The Healing and the Suffering

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I spent a lot of time on my journey reflecting on how to make good stuff come from all this shit - all the BS. Wanting desperately to spin this shit into gold.

It’s important to acknowledge the ongoing recovery, that it’s not a one-stop or simple recovery - not even EMDR or biofield tuning or craniosacral therapy and getting sober - Even though all of these have been helpful pieces of the healing puzzle for me.

I have to keep in mind that -

“cPTSD is not about what happened, or our supposed unwillingness to “let it go.” It is about how what happened wormed its way into our identity, beliefs, and reflexive behaviors. Realistically “letting it go” means reformatting who we are, day by day - not a one time decision.”

~Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle

My orientation to my alcoholism brought about from years of alcohol abuse, using and abusing it to manage my anxiety and insomnia and other trauma symptoms, therefore - also makes me realize that my ‘recovery’ is not only from alcoholism.

As Dr. Gabor Mate says, and 12 step programs concur, the SUD (substance abuse disorder), of any kind, it was but a symptom. Of larger and more ongoing issues that were always there -

recovering from intergenerational trauma, being a child of an alcoholic and coming from a long time of alcoholics, my own single event and reoccuring traumas, my inability to sit with emotions and undergo the pain of living with so many family members who killed themselves - and not finding more clear guidance on how that path to healing and survival looked like - because no one else wrote about their survival - when I went looking for it.

That shook me to the core.

Trauma already made me feel alone. So did the deaths of my two dysfunctional parents - and being left alone in the world, my only sibling also succumbing to this disease.

But -

I have also come to believe that through all this suffering - and pain and grief and loss - through PTSD and cPTSD - there also is growth and healing and there can be positives that result from all of this suffering -

It’s not because I reductively chirp - it all happens for a reason -

But I believe that through healing and guidance from my higher power, that I am able to heal and grow and recover - and to become even better than I was before the suicides, the traumas, the alcoholism -

I appreciate somatic healer, Levine’s words, that -

“I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is incurable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening -a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation.”

~Peter Levine

Through cPTSD, we are “forced to address our suffering because our wounding was so much more severe.”

~Pete Walker

That feels so fucking terrible at first. That severe wounding, that gutrenching, heart-breaking suffering.

But - it’s true. He’s right. Addressing suffering comes with growth, with healing, that has often been desperately, desperately needed for generations.

Because shit got so bad in life, and we grappled with trauma and suffering and our own inability to heal or managed with what happened to us -

We [felt that] didn’t have a choice.

I realized that, for me, it was either get some serious therapy, read all I could, release trauma from my body, get sober, or -

I too would have ended up dead.

From more excessive drinking—my preferred passive suicide method- or from un-aliving myself as well.

Though probably from pills; I wouldn’t choose a messy form-I didn’t want to leave the clean-up that my dad and brother did.

(And yes, of course, I had thought about what method I’d use…many times. I’ve had my own fair share of battles in years past with my major depression, insomnia, which both led to suicide ideation.)

Or, I could heal - I could get therapy and get sober and learn to be okay alone and understanding I was with myself - that I have got me - to manage my finances and to stop being so fearful that the bottom would drop out - because I finally trusted myself more than others -

There was no one coming to save me.

I would save me.

I realize now that the savior complex, the rescuing dream, it is a trauma response -

But -

It won’t work. Because until you feel safe within yourself, and manage your own finances - until you realize you can take care of yourself, support yourself -

Until you deal with those wounds, that created that anxiety to cause that -

You will never rest in your financial security - even if you have enough money, even millions, and even if your husband supports you and he understands your retirement and stocks and investments and life insurance policies -

If you don’t fix your own wounds and have sovereignty and autonomy and understanding - you will always experience some degree of financial anxiety.

The whole joke of - I guess I should marry rich - for me - came from a deeper desire for safety, security, and someone who could deal with the less fun and more stressful part of finances -

I needed to fix myself - and my own money story/money wounds and all the hangups I’ve had -

I realize now, with a greater sense of reclaiming why I have fears about money - because there was never enough, my parents didn’t have a lot of financial literacy, and because I come from people where money was always a stressor - my emotional inheritance - also like fearing I would not have a home - so I couldn’t relax into myself and my own home to make it my own.

I’ve done some deep healing and reconciling work over the last few years.

My suffering took me to a low, low point of - time for a deep clean - a serious moral inventory -

I am not sure it would have happened without the traumas, suicides, alcoholism -

Again, the test of the person is not what happened to you, or how you’ve fucked up before now, but -

What do you do with it now?

My efforts to spin all this shit into gold -

My own alchemizing.

And that - THAT - is post-traumatic growth.