myself, the information was useful. For example, Eurich found that people who ask questions that start with “what” are better at self-awareness than people who ask questions that start with “why.” This was confusing at first because I could always ask a why question that started with “What is the cause of…?”, but I’m pretty sure that what she meant was that it’s best when we can get past looking for the cause of problems and instead look for solutions to problems. The former produces blame, shame, self-loathing, etc, but the latter can actually produce… you know… solutions. So when I felt anxiety about something yesterday, instead of beating myself up for letting anxiety stop me from doing the thing, I tried to find a solution that would enable me to do the thing. And I did it. So, I think I’m making progress! I would argue that in C-PTSD recovery, “why” questions can be necessary simply because we’ve had false answers to the question of “why” indoctrinated into us. I’ve always been told that I had symptoms of trauma because of something about me: either I had a genetic defect, or I had simply made bad decisions. Getting a true answer, that I have symptoms of trauma through no fault of my own, has helped me ask, “WHAT can I do to get better?” Sometimes we have to go through the “why” to get to the “what.”
The problem is that once I figure out how to be self-aware, I still have to figure out how to find other people who are self-aware. I do have friends and relatives who I would say are self-aware, which is a huge plus. Just as I go about my journey and one of my goals is to broaden my social circle I need to make a mental note that a lot of people simply don’t have self-awareness, and they deserve compassion the same way as I want compassion for my own imperfections. My social worker suggested this article:
https://hbr.org/2018/10/working-with-people-who-arent-self-aware
My doctor suggested that I also look up Eurich’s TED Talks and they’re definitely not bad! The first one is similar to the article except in TED Talk form, which makes it easier to digest. The second is about self-improvement generally. I also found another article with similar-but-not-exactly-the-same information.
Obstacle #2: I can’t stop thinking about my family
All day, I think through events as though my family were here and I were talking to them. I imagine what their responses would be. Often, they would probably be extremely judgmental of me and my progress. They’ve always scorned coping skills as being hokey and legitimate therapy as being psychobabble.
I was told today that this is part of the grieving process and might go on for a while. I’m trying to just let it wash over me and wait it out.
Obstacle #3: Body image
I was Doing The Thing today and reading the C-PTSD book that I’m supposed to read, and I only got through one paragraph. It was on “body acceptance.” It said to send love to various parts of my body. I wrote,
“I refuse to accept my body because it is disgusting. I was thin until my psychopharmacologist lied to me and said the meds weren’t making me gain weight. Now, it is impossible for me to lose weight and my body just represents my mother’s victory in destroying everything about me.”
Now, I understand that my gut reaction could seem self-defeating, but anyone who’s had to take lots of medications to cope with trauma can probably relate. Sure, it would probably be possible for me to lose weight, but it would require me to be suffering so deeply from hunger all the time that it would negate any benefits of taking the drugs in the first place. Also, I was always thin and that was one of the very few things that was actually good about me. My mother envied me. She actually would be thrilled if she knew how much weight I’ve gained. And since there’s nothing actually genetically abnormal about me that would have required me to take all this medicine, it’s hard not to feel like she “won” once again.
I brought this up with my treatment team and said how when I diet, I’m doing it because my self-loathing has gotten to the point that I actually give up food as a punishment to myself for being fat. My doctor said to treat my body like I love it. He mentioned the scars on my arm and asked how I felt about them now as opposed to years ago when I was inflicting them. I agreed that I wish now that I didn’t have scars on my arm. His conclusion was something to the effect of, “Treat your body like you love it because someday you might actually love it.” Someday, I might decide that I love myself so much that I’m going to take better care of myself. He also mentioned that in the book The Body Keeps the Score, it explains that trauma is stored in the body and that could be part of why my body doesn’t look like I want it to.
I think a nicer way to talk to myself might be to tell myself that right now it’s hard to lose weight because I’m very limited in what foods I can access; and besides, I’m still early in my recovery from trauma and I still have to take medications with real metabolic side effects. The weight will come off as I heal emotionally.
Making the most of the time we have
In the meantime, before my doctor leaves, I’ve been trying to remember to ask my doctor all the questions that only he would have the answer to. For example, whenever I watch something on TV, even though I know it’s made by actors (and the people around me usually think it’s helpful to remind me of that anyway), I react as though the thing on the TV were really happening. Take “Finding Nemo,” for instance. Everyone else including small children think that Finding Nemo is a cute, fun, movie about keeping things light. I see a movie in which a father and son are traumatized by the death of the baby’s mother and all his siblings, and they are the only two left in the family, so they are each all that the other has. Then, they get separated! No. En-Oh. And don’t even get me started on apocalyptic movies. I refuse to watch any movie if I haven’t been promised in advance that it has a happy ending, and even if it does, I don’t like too much suffering at any point in the plot. Life is hard enough, so why would I want to add in made-up suffering? If I want to be depressed, I can google U.N. statistics on how many parents can’t feed their babies right now. I don’t need to tack on watching Batman try to evacuate Gotham.
