Disclaimer: I am not a medical practitioner, I have never been professionally diagnosed as having Post traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression, the following entry is my experience and is in NO WAY meant to serve as diagnosis or treatment of ANY mental disorder. If you have experienced any symptoms of PTSD or any other mental illness please seek medical care from a trained professional. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts call 911 immediately.
I call them panic attacks, I call them that because that it
easier to say than Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) flashback. I do this for 2
main reasons; one, because not very many people know what a PTSD flashback is
and two, describing them can sometimes set me off into one. So I’ll try to give
you a good idea of what they are like without going into extreme details of
what mine are like. Imagine your worst night mare. Now I don’t mean a
figurative sense like, “oh, my worst nightmare would be falling into a pit of
snakes.” Or “my worst nightmare is being chased down a dark ally.” No think of
an actual nightmare you’ve had, one that you woke up from crying or too scared
to go back to sleep or messed yourself. Yes that scary, so real you can still
feel it with you when you wake up. Now imagine being trapped in that nightmare
but to make it even more terrifying you know you are in a nightmare, you know
that if you could just do something to wake yourself up you’d be ok. But no
matter what you do you are trapped and everything you do just feeds into your
terror, everything you do just makes you more convinced you are trapped in this
nightmare forever.
That is what a PTSD flashback is like. It is in actuality
nothing like a panic attack; in fact mine come complete with visual, auditory
and sensory hallucinations. And I’ve had them since I was 16 years old. That
was at least until I found yoga.
A few years ago I went through a period when I was so
connected to my yoga that I would have moments or spontaneous meditation. I’d
be driving my car and see a hillside bathed in light or the way a shadow moved
over the fields and i would have to pull over and let the image wash over me,
it would fill me with joy and I would slip into a meditation where I could feel
my heart expanding and bursting with contentment and peace. It was way cool!
During this time I had an experience where I was in my house and I felt moved
to go lay in my bed and meditate, so I did. It was like being wrapped in a
blanket, all I could see around me was the color yellow. In color therapy
yellow is sometimes connected with overcoming fears. I didn’t recall this at
the time but when I came out of my meditation I knew in the pit of my being that
I was cured of my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I would never be slave to
flashbacks ever again.
I was right for almost 2 years. And then 10 days ago they
came back. They came back quickly, out of the blue and forcefully. And they
have eaten up any sense of security I have, they have stripped me bare of all
confidence and self reliance. Since the day they came back I haven’t had a day
when I didn’t feel them lingering on the back of my neck, like the cold hands
of a serial killer just waiting for the right moment to tighten and maybe this
time he won’t let go. So, exactly….
WHY THE HELL AM I WRITING ABOU THIS ON MY YOGA BLOG?!?!
Because I’m pretty certain that if it wasn’t for yoga I
wouldn’t have made it through this week, at least without being hospitalized or
on anti-psychotic medication! When it all started again I was riding back to
town with a friend, we had gone to see a movie in Madison. Nothing strange or
unusual not even a glass of wine with dinner, but on the drive home before we
had even made it on to the highway I fell into a flashback. I knew it was happening
but I was too scared to tell my friend what was going on so I closed my eyes
and started breathing. It was the only thing I could do, surrender. In yoga it
is called Ishvara Pranidhana, surrender to god. Maybe this is a very extreme
interpretation of the practice but once I started slowing my breath down I just
knew that what I had to do was surrender, ride this wave no matter where it
took me. Once I stopped trying to fight my flashback I felt the tiniest pulse
of peace somewhere deep inside me, deep in the base of my brain and from there I
started chanting the Gayatri Mantra.
Om bhur, bhuvah, svah
tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yo nah prachodayat
tat savitur varenyam
bhargo devasya dhimahi
dhiyo yo nah prachodayat
And that did it, the panic started to ebb away, the
hallucinations started to fade back into reality and finally I let loose and
cried. Crying means my adrenaline has crashed so it’s actually a good thing. My
poor friend having no idea what he just witnessed asked if he should pull over,
but I said no I just need to lay back for a while and I laid the passenger seat
down and chanted silently in my head the rest of the way home.
I can’t describe the way it feels to be battling something
like this, I just know that I don’t feel well, my body is exhausted from the
rushes of adrenaline and pounding heart rates, I’m not sleeping to well because
sometimes they happen in my dreams, and overall I just feel heartbroken. But
that’s really all the mental story around it, those are just symptoms so
there’s not much to be done. What I need to do is figure out why these are back
and fight them off again, I have a sneaky suspicion why and an even sneakier
way to combat it, but more on that long road later. Right now I have the best
weapon I could imagine for the moments I really do feel like I’m trapped in
hell. When my brain switches into a flashback and I can’t grasp onto anything
real I can slow my breath and start the Gayarti Manta. I can, amid my nightmare
be grateful for the light and know that the light will wake me up.
