It is a bit like my favorite Charles M Schultz quote: “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.'” 

 

By Michelleanne Bradley

I have been mostly missing from TTB.

Life has been a whirlwind. I am currently in treatment for major depressive disorder and CPTSD. I had a great therapist, and she retired. We had been doing EMDR, which was fantastic. I was adrift for a bit, and then I think that my antidepressant medication stopped working. I  think this because I fell super fast and far down that wormhole, and practice was not digging me out fast enough. There are lots of things I can see, feel, hear, smell, and taste. I pretty much have that down.

It is a bit like my favorite Charles M Schultz quote: “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.'”

When I first had my call with the psychiatric services group of my health insurance, they said they had a few questions for me. I failed the first one. They asked if I had thoughts of harming myself, and I said yes. They asked if I had a plan, and I said no. They asked if I had thoughts of harming others and I asked if I could be funny. They said it didn’t really matter because I was going to be put through to a live counselor right away anyway. I told them it depended on if I was driving.

They did think that was funny.

Now I have completed three of six weeks of TMS, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. I know that it does not work for everyone, and I am really grateful that it is working for me. I have been open about my ongoing struggles with my mental health, recovery, and basically all of the fucking things because I find that if I can help one person seek help, find refuge, and find their voice, then it is completely worth my voice shaking.

This week was a real wrecker.

My email was hacked on Monday. I woke up to text messages and emails from friends and colleagues about an RFP that I was apparently sending around. It was not me. I felt like a fool because I could see immediately where it stemmed from and how I got snagged in that net. Wednesday, my partner and I had to go buy a (new to us) car because one of ours had been totaled in an accident with a guy who was uninsured. This made a lot more work for us than if we had not been sideswiped by this dude with an attitude.

Friday it became super intense. I was sitting in my office in the back of the house when my partner asked about all of the cops on the street, and said that it was blocked off. I overlooked it because we are on the corner of a cul-de-sac. Sometimes the cops are looking for someone on the main road and they park across our street. Then the neighbor texted and asked about the cops on the street and said they were on our little block. Now I have to go out and see what’s up.

My partner follows me out, and I yell to the sheriff walking towards the inside of the block. I ask him what’s going on and he says that it’s all under control, someone is having a mental health crisis, and they have counselors on the way. In the meantime, there are helicopters overhead, about 10 sheriff’s vehicles lining the street, and I don’t have much faith in how this might go.

I had a few more questions, like which side of the street, which house, and what the tattoo was that I could see coming out of his shirt (he said it was a crow, so I lifted the sleeve of my shirt to show him the crows I have on my shoulder). I want to confirm that mental health counselors are on the way. He assured me that there were.

My partner made fun of me a little, then we saw the same deputy running back to the cars blocking the corner. The next time I saw him, he was wearing a helmet and carrying a sniper rifle. I yelled, “That is NOT mental health support!” and he responded that the guy had a gun and hostages. We went back into the house at that point. This all went down around 4:30 in the afternoon. At about 8:30, I went out and asked how much longer they thought this would continue and when they would take the police tape down across the driveway. They said that they were moving it out in a few minutes; the guy had surrendered and would be getting some help.

The nervous system does some interesting things when in that kind of situation.

I am so grateful for my partner and his sense of humor. I did get a cabinet in the kitchen cleaned out, and the spice drawer too, and at some point, the tension really rattled the body. He started playing theme songs to all of the police dramas ever. He made me laugh, which is really important. Saturday still felt like those ripples that come after a trauma. Even though it was not my mental health crisis, I could identify with the guy in the crisis. I have been close to that point (okay, not with guns or hostages, but the crisis part).

I am a professional beginner in Buddhist practice when it comes to this stuff. I practice Metta a lot. I found myself repeating the mantras and deepening into the practice as my system spun out in an attempt to ground myself. Saturday felt a lot like grounding practice.

On Sunday, I woke up to an alert on my phone that we were to evacuate due to a fire at a nearby park. I was exhausted, hadn’t had coffee yet, and really wanted to sleep in, just this one day. I was trying to figure out what to do first, how to maneuver the four dogs and where we would go (not to the local high school, which was the evacuation center, because of the four dogs, and I was frayed).

I texted the neighbors to make sure they knew, and tried to get a plan together. When, faced with certain situations, there is a point when the best thing that we can do is to stop. I have been through fires before. I was evacuated for a week once during a particularly gnarly fire season. This was not that.

Michael took three of the dogs to the dog park, which was far from the fire, and I stayed to grab things and the fourth dog in case I actually needed to go. Thankfully, they got the fire under control. My nervous system, however, was not in great shape before, and was then facing exhaustion.

It was time for rest. I will still be in my professional beginner space; I will still practice Metta. I will continue to ground myself.

What does this have to do with Buddhism? Practice remains my fallback. Years of practice have ensured that I can at least get to my default. My body needs life to be easier than this because we are far more delicate than we think we are.

Be kinder to yourself.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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The Suttas: A Path To Happiness Because No Amount of Bowing Will Help Us Escape Stress

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Michelleanne Bradley
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