Telling Stories

Once Upon a Mind

A few years ago, I was at a fundraising dinner, seated next to a Vietnam veteran who self-admittedly had severe PTSD. While discussing his condition, he said to me, “That stuff never goes away.” My response wasn’t what you might expect. I stated that while his recollections of specific events won’t disappear, the narratives he had constructed about them (including, “That stuff never goes away”) absolutely could. I told him he was wrong. This may seem like a harsh declaration to make to someone with his condition. But I assert it’s a valuable lesson as one of the formerly afflicted.

For roughly twelve years, I suffered from a form of post-traumatic stress, too. It was never officially diagnosed, but during that time, events from my past haunted me daily. Eventually, this led to an anxiety disorder, debilitating physical symptoms, and a complete mental collapse. What I didn’t realize then was how much of the situation was my own doing. The initial circumstances and my memories about it weren’t the actual problem. The real issue was how I reacted to it all by telling stories.

The following is a chronicle of how this unraveled for me and the lessons I learned as a result. It’s deeply personal, but I think others might relate (at least conceptually) to what I’m about to share. Hopefully, I can help some of you avoid going down this same path or change course if you are already on it.

In the middle of my active duty military career, I made what I can best classify as a “tactical error.” I won’t go into specific details about what happened as I don’t believe in publicly recounting war stories. Besides, my mental response to the situation is much more critical and relevant to the discussion here. Basically, I felt like I let my teammates down, and I struggled to get past this feeling. I replayed scenarios over and over in my mind, wishing I had somehow acted differently.

Of course, humans err all the time, and we learn to reconcile and live with mistakes. Occasionally, however, we falter in a way that eats at us. Maybe we miss the game-winning shot or act dishonestly to someone we respect. Whatever the case, we can't let go of this transgression of ability, effort, or character. That’s where I found myself, and it’s when the narrative started to form, with initial interpretations and adjudications like:

You are a failure.

You are an embarrassment.

This went on for a while. I spent years telling myself these things repeatedly every day. But the process began to snowball as well. Eventually, I started thinking about all my friends and teammates who had died in the line of duty. It didn’t seem fair that I was alive and they weren’t, especially given the internal dialogue I had uttered for so long. Slowly, these new thoughts worked their way into the narrative as it evolved and morphed:

Those guys were better men than you.

You should be dead, not them.

As time went on, I became convinced that something must be killing me, like cancer or another fatal condition. You may be reading this and thinking, “That’s completely irrational.” You’re right. Nonetheless, I legitimately believed it. To me, it all made perfect sense and seemed like cosmic, karmic justice.

However, my theory also needed evidence. So I went looking for it. I started noticing any tiny feeling I had somewhere in my body, like a tingle here or a slight stabbing pain there. These happen all the time to everybody, and most people dismiss them as nothing (because they usually are). For me, those sensations became the justification for a fatal diagnosis, a forecast of imminent death. As a result, my attention turned constantly inward, obsessively body-scanning.

As much as I felt like this imagined crippling disease was something I deserved, I was still terrified of it. I went to the doctor and asked about the strange symptoms I was having. I begged him to run various tests on me. Even as every result came back normal, I became increasingly afraid. My condition transformed to include omnipresent paralyzing anxiety and panic attacks. I began having chest pains. My jaw would go numb. I’d be dizzy all the time. My fears of these sensations only exacerbated a never-ending loop of exploration, fixation, apprehension, and intensification. The cycle went on ad infinitum.

Finally, after years of this gradually metastasizing, I had a mental breakdown. I came home from work one night and couldn’t deal with it anymore. My mind was shattered, my body was racked, and I was convinced I was dying. I got to my front steps and fell down sobbing. My oldest son, who wasn’t even four at the time, walked up behind me and just stood there confused and incredulous, trying to process why his father was crying on the ground in front of the house. He looked up and down the street, then back at me before saying, “Daddy, there are no monsters out here.”

All a child's mind could fathom was that I feared beasts roaming our neighborhood. Of course, he was right about the demons, just not about their location. I looked back at him through tears, pointed to my head, and said, “No, buddy, the monsters are in here.”

I guess I knew this was essentially a mental problem. But at the time, I had no idea what to do about it. And all of this was only the beginning of what would become a decade-long saga. There’s a lot more to it. For now, though, I want to focus on how it all started—with a story. The reality is that I took a simple memory of an incident no one else dwelled on or cared about and contorted it into some Stygian Greek tragedy where the hero must die. Ultimately, that’s what created my condition, and it was 100% self-inflicted.

The good news is that I no longer suffer this way. My turnaround started when I was introduced to a therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR is a non-invasive treatment in which a therapist has you recall specific memories and then talks you through them while you are exposed to pulsing sounds (and sometimes lights) that coincide with vibrations from paddles you hold in your hands. Then, they ask you how you want to feel about these memories compared to how you currently feel about them.

I don’t know how this works physiologically, but practically, it helped me realize the simple truth that I could tell a new story. This is not an advertisement for EMDR as a cure for PTSD or a panacea against unwanted memories. But it did teach me that the memories themselves were not the problem. It was how I interpreted them. It was the narrative I was telling myself about them. The recollections are still there; they just don’t bother me as they used to.

Of course, there are other ways to get the same result. Right around this same time, I also started practicing meditation. The point of such a routine is to treat your thoughts as what they are—thoughts. To notice them instead of identifying with them. To let them arise and fall away without judgment or fear. In addition, I found many of the techniques detailed in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)¹ extremely helpful.

Unfortunately, overcoming the physical symptoms that can accompany this kind of condition is a tougher challenge. In my experience, even after I understood what was happening, the somatic side effects didn’t disappear on their own. The best way I found to deal with those was through various neural retraining systems like DNRS, The Gupta Program, and re-origin.

Don't expect things to change overnight if you are dealing with anything like what I did. But realize it’s possible with determination. That starts by simply paying attention to the narrative you are creating. Ironically, we tend to forget that we only bring the past into the present through memories (often not very accurate ones).² You can let them be without passing judgment or searching for meaning. You can also alter whatever you’re telling yourself. Your mind is an audience of one. Often, they aren’t enjoying the show. However, that stuff can go away if you rewrite the script.

DISCLAIMER: RARE SENSE® content is not medical advice. Nor does it represent the official position or opinions of any other organization or person. If you require diagnosis or treatment for a mental or physical issue or illness, please seek it from a licensed professional.

1. If this interests you, start with the book The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.

2. I highly recommend this article to learn how memories are formed and rebuilt.