Beautiful Trauma: “Love In A Time Of Illness”
Written by Andi Bazaar | July 15, 2022
"depression, anxiety, burnout and even just general stuckness hate a moving target, a little bit of exercise every day helps to keep the mind at bay. many people are struggling with challenging emotions right now, here is a deeper dive."
First off I’m using exercise synonymously with physical activity, a regimented workout, a fast-paced walk or vigorous gardening. The evidence is clear that regular movement can help prevent, manage and even treat depression.
The same is true for anxiety:
- some of this effect is biological (chemicals in the brain).
- some of it is psychological (confidence).
- some of it is social (community).
- some of it is still unknown.
It is very important to note that exercise is not a cure-all or a panacea, for some people it can be enough and dor others it is not. It is probably best thought of as a tool in the toolkitwhich includes therapy, medication, nutrition, community and sleep hygiene.
I suspect there is also a sequencing element, if you are in the throes of deep depression or anxiety and someone tells you to "just exercise more" that probably isn't going to be helpful.
Probably helps most as preventative, mild issues and later on coming out of the woods. Remember that mood follows action, you don't need to feel good to get going and you need to get going to give yourself a chance at feeling good.
Intrusive thoughts and feelings are stubborn, this is why "think positive" usually fails. So much of this is breaking inertia.
In "The Practice of Groundedness," I debated with my publisher on whether to include exercise along with big practices like acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability and community.
Ultimately for all the reasons above we did, it's a full chapter and it should be.
Right now perhaps more than ever, do everything you can to carve out at least 20 minutes of physical activity into your day even if it feels like you are forcing yourself and even if it's just walking. Just show up and do it regularly, see how you feel after.
I see that many people are struggling with anxiety and spinning out a little. As someone who is good in a crisis (possibly only in a crisis?) and also good at pep talks this is my forté.
Who would like advice on productive ways to handle daunting situations?
The threshold (one like) has been me, this is for anyone who needs it also I should mention that these are frames and activities — none of this will overrule the struggles of people with depression or clinical anxiety. Those have chemical aspects but if it helps that's great.
THE FIRST THING IS THIS:
a. panic, in the absence of an imminent physical threat "is a lie."
b. panic is your amygdala saying "this is going to kill you right now." but right now you are not being chased by a bear so see the panic as just a chemical signal, one amongst many.
WHY IS PANIC A LIE?
Because it comes to you at times of low information, silence lack of transparency, an inability to read the room some general sense of darkness or being unable to see. Recognize that panic exists mostly when you don't know what's next.
Of course when you don't *know* what's next, you make things up. You come up with scenarios to fill the low-information void, very often these are catastrophic scenarios. Recognize that all those scenarios are, right now just imaginary and stay in the present because panic is affecting your body, a great way to reduce or eliminate panic is to befriend your body and physically connect with what you are feeling.
Panic steals your breath, first you'll need to breathe. Once you are breathing normally, connect with your body. Try to identify where the panic is living in your physical being, close your eyes and scan your body.
- is your stomach knotted?
- is the feeling a headache?
- what specifically does it feel like?
- a knot, a knife or sand?
Once you have identified where all the panic is living in your body, breathe and use you imagination to see those areas and connect with them.
Sit and see the knots or the knives or the metal weights or cinder blocks that are in you, make sure they're all seen long as it takes.
You will probably start hearing some thoughts at this point as you bring your attention to your body, these thoughts may be negative. That's okay, you don't have to believe them. They are just thoughts like clouds, would you control clouds? You would not! Let the thoughts move.
TO RECAP SO FAR:
1. breathe.
2. scan your body to find out where the feelings are living and what they look like.
3. recognize that not all of your thoughts are command, they don't require belief or action. you don't have to chase every squirrel, just let them pass.
Write any part of this down at this point, what has come up to you? Get it out! Then when you're breathing and physically present, it's time for the next step: Reading the room and being constructive.
THE NEXT STEP IS ALL ABOUT PLANNING.
Sit down and write down all your worst scenarios, inhabit them. Imagine every part of what it will feel like when you get sick, when your family gets sick. Once you feel this you can let go of the *anticipation* of feeling it.
