The Anniversary Effect

 I wasn’t going to write about this. I didn’t want to admit to it. I’m fine. Perfectly fine. There’s nothing to see here. But in the interests of being honest about mental health and what is normal and survivable and because I am genuinely fine I have changed my mind.

In trauma recovery there is a thing called the anniversary effect and it can completely knock you off your feet for a while. 

This isn’t a conscious remembering. It’s different, devastating and uncontrollable.

On the anniversary of my Dad’s death I might look at the calendar, check the sky for heart shaped clouds and have a moment of quiet remembering. It’s a good thing.

However, my Mum’s death is a traumatic event that happened to me and my brain approaches the anniversary in a different way. I hate that it does this. It makes it all about me and reminiscing is relegated to another day, another year, another lifetime. That causes guilt, which isn’t good for mental wellbeing either.

It starts about a week before. Sleep becomes more elusive. Eating is erratic. Emotionally I’m all mood swings and quivering anxiety. Focusing on anything is impossible. Lists, that have always been my friend, jump around the page and taunt me. I become a terrible teacher, a snappy housemate, a weepy wife. I say weepy but as I’m not really a crier this is what happened.

We were standing in the Long Suffering Husband’s shed. He’s finally finished it, except for the floor and getting the tools in. 

“It has only taken five years,” he says, “But I get there in the end.”

And tears appear in my eyes. A little sob escapes before I swallow it. 

He looks at me with tilted head and the look I hate. The one where I know he has seen that I’m not right, not myself and his face brims with concern. He steps forward to give me a hug and I cry. 

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks and I snap into anger, pull away, zip myself back up and say that I don’t know. And I don’t. Not then. I know that I’m not right, that I’ve been wobbly for a few days but I don’t know why. 

I have been putting things off. There’s an optician appointment to make, a birthday present voucher to use, which requires looking at a calendar and I realise that it is May and the anniversary effect is kicking in.

This is where my body mounts it’s own trauma response as a kind of memory party.

I’m assuming that anyone who has a trauma response has their own symptoms. Mine build. Difficulty sleeping turns to no sleep, first moving through panic waking, terrible dreams, unconsciously bruising myself at night and weird nighttime breathing. Not eating starts with a general nausea, an inability to swallow, stuffing comfort biscuits in to keep everything down then eventually vomiting for no particular reason. My contact lenses begin to hurt and my vision blurs to the point of everyone asking if I have new glasses. Constipation (too much information?) My brain decides it needs to focus on everything all at once and life becomes overwhelming as I develop a plan for world peace. I can’t look anyone in the eye. My palms are sweaty and my feet are cold. I want to run away but I don’t. I freeze. I go through life on automatic pilot, slowly, sadly, not fully engaging, wondering if I’m doing a good enough job of masking because if anyone notices and says anything I will run. I feel dirty. My hands get washed like I’m Lady Fucking Macbeth. 

The annoying thing is that I have been so much better lately. My broken brain has been healing.This PTSD has been EMDRed and yoga’d away. My walking, breathing, writing have all been slowly working their magic. So I was cross. 

Five years! I shouted into the void. 

Then, the day after the death-day anniversary my brain was light again. The fog had lifted and I was looking forward to things. And it is because of this lightness I decided to write this blog. 

The anniversary effect doesn’t cause a step backwards. It’s temporary and goes away again. It’s just your brain having a pity party. My brain has had to work very hard lately, so I can let it have a party once a year if it wants one. I’m not going to get stressed out by it.

If your brain is currently doing this then you have my sympathy because it’s not fun but you’ll get through it. 

Half Term Haunting

The October half term holiday used to be my favourite. Apart from a little planning and arranging of Christmas carols and songs there’s not usually too much to do. It’s not like having to write report comments. When the children were smaller, I loved Halloween. We would go to the allotment and collect and carve pumpkins. I’d make spooky food, like witch finger chicken strips, ghost biscuits, spider web cakes and a jelly brain. They would have all their friends round and I would tell stories and we would play games. I managed to convince my neighbours children that I had actually been to a school for witches, so that when Harry Potter came out they could tell everyone that they knew someone who had been to Hogwarts. Obviously, I’d never mentioned the name of the school because, well, you don’t tell Muggles, do you?

