Own The Suck: Consolidating My Gains During CPTSD Recovery, Part 1

I’m at the point in my recovery where it’s time to focus more closely on consolidating the intermittent gains I’ve made during the various phases of my recovery.  To that end I have been reading several books which are technically classified within the self-help genre but are nonetheless based upon the findings of scientific research studies.  Instead of writing what amounted to book reviews, however, I chose to wrap it all together.  This is the initial entry of a two-part post on integrating the insights of theses texts into what I’ve achieved through therapy.

My choices of readings were specific to ongoing challenges I have: overcoming my recent failures; handling the toxic relationships in my life; and how to overcome the pragmatic issues of “simple” daily living.  It was my hope to find a way beyond what were heretofore intractable hallmarks of my CPTSD and ADHD - socialization/relationship challenges, emotional regulation, behavioral adaptations, and development of healthy habits within a new life structure.   

The seemingly obvious starting point is the overall fiasco my life has become after the disintegration of my defensive repression of childhood traumas.  That’s what led me to first pick up Rebounders by Rick Newman.  It was written primarily to identify the attributes of "rebounders" - successful people who had been spectacular failures at previous junctures of their lives.  I wasn’t interested in reading about sappy success stories with trite maxims functioning as shortcuts to real change.  I wanted to know about why failure happens, how to overcome it, and most importantly avoid it in the future. 

The crucial feature of recovering from failure seems to be a person’s resilience.  The term “quality resilience” is a psychological term for people becoming more robust, skilled, and durable after setbacks.  In fact, I'm trying to internalize a reframing of the very occurrence of a setback as a weapon wielded to improve myself.  

Whether my setbacks are truly life-altering like divorce or fairly small in the grand scheme of things like an orthopedic injury, what matters is having the resilience to recover.  It does not matter if the setback is singular or one in a seemingly endless series thereof.    As the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi said, “It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up.”

This quote seems to be clichéd, but it’s not one of those shortcuts I mentioned wanting to avoid.  It’s an enduring statement of resilience because life never stops throwing you curveballs.  I'm not getting caught up in the optimism of the saying, however, because the truth is that hard work within the construct of a well-constructed plan is how I can learn to adapt and get up off the mat.  (Yeah, I’m a weekend warrior athlete who just shamelessly dropped multiple sports metaphors in one paragraph!)

I have been completely ensnared in the blame game - complaining about what people do to me and generally feeling sorry for myself.  This was my default attitude after I finally accepted my childhood of abuse and the subsequent problems I’ve experienced.  It turns out that I was what Newman referred to as a “wallower.”  I got rattled about being emotionally overwhelmed due to having never been taught any emotional regulation.  I became angry and indignant about my circumstances.  "It's not fair, damnit!"  Just realizing this painful truth about myself did not get me past it, however.

This brings me to another book I read, Toxic Parents by Susan Forward and Craig Buck.  While the topic is self-explanatory, I was able to extrapolate the lessons to toxic relationships of any nature.  This book crystallized for me the idea that my behavior regarding my circumstances was partially due to my refusal to reclaim my own life from those who mistreated me.  I don’t have to forgive an unrepentant father or a vindictive ex-wife, and I don’t have to allow their actions to drive negative overwhelming emotional responses such as anger and indignation.

Don’t get it twisted, though.  I’ve learned through therapy and Toxic Parents that I don’t have to meekly forgive and forget.  Unearned absolution for what these people have done and continue to do to me is just another form denial.  Denial is a significant maladaptive behavior I used as a child to survive and brought forth into adulthood.  To just forgive and forget is to pretend none of it happened which is the clearest form of denial. 

It is important that I instead process what has already occurred and respond intelligently to what continues to happen instead of knee-jerk reacting.  Otherwise I just allow myself to devolve into emotional chaos.  Unilateral forgiveness is to deny my reality and feelings and possibly subconsciously ascribe responsibility to myself, which is flat out crazy-making.  I need to accept what has happened, not get overwhelmed or angry, and move forward for myself.  Interestingly enough, this approximates what rebounders do regarding their failures.

Rebounders get past the circumstances of their problems and get to the business of solving them.  One term that stuck with me was “own the suck.”  It referred to military helicopter pilot Tammy Duckworth who lost both legs after being shot down.  The “suck” is an oft-used term by service personnel to describe fighting in terrible environmental conditions in various Mideast conflicts.  Owning the suck in my context means accepting my situation for what it is and doing what I can about it instead of wasting personal resources bemoaning the situation itself.

