PTSD parents: after the shootings

This post is a little judgmental. If you are here reading it it is very likely NOT directed at you since the (two) people I had in mind writing it do not, as far as I know, read my blog. So relax.

It’s also a little self-congratulatory. I am congratulating myself this week and I think I have learned something, even though I am sure I will forget it. Pride goeth before a fall and all that, yes, but sometimes I am glad to have a little pride even though it is rather sinful. (Same with lust & gluttony, ahem.)

Before I get into it though I direct anyone who’s into really personal but thoughtful reflections on tragedies (VA Tech related, but general) over here at Phantom Scribbler. Although my mother’s narcissism was slightly different, I so get that part of it. And I love the broader application. Plus, it’s kind. My post may not be, if it comes out at all like it is in my head right now.

(ETA: Definitely not entirely kind, no.)

~~~

So this post is about parenting and having post-traumatic stress disorder, which I formally have up the wazoo: extensive childhood trauma, rape as a young adult, and Emily’s labour & death. To name a couple of things. I won’t get into elementary school.

This week of course there was a horrible tragedy on a US college campus. And of course people reacted emotionally and with grief.  And some people got triggered and some of them fell into “coping mechanisms,” which, you know – better a coping mechanism than to go kill people, or kill yourself.

But – here’s the judgmental part – some of those people are parents and some of those coping mechanisms really suck (cutting, going to bed for four days and not speaking to your kids, doing various drugs). 

The thing is I have a lot of sympathy for that, because anyone who copes with these things probably has developed some negative coping skills (mine are drinking, and picking fights with people that hype me up, hmmmm, but I think we can keep this post to a minimum here) to deal with triggers.

What people who don’t have triggers (in the post-traumatic sense; I don’t mean “when my girlfriend cheats on me it triggers me to be mad!” – hello, that is an emotional response) hear about triggers they tend to think they work on television. Like I see the spider, and all of a sudden I am remembering spiders crawling on me when I was hiding from my abuser, and then I start screaming “spiders! spiders!”  I mean yes, occasionally they work that way (when one loses the sense of the present they are then called abreactions).  But mostly they work more like this:

- see the spider. I think “oh yuck a spider!”
- I get a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach that might resemble fear, or shame, or disgust, except before I can identify it, it becomes a rush of adrenaline (fight or flight). Of course when I see the spider I am actually on my way to a meeting so I just think hard about something else, really hard. God knows I don’t want to prod at that memory.  
- In the meeting people don’t seem to be smiling. Why aren’t they smiling? They hate it! They hate me! I suck. I feel ashamed. No wait, they are just stupid. Stupid fucking people. Or maybe I suck! Augh! Shame! Fear! Cannot handle it!
- After work I think I am so stressed, well, no, I don’t want to think about that stress so I think I’ll just “reward” myself. Oh that’s it, right, here I am at the wine store treating myself. Okay, one bottle of Chardonnay for me! It relaxes me and god knows I need to relax.
- Yummy Chardonnay. Oooh happy glow. I’m sleepy. Night-night.
- Next morning I see that my husband has not taken the garbage out and we missed garbage pickup! Oh shit! We are dirty people! (with spiders!) Shame! Anger! Adrenaline! The garbage is here and stinky and it will be here for a week and stinky! This is the end of the world! Doesn’t Carl get that this is GARBAGE and it MUST BE TAKEN OUT. Otherwise you might get… not spiders… maggots! That’s it! Yell yell.
- Feel like crap.  I’m stupid. I feel ashamed. Oh god no not shame! AUGH! Must go to work and overanalyse yesterday’s meeting. They’re going to fire me! I don’t want to deal with that. I will go on the ‘net and have a fight about… feminism!  that’s always a good one!

(etc., until the adrenaline cycle passes, which can take a few days)

After I had Emily I lived in a great cycle like this for oh, a year or so.  No seriously it was kind of fabulous in a sick twisted way.  Some of the adrenaline highs can get good too, you see like this:

- I don’t want to think about my meeting so I’ll think about… sex! Yum! (sex & adrenaline, you see). Hey there is a hot guy! I’ll fantasize about him! Yum!

And I drank a lot of scotch at night.  That probably has been my base coping mechanism since having Emily, with stupid fights a quick second.  

Here’s the thing about a coping mechanism though: not only is it often something sucky, like, you know, doing drugs.  But it also pushes the emotion down. Sort of like play-dough in a press. The thing is that it’s going to leak out somewhere eventually. Either that or of course the press explodes and you have a heart attack or whatever.

And I consider one of my major jobs as a parent to try to avoid lowering the lever on the press.  I cannot always control what stress is going to come my way, and sometimes just to get through the day, I will have to lean on some coping mechanism and deal with the results. But overall, I think it’s key – critical, even – to deal with triggers in a way that breaks the cycle as early as possible.

And that means not doing that stuff. Okay?

Find out what would help you stop. Do that. Be kind to yourself in your failings, but not too kind. Don’t make excuses. If you fall of the wagon, get back on. Just stop! Stop!

(okay, breathing now)

This need to stay as much as possible in the stop the negative coping skills place is one reason that since Noah’s birth I have not been (hardly been, okay, imperfectly been, obviously) haunting the ‘net in any spots that I know will get me all riled up. 