This half term hasn’t been as much fun. 

I miss having small children around. I miss the pretend haunting. 

This half term has been filled with the kind of haunting that no one wants. The kind of haunting that makes me cross. The sort that I don’t want to admit to. 

There was one of those silly things that appear on Twitter that said something like: For Halloween let predictive text answer this question. Type “This Halloween I am haunted by..” and let predictive text give your answers. Without thinking, I typed in my answer (with no intention to post) and got, “I am haunted by my Mum and Dad.”

Wow! Not such a fun game.

It’s true too and I hate it. If you had told me three years ago that I would still be having some difficulties 18months after both parents had died I would never have believed you. I’m strong, determined, bloody minded and have realistic expectations about death. Parents dying in their seventies is normal. To be sad and miss them is normal. But here we are and some days I can barely function. I can’t sit still or be anywhere where I feel trapped.  My brain still can’t take too much noise or flashing lights (films can still be difficult) and my concentration is shot to pieces. It takes me four times as long to do anything and even then I have little confidence that I’ve done anything well. And all of this is made a million times worse if I spend any time in my parent’s house.  

The Long Suffering Husband looks at me, pityingly. He can see the toll it takes in my face. 

“Every time you go there you age about 20 years,” he says. 

Honestly, he’s such a gem.

My sister has recommended wearing a hat.

“It keeps it all in,” she says, “You look a bit silly but..”

I’m considering fashioning myself a little tin foil cap. It might help to keep the weird things that are happening in the world out too. 

But it just makes me cross with myself. Pull yourself together woman. It’s mind over matter. Don’t mind and it won’t matter. Then I switch and try to be kind to myself. What would I tell other people? I’d say it’s fine. Look after yourself, do whatever you need to. And therein lies the problem. When you need to do opposing things simultaneously it send you a bit bonkers.

I am currently in a phase of this extreme adulting malarkey where my parent’s house is sold. That’s great but it’s a very final step. There is light at the end of the tunnel. One day, soon, I will never have to go into the house again and maybe the holes in my brain can finally start to heal over. But before then comes the very difficult job of raking through their possessions. We did quite a lot of clearing before it went on the market. Clothes, lots of books, dvds, and some rubbish all went. The nice things, furniture and bits and bobs, we thought might have value, stayed. Now, we have the difficult job of sorting them out and let me tell you, this is a pretty shit thing to do.

You feel completely torn. You’d like to not have to look at it. Some people do this. They hire a skip and chuck everything in, or get a man with a van to come round and take everything. Whilst that is tempting, it’s something I find impossible. Other people take photos and list everything on Facebook sales, or take pieces to auction. Other’s give bits away. This explains why we have a hideous mirror and some glassware that isn’t to anyone’s taste. You don’t sell things because you need the money, it’s just that you can’t bear to think that your parent’s lives had no value.

When there is more than one sibling, this can also be tricky. What if you both want to keep the same things? What if there are things that neither of you actually want to own but you can’t face getting rid of? Whose loft has to groan with ornaments that your children will have to sort out when you go? What if one can’t face it and leaves it all to the other? Ultimately, though, you just need to look after each other. Your relationship is the most valuable of your parent’s possessions.

Over the years, I’ve tried to listen to things other people have said and not make the same mistakes. As death is such a big taboo in our society we don’t talk or listen and so we have no real idea of how we are meant to complete these tasks. I feel like our clearing is proving to be a very long and protracted process but maybe I just stopped listening when people talked about it.

Thanks for listening to my half term horror story. Let’s try the predictive text thing again - “I am haunted by my knitting.” That’s more like it.

We all have mental health (fear of flying)

I wasn’t going to write about this. ‘Stay positive,’ I thought. ‘Don’t dwell on the tricky things. It’s not as if you want anyone to know. You don’t want sympathy or advice. You’re not asking people for their tips on how to fly when you are bonkers. Just keep quiet. Pretend it never happened. Pretend you are completely sane.’

