I can tell my brain is healing because my creativity, curiosity, and silliness are coming back. Yesterday I had a few profound thoughts and throughout the day would burst into silly songs. This morning I sang a song celebrating the fact that my dog pooped. ?
Antidepressants don’t work well for everyone, but when they do work, they’re a godsend. Especially when you combine them with therapy and making changes to your thoughts and actions. Healing happens when we allow ourselves to rest, surround ourselves with low-stress, nonjudgy people, and take the time to listen to what we really need.
We have to get out of the overwhelm before we can start healing. For those of us that judge ourselves for “being lazy”, this part can be the hardest. We want to go go go, but that’s not what our bodies and minds need when we are overwhelmed. You have to just STOP.
One of the things that sucks about PTSD is that it will creep into your day when you’re least expecting it. Yesterday my brain made the connection between the word Park and one of my former attendings. Suddenly I was back in that program.
Once the triggers start, they tend to keep pulling other memories and feelings. But I’ve been learning not to judge myself for it. When those moments happen, I take a deep breath and remind myself that I’m not in that hospital anymore.
I remind myself that I never have to go back to medicine or work at another hospital if I don’t want to. Then I take stock of the good things in my life and think about how far I’ve come already. I try to ground myself in the present moment.
It’s getting easier. The more I keep gently coming back to the traumatic memories and untangling the connections with my childhood, the more I heal. One little baby step at a time.
Going back to the creativity bit, I want to share one of the thoughts I had yesterday. I know I’m kind of all over the place today, but who cares?
What if shame (along with guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation) is something we learn rather than being born with it? I’m no Brene Brown (the master of shame research), but hear me out.
When we look at little kids, they experience a whole bunch of emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, envy. But what about shame? I don’t think so.
I think shame is something we learn. It’s something we’re socialized to experience. Shame is used to control people: from kids to adults.
There is a difference between learning there are consequences for our actions and learning to be ashamed of our actions (and even thoughts!) Shame keeps us in our place and prevents us from being too much or from asking too many questions.
So who benefits from shame? Systems and people in power with authority. They benefit from people being weighed down by shame.
Because when we decide to let shame go, what might happen? We might be more creative and innovative. We might demand better.
And all of that leads to disruption of the status quo. Which is bad for those who want to keep the status quo humming along at its mediocre level. They benefit from keeping the rest of us small.
I invite you to do a thought experiment. How does your shame help you? Can you think of any one good reason it benefits you?
And then I’d like you to ask yourself, what would you do if you weren’t ashamed of anything? Who would you be? How would your life be different?
I’m really interested in what you think about shame and what your answers are to those questions. Leave a comment and let’s talk about it!