And also, since discovering that I was pregnant with Noah I have not really had any drinks (I think I’ve had 3 full drinks, and sips out of Carl’s here and there. I like wine and beer and spirits and I am not anti-them; I’m anti-them to reduce stress or to total excess). Pregnancy and breastfeeding help with this of course, since you’re not supposed to have much more than an occasional glass of wine (while breastfeeding; pregnancy I am kind of in the ‘don’t have any mmmkay?’ camp).

But really I gave it up because if I’m stressed, I need to deal with it, and not have some wine and not deal with it and then blow up at Noah the next day or whatever. 

So what is the alternative? Have I achieved some level of zen where nothing bothers me? Oh no, although I keep trying.

But I’ve made the choice to put Noah first when I have a choice. And frankly, this week I had a choice.

I was up late last week and early this week with Noah’s fever and then (related? not sure) cold, so I knew I was sleep deprived. I knew I had to get a crown on Thurs. and that the dentist would freak me out. I knew that I had a work deadline that I was behind on due to the fever thing. And I knew this was not a great week for Carl to back me up.

So when the VA Tech shootings happened, I stopped reading about them. It’s not that I didn’t and don’t care; of course I do. But I knew that if I read about the victims specifically at that time and read about what happened and watched the reaction to it having been a permanent resident Korean in the xenophobic US, that I would get upset, sad, angry, and fearful.  The loss of control and psychopathic aspects would trigger me on the childhood stuff. In particular though the loss of young people would trigger me on the Emily front.

So I turned the radio off and I didn’t read much about it. Of course some things got through from friends and family and that was ok. I just stayed vague on it.

This is not often possible with triggers; things come at you and you just react. But this was one where I could feel it start, the news, the fear, etc. And I chose not to step any deeper in it. It seems so simple. But it wasn’t, actually, very easy not to go and read about it. I kept craving that information. And each time I would say “not this week. Sleep dep, dentist, toddler.” 

The thing is, it’s not just about me anymore. Noah and I are a tight unit at this age of his and although of course I am going to be as human – more so maybe – as anyone else, I just feel like it’s important to try to be aware of stuff that I can avoid. So I did.

I am slightly absurdly proud of myself on this point. There’s the pride, and my crowing about it right here.

Of course here are the other things that suffered this week: I really have dropped the ball on a social task/nice thing to do that I know is going to be hard. And I didn’t call to be nice about it, and it’s rapidly becoming a Thing I haven’t done. I didn’t get things cleaned up at night ’cause I knew I needed the sleep and now I’m a bit grumpy about it. I had to blow off conversations with people online and in person because they wanted to talk VA Tech. And I had to trade some free time with Lynn in exchange for HER not reading about it as quickly as she wanted to.

And this week Noah was a challenge: he didn’t feel great; he’s really starting to test some limits that I find hard (like he hit the cat and that’s a big discipline challenge); he was still a sicky-babe and he needed to breastfeed more than usual and be held a LOT. And although there will be many times that I fail, and I did raise my voice at him about the cat, and he cried, and he ate french fries one day that I forgot to pack a snack along, I do believe that this time, I avoided the thing that would have impacted on my capacity to be a good parent.

I did not end up having a great big gin & tonic after he went to bed only to be grumpy the next day; I did not get into fights on the internet that would make me feel all “warriory” and keep me up and keep my focus on that instead of whatever.  And make me tired and crabby the next day and make my temper shorter and make me too energy-wasted to go out and do things to keep my toddler boy active and happy, or to find creative ways around things.

I did feel the fear that I couldn’t avoid, the deep fear that one day my beautiful, beautiful boy will be the wrong class… piss off the wrong person… be standing on the wrong corner and be gunned down. And my god it is a deep and terrifying pit of fear. And I brushed a little against the way that it feels to truly be trapped in a room and at the mercy of someone crazy. I felt it. I sat with it.

And then I went to bed on time and I got up the next day, and the next, and the next, and each day I stepped away from the news and I sat on the floor and played Little People Go on the Bus and I took Noah to the Home Show to walk around/be pushed around when he was a little better but not quite up to big things, and I took him to the zoo and the playground. When he freaked out about putting on his coat I sat with him and held him and then made a game for it, which did not, of course work. And then I held him again. And then I took him on the porch and showed him the cedar and slipped the coat on when he wasn’t looking. And he freaked out… but I never did.

And good god other PTSD parents, please try to do this.

It makes me so sad to read about how you went out and read things about the tragedy and then the senselessness of it all overwhelmed you and you did x thing and ended up in y place and to know that all this whole time, your children were around for it. You know? Next time turn everything off and go out for a walk in a park with the trees that grow regardless. Feel the sadness that some people won’t be able to walk in a park anymore. Call your therapist. Go back and enjoy your life in the now. And remember that you have a small human being in tow with you.

Please.