Then I thought that was duplicitous. I have written about PTSD and being fixed and maybe if someone was reading that and the following blogs, they would think any treatment hadn’t worked for them. If you are my friend and are reading this then I don’t want you to panic and think I don’t have things quite as together as you thought I had (although if you are my friend you’ve probably always thought I was bonkers and ‘together’ is never a word you’d use to describe me). I’ve also decided to tell you the story of my flight home from Japan because it is actually funny.

So, if you don’t know, when my mum died last year (yes, it is nearly a year) it was traumatic and I caught myself a bad case of PTSD. Luckily, I found an excellent therapist and managed to get back to work and living a normal life. That doesn’t mean that everything is easy. There’s lots I have to work on.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that stems from a traumatic incident. At first, I couldn’t close my eyes without that incident replaying in my head, like a horror movie stuck on a loop of the worst part. This movie came in full 5D effect: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. This caused panic attacks and, for me, claustrophobia. I wanted to manage the panic by having a small ordered life; being outdoors, walking and being in control of everything  helped. Then I had EMDR and the videos stopped playing. I was given some CBT tools to help manage any panic that happened and normal life could  resume. I was different - my brain forever changed but not so different from anyone else.

The Long Suffering Husband has always wanted to go to Japan. We had intended to go last year but Mum was dying, so we didn’t. You can imagine that this trip pushed all my buttons. It’s difficult to stay in control when you have no idea what to expect and very difficult on an 11 hour flight. The journey out wasn’t too bad. I had an aisle seat next to the toilet with a wall behind me and if I felt wobbly and none of the sitting-still-CBT-mind-games worked I went to the toilet and ran on the spot for a few minutes, pretending to be at the sea wall with geese flying overhead. I might have done that about a dozen times. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I stared back at the LSH with my saucer-wide eyes, “It’s just that anxiety is a bitch.”

Coming home was different.

Our seats were in a group of three with our two closest to the window. You don’t get a choice  when you check-in online. A teenage boy sat next to us. Japan attracts sensitive, studious misfit boys. He was reading Victor Hugo’s Hunchback and I wanted to ask him if he had started it before the fire but I didn’t. The LSH asked him if he would prefer a window seat and I told him that I was a fidget but he thought he’d be ok where he was.

Three hours in and I had only made the boy move four times. It was ok:  I’d eaten the meal, read lots of my book, I was still breathing. Then they turn the lights off and hope that everyone goes to sleep. The boy next to me obliged. I thought I’d try to watch a film (which, looking back was probably a mistake, as my brain hasn’t coped with that much sensory input for a while). The man in front of me reclined his seat (just know, that if you ever do this on a flight then it’s a dick move - no excuses - it’s just rude) and the LSH started to snore.  Sleeping is not something I’m very good at and it was only lunchtime.

It started to rise. That feeling was in my chest. I was hot, sweaty. I tried to think of the sea wall but when I closed my eyes I saw something else - the last time I was trapped in a situation I wanted to get out of.  My mouth was dry so I finished my 5th bottle of water. My head was pounding. A crying sound was trying to escape from my throat despite the fact I had firmly clamped my lips together. My knees were banging together hard enough to cause tiny bruises.  I needed to get out. I tapped the boy on the knee but he was sound asleep, so I knelt  up on the seat. That was better. I could try to get back in control. Five things I could see, four I could hear, three I could touch, two I could smell and one I could taste. Okay. I could breath again. Crisis averted. It wasn’t the most comfortable position but it worked. Then the fifth bottle of water made its way to my bladder and I started to think that  I had to get out again. The thought washed over me like a wave and I punched the boy in the arm, shouted, “I’ve got to get out, I’ve got to get out,” and leaped over the top of him. He came round, groggy and confused, rubbing his arm apologetically. I picked myself up from the aisle and ran to the toilet, where I sobbed, breathed, used every technique I’d been taught until I was able to splash my face with water and emerge from the brightly lit toilet cubical back into the dark of the cabin, blinking as though I had gone the other way.

