The ART of Healing

Its been a long while since I have posted anything.

While I’ve been gone, I have gained so much more understanding of many mental health conditions.

I once suffered with PTSD. I didn’t realise that is what was happening at the time. I didn’t find out until many years later when I suffered it again and was diagnosed.

To get past any mental health condition, understanding the root cause is the way to get past it and to a place of acceptance.

I read something once and it is so true. If we accepted what is, we would save ourselves a lot of pain.

The second time I had PTSD, my Dad had drowned when i took him on holiday. What followed was a lot of anger at myself as well as a lot of guilt. I couldn’t accept what had happened and blamed myself. I had always took responsibility for everyone, and he was my responsibility. If only I was watching him was a thought that circled like seagulls over the sea. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

Just because I had that thought though, did not make it true.

I think for many, we see our thoughts as the gospel truth and if I have thought it, it has to be true or why did I have the thought?

I think this is a real problem for psychosis sufferers to get their head around. For my son, he would rather think the thoughts were true, because the alternative was that he was crazy.

But that’s just another thought.

And here’s the thing, so often we try to resist the thoughts and emotions that are uncomfortable. But what we resist persists. You may ask what the hell does that mean?

For many, me included, as a child I watched my parents suppressing emotions, so I learnt how to suppress too.

As a toddler having a tantrum is not seen as a good thing! But what is it really? A child expressing how they feel in that moment. Which is likely anger or frustration. Generally that happens around 2 years old.

By the age of 5, you likely learnt it wasn’t acceptable to express your emotions in such a way.

“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” is probably something many of us heard. Again, doesn’t that say stop expressing that emotion?

So we end up with so many adults that have learnt from a young age I cannot express any emotions other than the good ones. Happiness, laughter, love.

So what do most children learn to do? Bury it, lock it away somewhere and not think about it.

For me personally, I lost my Mum at 14. I took on the role of Mother in her absence in looking after my Dad. I put his feelings above mine because I figured it must have been so much worse for him than it was for me. He was utterly lost.

Many years later a relationship I thought would last forever broke down. As with many broken relationships, it lead to me moving home. I felt I lost a whole family, kids (he had 3), Mum, sister and I was devastated. It felt like the ground had opened up. With reflection, I can now see that it was the suppressed feeling of losing my Mum that had risen to the surface.

The thoughts and feelings were so overwhelming, again I tried to do what I had always done. Bury them. Put on a mask and pretend I wasn’t falling apart. I drank copious amounts of alcohol and took drugs to try and suppress the feelings. I didn’t want to feel this way. I judged myself harshly. I must be weak, there must be something wrong with me. Why am I not able to just “get over it” like everyone else? So continues the journey of resisting the emotions.

I stayed stuck in thinking that way for 12 long years. I avoided relationships at all costs because I believed there was fundamentally something wrong with me. Not only could I not hold onto a relationship anyway, but also the pain was too much of a risk to take again.

Any mental health condition has very similar effects. Believing it is the result of a circumstance, so avoid that at all costs. It then controls everything from that point onwards, because the thinking is often if I avoid that it’ll be fine. However, it is then the focus of what to avoid, which can often lead to more of the same. Psychosis, just like my PTSD, often happens more than once. The only way out of this loop is going through it.

So how to do that?

I think for many, it is a hard thing to accept that the thoughts you had may not be real, because where does that leave you?

But here is the truth. Everyone thinks thoughts that aren’t real.

How many times have you worried and catastrophised a future event that hasn’t happened yet? Imagining all of the worst case scenarios.

How often did the worst case scenario actually manifest in reality?

If your anything like me, it never did happen, but it didn’t stop my imagination from thinking it. Isn’t it also true that thinking in this way holds you back?

It is also likely keeping you from seeing the options, the way out of the situation. While thinking the worst, it effects the emotions and brings up fear, worry, doubts. Which sort of keeps you stuck. In limbo not being able to go backward or forwards.

How can I get past it, you may be wondering?

I personally gained so much insight when I signed up to a coaching program. It opened my eyes to see all my life I had believed I wasn’t good enough, and in order to be enough, I chased love and validation from others.

However, you don’t have to work with someone. Its a hard thing for most people to choose to do. It can lead to feelings of being broken, or fear of being open and vulnerable at the thought of working with someone.

All is not lost…you do not have to get a coach!

Instead, I invite you next time you get an overwhelmed and a flood of emotions come to the surface, use it as an opportunity to be curious.

Allowing it to be there, sitting with it, and perhaps asking it “what are you trying to tell me? What are you protecting me from?”

Maybe focus on where the feeling is in the body. Is it in the gut, the chest, the shoulders? I always find I feel the sensation in my body. Imagine emotions being a best friend that is trying to protect you from making a mistake or getting hurt.

You don’t have to follow the friends advice. Though I am sure you would listen to what they had to say? Emotions want to be heard to. And more often than not, they are being ignored.

If someone constantly ignored you, how much love would you feel towards them?

By listening to your own emotions, is an act of self love. Listening to yourself or a younger version of you that is afraid.

If you are a carer, you may be wondering “what can I do to help?” Often, one of the best things you can do is to just be with your partner, family member or friend. Its says “Your not alone” without saying anything at all.

It also relieves the pressure on what to say. Often, in the case of my son, when I tried to help, it made things worse. But I felt so helpless and hopeless. I hated to see him in turmoil, so put myself under the pressure to try and fix it.

I didn’t have the answers.

Even with understanding the cause of his psychosis i didn’t have the answers. He did. To find them though, is in asking the right questions and having the patience to wait for the answers to surface.

If your reading this because you too suffered psychosis or any mental health issue, you too have the answers. You may no believe it yet, but I know you do.

I imagine that before the psychosis surfaced, something was happening in life that left you feeling emotionally and mentally overwhelmed. As a starting point to get to the answers, perhaps explore those emotions and what were they trying to communicate. How old was you when you first experienced these emotions.

This forms a part of th work I do. The ART of healing is about Acceptance. Sitting with the emotion and accepting it. Not l like it. Not hold onto it. Just to sit with it. Hear what its saying. If its anything like mine, it may be saying you’re not enough, your alone, you don’t belong, your not safe. Whatever it may be saying, how true is it? If like me, you come to the realisation that it wasn’t, then you can Release it.

The final part is Trust. Trusting yourself. This may be kicking up some resistance. When you follow the first part of ART, the trust will come on its own, because in accepting and releasing is learning to sit with yourself, accept your emotions without trying to force them to change. Often, just by listening, even without asking questions, they start to loosen their grip. They lessen. When you notice this, you start trusting in yourself that you are able to feel them without them consuming you.

I don’t believe anyone needs fixing, you’re not broken. You are enough just as you are, no matter what you’ve been through. I also know that after you face it, go through it, at the other end you will have a strength you never would have believed possible.