You’re Responsible

In an adult Sunday school, I’ve been teaching a series on our bodies are God’s holy temples. (The Bible calls them that.) What surprised me was most class members remained passive about their physical health.

If you have a headache, take an aspirin. Aleve keeps it away for 12 hours. Restless leg syndrome? There’s a pill for that. Heartburn after eating spicy food? TV screens show several over-the-counter liquids and pills to remove the discomfort.

I noticed the TV ads for prescription medications. Many of them end with these words, “Ask your doctor for . . .”

I’m not against medicine or doctors. But I’m against being passive about our physical health.

I am responsible for my health. I have the right—the duty—the responsibility to take care of myself. Too often the sick passively put themselves into the hands of a professional and look for pills or surgery to take away their symptoms.

Instead of immediately seeking a professional, why not start by asking yourself: What is going on inside me that makes me ill? For example, instead of taking Tums or Nexium for acid indigestion, why not avoid spicy foods? It’s often that simple.

My reason for stressing responsibility is simple. If we truly want healing and to rise above our abuse, we have to work hard at it. Too many men give up and medicate themselves with frenzied activities or anti-depressants, or seek the therapist who can set them free.

As an illustration, I’m a professional writer and have taught in more than 200 writers conferences. One of the benefits to conferees is that they are able to set up appointments to talk with the professionals on staff.

Rarely have I gone to a conference without at least one writer showing me a manuscript that’s been rejected countless times. Instead of trying to figure out what they’re doing wrong, they keep seeking. One woman said, “I know that one day I’ll find exactly the right editor, and I’ll sell this book.”

It works like that with healing from our traumatic childhoods. I am responsible.

I am responsible for my own healing from abuse.

PTSD

(Joe W., one of our faithful readers, asked me to blog about post trauma stress. This is an encore, especially for Joe.)

* * * * *

It surprised me the first time I heard sexual assault linked with the idea of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and yet it fit. Until then I'd associated PTSD with military veterans who continued to relive their horrible ordeal. When I was a kid, the experts used the terms shell shock or combat stress. 

My connection began when I read an article about PTSD and learned about their having flashbacks and recurring dreams. I said aloud, "That describes many of us survivors."

In my first year of healing, those flashbacks occurred several times a week. I felt as if the abuse were happening all over again. At other times, especially when I faced an extremely emotional situation, I numbed out, which was also listed among the symptoms.

One man who wrote me privately told me about his PTSD and said, "When the flashbacks occurred, I dealt with them by drinking them away. I called it recreational drinking, but I was self-medicating."

It's not just the symptoms, but how we react. For some men, the effect is debilitating. I was fortunate because I'm a fulltime, freelance writer. For three months after I started my healing, I didn't work much and I was able to stall on projects. Because the pain and the memories were so new and invasive, I told friends I was just taking off a little time for myself—it lasted three months.

I wasn't cured, but during those three months, an almost nightly recurring dream stopped. The flashbacks came less often with lower intensity.

I'm still not fully healed,

but I'm getting closer all the time.

PTSD

It surprised me the first time I heard sexual assault linked with the idea of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and yet it fit. Until then I'd associated PTSD with military veterans who continued to relive their horrible ordeal. When I was a kid, the experts used the terms shell shock or combat stress.

My connection began when I read an article about PTSD and learned about their having flashbacks and recurring dreams. I said aloud, "That describes many of us survivors."

In my first year of healing, those flashbacks occurred several times a week. I felt as if the abuse were happening all over again. At other times, especially when I faced an extremely emotional situation, I numbed out, which was also listed among the symptoms.

One man who wrote me privately told me about his PTSD and said, "When the flashbacks occurred, I dealt with them by drinking them away. I called it recreational drinking, but I was self-medicating."

It's not just the symptoms, but how we react. For some men, the effect is debilitating. I was fortunate because I'm a fulltime, freelance writer. For three months after I started my healing, I didn't work much and I was able to stall on projects. Because the pain and the memories were so new and invasive, I told friends I was just taking off a little time for myself—it lasted three months.

I wasn't cured, but during those three months, an almost nightly recurring dream stopped. The flashbacks came less often with lower intensity.

I'm still not fully healed, but I'm getting closer all the time.

Cutting Yourself

(an encore post by Cecil Murphey)

Until recently, I assumed self-injury or self-cutting was a female response to pain. Increasingly, however, I hear stories of young men who are cutters.

