4. October 6, 2024: out of despair comes salvation in one -final- *healing* PTSD episode...

***Warning: this post contains discussion of suicidal ideation (and expletives)

October 6, 2024

This day deserves its own post. What happened that afternoon is what we only have one word for in our English language: miracle. October 6th marks the day of my final PTSD episode. --This alone is a bold statement, to deliberately use the declarative adjective "final," as in: it wasn't just the latest PTSD episode of my life, but the very LAST.

I haven’t before described these episodes in this blog--and not out of painful remembering or fear of re-triggering, no, not at all--their illustration merely hasn’t yet been a function. But here we have come now, at a point where it is worth evoking the general experience I would undergo when triggered into full-scale PTSD episodes:

The onset of any PTSD episode is, of course, a trigger: some thing--action, conversation, sensation, etc.--whether real feared imagined, that elicits an involuntary series of responses that are physical + mental + emotional. I highlight INVOLUNTARY here because these are truly, wholly involuntary responses to past trauma.

For me, the trigger itself wouldn’t matter; at times it would make "sense" with direct connections to my fear and trauma, but at others it might not and could even be confusing as to why/how it served as a trigger. Guilt being another powerful component would arrive rather quickly for me but not fully set in until after the episode abated, but the more confusing the trigger the deeper the feelings of guilt and shame. Further, a duplicate conversation or situation might be "safe" (read:non-triggering) one time but another time, for no seeming reason, be "unsafe" (triggering). --What is the unsafe feeling, exactly? Believe it or not, it's not terribly easy for me to get back into that headspace...it is almost like the amnesic (sidenote: I really thought I just made a brilliant word up...but apparently this word already exists..) phenomenon of childbirth, where you develop a certain amount of amnesia to the experience and can't accurately jump into all of the physical and psychological sensations that occured.

What I do retain vividly is what would feel like an awareness of "reality" and being "in control," followed by a downslide that ALWAYS, for me, ushered in the shame and guilt -- like I had a choice to make: whether to enter into a trigger-state or to let it slide right off me, somehow. Sometimes that downslide would be seconds long, other times it would be minutes and feed off of further triggers to fuel it into full-force.

There was always a *guilt-ridden* sense like I could make it stop happening if I wanted to, like I had a choice to enter into trigger-state or not – and maybe I did, I really don’t know. And I say this very carefully so as not to victim-blame anyone who suffers from PTSD episodes. I only mean that in the very very onset, at the seeding of a trigger before I felt like I was smack in the middle of a full-blown episode, when it was just dawning on me that that might possibly be what was happening I was aware enough in my thinking-brain to believe I could remain in control of the primal-brain that was pugnaciously, stubbornly and often miscalculatingly dictating the next steps. Come to think of it this experience was actually quite out-of-body, where I would experience a PTSD episode as, somehow, both participant (victim) and observer, willing for it to stop. Floating outside of myself and watching this horror film play out, I wouldn't want it to progress to that person – me – and would feel desperate for there to be something I could do to thwart this awfulness from playing out. Whether this process actually took seconds or minutes, it always felt like a slow, time-bending onslaught before complete shutdown. Shutdown is, indeed, the word dujour. When I would experience a true PTSD episode it felt like total physical, mental and emotional shutdown.

PHYSICAL - Become as small as you possibly can.

This didn't always mean fetal--though fetal seemed to be the goal as I look back on it--but always meant desperate attempts to physically shrink down, depending on where my body was in space. There were plenty of times when a trigger would happen in a public space, where I would be minimally able to conceal myself, and the guilt and shame would surge right out of my body and into the heavens in the worst possible exposed nakedness I can think of. I would even seek to hide myself even if I was alone, whether that meant a pillow or blanket or clothing over my head, because of this overwhelming feeling that I couldn’t be seen by the world--but even more than that, that the world was a THREAT. The primal-brain insisted that there was an outside threat and my only response to that danger--an effort that would drain me of all energy--would be to cover my head...much the same as the not-so-elusive-illusive ostrich.

MENTAL - Become as single-minded as you can.

Sometimes my mind would race a mile a minute with thought after thought after thought but more often than not my mind would go "monotone" -- not quite blank but not operating in a recognizable way. It was like it was my brain...but not really my consciousness. The primal-brain would take over and find something highly specific to focus on--a certain aspect of a picture on the wall, a thread on a piece of clothing, a specific corner of a blanket--and I would hyperfocus. This was not a meditative practice or a calming event (hmmm... actually.....might need to think on that statement a bit more.....); this was something I was not controlling but would just happen. If there were words or thoughts in my mind or if there were questions asked of me or things that I needed to respond to (like if we were out in public or if I felt there was still a way I could pull out of this if only I could respond to whatever my husband was saying or asking of me -- more guilt/shame) it became impossible to form words out of my mouth. I don’t know how else to describe it other than speech paralysis. For the entirety of the episode, I would not be able to communicate and not just with my husband, but with anyone...including my own sweet, sweet children. <--This one still hurts. Definitely have some more shadow work to do there.