There was a lady outside, waiting for me.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I saw everything,” she said, “Are you really sure you are alright.”
I blinked back the threatening tears, mortified. Then another two passengers appeared. One had fetched a stewardess on his way.
“I feel such an idiot,” I said.
“She fell over,” one of the passengers explained to the stewardess.
“No, I think she was tripped. Someone stuck their foot out,” said the one who had seen everything.
“No, no, I just got a bit panicky,” I whispered.
The stewardess thanked everybody and sent them back to their seats even though they were still muttering about how people should keep their feet in and pulled me into the galley, where I promptly burst into ugly tears and explained everything. Well, not the stuff about PTSD and my mum and the year of my life I can't remember but enough so that she knew that I hadn't physically fallen.

I can't tell you how kind and wonderful these two British Airways cabin crew were.  There was absolutely no pressure for me to be normal and back in my seat.
"Are you travelling with your husband?  What seat are you in? I'll go and let him know."
I explained that he was asleep and that he would be fine.  They told me off and said that they weren't worried about him. It was me that wasn't fine! They were really upset that the aircraft was full and they couldn't even move me to first class.  "Oh, I don't think I deserve that!" I said. They disagreed.  They reassured me that I wasn't the worst and that it 'happens to all of us'.  I was sceptical about that.
"It doesn't happen to you, does it? You wouldn't be able to do this job if it did."
"Oh no, not at work but I'm terribly panicky in situations where I have to speak.  I'm not married because I don't want all that speech stuff and have people looking at you all day."
We talked about her anxiety and I wondered if there was any way round it.  I suddenly realised that everyone has mental health.  There are times when we are depressed or anxious and the trick is to deal with it.

I had just stopped shaking when it was time for them to do another drinks round.
"If I'm going to stay in here, can I be of some use?" I asked, "Honestly, it would really help me if I was busy."
I spent the next hour pouring juice into plastic cups and finding out all about the life of BA cabin crew.  Soon, it was time for their break (They go upstairs in the tail of the plane and sleep for a couple of hours) but reassured me that I was welcome to stay and the other two crew members would be more than glad of my company.  Apparently, I'm funny!  I thought I had overstayed my welcome and would try to get back to my seat.
I was told that the 'cabin crew seats for landing' were mine if I needed them for the rest of the trip. I lasted about ten minutes back in my seat when the LSH suggested I go and use them.

One of the problems, for me, was that people fart in aeroplanes.  They fart a lot. The smell of the toilets and the rotting food and the pot noodles that they make up in the galley for people who need to eat all the time all smell like something I remember, so that even in my less claustrophobic seat the anxiety was difficult to manage.  Eventually, I was sick and by the time the crew came back from their break to serve the last meal I didn't look well at all but it was a bit busy and crowded at the back so I went back to my seat.

"Beef or Pasta?" the stewardess said to the man in front. "And can you put your seat up for the lady behind!" she snapped, catching my eye, in solidarity.  He had annoyed her earlier anyway when he'd demanded to know what the meal was going to be so that he could decided if he wanted red or white wine. Then she tried to offer extra drinks to the poor boy with the bruised arm but he was too nice and polite to accept and she stumbled over her words.  "Oooh, sorry, I've gone into full-on fight mode," she said. 

The flight was over.  I thanked the staff for all their kindness and left, grateful to have made it. 
"So, where are you going next?" asked the LSH's friend who picked us up from the airport.
"Errm. I think we might leave it for a while," the LSH said, squeezing my hand nervously.
It will be fine though.  I'm not going to let this thing beat me.  We all have mental health but the trick is to not let it stop you living a life. 

Resilience

Sitting in the sauna with my sister listening to two teenagers witter on about their lives, the rules for dating, boy codes and other incomprehensible subjects I realised that children have the language of dealing with their emotions but still have as little clue about how to actually cope with them as we did. It turns out their friend was, “totally triggered,” when her mate kissed her boyfriend and that even though another friend had slept with every boy at the party that was totally fine because , “she has so much respect for herself.” They all know the word resilience but when life throws a curved ball I wonder how many of them will actually be able to do it.

