Staring into the Abyss - The 'Untempered Schism' of PTSD/C-PTSD
In Doctor Who, the Tenth Doctor talks about being taken, as all young Time Lords are, to the Untempered Schism as a child, "Eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired; some would run away, and some would go mad." ("The Sound of Drums") These are some possible reactions to trauma, especially childhood trauma. Some people become inspired – to create something from their pain or to reach out to others, some try to run from their pain, and some end up spreading their pain to others. Many times, we go through at least a couple of these stages.
Imagine that when we have been hurt, deeply hurt in a way that scars our psyche especially, we gain a form of power from it.
In The Magicians, Eliot says “Magic doesn’t come from talent. It comes from pain.” (“The Source of Magic”) and various characters mention traumas that led to the discovery of their magic. Much like the power in Harry Potter, there is no good or evil to this. It’s all about how we choose to use it. Most superheroes and super villains alike gained their powers from something horrid, whether it was a radioactive spider, or a lab accident with plant toxins. But the difference between Peter Parker and Poison Ivy is how they chose to use their powers. In our mundane world, we can use our pain to reach a similar pain in others, and we have the choice whether to reach out in a way that will continue to damage, or in a way that can help heal others and ourselves. We can also use the stories of our favorite characters to help us better understand our own pain and how to heal ourselves and others. This is more than a fan's idea; it's actually in use by therapists in many areas. You can find information from licensed counselors and therapists about it here, and here, and here.
We often continue to cause damage even to ourselves, until we’ve actively begun to heal ourselves. Only then can we start to understand how our pain has affected us, and has continued a cycle of pain. Poltergeist came to mind for me in group therapy one night, and I shared with the group that the idea of "moving the headstones but not moving the bodies" reminded me of the troubles we faced when we had paved over our traumas, but they were still there to haunt us later. Even Freud said “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
In "The Almost People" (Doctor Who), Jennifer says "I tried to block the memories but now I realize I must remember." Because remembering allows us to learn from those things. Xander (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) says in "Dead Man's Party" that "you can't just bury stuff. It'll come right back up to haunt you." This is, of course, a references to the reanimated corpses that will soon burst through the window and attack the party-goers, but really those zombies are a metaphoric representation of the repressed and unexpressed emotions Buffy needs to deal with.
When you’ve gone through life repressing things, it takes a lot more work to unpack it all and learn how to deal with the issues. In my case, despite seeing a variety of therapists over time, I was never able to stay with them long (usually due to insurance reasons) so my progress continued to start and stop until I finally got new insurance and found someone new that I felt I could work well with. Now, after more than 6 years seeing her, I feel like a different person for all the progress I've made on healing my soul. I won't say I'm done with therapy, but I'm far more stable and mentally healthy than I was then. It hasn't been easy, but it's been absolutely worth it.
I started off seeing her for anxiety and depression. In addition to these things, I have a number of chronic physical issues like fibromyalgia, and one day about 3 years into my regular sessions with April I was casually making a list of these physical and mental struggles I face (though I doubt I used such positive language about them at the time). After I listed a few including anxiety and depression, she interrupted me to say "and PTSD." At this time, I can look at some of these things and recognize that they were traumatic events and that I still experience stress from them, but when she said that it took me completely by surprise. So much so, that I went home and wrote a poem about it.
“and PTSD”
She just said it,
like a post script to a letter
an addendum to my list; disorders, diseases,
“and PTSD.”
post, past, passing through days
‘past can’t hurt you now’
so I must be fine here
in the present
“and PTSD.”
trauma, trying, tripping through life
soldiers and victims, widows and orphans
so I must be okay, right?
trauma free
“and PTSD.”
stress, strife, stuttering in fear
money, family, poor health, society
so I must be normal, then
daily stress
“and PTSD.”
disorder, disruption, disgust with myself
forgetful, tearful, triggered and shaped,
tiny paper-cut troubles
left me with scars
and PTSD.
The very process of writing that poem was healing - acknowledging the pains of those "little" injuries, recognizing the struggles and the effects of those struggles gave me a sense of validation, validation that served as a gateway to finding power over the worst of those demons. As I find I tend to do with all of my healing creations, I kept coming back to that poem for a few weeks, reading over it again and again, absorbing the truth and acceptance in it. It wasn't until much, much later that I saw a similarity between that and a spell being chanted on Charmed to protect from one monster or another, an idea I’d explore further with personal meditations and affirmations.
