We never know who needs to hear exactly what we need to say. . . .
One of my friends shared a blog of another person, actually, a man who is learning how to deal with a person with Alzheimer's disease. He has come to understand that the person lives in what he calls "Alzheimer's world," while he lives in a world with a completely different reality. He actually takes a step to the left before he responds to the skewed reality so as to remind and reinforce within himself that he is stepping into a different world with a completely different reality than his own.
This is exactly how I feel about the way the PTSD world collides with my own world, a collision that skews and screws with my reality. Only these two worlds exist within myself. . . .so how do I step to the left within my own mind?
I am still trying to integrate how as I sat connected with the biofeedback machine, my physiological parameters were reading "relaxed," all the while I was having a panic attack. And if I hadn't been sitting in front of that machine watching the data myself, I might not even believe it, but it was what it was. My body was having one experience of reality while my mind was experiencing another.
And it's hard enough to try to explain what happens within my own experience, let alone to someone who is outside of the experience completely. The doctors tell me I just need to learn how to relax, but the biofeedback machine actually tells me very clearly that I DO know how to relax, so it's so not a relaxation problem. And a well intentioned friend recently suggested that I focus on positive images when I meditate, as if that were something that I have never done or even thought of doing before.
PTSD is just sooo not about learning how to relax. . . .and it's certainly not about focusing on happy thoughts.
I have seen images of PET scans and SPECT scans from a person having a seizure, a person having a panic attack, and a person having an orgasm. And when these images are laid out side by side, it is virtually impossible to distinguish one from the other (which is just incredibly amazing. . . .and terrifying for me, personally, because I may not have Alzheimer's, but I absolutely feel the frustration of the people around me who don't understand anything about my incredibly high maintenance process as I try to create a functional life with these two different worlds colliding inside of my mind).
I think at this point it's just so much easier to isolate myself off from the rest of the world.
I have actually started to feel like death is no longer the worst thing that could happen to me. . . .and I don't mean that in a suicidal kind of way. . . .just the dark truth spoken out of hopelessness that there will never be life beyond the panic and chronic sleep disturbance that leaves me so completely exhausted and exasperated.
Oh, how I really do wish that I could just step to the left within myself. . . .when the PTSD world collides with my own. . . .