Rebounders have the self-awareness that allows for an accurate appreciation of why things go right or wrong both in the external environment and also within themselves.  I can’t successfully solve a problem if I cannot diagnose all of its facets properly, so I had to get my arms around my internal issues irrespective of their potential external origin.  It’s okay to be wrong, but it’s not okay to be wrong-headed.  My emotional immaturity and lack of regulation is part of what drove my stubbornness.

My emotions came over me like a tsunami after a lifetime of suppression.  One maladaptive aspect of my personality that carried over from childhood was not feeling virtually any emotion at all.  Of course the emotions were always simmering underneath my veil of calm and being comported at virtually all times.  Rebounders actually are recognized for their ability to compartmentalize emotion without ignoring it altogether, which is what I had done.  They do not become dominated by emotion as I had been for the past six years after becoming a father. 

Developing resilience is not something to be done merely by force of temperament, however.  The important piece here is that self-awareness is paramount to bouncing back.  Wallowers rarely question their own judgment or conduct a truly introspective analysis even when giving the appearance of doing so.  They get hung up on external factors while also tending to overestimate their abilities and talent.  Former US President Calvin Coolidge once noted, “nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent… (and) the world is full of educated derelicts.”  I refuse to be categorized as such.

The upside is that the resilience of rebounders is neither developed nor maintained like inherent talent or intelligence.  Mother Nature doesn’t need to endow us with it because we can develop the attributes of resiliency incrementally.  Once we own the suck it becomes time to take action to adopt the other traits rebounders have which allow them to keep moving in spite of their negative situations.

One critical action is preparing for the things which will inevitably go wrong.  I need to prepare for how to be comfortable with setbacks, hardship, and inconvenience because that is what's required to move toward my goals.  My internal desire to do things as perfectly as possible engenders impatience both with respect to having failures at all as well as the length of time it takes to realize substantial gains.  This impatience, combined with my CPTSD-generated anxiety, tends to spiral me downward into self-loathing, frustration, and inability to act.  Therefore I need to remain cognitively vigilant about responding well.

I also continue working on internalizing the reality that I’ll never be completely free of the anxiety, guilt, fear, and confusion in my life because of what I’ve endured.  These things can simply no longer be allowed to define me or control my actions and responses to triggers.  I can plan to anticipate these issues as well.  This will allow me to develop the change in habits required to alter those maladaptive behaviors which linger and occasionally continue to control my life.  Now that I’m doing my best to own the suck, the process of changing daily habits to effect a consolidation of my gains made during recovery is what I focus on next... and the subject of Part 2.  

Destroyed Relationships in the Aftermath of Recovery From CPTSD

I miss my daughters so much.  My ex-wife is taking advantage of my temporary situation to set the stage for her to steal the 45% custody that I was awarded just 7 months ago.  She says that she’s concerned for the girls because I had two suicidal ideations during a 10-day span. 

On the surface that seems reasonable, but the reality is that she knows that I pose no threat to myself, anyone, and certainly not my own daughters.  I spent 16 intimate years with my ex, so her surprising me with just hours’ notice of the petition to temporarily suspend my parenting time was completely unnecessary.

I’ve provided her with written documentation from both my psychologist/therapist and my psychiatrist, who have seen me for almost 3 years now each, that I pose no threat at all to anyone.  They know that I’m not truly the suicidal type.  I was simply in a state of serious distress without any help from my family and I have spent the past two years in self-imposed social isolation as many with Complex PTSD typically do.

These ideations barely even fit the definition of the term.  They were more of elaborate, if not so subtle, cries for help.  I never made a single plan to actually off myself, and I never would have.  I stupidly reached out to my ex thinking she still had a heart, and the fact that she’s a psychotherapist herself made me completely blind to the idea that any of this would be cravenly used against me.

It’s rough for me, but what bothers me the most is the impact on my 4- and 6-year old daughters.  I got almost half custody precisely because I had spent 2 years as a stay-at-home dad and had almost 50% custody for the 18 months between the split and the official divorce.  We have such a close and strong bond that this sudden disappearance from their life has to be confusing at best and significantly stressful and painful at worst. 

Immediately after my hospitalization I offered to go to counseling and mediation while she could name her conditions for me seeing the girls while I’m getting back up on my feet.  She responded with the combative petition.  She’s not interested in working with me, being cooperative in any way, or co-parenting at all.  She just wants me to disappear and allow her to raise those girls in the twisted manner of her mother.