Other people simply do not have this reaction to things that they know are fiction. So why can’t I stop myself from reacting emotionally as though something traumatic were actually going on?
The official word from the doctor is that it’s dissociation. That’s as much detail as he could give, but he was pretty sure that it was dissociation from the C-PTSD.
Another thing that bothers me is a phenomenon that goes like this: I’m in a situation. I believe that it is the first time I have ever been in said situation. Then, later, I look back on it and think, That wasn’t really the first time I was ever in that situation; it had definitely happened before that. For example, I looked at a book’s ISBN and remember thinking that it looked strange because it was an old book. I believed at the time that I had never seen it before. Later, I felt sure that I had seen an ISBN like that somewhere before this recent experience. When this happens, I honestly don’t know whether or not the situation that I thought was new was actually familiar. It feels like a kind of after-the-fact deja vu, and according to the doctor, that’s sort of what it is: it’s jamais vu, the bizarre cousin of deja vu. And it’s a symptom of—you guessed it—dissociation!
Finally, I described a weird thing that happens at the base of my neck, just where it connects to my head. It feels like my spinal fluid is gurgling or fizzing. I can both feel it and also hear it. Nobody else I’ve met can relate except my dad, so I feel like it must be genetic. It is annoying as 🤬. The official word from the doctor?
He has no clue. There’s definitely no scientific way I can feel my spinal fluid and besides, there’s no way that air could get mixed in with my spinal fluid and the bottom line is that there is no explanation. But I definitely did get the impression that a psychiatrist was the right person to have brought this up with. You might have had to be there but it was funny. I’m glad I can still have light moments with my doctor before his last day.
Animal Videos
Sometimes I watch animal videos to take a break from healing myself. This video was intense and I just kept watching it over and over:
I can so relate to the little dog, whose amygdala went into super-hyper-over-drive when someone treated him kindly. What struck me was that even though he had clearly been through horrific abuse, he wasn’t aggressive. His inborn instinct to cry for help was working overtime even though I question whether he had ever been helped before. It reminded me of when I was little and my dad was hurting me, I would scream and cry in pain because I knew I couldn’t fight him. Looking back on it as an adult, I can’t imagine causing a child to cry and feeling anything but horrible. But for my dad, that was his reward. As a kid I practiced and practiced going longer and longer before I cried until I learned to get through the ordeals without crying at all. That’s when he stopped hurting me so badly in that way. But, like Kanye the dog, I eventually found people like my current treatment team whose hearts do break when I’m suffering intensely. Hopefully I will be able to reach a similar outcome.
What Kanye had going for him that I don’t, is that the woman at the animal shelter was able to touch him. Here, “it’s a no-touch unit” is repeated ad nauseam by staff as though it were our actual slogan. The reason for this is ostensibly that some people have types of trauma that would cause them to be triggered by any sort of touch. Really, I’m pretty sure it’s to avoid any sort of liability. However, it’s not natural to be sick and have none of your caretakers be allowed to touch your shoulder, let alone give you a hug. Without touch, I doubt Kanye would ever have made such a recovery. As for us, grooming has been an essential part of human evolution since way before we were humans, and for certain cultures to spontaneously and abruptly abandon the practice is, to me, ludicrous. I had to put down The Happiness Hypothesis because it talked about how harmful lack of touch really is for humans and there’s nothing I can do right now that would get me a hug. It’s going to have to wait until discharge, which could be months away. Staff and patients here do “air” high-fives without our hands actually touching as though we could produce the feeling of a hug with words. Spoiler: it doesn’t work at all. I firmly believe that the lack of acceptance of platonic touch is incredibly detrimental to our society. I haven’t looked into the research, but I would be good money that this is one reason why some people display risky sexual behaviors. Kids go their whole formative years in industrialized North American schools and are taught that all touch is “inappropriate,” and then they don’t even know that platonic touch exists. In an article entitled, “Argentina Is a Soul-Reviving Eden Waiting to Welcome You Home” published in October of last year, the author writes,
In 2008, I was secretly cringing at my life in suburban Michigan. I was 32, married to a charismatic guy, and living in a gorgeous house. On paper, I was living the stay-at-home soccer-mom dream: caring for three young kids, practicing yoga in cute outfits, and cruising around in a tricked-out minivan.
But toxicity simmered underneath. That huge house was a nightmare to maintain. My yoga classmates chased their enlightenment with a steady diet of Xanax and chardonnay. My perfect husband was hiding a proclivity for Craigslist escorts, eventually going to jail for fraud.
One day, I snapped and bought a one-way flight to Argentina—a country I could barely pick out on a map, and whose language I could not speak. There was no plan except to get far, far away. To dramatically shatter my previous lifestyle.
