On constructing a narrative of your life

I was listening to a podcast last week (NPR's On Being).  In it, Krista Tippet (the host) and Bessel van der Kolk (a psychiatrist and expert on trauma) were discussing trauma in the context of "Restoring the Body."  It was fascinating to hear them delve into the mind-body connection, but I was brought to a complete mental halt as he talked about how memories are formed.  All people will experience trauma.  It is a fact of life.  Some will experience trauma in horrific amounts, while others will only have "small-t" traumas that haunt their life.  Some people get stuck in the trauma, reliving it, unable to process and make sense of their memories.  In a very real way, they are unable to in-corporate (deal with in their corporeal selves) their traumatic experiences.  These are the people who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  It can be horrific.

On the other hand, there are those who experience trauma and in some way they are able to make sense of it.  They process the trauma, deal with it, and in a very real way, are no longer haunted by this memory.  Upon further study, Kolk discovered the primary difference between these two groups.  On the one hand, those who felt deeply their unresolved trauma, and were still in the grip of the event (or person) that had traumatized them remembered the event quite clearly.  In fact, they remembered the event as it happened to them.  In discussing events with the other group of people (those who were not suffering from PTSD), Kolk made a surprising discovery:  those who were able to deal with trauma had done so by constructing a narrative of their life, and fitting the traumatic event into their story.

It didn't matter if it was actually true.  Kolk found that, objectively, those who suffered from PTSD had clearer, more accurate recollections of their trauma.  They remembered it as it actually happened.  And this remembering of pain and horror as it had happened was what left them stuck and unable to break free from their trauma.

Kolk and Tippet go on to talk about how actually in-corporating those memories (through yoga, mindfulness, EMDR, and other therapies) can help break that cycle, but I was struck with the tension between remembering accurately and being stuck in your trauma.

That's what this space is.  Hopefully, it is a space to make meaning of the traumas (big-T and little-t) in life, to find the truth, but in some ways to transcend it, and find the deeper meaning in what has happened.  I want to be healthy.  I don't want to be someone who is so caught up in being 100% factually accurate that I miss the truth of the narrative, the meaning in the poetry, and leave myself caught spinning in the wounds of long-ago.

-----

I don't want to live in the past.  The future is unexplored territory.  I want my heart to be captivated by the present.

A client shared today, "We spend so much time with one leg in the past and the other leg in the future that we just end up pissing all over the present."

I don't want to piss my life away.  I don't want to piss your life away either.  The only value that comes of these ramblings is how it impacts our presents - what we choose to do - how we choose to be - whom we choose to love.  I want to choose better.  I want us all to choose again.  I want to see us choosing life.  Here.  Now.  This moment.