no thanks

 Now that I've gone thru the events during my death last month, I wanted to let folks in a little more on some of the psychological effects of all this - and, as you might imagine they are many. And this is going to get extremely personal, so buckle up.  One reason I want to do this is catharsis for myself, but the bigger reason is that this might illuminate things for others who have friends or loved ones who have gone thru a terribly traumatic event and are having trouble in breaking thru to them.

Yesterday, I had 3 pastors over to my house- 3 men who I respect immensely.  They wanted to come over and pray with me because- simply put - I have not been able to pray or talk with God since this happened.  In fact, I have had an overwhelming amount of silence where God is concerned in this- He's just not there for me, and I have had no desire to talk to Him, either.  Why, you ask? Because I'm still very, very angry with God for what has happened to me. (I'll write more about that later.)

At any rate, I fully recognize that this absence and distance is not normal or healthy for me, so I was happy to have them come over to talk with me and pray for me- and, btw, one of the pastors that came over (the current interim pastor at my church) had given a sermon just a few days prior to all of this where he said that sometimes, we need others to believe for us in times of strife and stress.  That sermon meant a lot to me and means even more to me now.  So, again- I have to say another thank you to Pastor Tom and that message.

During this chat, I related what had happened to me to these men.  It's a story I've now related a hundred times (and I'm not tired of telling it!) but the insights that I got from these three just incredibly gifted me with something new and fresh.  And, as it happens, one of these men actually died from a sudden cardiac arrest about 8 years ago, so there was a kinsmanship there that would have been hard to find any other way.

I asked my friend if he had felt like I did after his revival- like I didn't belong here and why was I alive and why wasn't I thankful just to be here - and he had and still does.  The commonalities in our experience here were striking, to say the least, and it gave me a lot of comfort to know that I wasn't alone in feeling like I did.  He suffered the same levels of despair and depression after awakening, and didn't understand why he felt that way.  Now, mind you, I had already had that talk with the hospital chaplain about this being a normal response to trauma, but hearing this told to me from a very trusted friend who had been thru exactly what I had just gone thru added a layer of confirmation that probably couldn't be gathered any other way.

I did not and do not feel thankful for being alive.  Now, this not is a suicidal thing at all.  I just don't care.  My life has been turned upside-down and my health is so frail now, the question I keep asking is, "is it worth it?".  I feel like a complete burden to my friends and family for the simplest of things; I can't drive myself anywhere; it takes me 45 minutes to clean up and get dressed in the mornings; I spend all my waking time either watching TV or in doctors office; and I am in constant pain - it just plain old sucks.  Now, I want you to understand that I'm not having a pity-party in telling you this; I'm merely explaining why it is very difficult to have anything that even looks like "thankfulness" because this is all-consuming.  My wife, my family and my friends have assured me that I am not a burden, and the doctors have assured me that I will get better and life will return to some kind of normalcy, and I try hard to believe them- but it's difficult, to say the least.  Whenever I express these thoughts to others, their tendency is to try to equivolate their own experience in to this, and in the case of my wife, try to "fix it'.  In fact, almost every day she says to me, "I wish I knew how to fix this", and I know she can't.  No one can.  Although my mental state today is FAR better than it was a month ago, it's still difficult for me to relate to others and I'm still very distant and pre-occupied.

The general tendency of a supporter is to be kind of a cheerleader and aid and support your loved one in order to "fix it".  That attempt has it's place in all of this, but you no doubt face frustration when your damaged loved one just doesn't respond.  Talk like, "well. they're just depressed- who can blame them" and "they've been thru so much" occurs here, but that doesn't really tell you what is going thru our heads.  Yes, there is depression here, but it's so much more than that.

What is going thru our heads is 2 questions that come up over and over again, and there is no right or correct answer to it- "Why did this happen, and  how am I ever going to be the same again?"  Both of these questions sound very simple to answer when you haven't directly gone thru the trauma, but when it's you asking this for you, those questions are far, far deeper than you might imagine.