There are so many ways to address the pains and traumas of our past. Many people heal through writing, sometimes about our exact experiences and how we felt about it, sometimes by creating a fictional world with characters to explore those feelings through. The book Writing as a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo is an excellent source to help with that process if you desire. Many of us heal through other forms of creation; painting, singing, sculpting, landscaping, etc. Many people heal with great help from our personal spiritual believes and practices including prayer, meditation, personal pilgrimages, sweat lodges, and many other rituals and ceremonies. Many of us heal through extensive therapist-guided work, sometimes through talk therapy, various other therapy formats, self-reflection, and more. Personally, I’ve found all these things vital in my path to healing, and I’m sure there are other paths I haven’t experienced. (If you’ve experienced another healing mode not mentioned here and would like to share it, the comments are always open.) One thing all those options have in common, if they are to truly work for us, is that we must somehow process the trauma in question. We must face our past from a different perspective.
River Song is an excellent example of this in the Doctor Who episode “Day of the Moon” when she’s pretending she wasn’t the child in the very space suit they’re examining. “She forced her way out; she must be incredibly strong,” she says about her younger self. Imagine that for a moment, being able to walk in your own footsteps, see evidence of your trauma, and acknowledge your own power and strength that brought you through it. It’s a powerful thought. Our own strength is not always going to be so obvious when we look back. In Charmed (“A Paige from the Past”) Paige revisits her teen years to better understand the trauma of her adoptive parents’ deaths, and later (“Ordinary Witches”) she takes Kyle Brody to the time of his parents’ deaths to help him heal as well. In both their cases, they learned important things by looking back at these painful memories with new perspective, things that helped them heal, helped them understand themselves better, and helped them with other struggles and conflicts in their present. River, of course, has already learned much about herself, and come to understand her strength in so many ways; her strength of will, physical strength, strength of character (she has her own code, thank you), strength of her family, even if they don’t always know that’s who they are. She’s further along in her personal work, so she was able to look back on those childhood days as Melody and see the core of that power that’s been inside her all along.
I never realized just how powerful and important that retrospect is. Not only to recognize the strength we couldn’t see during the trauma, but also no matter how much or how little progress you’ve made, looking back and recognizing “wow, I handled x better than I would have a month ago, or two years ago” and seeing that personal healing, it’s a whole other level of healing on its own. I can think of a dozen or more times that April has stopped me as I’ve been in the middle of telling her my most recent stress story, interrupted me mid-sentence sometimes, so she could ask me to think about how this same story would have affected me at various points in the past. And that might be part of the power, the way that comparison forces me to shift from the level of stress I’m feeling at that moment to imagining the level of stress this would have caused a year ago. When I think back, and I realize how big that change is sometimes, it reinforces the value and benefit from the work I’ve been doing. This progress is not a smooth incline. It’s an obstacle course of hills and valleys and higher than you’d expect peaks and lower than you ever wanted to feel again lows, and that’s exactly why it’s important to zoom out on the little zig-zag chart sometimes and remind yourself that even if this feels like a low, it’s higher than your lows used to be and you’re on an overall good path.
In the Being Erica episode "Erica the Vampire Slayer" she's sent back in time to an ex-boyfriend and his Vampire LARP to learn that she can access more qualities than she thought she possessed. She learns a little about being strong, firm, confrontational when needed, thinking less about what others think of her. She steps out of her comfort zone and begins to expand her horizons more. Much to her surprise, she steps into her "enchantress" role and later finds that she's able to bring out new aspects of her personality that become helpful in trying situations. Erica's closing voiceover says "At the end of the day, it comes down to this. The way we choose to see ourselves, it limits who we can be. Step outside the box and you might learn something. Because we are more capable than we imagine. Because we all have it in us to do things we've never done before. Because sometimes, we can surprise even ourselves."
That moment of surprise when you actually see your own progress, your own growth and healing. That’s what she’s talking about.
It's a feeling of empowerment, and peace (and, if you’re me, it’s often followed by a fear that you’ll screw it all up soon). We should all be able to be our own most powerful force, to recognize our own strengths, in whatever forms they take.
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