What is Trauma?

Some people don't simply understand what trauma is.  In a basic sense, it is when a person is "overwhelmed by events or circumstances and responds with intense fear, horror, and helplessness."  Examples appear in the tree on this infographic:  http://www.thenationalcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Trauma-infographic.pdf

My trauma started at age 7, when my family moved to Atlanta.  This is where I began to spend Sundays with my grandfather, whom we would come to learn was a pedophile.  As an already shy and introverted child, this experience hit me like a brick wall leaving me more introverted and scared of people.  The trauma didn't stop there, it continued in finding unhealthy relationships with others around me.  I felt like I was marked and trapped in a personal narrative of shock.  There are some events that changed this:

a) I engaged in a therapeutic relationship with a therapist.
b) I began to draw my feelings.
c) I began to journal my feelings.
d) I took medication when a mental health condition struck.
e) I learned how to seek healing relationships to replace the unhealthy ones.
f) I stopped drinking.
g) I found Georgia peer support and acquired new friends and skills (www.gmhcn.org)
h) I sought connection with other survivors to advocate and discuss trauma.
i) I started to create skills resources and share what I have learned.


We do not have to be silent, we can come together to share stories of healing and change the narrative.

You Made a Difference Friend, May You Inspire Others:

I sent this to 3 newspapers and not one had time to write a story on friendship.  So, here I will publish this tribute to an amazing woman.   

North Augusta, SC, September 19, 2016:  Today Miriam Culbertson will be remembered at Posey Funeral Home in North Augusta.  She has been my friend since I moved next door to her.  In 2003, I woke up in my home and thought it was filled with gas, I could hear the media outside calling me a witch, and I was sure someone was trying to poison me.  I fled to my car with my dog.  Miriam saw me and tried to give me a hug.  I told her to stay away, as I thought she had ill intentions.  I ended up driving up ad down the East Coast in fear of an entity I couldn’t find.  Then 4 hospitalizations later, I came home and Miriam was still there.  She stayed by my side when illness struck in a way that the younger people in my life just did not.  She was a rock, always there for me even when my career that evolved in peer support took me to Nebraska.  She always was on the other end of the phone till now.  I miss my friend dearly, but want to encourage people in the community to continue to reach out to people with mental illness in the community.  You can make a difference just by a conversation and being there.  Sharing her faith and love was such a precious gift and I am stronger because of her love.  Reach out and be a friend to someone struggling.  A friend makes the difference.  Miriam speaks at the end of this video I made for a “What a difference a friend makes” video contest years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--zGp7rpWuY&app=desktop

Miriam Culbertson and Carol Coussons de Reyes, 2004, North Augusta

It was ridiculously expensive, but I'm glad I took care of me.

Leaving Nebraska was a painful decision that took months.  I could feel things changing with the new administration, because they moved my job to the hospitals, told me I would be working with sex offenders, told me I would have to reapply for my job as they reclassified it, and I was informed that I would be moved to an office that was housed above sex offenders.  All this was too much and asking me, as a trauma survivor, to serve sex offenders was not working at all.  I became very ill and went on medical leave.  

Georgia, my family, and my friends in Georgia were in my heart and I decided to be closer to their love while I was on medical leave.  I healed and I decided enough was enough.  I decided to stay in Georgia and it was a great decision, because I landed in a fabulous place of employment after months of waiting.  I'm so happy today and I am glad I made this decision.  It was an expensive decision, but I am so proud of me for taking care of me.  I knew my value in the larger market of employment, it is a niche market, but I truly love the work of assisting the people with behavioral health conditions to live lives of resilience and recovery!