ASK YOURSELF:
If this happens, this worst-case scenario could I get through it? You don't have to like it but you could probably get through it. Remember that most people survive, this is where that knowledge is helpful.
After you have breathed, body-scanned and imagined your worst-case scenario you are now in a position to productively address your concerns. Now is the time to make plans and prepare, intelligently and for as much as possible of what could happen.
BRING OUT PAPER.
First you have to think about being in quarantine together, this is a space issue. It can be stressful, make sure everyone has their own "zone" they can retreat to. Have schedule, rituals etc then move on to specific plans and checklists.
- what will it look like if a family member gets sick?
- where will you put them?
- how will you feed them?
- do you have flu medicine?
- can you get to a doctor if there’s distress?
- who will drive? write it all down.
THIS IS YOUR PLAN.
Make as many plans as you need, talk through it together with your partner or spouse (not your kids yet). It can be scary to say this all out loud but also: by naming things you take away their power, name them now so they can't control you later.
Please note that not everyone responds to information in the same way, some people need to know as much as possible to be secure: (some people feel that excess information only feeds their panic.) Respect whichever mode the person with you prefers, your anxiety mode is not theirs!
NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR PLAN, YOU COME TO:
- what do you do with all that time?
- all that time together?
- all that time to think?
There are two modes: (Distraction and Work)
Distraction is TV, video games etc. It will help you not think about things, this is good actually. Your brain needs a break, give your brain a break.
Work is not just your actual work, it's anything that's productively addressing your needs: self-care, meditation, exercise.
Move your body, take care of your body. You will need your strength and also to release all that energy, it gives a sense of ritual and order.
Also make sure you can leave wherever you are even to another room, the main thing is to make sure everyone has space to be comfortable. Some may need to go outside. Take breaks in the day and from each other.
Use Art — drawing, writing, music, dancing. All these should be part of your day, they help you address feelings you can’t get at otherwise.
Gather information carefully, there's a lot of news. Ask yourself:
- do i need to care about this right now?
- does this help me plan for my family?
- don’t borrow trouble.
- don’t rush to judgment.
- stop categorizing "good" and "bad." — it just won’t take you anywhere good.
Remember that you have *every right* to your frustration, that is valid! Validate yourself, this is a lot to handle, very fast and all at once. There's a sense of loss and grieving for the lives we lived just recently, i you need to cry set time aside to cry.
Lastly, the best way to keep your troubles in perspective is to help other people.
"Who could use a boost or charity?"
"Is there a person or animal that could use love right now?"
Love is self-renewing — the more you show, the more of it you feel. don’t limit your love, share it.
An important thing is to find abundance in whatever your situation is, stress is real especially financial stress but somewhere in your life something is abundant.
- love, space, talent? (can you still express yourself?)
- blessings? you’re rich in something, appreciate that.
THIS IS: Jwan Höffler Conwall
Here is my story about those thoughts: (medical garbage, sexual violence and trauma)
For context, I have chronic illness. I have had chronic illness for more than half my life, it started with migraines before puberty — those run in my family. At 15, sudden GI problems that never went away, throughout my 20s t
he onset of autonomic dysfunction.
I didn't know what was happening, the symptoms of heat intolerance, orthostatic tachycardia, post-prandial hypotension (low blood pressure after eating), etc they came on slowly and progressively. At first I assumed it was stress because I spent my 20s in grad school.
Eventually I realized it wasn't just stress (although stress can exacerbate symptoms of many illnesses) and I saw a lot of doctors, one said that "short people just have trouble with blood sugar," which is not science and it wasn't my blood sugar that was the problem anyway.
I never denied that I had stress but knew myself well enough to know that something else was going on, it wasn't just anxiety. It wasn't some repressed trauma, I finally got a diagnosis of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome in 2016 from my neuro confirmed by cardio.
Other relevant context, I also don't deny having experienced traumatic events but my symptoms started before I ever experienced sexual assault and I went through pretty intense therapy in my early 20s and worked through a lot of shit before my symptoms got worse.
Back to present day this year, both my neurologist and my primary care doctor both of whom seem stumped by my symptoms have mentioned psychosomatic illness to me. There seems to be some deep desire for me to have some massive trauma or unacknowledged stress.