Resilience is one of the new fads in pop psychology. Schools talk about teaching resilience, even though that concept seems either cruel or impossible. Fans of corporal punishment will argue that people of my age were taught resilience at school. Teachers could stand you in front of the class and hit you for spelling a word wrong. They could throw missiles at you for talking, or send you to the headmaster for a proper thrashing. Oh, how we learnt to survive. Except that I suspect many of us didn’t. Just as how some kids will crumble under the pressure of constant measuring, testing and changing the goalposts that happens now. 

Maybe the lesson in resilience should actually be learning when to give up. I think of myself as a pretty resilient person, which is why my reaction to my mum’s death was such a shock. People who know me argue that I have been resilient (or stubborn) in refusing to let that PTSD thing beat me.  I just think I was lucky that I was able to find the right kind of help.  To get that help, I had to give up a little bit, though.  I couldn't have done it if I had gone back to work after my one week's bereavement leave. 

A report today says the our children are the safest but also the unhappiest. Children’s mental health is reported as the worst it’s ever been with many seeing no point in living but we can’t know that those very same suicidal children wouldn’t be the survivors if they were under threat.  But does that mean we should put people under threat to test them? Is it right to change what's expected of children in exams just to see who will survive?

I grew up in a family of fighters. My father, in particular, had a tough start in life. They were poor in the days before a social security safety net. A jam sandwich for tea was a good day. Both my parents sat with slack-jawed incredulity when anyone talked about the good old post-war days, as for them, they were times of huge struggle. But they survived.

When your parents have died one of the really hard things you have to do is sort through their stuff.  There are memories everywhere.

My mum was an artist and I have recently started the mammoth task of clearing her studio. It is filled with notebooks and sketchbooks that tell of her life, never mind all her artwork.There are inks I remember buying her for Christmas in the year that my Dad wrapped everything in a foot spa box as a joke (it didn’t go down well.), every type of paint you can imagine, and unidentifiable tools. There are books and magazines (dating back to 1972).

I was no good at art. My mum would laugh at my attempts and suggest that I took after Dad, who famously couldn’t even draw a cat. Growing up in a house full of art stuff was useful though. When I was put into a remedial handwriting group in senior school I was so mortified I spent every spare moment teaching myself calligraphy. (I told you I was stubborn) I remember Dad being impressed because as a left-hander who had been forced to write with his right his writing was awful. I remember him having a go but I thought Dad never gave up on anything.  However I found his calligraphy book.  There are times you just need to say :

Knowing you can’t do everything is a kind of resilience of its own.

Moving On

Now that I’ve finished reading the Brexit report and I’m fixed (so that the constant videos of the last moments of my mum’s life aren’t playing behind my eyes) it’s time to ‘move on’ and so I’m going to write some blogs that deal with uncomfortable truths about death, bereavement and grief. Today’s blog is about support.

After I’d written the fixed blog people told me their stories and said that it had been helpful to read. Other people had told me that they’d sent it to friends who were struggling with grief, or madness.
I was surprised by all of this, as I thought my experience was pretty unique. Obviously, I hadn’t given the details of those final images but my descriptions of how I acted with PTSD resonated with many people.

When life is difficult for someone the people around them want to help. It is hard to know how to help and even harder to know if you are able to.

The truth is that there are no rules. A psychological study has shown that there is no right thing to say https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2018.1509341  Things that helped me might not help someone else but I’m going to tell you  just in case those things are universal.

On Thursday I’m taking some friends out for dinner who were very supportive. We are going to celebrate my being fixed with sparkles, bubbles and food. Looking back, I realise how lucky I am, to have so many friends and family who care and did exactly the right thing for me. And also how lucky I am that there were so many others who tried to help and failed. I think of the Long Suffering Husband who failed at least 30% of the time but never gave up.