While watching my oldest play soccer my youngest was telling me how her mother won’t allow her to call me, and then she was physically taken out of my lap by my ex because she was upset about what she was told.  She did more or less the same thing with my eldest while we watched her sister. 

I should have long stopped trying to rationalize the irrational because my ex disagrees with every I say and everything I teach my girls.  My youngest even told me she that she showed her mom how I taught her what a magnolia tree looked like, and my ex said that I was wrong and went so far as to check her iPhone only to realize I was of course correct. 

Why would I randomly tell my daughter the incorrect name of a tree?  My ex knows I basically grew up outdoors with Mother Nature as my best friend.  She has first-hand marveled at my knowledge of nature as I’m the first to take her camping, fishing, and hiking.  The fact that she would instinctively disagree with me regarding nature when she has no earthly idea about nature herself gives me all the indication I need regarding her illogical and emotionally-charged reactions to anything and everything regarding me.

That begs the question: why do I still get bothered so much by what she does to me?  The reality is that it doesn’t bother me so much, but the collateral damage to my daughters infuriates me.  She is a trained child psychologist but has willfully blocked out what she’s doing to them. 

Now you may think I’m leaving some things out, but I’m not.  The truth is that I want the girls to go see a child psychologist to discuss what their mother and grandmother puts them through, but my ex disagrees vehemently.  She knows what the girls will tell this psychologist.  I’m completely fine with anything and everything they say regarding my parenting, but I guess my ex is not.

I’m not nearly the perfect father and have made some fairly substantial mistakes.  I guess the difference is that I’ve owned my mistakes and have worked to correct them.  I’ve not mentioned the fact that none of my mistakes have included neglect, physical man-handling, religious zealotry, or psychological manipulation… all things they are subjected to at their mother’s/grandmother’s home.

Look, I readily admit that I’ve not been in a place to be the best father ever given what has been going on with me.  I’m coming out of the throes of recovery from child abuse that was repressed for 12 years or so and came at me full-throttle in the form of Complex PTSD.  However, I’ve never touched my girls, neglected them to the point they end up in the emergency room, or introduced them to aggressive and scary concepts such as satan, hell, and sin. 

I know that what’s going on with me is temporary as is my ex’s ability to create additional chaos in my and my girls’ lives.  It’s so frustrating, though.  I would like to have focused this entire post on something else that helps me further along in my recovery, for example.  Having to deal with court dates, written responses to her absurd petition, and the stress of not knowing what she’s going to try and pull next.

I’m sure my ex is frustrated that I’m going through this and cannot hold up my end of the parenting bargain right now.  However, it’s completely counter-productive to the peace within her life, our daughters’ lives, and of course my life.  However, I have to realize that I cannot control her nonsense.  All I can do is control my reaction to her nonsense. 

I need to continuously remind myself that this is a temporary state of affairs and that hopefully one day she’ll find enough peace in her life to stop fighting me for control over the girls.  All I can do is do me and my girls will grow up and realize what their mother has been doing to all of us.  Like I said, I’m very content owning my part in all of this. 

Soon enough I’ll be back on my feet financially and be back in a position to effect the parenting agreement I fought so hard for.  In fact, I’ll be in a position to get that last 5% custody so that the girls can spend equal amounts of time with both of their parents.  My ex will fight me on this, but it won’t be too much longer before the girls will make their own desires known.  The three of us will be alright.

Complex PTSD Recovery: The Neutral Zone of Transition

I'm now moving from my personal nadir into something I refer to as the "neutral zone" of transition based on William Bridges' work.  This neutral zone is the time after mourning for the childhood I never had and regret over not avoiding just how screwed up my life has become by getting therapy earlier. 

It’s time to reinvent myself now, though.  I’ve done much of the initial work required to recover, but not quite all of it.  However, my progress has been sufficient enough to begin advancing to the next stage.  It's this period of time in which so many things are now possible which weren't before I began my therapy, and for the first time ever I get to do it on my own terms. 

While my marriage ended in a cluster-bomb of animosity, regret, and confusion, I can now find a partner better suited to how I need to live happily.  Not only did my personal life run off the rails, but my career in healthcare management and consulting is in tatters from neglect and the inability to effectively network because of my past problems socializing as an adult.  

However, starting from scratch allows me the freedom in this neutral zone to consider becoming a teacher/professor, maybe start an outdoors excursions outfit, or run a small non-profit without regret or guilt that I should be out there making well into six figures annually just because I feel an internal pressure given I have the education and ability to easily do so. 

