Staph and Spirit, Part 2

     Last posting, I wrote about my illness and the trauma associated with it -- the real conviction that I was going to die or be permanently disabled. I said I mainly wanted to speak of the spiritual side of the experience. To do that, I recalled that two of the main convictions that I've come to based on my counseling many trauma survivors: trauma is a spiritual wound and requires a spiritual healing; and the second, the same God a person has before the trauma is not likely to survive the trauma.

     The first idea is based on the clear experience that trauma removes the sense of safety and relative predictability that life affords, at least as we go about our daily living. A good Buddhist or Hindu might chide us for being naive in such an unpredictable world, but my experience of people before and after any severe trauma is that we (Westerners, at least) all pretty much think the world is generally safe and that what we expect of life will pretty much be the story. Our mental health is unconsciously dependent on these assumptions. Imagine those being ripped out of you. That's certainly what I experienced, especially in those lonely sleepless nights in the hospital. In those moments, there was no safety for me - I felt so helpless I couldn't sleep for fear of not waking up. To make an obvious point, such feelings hit us at the deepest or spiritual level. Our spirit is changed fundamentally.  We don't feel at home in our own world.

     The second idea is related to the first. If I have any kind of higher power, whether God or a philosophic or scientific worldview or the inner self as God, that higher power doesn't work well anymore, if at all. The world I knew is overturned. There is no rescuer or comforting thought. Something new or at least different has to be found to replace the old, because living with radical uncertainty is pretty intolerable. I've seen too many trauma survivors get stuck in very partial "answers" like trying to reduce their life to a basement room or becoming workaholic (or otherwise addicted). The more fortunate go through their "dark night of the soul," and emerge with a different, but durable "something." That may take many shapes. One hallmark of such a shift, but  common, is an increase in compassion or empathy for other peoples' suffering. Another hallmark is a sense of mystery, whatever one's higher power may be -- less about words, more about deeper feelings of  connectedness, transcendence, purpose, perhaps being loved and cared for, as well as a newfound gratitude. Mysteriously, the trauma has eventually(although not inevitably) led to feeling a part of a much larger scheme of things.

     So what happened to me? In a nutshell, naming my fear and trauma to a good friend and fellow therapist, I was skillfully and compassionately aided in developing some very useful tools -- tools that helped me regulate those fear-based physical and emotional reactions. One tool was a personalized affirmation: "I am a strong, powerful warrior getting well." Repeating that alone several times countered the very negative thoughts my deep self harbored. Next, using the words of that same affirmation slowly and deliberately, I was asked to visualize myself doing my favorite sport, kayaking, in my favorite bay, with a left -right stroke of the paddle hitting each word of the affirmation. I cannot over-praise the power of that combination of word and image in quelling the fear that threatened to overwhelm me. It not only calmed, but helped me sleep, a very precious gift. I was so grateful for feeling safe.

     The third gift my colleague gave me involved three very specific fears, and the images we came up with together that came to regulate them. My three deepest fears were these: that my heart was damaged irreparably by the infection; that my lungs were also compromised permanently in their ability to allow me a full breath; and that my kidneys, those blessed filters and source of other important functions, like regulating blood pressure, were also damaged beyond repair. "How would you image your heart?" my friend asked. I answered, "As a continuously rythmical pumping spring, sourcing a woodland stream that flows gently downhill, giving life to many creatures." Then she asked, "Can you give me an image for your lungs?" I immediately answered, two big Red-tailed Hawks, downstream, lifting and lowering their wings slowly and powerfully, lifting and helping me fill and empty my lungs. And finally, I imaged my kidneys as a low pile of white quartz rocks, filtering the flowing water and making the water of the woodland stream even more pure and life-giving. Using these images, seeing myself walking down the gentle stream in the beautiful woods, I experienced an ability to breathe more deeply and gently let go of those three specific fears of damaged heart, lungs and kidneys. Without a doubt, this experience helped me heal as well as relax from my fear-driven loss of control. Once again, I felt safe.

     If I'm not crazy or delusional (and that may be in question!), this experience has some important clues as to how spirit may work in a crisis like this, using (with help from the right people) the very elements that tear us down to build us up. More on this next posting.

    

    
    

    

    

    

Staph and Spirit, Part 1

     I've been sick the last nine weeks or so, with a major staph infection serious enough to be hospitalized for five of those weeks. My wife (my best caregiver) didn't tell me right away that the second night in the hospital, my doctor told her that I "might not pull through." Twice in the course of the five weeks I experienced "flash pulmonary edema," where fluid filled the areas around my heart and lungs and I felt "air hunger," literally not being able to take a full breath. During these attacks, my blood pressure skyrocketed to over 240. I believed in those gasping moments that I was going to die. Without the very skilled medical attention I did receive, I might have stroked out or otherwise been compromised enough to stop living.

     I'm home now two and a half weeks. I'm much, much better. I'm walking and moving, although a cane sometimes provides security. My zest for food has returned, although I don't have half the appetite I did before I got sick (some would say that's a good thing). My sleep is beginning to get better. I am slowly returning to work, a few patients at a time.

     It's the spiritual side of all this that I want to talk about. In the hospital, many sleepless late night hours gave my mind free rein.  I couldn't beat down the creeping fear of losing my breath and dying, or at least being terribly sick the rest of my life. A young rabbi who was the chaplain on our floor asked me in one conversation: "How do you experience God here in the hospital?" I answered mainly through the helping, healing hands of the staff, from janitors to aides, nurses and doctors, etc. So many loving, kind and skilled people helped me feel cared about and taken care of. But that's the story I told myself in more hopeful moments.

     As I said, during much of the hospital stay, there was a fear in me that felt crippling. As someone intimately knowledgeable about trauma from counseling hundreds of firefighters, EMT's, and other 9-11 survivors, I saw that I was traumatized acutely, especially by the two scary episodes of pulmonary edema and that doctor's doubts about my survival which I learned about a few weeks after he spoke to my wife. The looping re-experiencing of those awful moments, especially in sleepless late night hours, was terrrible. Trauma takes away that implicit sense of safety and predictability in life we all usually take for granted.

     I was fortunate in that a dear friend and fellow therapist, also intimately aware of trauma and its effects, picked up on my state of mind and soul  and asked if she could help. The tools we worked on together helped me regulate and better manage my fear-based physical and emotional reactions. I have given many workshops on trauma, and one of my experience-based observations is that trauma is a spiritual wound and needs a spiritual healing. Another is that the same God a person might have before the trauma will not likely survive the trauma. Both ideas could not have been more true for me.

     I'll end here, because I want to give my own experience the room to detail and expand upon. I'll continue this discussion in the next blog.