Twelve years later, my days are spent gardening outside of my little adobe home in the Andes of Patagonia. Lunches with neighbors can last hours, with a leisurely nap afterward. My kids grew up in a community where the teachers greeted them with warm hugs every morning, where play dates involved waterfall hikes instead of video games. And, as a newly divorced single mom, I was able to raise my family on a part-time income in an earthly paradise.
(Brown, 2020). Emphasis mine.
I remember reading that article months and months ago and it really stuck with me. (The fact that I was able to actually find it again today was the combination of a small miracle and a lot of search engine ingenuity on my part!) I firmly believe that if (during non-pandemic times) teachers were allowed to hug each of their students every morning as they come to school, we would see a dramatic decrease in destructive sexual behaviors when they grew up. I have nothing against appropriate and ethical sex between two consenting adults, but I really think that some people in touch-starved cultures like North America just want a hug and don’t know that platonic touch is even a thing. I remember a quote from the movie The Magic of Ordinary Days where the female protagonist explains how she got pregnant. It went something like, “I just wanted to be held.” Are all unplanned pregnancies the result of this? Absolutely not. Should women ever be shamed for being pregnant? Again, no. But do people ever go further than they would otherwise want to sexually because that’s the only way they know to get any kind of touch? I suspect that it has happened.
One more animal video
I set the video below to automatically start at the 5:29 mark. The first part of the video is about a cat who adopts ducklings as her own. Then, a lioness adopts a baby that she ordinarily would have considered prey.
I just relate to that lioness so hard. I have a plant that I’m simultaneously trying to bond with and also trying not to bond with too much for fear that I’ll love it so much I end up killing it. (Plants don’t always respond to love the same way people do.) I love my turtle just so unbelievably deeply. And honestly, what I want most in this whole wide world is to have my own children. There are lots of things I want; don’t get me wrong. But I just wish more than anything else that I could be emotionally and financially stable enough to have kids and my greatest fear is that I’ll run out of time.
One solution might be to get myself stable and then get a job in a Head Start or somewhere where I could work with babies. Then I could volunteer at the animal shelter on weekends. I have this desperate need to nurture that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ignore. However, I have no idea what the educational requirements are for Head Start or if I would need a special certification. It would be something worth looking into.
Conclusion
Being an apostate is hard and also trauma is hard. Often, people get to have experience in both of these areas. My doctor quit his job here at the hospital and his last day is next month and I’m devastated. Losing important people is extra-extra sucky when you’ve already experienced the loss of your family and most of the community you grew up in. I want to improve my self-awareness and also add more people who are self-aware to my friend circle. I miss my family. I hate my body. Dissociation pops up in all kinds of weird ways. Your spinal fluid can’t gurgle even if you’re crazy. I watch a lot of animal videos. Platonic touch is massively underrated, and, in addition to improving my self-awareness, my other new goals are to move to Argentina, get a job in a nursery, volunteer with animals, and nurture all day every day.
References
Brown, C. (2020, October 16). Argentina is a soul-reviving Eden waiting to welcome you home. Thrillist. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/living-in-argentina-moving-guide
The Dodo. (2017, November 29). Dog Cries Every Time He’s Touched — Until He Meets This Woman | The Dodo [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 26, 2021 from https://youtu.be/h5XzGyjEkkc
Eurich, T. (2017, June 2). The right way to be introspective (yes, there’s a wrong way). Ted.Com. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/
Eurich, T. (2018, January 4). What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it
Eurich, T. (2018, October 19). Working with people who Aren’t self-aware. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2018/10/working-with-people-who-arent-self-aware
Genetically Modified Skeptic. (2018, December 9). 4 Liberal Defenses of Islam Debunked [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://youtu.be/INZfPHFzFAI
Genetically Modified Skeptic. (2019, September 9). 4 Lies Muslims Tell About Ex-Muslims [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://youtu.be/AzHPcklR7y8
Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465028023
Real Wild. (2018, September 26). The Cat Who Adopts Baby Ducklings | Animal Odd Couples | Real Wild [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://youtu.be/K83BKNxgg7w?t=329
Russell, K., Ulrich, S., Winningham, M., Shields, B., & Creel, A. H. (2005). The magic of ordinary days. Place of publication not identified: Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Schwartz, A. (2020). The complex PTSD workbook: A mind-body approach to regaining emotional control and becoming whole. Sheldon Press. ISBN 978-1529312133
Stanton, A., Unkrich, L., Goodman, J., Brooks, A., DeGeneres, E., & Gould, A. (2003). Finding Nemo. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Home Video.
TEDx Talks. (2014, July 15). Learning to be awesome at anything you do, including being a leader | Tasha Eurich | TEDxMileHigh [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://youtu.be/NVPxmz_PvUw
TEDx Talks. (2017, December 19). Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix | Tasha Eurich | TEDxMileHigh [YouTube video]. Retrieved August 27, 2021 from https://youtu.be/tGdsOXZpyWE