Most of the time, for me, when people failed it was because they were trying too hard. They wanted my pain to stop. They couldn’t understand it but thought they could. As soon as someone jumped to a conclusion I was lost. “I know exactly how you’re feeling,” they’d say and inside I would be    screaming. I think that whatever someone is going through it is totally unique and no one ever really  knows what it’s like to be inside their head.

“It’s because..” was another conversation starter that would make me curl up inside. This was terrible on two fronts. The first was that they were usually wrong but the second and more terrifying was the fear that they might get it right. When you are at your lowest and really struggling with something then the last thing you want is to be noticed.

“You should...” Oh help! This was the worst. Even if the advice that followed was good advice I generally couldn’t have heard it because it was framed in arrogance and judgement. There were bits of advice that were funny, like “You should eat more bananas.” (I’m still not sure why) and others that still hurt when I think of them now, like being told it’s time to move on.

I titled the blog ’moving’on because this is probably the least helpful thing, ever (in my opinion). In  an age where growth mindset is all the rage, resilience is taught as something you can have just by saying,  “get on with it,” and that anyone who can’t get over something is a snowflake (stupid term because snowflakes are amazing), this phrase is going to be said more often. The truth is that a person can’t always move on. I couldn’t and I am a pretty resilient person who has suddenly become a bit freaked out because the things she's always said are suddenly trendy.  Until the video images stopped playing behind my eyes there was no way of moving on. I was stuck. And even now, I am still bereaved. My parents have still died within 18 months of each other, I have still dealt with things no squeamish person should ever have to deal with and I feel forever changed. I have good days and bad days. This is normal. (I’m telling myself as much as I’m telling anyone else).

So, if people failed because they were trying too hard then would it be better that they didn’t try at all? No. No. Absolutely not. I have more respect for people who tried and got it wrong (even if I was hurt by their trying) than those who just didn’t bother. The loneliness of dealing with these issues is indescribable.

The connection between people is hard when you are struggling.  It's even harder if you are struggling with something that society doesn't like to talk about.  Death is still a big taboo, as is mental health and menopause.  Doing all three things together makes you a very difficult person to be around and you know it. 

The people who were really supportive for me didn't care about any of that.  They didn't need to talk about those things.  They just let me know that they were there.  They would swim alongside me, or invite me for coffee, or send me a text to ask how I was and be happy with my answer of 'OK'.  They talked about other things and didn't get cross if I zoned out.  They didn't hug me (that might be a personal thing).  They didn't give up. They told me their stories without assuming that mine was the same.  This, I think, is important.  Other people's experiences help you work out what you might need.  The more I heard about people's experience of grief the more I realised that I was in a different place.  A conversation with a chap in a coffee shop, however, who had been a soldier and told me about his PTSD did make me feel much less alone as did the story a dog walker told me about their mother who had never been the same after nursing their grandmother through cancer.  We should talk more about death. 

One of the things that really kept me going through the early darkest days was that every morning I would get up to a message from a friend that contained a gif of the Pope doing something strange.  It made me laugh and if someone can make you laugh when everything seems pointless then they are doing really well.

Fixed

I’m probably about to wildly over share but I’m so excited that I just don’t care.

I have been stuck in a living hell for the last six months. Not to over dramatise the situation but it has been really awful.

The trauma that I suffered because of mum’s death is more complicated than I want to go into but it left me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This meant that my brain was broken. For a long time I couldn’t close my eyes or look at my hands without replaying the traumatic images in my head. Smells would leave me being unable to breathe. I couldn’t sleep and if I did I would wake gasping for air and gripping my upper arms hard enough to bruise them. I lost my appetite and felt permanently nauseous. I was terrified of seeing people just in case they said anything that caused the images to replay. I couldn’t watch television or cope with loud noises. My brain felt like it was constantly fizzing. As time went on, I felt depressed and defeated by the situation and wondered how I could go on.

People were sympathetic but because I couldn’t explain what was really happening for fear of replaying the images, their sympathy only isolated me further. When people said that it was understandable because both parents had died so close to each other I felt like a fraud. You see I’m a bit hard. I don’t cry. I don’t have an issue with death.