"Why did this happen" is a form of self-blame.  It's the worst case "coulda-shoulda-woulda" scenario.  It's not just a case of asking whether or not there was more you could have done to prevent the traumatic event, but rather, it's a case of feeling so terribly guilty that you hurt or terrified others by your "inaction".  For me, I spent the entire first 24 hours after being revived apologizing to everyone for putting them thru that- and even though I knew it was not my fault, the guilt I felt was just overwhelming.

But, it's the "how am I ever going to be the same again?" question that's really the most insidious.  Every trauma sufferer wants nothing more than to feel some small sense of normalcy, and we believe that the only way to do that is to return to our old life.  All of our efforts are to do that very thing, and it is an impossible task to do that in every, single case.  On top of that, if we did return to our "old lives", we all realize, deep down, that the "why" question is no longer really answered or is changed in such a way that the previous explanation is no longer valuable. 

These two questions go round and round in our heads in a never-ending battle.  And when we hear from our supporters that we need to "cheer up" or "move on", it becomes even more evident that we are alone in this quandary.  Lather, rinse and repeat........

I spent the first three days after being revived doing nothing but crying and apologizing.  I couldn't really hold a basic conversation, and I had absolutely no sense of humor.  (those who know me, know that I have a joke or inappropriate quip for all occasions)  The two questions I mentioned above were literally all I could think about- and I mean in a truly obsessive/compulsive way.  And it got MUCH, MUCH worse at night when I was alone with my thoughts in my hospital room.  It just spiraled and spiraled.  A lot of those 3 days I was pretty much catatonic.  I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't watch TV.  I could take no joy in anything.  I put on a brave face for my visitors, but I was dying inside.  When my visitors left, I was exhausted from the effort of trying to appear normal. (the manifestation of "how am I ever going to be the same again?" question)  For those that did come to visit me or talk to me on the phone during that time, please understand that all of what you saw was acting and fake, and the whole time we were talking, I was screaming inside my own head.  It's not that I didn't trust you to take my honest feelings- it was because I thought if I acted "normal", I would be normal.  Pretty stupid, huh?

I can confidently state that this is what is going on in every PTSD sufferer's head.  In fact, I'll guarantee it.  The inevitable question here is "how can I actually help?", and that is what I'm driving at here with all the context. Some of the answers here are obvious- don't act like you know what's going on in their heads or what they've been thru, but here's some not so obvious ones.  

• Don't push.  ALWAYS ask if we are comfortable in talking, and back off 100% if we say we aren't.
• Be there and present for us.  This does not require platitudes to accomplish- in fact, it doesn't require you to say anything.  Just listen.
• Don't say, "I can't begin to understand what you've been thru."  That makes us feel even more alone.
• Don't say, "It's gonna be ok."  It's not.  Life is different now.
• Don't tell competitive stories like, "you know, I know this guy that went thru what happened to you, an he said....."  because that just shows us how out of touch with us you are.  Second or third- hand story telling does nothing but make us feel worse about where we are at the moment when we hear someone else go thru it.
• Don't say, "You're gonna get thru this."  Because in our mental state, that is a lie.
• I know this might seem obvious, but unless you have suffered the same kind of trauma, it's very difficult for us to relate to you.  Every time you try and fail at this (or we fail with you) it makes us feel even more alone and speeds up the spiral in our heads.

I'm not saying leave us alone, but what I am saying is be prepared to leave us alone. Give us space.  But do keep trying. The thing you have to understand here is that what we've gone thru has caused a huge distance between us and the "shore of normalcy" and it takes time and effort to cross that distance.  It just doesn't happen overnight. 

As for me and how I'm doing now with all of this, I still struggle daily with those two thoughts.  One thing that was very helpful for me yesterday was that one of the pastors who came to visit me told me "yeah, Marc.  Let me confirm for you that you have lost your mind.  Your old mind.  You have a new one now, and you need to figure it out"  and that REALLY resonated with me.  My life is so different now, and it's never going to be the same again, and that is the context in which I need to operate.  That takes acceptance and patience on my part as well as the ability to forgive myself when I stumble thru these things.  I've heard that this will be a bumpy road, but I'll never know for sure unless I get on it.

I really hope that this entry helps someone who might be dealing with someone who has suffered trauma as I have described.  As I go down this road, I am happy to take questions, and together we can all find some of the answers.