I've never been a cutter, but I've seen the results of several who are. Some cut their wrists or arms, but I hear more of it occurs on the legs so it's not readily seen. My understanding as a non-therapist, is that it's a form of self-medication—a way to control the pain. Using a knife or a razor blade, cutters hurt and they use self-injury as a temporary fix for their extreme pain or depression.

From what I've read, most self-harm or self-mutilation hits between the ages of 15 and 35. They're not suicidal and they know it's not a solution, but it is a form of self-medication.

"I wanted to stop," a teen-aged boy said, "but it was the only thing I could do to keep from giving up on life."

He has gone into a year-long residency at Teen Challenge. "I can't help myself, but God can help me through the people there."

Cutting Yourself

Until recently, I assumed self-injury or self-cutting was a female response to pain. Increasingly, however, I hear stories of young men who are cutters.

I've never been a cutter, but I've seen the results of several who are. Some cut their wrists or arms, but I hear more of it occurs on the legs so it's not readily seen. My understanding as a non-therapist, is that it's a form of self-medication—a way to control the pain. Using a knife or a razor blade, cutters hurt and they use self-injury as a temporary fix for their extreme pain or depression.

From what I've read, most self-harm or self-mutilation hits between the ages of 15 and 35. They're not suicidal and they know it's not a solution, but it is a form of self-medication.

"I wanted to stop," a teen-aged boy said, "but it was the only thing I could do to keep from giving up on life."

He has gone into a year-long residency at Teen Challenge. "I can't help myself, but God can help me through the people there."

Stomach Pain

It was his secret and Larry said he carried a heavy ball of guilt inside. "The guilt ate at me, and I developed stomach ulcers." He gulped down the liquid medicine for relief, and snacked every two hours to keep food in his stomach.

Several times his doctor tried to find out what caused the problem but he kept saying he didn't know.

"But I did know."

Larry's secret was so deep he didn't want to admit it or talk about it. He was sure that if he did, his symptoms would get worse.

"About eight months ago I spilled my guts," he said. And once Larry began to talk about being sexually abused, the healing began. He still snacks and takes medication, but he hasn't had a serious bout with stomach pain for seven months.

From Pastor Peter

"When I was fifteen, I drank my first beer and then my second. It was strange but I didn't worry about anything. I had fun and it seemed like everything I said was witty." That's how Peter, a Southern Baptist pastor, started his email to me.

He went on to write that drinking kept him detached from his emotions. "When I was twenty-one, I almost washed out of college. What I thought was witty my career counselor told me was silly and often incoherent."

Peter went to an AA meeting to please his counselor and so he could finish the semester and stay in college. An older man in the meeting said he had been an alcoholic for fifteen years. "It was the only way I could forget that I had been abused," the man told Peter.

"That clicked!" Peter wrote. He said he felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. "That's when I knew why I liked getting drunk. I could forget."

Peter never took another drink because he didn't need the booze. He  graduated from college. "I wasn't at the top of the class, but I was at least part of the class." 

He not only became sober, but he found a fine therapist who helped him cope with the trauma of childhood abuse. He's now a pastor in Texas and has gotten his church to start a Celebrate Recovery group.

Numbing

In a previous post I wrote about numbing out when I felt overwhelmed by emotion. It almost happened again recently. My wife had two serious accidents in an eight-day period. Although I was aware of her pain and I could see it in her eyes, I hardly knew what to say.

In the past, I wouldn’t have understood, but this time I wasn't numbed as fully as I had been long ago, yet I was aware of a struggle going on inside me.

For me, it was an involuntary numbing. I can now look back and realize that my wise, inner self used the frozen emotions to protect me from feeling my pain.

There's another kind of numbing, and it's done so often that the people are hardly aware of what they do. We say they self-medicate. Their medication can be stuffing themselves with food. Why wouldn't they? While they were still infants, parents stopped them from crying by thrusting a bottle into their mouths. Food soothed any ills. So for some, food addiction is a natural reaction to abuse.

I know a woman who was sexually abused and after each abuse, her step-father bought her a gift. I overheard her say to a group, "I'm a shopaholic and sometimes I wonder why I buy so much."

Maybe she knows the reason. Or perhaps she knows it's her way to stifle the pain. By shopping she can self-medicate and numb her emotions.

What kind of numbing devices have you used—or still use? What is your "drug of choice" to cover your raw emotions? Why don't you write to me at Cec_Haraka (at) msn (dot) com and share it with us? (You don't have to reveal your identity.)