The Bright side of PTSD: become a Body Guard?

Coop, Uncategorized

Smells, noises or lights can suddenly awaken some of us, and refuse to let us sleep until identified. Long-lasting childhood traumas can leave your Inner Child reluctant to come out from under the coffee table. Some ideas, illustrated by examples from historical and fictional sages, may help your Inner Parent to teach safety and trust to that Frightened Inner Child so that your Inner Adult, your competent and ambitious self who’d rather ignore both Child and Parent, can get on with succeeding in life.

First, one possible intrepretation of Hillel’s famous pair of questions:
A. אם אין אני לי, מי לי (Im ein ani li, mi li: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me,”) is that each of us must parent and protect his or her own inner child, and

B. ? וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני ; (Vekesh’ani le’atzmi, mah ani ? “And if I am only for myself, what am I?”), also stand with others who have been wounded.

Second, if, like Harry Potter, you’ve sustained significant losses in your life, even very early on, is there someone you can recall, or as Harry uses to conjure his first #Patronus, even some imaginary memory, showing love or kindness, even if from or to a stranger just for a moment? Your Inner Parent can use that image to show your Inner Child that there is hope for this world, and that is worth holding on to and fighting for, to motivate your ambitious Inner Adult to keep going. This is being for yourself in the most crucial way: parenting yourself through the panic and soothing those constantly jangled nerves until you learn to trust life. Then your ambitious and centered Inner Adult can take it from there to build the life you want to live.

Third, if, like Amelia, you see that it would be safer to give up than to fight, perhaps your Inner Adult can take the lead, having learned by watching your Inner Parent defend your own Inner Child, that sometimes an adult must sacrifice to create a better world for all Human Children. And like Feruze Hatun, healing all those around you may come at a high personal cost, but honesty and love, even shown to our enemies, as Gandhi and Dr. King proved, can indeed defeat hate, and bring you greater self-confidence and feelings of security.

So, warrior like Amelia or Intergenerational Community Parent to all, like Feruze Hatun, or just competent, capable, and knitting lots of hats for House Elves like Hermione, parenting yourself can lead to parenting others , for the good of All Humankind. Or you could still become a Body Guard.

Some more of my thoughts on how local government Policy such as accepting part of local taxes in local currencies/Time Dollars can help stimulate local community employment and inclusion for PTSD survivors are found in my related paper on Building Community and the crucial role of Intergenerational Participation in Community : Shavuot (Pentacost) as one of four Biblical pillars of building community.

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest
My books on Economic and Social Policy: Shared Monetary Governance, and Stayed on Freedom’s Call…

September 10th, 12017 HE
Community4BiblicalPillarsShavuot

Published

28 thoughts on “The Bright side of PTSD: become a Body Guard?”

  1. Fortunately for me I had a good childhood. Our parents were loving, caring, compassionate, considerate people. I believe my depression, anxiety and panic attacks are genetic and were made worse by sexual abuse/rape and domestic violence that happened during adulthood. My mother had schizophrenia but she was a good mother and a good woman. My Mom suffered mostly because she was blamed for my brother Stephen’s Autism. Back in the 60s women were at fault if her child came out disabled. Both parents worked together to seek help for my brother and never gave up on him.

    Even with all the sexual harassment and abuse I’ve been going through and still go through I can still function and conduct my life in a proper manner. Over the years I’ve been through therapy, counseling, various anti-depressant drugs and hospitalizations. None of these things ever helped me and only made my situation worse. I know through personal experience that mental wards are abusive towards patients and all they do is fill you full of pills. I still have nightmares about that place today.

    Once I got out of Kings County hospital I vowed to never return and I have not. I will never ever trust another therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist for the rest of my life. I channel my energies into caring for my brother Stephen who has Autism, writing and photography. I look forward to retiring either next year or early 2019 and establishing a Photography/Art program for developmentally disabled Adults.

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      2. Could retire to NM and hermit: rent is cheaper and the arts community up in Santa Fe (1 hour by rail from Albuquerque) has some well-spoken of if expensive theraputic places that some insurances cover for special-needs people, so they tell me with no specifics…

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      4. Sorry I wasn’t clear on that: I mentioned services because I wondered if both of you could come. Also my apologies about the driving. Public transpo. here doesn’t really work.

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      6. Wow, then you’ve been to far more places out here than I have (as with every place I’ve lived: worked in Turkey, never saw Konya, worked in Mx, never saw any tourist sites at all, worked in England, ok, saw the British Library and the Roman Baths, but in 6 years, you’d hope so!) -not much to see here in Abq, though Santa Fe has some colonial architechture. I’ve not seen LV, the Gc nor much of CA (a tiny bit of Monterey while at a Unix conference), so I need to walk from here to CA to see the sights along the way! I wonder if anyone would sponsor me: GoFundMe?? 🙂

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      11. One of the great things about this country is that colleges and universities plus museums will give you money to follow your dreams. The applications are not easy but if you persist the rewards will be great.

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      16. Sorry about that, but I thought you might know or contact the organisers for the next one, or see what they were doing if it has any applicability for you. Hope you had a good weeekend.
        Shira

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  2. “being for yourself in the most crucial way: parenting yourself through the panic and soothing those constantly jangled nerves until you learn to trust life. Then your ambitious and centered Inner Adult can take it from there to build the life you want to live.”
    Great advice…

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    1. Thank you, but I really must credit my current therapist: she is well-trained, sensitive and smart enough not to let me side-line the important issues. Fairly young (a Jungian, actually, in her late 30s) and trained in Berkeley, CA, I believe, or somewhere up in mid-northern CA. Very keen on archetypes but also extremely adaptive (ie I said no bleeping idiot Affirmations! and she responded -well there goes one of my main tools, and never mentioned them at all, but found work-arounds).

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