Dealing with emotional trauma

So as I left off in My Story, I had shut my feelings away.  I also returned home and that added distance only assisted my slip into denial.  Since I was away from R I could fool myself into just feeling like we hadn't talked for awhile.  Naturally this was not the best way to handle this situation, and it began to take its toll.

At first I think I was able to fake it to make it.  For the first year after R's death I was able to handle life, I was in denial after all.  Even when some of the other guys tried suicide as a result of R's death I was somewhat emotionally detached from the situation.  My body had gone into its survival mode, and its defense mechanism was to cut off emotional feelings.  By the time the first anniversary of R's death came around I could no longer deny what had happened.  That first one year anniversary hit me like a ton of bricks one night at work.  Luckily it was at the end of my shift.

Now I could not shut away the feelings and I instantly had to deal with it.  Closing away my feelings had taken a toll on me internally and now it was starting to show.  I reached out to some peer support groups and was advised to go to my doctor and make sure nothing else was wrong, no sudden changes in health or anything.  After the doctor made sure I was in good health I was given an anti-anxiety/anti-depression prescription.  This did help me a lot at this period of my life, but I later learned it had a lot of adverse reactions as well.  I will say at this point that I did not allow this situation to affect my work.  I was still able to compartmentalize when I went to work, but now that the one year anniversary had come along it was harder for me to keep that buffer up.  I began feeling anxious at just the thought of going to work.  Since my job deals with trauma on a regular basis this added to the situation.  The medication I was put on helped with this and allowed me to continue to compartmentalize my feelings, but it also deadened my feelings a lot.

One of the biggest areas these events affected my life was my relationship with my wife and my bills.  I continued to be there for my kids and in many ways they helped me in healing a little bit too.  However, handling regular life was something I allowed myself not to face.  By not facing R's death it seems I had set a precedence for other aspects of my life.  I made it ok to hide from things that added stress.  You would think this carried over to my career, but because of my wife and kids depending on me to provide for them I didn't allow this to happen.  I did struggle with some sick time usage as keeping all those emotions locked away for so long caused a depression in my immune system.  I became more susceptible to regular sicknesses that had not affected me before.  Luckily I had the sick time to do this.

I have since gone to a therapist to talk about a lot of these issues and my therapist has stated that because of the traumatic events in my childhood I returned to some of my coping mechanisms that I developed back then.  When I was a child I would often hide under my bed when my dad became violent.  Later in life I reacted with a temper, but at this point in my life I was metaphorically hiding under the bed again.

We started to fall behind with our bills because I was ignoring them, it was all I could do to pull myself together and compartmentalize my feelings to go to work.  I was also finally using my GI Bill to go to school online.  I was exhausted from all of this and facing the bills was something I allowed myself to hide from.  There was more trauma to come and something needed to change.

Importance of friendship:

A quick note about healing from emotional injuries.  Never forget the power of true friendships.  Because of all the shit that has happened the past few years I became a recluse and wasn't dealing with things.  Today I have spent the majority of the day on a group text with my brothers. These guys are true friends to me and I know there are no expectations. Even though I haven't talked to some of them in almost a year we can pick up a conversation as if there was never a gap in our communication.  I can be myself.  This is incredibly refreshing and allows you to be yourself while you converse.  Also it helps a lot to know that there are people in your corner.

Objective:

With the My Story portion of this blog not yet finished, I wanted to give some direction on where all of this is going.  I did not anticipate writing so much about myself under the My Story part.  As you can see from my story, I did not have the greatest childhood.  I know there are people who have had it worse, but I am not here to compare.  Life has taught me one thing; people have different strengths and different weaknesses.  For one person, just having your parent raise their voice seems harsh for someone else that wouldn't bother them.  Some people can walk away from drugs others spend years in addiction.  I am writing this much about myself so that people out there know I can relate to them. 

As will be disclosed in My Story the childhood wasn't the only trauma, but because of the childhood some of the later trauma was mishandled.  Where I am headed with this blog as I bring the My Story page current is what I am doing to heal.  That's right I said doing not did.  This blog may turn out to be a part of the healing process. 

As for the name of the blog, I will explain a little.  In My Story Part V:  I talked a little bit about meditation, and how it seemed to help me find some clarity in my life.  In our daily lives, there can be so much noise that we lose touch with ourselves.  I am a husband and father of three kids.  I have a full-time job and I am going to school to get a degree in engineering so I can get into a job that doesn't deal with trauma on a regular basis.  This year was the first year that I sat and meditated in probably 5-6 years.  My children are also currently 10, 6, and 4.  It has been difficult to get up to those mountaintops and sit quietly listening to nature and just soaking it in.  You know just being out among nature can have an amazing grounding effect on the body, but you have to eliminate the noise.  

We are one of those weird families that doesn't have cable in our home.  We have television sets, but not cable.  I still get news by reading it online or picking up a newspaper or listening to it on the radio, but not from the telly, unless I am at a restaurant that has televisions on the news.  This I would strongly recommend to anyone.  You would be surprised at just how much the television clutters up your brain.  

Meditation can really help our brain, body, and yes spirit.  In fact, when I first started to learn meditation from my sensei, almost two decades ago, he taught me to enter meditation by first forming a triangle with my two hands.  The three sides of the triangle represent body, mind, and spirit and our goal is to have all three of them in balance. 

DISCLAIMER: Please Read.

First things first in this blog.
1. Adult content will be shared to include stories with adult content and expletives. If you do not want to read any of this stop here and leave.
2. I am not a professional counselor or doctor, I will speak my mind and opinions take them as you will.
3.  This is not my job. I have numerous other responsibilities in my life that will take precedence over this.
4.  This is being done anonymously and identities have been changed in order to preserve anonymity.
5.  This is my blog and I reserve the right to block anyone or remove anyone's post I feel is necessary.
6. If I ever recommend anything to include a product that has helped me it is purely in hopes that someone else will find it useful not for some marketing ploy. This blog is to hopefully help me as much as others.
7.  I do have a religious background and believe in God, as will be reflected in some of the stories.  I am not here to argue his existence and why so many bad things happen, refer to #5 above.

Some of you may feel I am being too much of a hardass, (there's the first one), and would like to send me long messages explaining why I shouldn't run my blog the way I do or talk the way I do.  To you I say I am not putting a gun to your head and making you read my blog, so if you have a problem with it, stop reading it.  I do not intend to coddle, mince words, or pamper to everyone's request.

All that being said.  I do hope that someone, or many someones,  may find the help they need through this blog.  I also hope that through this blog and helping others I will find more pieces to the puzzle of putting my life and myself back in order.  See I do have a touchy feely side to me.