A Union of Hope Play at Centennial Olympic Park

The world is spinning with trauma and pain.  Once in a while, we need to stop and listen to the voice of the trauma survivor.  Trauma takes many forms, it can be real life in the now violence and it can result from a history of violence that a culture remembers.  We have places that give voice to Georgia's trauma, like the amazing history of Martin Luther King, Jr and other civil rights leaders.  We do not have a place I can readily recognize the current in the now voice of troubled and traumatized citizens.  The Dalai Lama was welcomed at the Centennial Olympic Park years ago to speak to the importance to compassion.  That stage would be a wonderful spot to dialogue on modern issues and theater is a great way to get people's attention.
I will never forget the theater of the protest of Martha Burke at Augusta National Golf Tournament.  There was a big pig that said, "While CEO's play, women pay."  There were puppets representing characters of the day.  As a participant, I thought it was a little over the top, but the truth is that it spoke to what many women were thinking.  It was a grand way of communicating a group's truth about exclusion of women.
We are in desperate need of dialogue in America and perhaps theater could release the pain and create symbols of healing for people.  We also need to practice the skills of compassion in relationships publicly.  Like, what if we had a hug in or teddy bear exchange after a play on the trauma of the moment that people are feeling.  There is much work to do to heal in America.

Peace and Love,
Carol

Keeping Hope Alive

As I quit my job, I didn't really think I would be landing in a world of poverty.  I haven't been poor since college, and even then I fluttered within because I found a job I hated that kept me alive.  This time was different, because I landed my whole family in poverty.  I believed I must follow a path back to Georgia and found unemployment without even unemployment benefits.  I learned a lot.  You have less energy, when you are poor for lunches and coffees with friends because there is no flow.  When you have food stamps, people judge your comments as you walk through the checkout line.  Some pharmacies, don't include the handy little cups for your medicine when your child has medicaid.  When I dressed the part of poverty, I felt it deep inside.  I had to believe in myself and not dress the part.  I had to believe that the job was coming and do everything in my power to make that happen, despite the odds of a middle manager flood.  I went to vocational rehabilitation to get counseling, because I didn't want to leave any stone unturned that could change the reality I was living.  My family's poverty ends on Monday and I am overjoyed that I was able to keep hope alive.  Everyone should have savings, understand a budget, understand how much you spend, and pursuit education with vigor.  Most of all, we must keep hope alive for change.  

Hope and Choice

A colleague of mine has recently passed that I would consider part of the anti-psychiatry movement.  He spoke to the horrific abuse of the system, but never spoke about when it worked right.  I guess it never worked for him and this saddens me.  I read horrific stories in the paper and I know that things can go absolutely wrong.  
At the same time, I have experienced success in my life with lots of wellness tools, which includes modern psychiatry.  When I am unmedicated, I become angry and entrenched in my trauma and the narrative becomes larger than life.  The stress is absolutely unlivable and I am sure I would have a serious physical illness.  So, I am thankful for modern medicine that includes psychiatry.  I am thankful for clinicians.  I am especially thankful for trauma-informed clinicians and they are challenging to find.
So I guess if psychiatry isn't working for you, I would encourage you to do what is right for you.  I used to believe that recovery for me would involve living without medication and I simply know that is wrong for me.  I have a high quality of life, thanks to modern psychiatry and clinicians in addition to a host of other wellness tools, like peer support.  I encourage you to keep hope alive and seek what works for you.

Addressing Trauma with Your Psychiatrist...

Its easy for clinicians to see through clinical lenses, if they have not been trained in trauma and even if they have.  Treating trauma and validating appropriate social responses is a dance.  If we only speak of our fears to our psychiatrist, we may find appropriate social fears being medicated away.  We have instincts and its important to listen to them.  Its also important not to be afraid all the time.  There is a fine line between being a trauma survivor and acting appropriately based on knowledge learned and the real realities of mental health conditions.  Recently I found myself reminding my psychiatrist that while I was afraid to turn corners of allies downtown alone that this was also an appropriate social response for a woman.  She jogged what I said through her head and had to add that into the equation.  We must dialogue about trauma with our doctors, so that we don't end up medicating away our appropriate social instincts.