Now the answer is probably not so complicated or so deep, I meet many of the clinical criteria for a hypermobility spectrum disorder or connective tissue disorder possibly Ehlers-Danlos. It's not rare, but rarely diagnosed.
Instead of listening to "hey, what about HSD / EDS" or "maybe there's something else at play, maybe autoimmune," — I've gotten the ol' psychosomatic line. I'm not denying psychosomatic illness exists but what I take umbrage with is how it gets deployed esp. through trauma.
I'm not a medical doctor but I am a trauma theorist by training and so I take great interest in how people talk about trauma and theorize it, the historical and philosophical models of trauma are as important and often overlap with, the medical models that we currently have.
Classical Trauma Theory, the kind that saw its boom in the early 90s especially with theorists like Cathy Caruth and Shoshana Felman among others subscribes to an idea of trauma that is about its belatedness its difficulty to be articulated.
The clinical model of PTSD takes up similar qualities that reminders of the trauma are avoided, sometimes forgotten, etc. Now, I understand this model because it is a model that makes sense but not for everyone, it is a dominant model and a clinical model.
I also don't deny that we need to acknowledge the ways in which trauma affects the body, including through things like intergenerational trauma and its relationship to epigenetics. Nor do I want to suggest that the mind and body aren't connected (obviously).
What I worry about is that the dominant model of trauma is limiting (as in, there are multiple experiences of trauma — some people remember a lot, some people remember nothing, some people avoid, some do not).
I worry about how in an attempt to validate some certain experiences of trauma, broad generalizations have been made, but I worry that it has moved to "the trauma brain does or is X" as if there is a singular way that trauma affects a brain but more generally I worry that the very frameworks of understanding that we have to explain some experiences of trauma are being used very harmfully against others.
This is what happens, I think, with the idea of some psychosomatic illnesses.
The argument that trauma is belated and repressed gets used endlessly by doctors to dismiss physical symptoms that they can't figure out and because a "repressed trauma" is something that not even you can identify, let alone doctors it's a perfect way to dismiss patients.
It's not that trauma can't be repressed, it's the idea that somehow trauma is by default repressed or that by default trauma = PTSD (which is a clinical diagnosis and is by definition a condition that has "distress or functional impairment")
Can we just start believing people not just that they have physical symptoms but to stop assuming that? "no, nothing repressed here" isn't just actually a sign of repression? That maybe trauma isn't the reason for everything? It's the reason for some things, just not everything.
THINGS NOT TO SAY TO A PERSON STRUGGLING WITH ANXIETY:
A. Do not tell a person with anxiety that they are being "ridiculous" or "irrational" — it could trigger an even bigger reaction/attack.
B. Do not ask a person with anxiety if they have tried sleeping it off or thinking their way out of it or distracting themselves. In addition, don’t accuse someone with anxiety of choosing to feel that way. No one willingly chooses to feel constant worry or helplessness.
C. Do not get annoyed or irritated with someone with anxiety if they come to you for help, it takes a lot of energy to ask for help and shooting them down teaches them that they aren’t worth helping.
If a person with anxiety is coming to you for help, sometimes "how can i help" is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Be patient, sometimes all you can do to help someone struggling with anxiety is to listen to their fears and learn their triggers so you can help navigate them through it in the future.
Some people prefer to be alone to navigate through their own problems, support them by being on standby as often as they need you.
Anxiety can be a constant feeling for some, be there for them through it all not just through attacks (reassurance is key). You are not going to cure someone with anxiety just by being supportive, so don't be offended if they don't feel better right away.
Gently suggesting different ways to get help for anxiety can be helpful, getting professional help is a choice but it can be a difficult one to make. Again, be patient.
Remember, you are not responsible for someone else's problems or happiness. You still need to take care of yourself first, if someone becomes toxic to your mental health, you need to do what's best for you.
According to NAMI about 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. alone suffer from mental illness, mental illness comes with a stigma. Help fight the stigma and support those who suffer.
A Special Thanks To:
- Henrie Louis Friedrich (Co-wrote)
- Dr Oliver Schofield (Consulting/Analyst)
- Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Journalist)
- José Schenkkan (Editor)
- Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
- Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph (Style)
- Jwan Höffler Conwall (Model)