Instead of normal but extreme grief I have been dealing with a constant video playing behind my eyes that left me feeling useless, out of control and not safe.

Some people would give up, drink, take drugs and pull the duvet over their head. I used to fight giants so I walked, drank water, did yoga, swam, ate three meals a day whether I fancied them or not and practised mindfulness.

As a psychology geek, I already knew that the therapy for PTSD was EMDR. (It’s always important to fight acronyms with acronyms) and when I told the consultant at the hospice what had happened and how it had turned me into  ‘Lady F-ing Macbeth’ (“Don’t worry,” said my sister after, “pretty sure that’s her middle name.”) she confirmed that EMDR was the way to go.

It is only available privately, so I found wonderful Helen at the Silver Street Clinic. I’ve had eight sessions with her, with only three of them being EMDR.  In the first we talked about what had happened and how I was feeling. The second gave me strategies for dealing with the anxiety symptoms. The third and fourth were EMDR sessions, after which I felt able to go back to work. The images were mostly under control and we locked them in a box.  In the fifth we talked about my difficult return to work but decided that it was alright to stop treatment.Then I cleaned my mum’s kitchen cupboards and the videos started to play in my head again along with a return to bruising myself in my sleep.  Those images refused to stay in the box.  Session six was to assess what had happened and a few more coping strategies. On the seventh visit we got distracted talking about death in general and things that can’t be changed. On Tuesday I had the EMDR session that fixed me. The images came out of the box, we turned them black and white and dealt with the difficult emotions in a safe way.

Everyone has heard of PTSD in terms of soldiers coming back from war. We know that it’s an anxiety disorder caused by witnessing traumatic events.  It's not so common in every day life.  Mostly, us humans are very efficient at dealing with seeing an isolated trauma.  Our brains have mechanisms which allow us to file the event away in a safe way.  Much of this work is done while we are asleep.  We dream and our brains relieve the trauma in different ways.  Usually, while we sleep the amount of nor-adrenaline released is reduced and so relieving the trauma in REM sleep is safe.  In patients with PTSD this mechanism of the brain in broken and instead even more of this anxiety inducing chemical is released. 

I referred to the time from Mum's diagnosis to her death as the Great Elephant Wars of 2018.  The whole thing was like fighting the proverbial elephant in the corner.  Something that you shouldn't really mention but had to constantly fight. It wasn't a real war, though and I was furious at myself for being so weak to have been this troubled by the situation.  Helen explained that your brain is like a filing clerk and because of  how busy I was (still fitting in concerts, clubs and pupil exams alongside wanting to care for Mum and grieving Dad) my filling clerk was overwhelmed.  It had an over full in-tray and was really beginning to panic about ever getting on top of the job. Then the traumatic death occurred generating a black sack full of paperwork but there was no room in the in-tray so my brain and it's desk got buried in papers to file.  It broke.

EMDR (Eye Movement De-sensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy works by simulating what your brain does during dream sleep.  Your eyes are moved from side to side while you visualise the trauma. You can follow a light, be tapped on the knees or have beeps played into alternating ears (which worked best for me).  A skilled therapist takes you through the visualisations and asks you what you are feeling and where.  They use techniques like turning the image black and white which help to keep you feeling safe.  You can stop at any time you want.  It is like some sort of voodoo magic. 

I came out of the last session and knew I was fixed.  I felt hungry for the first time in six months and realised that I didn't feel sick anymore.  I could go into Marks and Spencers without my heart pounding in my chest (I bought myself a pain au chocolate because I fancied it).  There was a spring in my step and I noticed that I felt happy.  Since then I have been able to watch TV and sit in the staff room. My head feels lighter and the Long Suffering Husband has commented that I have lost the 'haunted' look.  I can feel that my smile reaches my eyes.  I'm sleeping properly (except for Thursday night when I was like a kid at Christmas and couldn't wait to wake up and start the next day).  I have been bouncing all over the place and decided to write this blog and over-share just in case you hadn't noticed.