EMOTIONAL - Become as protective (of yourself) as you can.

It’s not easy to access the feelings of a trigger-state. Even now I’m having a bit of trouble trying to break into exactdirectspecific patterns of thought and/or feelings, but I do know that they were very, very very heavy. A lifetime of fear would surge through in an instant -- anything and everything related to and completely outside of the direct source of trauma would vomit inside my primal-brain. The feelings of hopelessness and despair were tangible, sense-able and palpable, and they weighed me down. This directly correlates to what would happen to me after a PTSD episode: even if I had found a way to come through it quicker than falling asleep overnight, my energy level would be ruined for the rest of the day. I would be able to do little more than lay down, even if I wanted to "get back in the swing" and live life again. The feelings that bore down were so supremely despairing...sadness doesn’t even scratch the surface. They were hopeless and completely and utterly terrified. They married in horrific, wretched union with guilt and shame to my defeatist end.

You might wonder if I was ever suicidal. The very easy answer is no. As described in earlier posts, I spent my entire life absolutely terrified of death -- obsessed with it, fearful of it for myself and for everyone around me. Every waking moment every minute of living, with very few exceptions, I was aware of the terrifying horrible evil cruel thing coming for us all: death. So even when I despaired, even when I was hopeless, even when my primal-brain took over in traumatic response, instead of making me want the end to come it only amplified the fear all around me and made me even MORE terrified of that horrible thing: death. No, no thoughts of suicide...but what a skin-crawlingly impossible purgatory -- inside an episode there was no hope, only full-on fear, so no promise of an escape or reprieve of any kind -- but the one and only guarantee of an "end," --the finality of death-- wasn't available to me either (this, of course, is a good thing...but in the throes of an episode it, terribly, feels even further disempowering).

But something was different on October 6.

Something seismic had shifted after surviving the dark night of my Soul and starting to open to this new/old world and remembering that, yes, there is life after this 3-D casing -- there is something that survives death, and not only that but something that I now know is so vastly incomprehensibly more sophisticated than just that statement alone. I had not experienced a PTSD episode for a number of weeks up until October 6--a full month. But on that day, when something totally benign unexpectedly started my trigger-state launch sequence and I fell straight down into it, full blast......all unraveled.

The destruction of my entire life began to unfold. Because I had opened to the possibility of a "great beyond," the shock of finding myself victim to another PTSD episode was so offensively incomprehensible that I just. could. not. handle. it. It was the ultimate betrayal, even beyond what my husband had done to me or what anyone anywhere could do to me, because this was a betrayal by the Universe.

How could this happen to me?? WHY after I had come through all that I came through and had finally started to awaken to all that I awakened to, why was I so cruelly led into belief only to have it callously ripped away?!?

If you have read any of my previous posts, you know how deep my former decades-long conviction of nothingness--no life after death, no God, no Source, no comfort of any consciousness surviving--ran through to my bones. So when, just a few months ago--just 5 WEEKS prior to October 6--I granted the fledgling allowance that there might be a God/Divinity/Source/Great Spirit...that GREAT great greatest surrender that seemed too good to be true, well...exposed itself to be, indeed, too good to be true.

There I thrashed, on the floor of my bathroom, living the unproof::: there IS nothing after this lifetime; it all explodes into black horrible terrifying nothingness, forever and ever and fucking horrible ever.

It must mean that it was just a desperate figment of my wild ADHD imagination--all this STUPID and EMBARRASSING bullshit about Spirit was all just a desperate clinging to what I always knew to be ridiculous, degrading small foolish falsities. I cannot highlight the feelings of shame and embarrassment enough here...flashes of any spiritual moments/ideas that I had allowed to SO FUCKING STUPIDLY infiltrate my STUPID mind detonated in pure, acrid bile.

This was my nauseated taste of raw, exposed hopelessness...and my first--and only--genuine wondering...why the fuck should I even be alive anymore??

No one came to save me, no dead grandma’s or guardian angels or sudden spirit downloads --

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

So there was my proof...: THERE IS NOTHING.

We are nothing.

Everything is nothing.

Fuck me and fuck you and fuck it all.

Fuck.

Of course, and thank God...it doesn't end here.

