I watched something a bit triggering last night on the Australian version of the television show The Dog House it was about a military veteran who served in Afghanistan’s search for a dog and for love. Sadly the dog they chose in the program, Raj and he, did not manage to connect, the man was trying too hard due to his anxiety and longing and not giving Raj space and time to come to him and then he was sweating so much with all that banked up nervous energy.. My heart went out to him as he said he knows due to his PTSD he will not be capable of a loving human relationship. In the end he did find the right dog, one with less trauma, but it echoed deeply for me about the pain PTSD can leave inside of us and our struggle as survivors to contain it and reach for some form of love.
My own dog Jasper honestly gets a bit skittish at times. He sees my panic attacks that can be extreme at times, today I bled again and I scared him as a puppy after an unnecessary sinus operation that only made matters worse. My therapist assures me all the time I am a good dog mother but there’s times I do storm. Going gently on myself and accepting my trauma caused lasting damage reminds me its all part of sufferering Complex PTSD and most of the time lately I do not have as much repressed rage as I used to.
Seeing Deacon fall off the wagon in the series Nashville last night has been triggering too. With this next bust he’s having to explore the violence in his own background, a car accident has been involved so that resonates too. At this time of year in the spring of my adolescence in 1979 I was still pinned to the bed, although at one point the bar going through the top of my left lower leg bones slipped and I was in agony. That was a few months in to my 101 day stink in skeletal traction.
This time of year is littered with anniversaries but I’m not struggling with as much repressed grief, even if this week my body symptoms have been explosive and acute. I’m coping with the distance from some family but it still hurts at times, not as much when I self soothe. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, they just don’t know what I’ve lived and we all deal with aspects of the family trauma in different ways. My own anxiety and PTSD does make me try to control at times, just like that man was trying to do at first with Raj, in fact one of the dog support workers mentioned this as one of the major aspects of PTSD as they watched his floundering attempts to connect with Raj by closed circuit TV.
Today I will count my blessings even as my heart aches. God bless Scott he keeps reaching out even as he gets the full force of my upset. My therapist thinks it’s good as anger helps me set boundaries but at times I still feel stuck.
There are pockets of freedom and peace. Today I’m down by the lake, it’s warm, calm and beautiful. Thank God for nature, poetry and my blogging friends and of course for my beloved Jasper and higher power. With all of this God knows I am never alone and within the scope of my heart lives a place for all thoughts, responses, reactions and emotions to be felt, borne and lovingly contained.
Emerging From The Dark Night 