There’s been considerable external pressure in the past as well.  Besides the fact that I’m the golden child of the family, my ex-wife once told me the only thing she truly cared about regarding my career was that I make at least $100k/year for her to be comfortable.  I didn't realize the impact that had on me at the time, but thereafter I was consumed with making sure my career path brought me into that income tier.  Now I can find a partner who doesn't care which income bracket I’m in, but she'll rather want me for who I am and prefer I do something fulfilling that gives me a sense of joy. 

Most of my old friends have been out of the picture after I basically went into hiding for 2 years, but it'll be interesting to see who's still there for me as I embark on the beginning of the post-apocalyptic chapter of my life.  It's truly exciting to think about all of the new friendships and romances I can have without all of that emotional baggage holding me down and screwing things up for me.  

Yes, my first real relationship after splitting from my ex-wife has recently been snuffed out mainly because I still have not completely escaped some of the bad habits from my past.  To be specific, I subconsciously hit the self-destruct button on any relationship when someone gets too close and I feel vulnerable.  

It's a direct result of being abused or neglected by the people I loved and idolized growing up.  I learned then that allowing people too close to you only results in pain.  Keep them at arms' length and I'm protected.  It's amazing to look back and see the patterns across relationships of all types, and it's even more amazing I never saw them before.  

The only exception thus far has been my ex-wife, but that's only because she's a psychologist and could recognize and dismiss my nonsense as just that instead of thinking it really had anything to do with her.  Yet I won't go into a downward spiral fueled by self-loathing and regret for my mistakes with this most recent relationship.  I accept it as another opportunity to recognize, learn, and change so that it doesn't happen again.  It’s easy to say, but so damn hard to do.

So this post is all about transitioning from whatever low point you're currently at in your life to a more healthy and functional one.  If you feel like your life is over, then good!  Unless you're dead and reading this from the afterlife, your life is not in fact over.  This means there’s a litany of opportunities awaiting you now.  It's time to relinquish the behavioral programming from childhood and learn more sophisticated and mature behaviors.  

I'm not saying that you should reject and ignore your old life.  Never forget that owning your past is the key to overcoming it.  It's critical to extricate the impact of our past traumas from our present reality.  The avoidance, repression, and suppression causes us to be clueless as to what's happening around us, which was great for us when we were kids under constant threat... but we can't afford to check out from reality as adults.  

This is what I did for a few years: I simply checked out little by little around the time my first child was born.  That adult experience of becoming a parent triggered a jail-break release for my childhood demons who had been in repressive purgatory... and I was simply overwhelmed emotionally.  It's similar to what happened with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  The defenses which held all that water at bay were simply insufficient in the face of such a deluge.  

This was what I experienced starting a little bit before the birth of my first born.  Then came the ever-quickening descent into the black hole of CPTSD: night terrors; flashbacks; self-loathing; you name it.  That was then, though.  Now is completely different.  I'm into my Neutral Zone now.  I no longer have panic attacks.  I recognize my maladaptive behaviors even though I've not completely conquered them.  The point is that my loss and grieving period is over, and now I have to figure what my new beginning looks like.  This is what the neutral zone is all about.

It's true that I'm in a limbo of sorts because I no longer hold onto the past and haven't quite set my future plan, but this is not filled with stress and consternation.  Yes, I'm still unsure of how to configure my future, but I'm figuring things out little by little as I continue through this introspective journey called recovery.  In the past, this type of limbo would have brought me crashing down to my knees, but now I'm truly enjoying this time of discovery about myself and how I want the next half of my life to materialize.  

Don't get it twisted, though.  I still go through some fairly craptastic days because I still grapple with the consequences of my old world: lack of social circle, financial difficulties, legal problems, employment difficulties, etc.  However, I never expected there to be a clear line of demarcation between the old me and the newly forming one. 

This is a transition and not just a mere change.  A change is really just a function of a singular decision or one-time situation.  My transition is an inner release of how my life was and embracing what my life is becoming.  Being in the neutral zone portion of my transition has meant serious and rapid progress for me.  I’m trying to push out of it now, but I’m okay with the idea that it may take longer than I want because I’m confident that I’ll make it eventually.

Hopefully this will help you advance in your recovery, get past the problems of your old life, and feel more comfortable about your own neutral zone as you realize how much better it’s all going to get if you put the work in.