While I turned over these horrible attacks in my triggered brain--a heaving, destroyed mess of a human mind and body--I dragged my hyperventilating carcass onto my bed. It should be said that - although I can't be sure - at this point I would guesstimate somewhere around an hour had elapsed from the onset of whatever that tiny little insignificant trigger was to the brutal devastation that seemed, viably, to be killing me in this episode. While I'm fairly confident in my time assessment here, I can't actually be sure, as another hallmark of my PTSD episodes was that I lost sense of time; when a trigger rendered me paralyzed in mind and heart, great swaths of time could (and usually would) pass in an instant.

So an ~hour of straight crying alone in my bedroom and a decision to give up (at least for that moment...no honest idea of where this would have went without what happened next..), I forced myself into bed and pulled the blankets over my empty body. Invoking the safety of the ostrich, I covered my head atop with a pillow as I wailed into the pillow below. Sobbing savagely, I screamed so hard I would have sworn I bloodied my throat. It felt as though my heart was sputtering to a stop. As you might imagine, it wasn’t the easiest to breathe under the figurative and literal pillow of these circumstances, but that’s when, suddenly...

Everything just stopped.

Yeah, like, every single physical ejection and mental+emotional emesis just instantaneously ceased. Flick of a lightswitch, snap of a finger, blink of an eye...however you'd like to metaphorize it. Just...gone. Stopped. No more. Not even a HINT of any of that gargantuan, cruel effort. Fucking wild. WILD.

You know those post-cry breaths you get after a really hard outpouring, where you get those almost hiccup-like breathing spasms? Well, my crying had instantly cut off -- everything just stopped, remember?-- ...but there was NO heavy breathing, let alone post-cry breathing. No tear production--no previously welled up tears even--no congested sniffles, no weeping body trembles...NO EVIDENCE of the violence that had just taken over my being for sixty unbearable minutes. Instead, my lungs felt full, and my heart felt full-er.

What....the really effing...eff....

What I can only describe as a "Universe hug" came over my entire being. Then, a pulsing green light--a beautiful, amazing, comforting light--pierced the blackness of my closed eyes. Each pulse felt like that Universe hug was radiating healing up and down and all around and through my body. --I'm using the term "felt like," but that’s actually inaccurate: it's not merely that it "felt like" a Universe hug...I realized that I was being healed right there in the moment. Yes, healed--not comforted, though of course the deepest comfort I've ever known was washing over me--something, someone?, was healing me from four years of PTSD and abandoned hope so that writing this now, just shy of six months later, I remain PTSD- and hopelessness- free!! It is, truly, a miracle. ...At least, miraculous under a materialist discernment; with remembering eyes I understand the miracle of my healing as an actual reality that we can all tap into.

You know I love a paradox, so in great contradiction the last thing I ever want to experience is that depth of despair again...BUT, conversely, the thing I most want to experience again is that healing Universe hug -- and I mean that to the degree of genuine sincerity -- no exaggeration. This was an explosion of bliss and love and love and bliss, but even those words are so grossly inadequate. I can only try to likening this feeling to very *fleeting* moments of bliss love joy that you’re only able to seemingly grab onto for a moment or a heartbeat, because you’re still very much grounded to this 3-D world. Any of those times where your heart beams with pride or radiates in joy, even then as happy and blissful as they are...I would say these are only moments (even if longer/lingering ones...moments, still). They’re not … full body, full mind full heart full consciousness, interdimensionally powerful, connective tissues of Divinity. This healing light was truly that healing. And it felt so familiar!!! It wasn't foreign, despite no feeling E-V-E-R coming anywhere near close to it. It was like a remembrance of where we come from and the promise of what we have to look forward to.

Nothing, now, can ever take away my knowing again.

I need to pause here, just before the end, to report that I've been struggling with the writing of this particular post. Even the most beautiful author or lyricist in the world can't touch the pure beauty and Love of what I experienced with their writing talent, and I certainly can't come anywhere close to how dismally they would fail to capture it. But it is profoundly important to my story--to my life--to understand my rescuing. I know that I have failed to encapsulate even the smallest fractal of truth of what I experienced that afternoon...but that is part of the significance of its magnificence; the power of this Love, this healing this truth this higher consciousness and frequency and vibration...it is so colossal that there is nothing we can humanly do to properly express or represent it. Even the image I selected for this post--an AI-generated image (I'm not always a fan of this...but it seemed fitting here)--doesn't do any justice at all to what I saw while I was being healed, but it offers a hint of a suggestion of a picture to try and illustrate this experience. Thank you, as always, for making it down to the end ;) I thank you, and I honor you<3

If you have ever experience any kind of "Universe hug" or anything similar, please share your Love for the benefit of all!