Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story (40 page)

Just 2,999 more times of nailing it until I embodied the state I’d set as my goal to exist in. Maybe. Probably at least. I was still a year away from attaining even once a sadness that felt not alarming or awful, but exquisite. From feeling as if suffering and sadness were natural and intriguing, thinking righteously,
Who
said
I shouldn’t feel like this sometimes? That anyone shouldn’t?

In the meantime, Nico did everything he could to help.

Two years into my disorder, I extended acceptance and understanding to others, to sources and to the strangers who e-mailed me. But I still cursed my own symptoms when they showed up. It was Nico who tried to foster acceptance for my irritable heart.

“Who are you?” I asked him once as we lay in bed in the afternoon. He’d given me a kiss, and my body had disappeared, and when I looked at him, I didn’t know who he was. I
knew
who he was. But I couldn’t feel like I knew who he was.

“I’m your husband,” he said.

That made me cry for not having recognized him. In addition to feeling lost, I became very sad and scared.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, cradling my head into his shoulder.

I heard this, and considered the current evidence. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

Nico hated it when I condemned my crazy. He had long ago reached the space I needed to be in, the one where I wouldn’t judge, the one where I wouldn’t hate myself or my emotions, where I felt like they were OK. He didn’t miss a beat, creating a soft cloud of compassion around us by revising his answer, which he delivered with a kiss.

“Nothing bad.”

EPILOGUE

That night, a year or so into our marriage, Nico was working late at the bistro.

That night, I got home from the office building I rented with other writers downtown and got in the shower. And at the end, I did my exercises.

I tried to invite my body to take up space under the stream of water, starting with the hardest direction: breadth. Width. I breathed expansively across my chest. Or tried; I couldn’t do it. My shoulders were tight. I shook out like a loopy child, one doing a chimpanzee impression, naked, arms swinging low but hard around me, back to front by swooping around the sides.

I tried again.
Breathe
. I envisioned myself wide. Out past the confines of the shower stall, and already something softened and gave, wetting my eyes.

Keep going.

Visualize expanding across the street, right down San Jose Avenue to the right, past Mission Street toward San Francisco Bay to the left.

Oh, there it is, the obstruction. After everything else started to soften and relax, the hardest part stood out, a tense pit in my abdomen that today, like perhaps most days, was made up of fear and shame.

Where did that come from?
I wondered, scanning automatically for some disgusting behavior in my recent or distant past.

I abandoned that, remembering, for once, that it wasn’t my fault that it was there.
Try to be nice to it
, I remembered, too, and tried it. Again.

I put my hands over it, below my belly button and to the right where it seemed to live. I started picking my weight up off of one foot, then the other. Left foot up, right foot up. My shoulders swayed side to side into the movement, so that eventually I was rocking it. Holding it and rocking it like a baby, not like an unwanted one, saying to it, “It’s OK.”

It’s OK
, I repeated internally,
you can be here
.
You deserve to be here
. Rocking, rocking. Left, right. Hands cupping my abdomen.
I don’t know why you’re here but I’ll take care of you
, I said, then stopped, the realization of what I was about to say next, and mean it, knocking me back into the wall.

I understand you’re just trying to take care of me, too
.

SOURCE NOTES

This book contains a lot of private information that was taken from my personal notes or history and corroborated, whenever possible, with friends, family members, and other relevant sources. The rest of it was fact-checked to hell and back. All printed sources, expert interviews, previously published reporting, studies, consultants, and statistics are identified in these notes. My fact-checker—fellow reporter and fellow fiercely trained fact-checker Sydney Brownstone—and I have indicated instances in which we found the “facts” to be particularly contentious and have in some cases offered extra explanation. I put that word in scare quotes because estimating something even as concrete and measurable as a body count is complicated enough (indeed, see a disagreement about Haiti’s earthquake casualties in the notes for Chapter One); estimates are necessarily more nebulous with rates of traumatization in a world or national population. Still, they are valuable in attempting to understand truths about our world, and so are humbly presented for further scrutiny here. I’ve also presented them and other citations as a resource for anyone, traumatized or otherwise, who might want to learn more. The most frequent source of these citations is the sensitive, revolutionary, invaluable volume that stands as my trauma Bible, Judith Lewis Herman’s
Trauma and Recovery
.

One further note about sources: A few names in this book have been changed, and each for very good reasons. I didn’t modify any other identifying details about people but omitted plenty in the service of their anonymity.

PART I

“If your heart turned away…”: Moore, p. 120.

CHAPTER ONE

7.0 earthquake: U.S. Geological Survey.

290,000 buildings: Disasters Emergency Committee.

There’s some controversy over the number of casualties from the Haiti quake. The Haitian government immediately estimated deaths at 230,000; a year later, it estimated 316,000. An outside study said the number was 158,000 (Kolbe et al. 2010). An unpublished U.S. Agency for International Development study (Schwartz et al) estimated 46,000 to 85,000 deaths. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, Edmond Mulet, head of the UN mission in Haiti, estimated 300,000 wounded, and the Disasters Emergency Committee stands by that figure. A June 2013 study estimated the true number of injuries to be far less: 124,577 (Doocy et al). My “at least” 290,000 strikes a middle ground between the estimates. See also Maura O’Connor; Archibold.

three and a half million affected: Disasters Emergency Committee.

fewer than 10 million lived there: Central Intelligence Agency.

more than a million Haitians displaced in camps: U.S. Agency for International Development.

1,300 camps: U.S. Department of State.

one of the largest UN forces on the planet: Center for Economic Policy and Research.

Nineteen million cubic meters of rubble/from London to Beirut: United Nations Environment Programme.

people liked to say that: Desvarieux, for one example.

most national government buildings damaged: Disasters Emergency Committee.

CHAPTER TWO

Haiti reporting scenes/Haiti feature: McClelland 12.

“we have double problems”: Amnesty International for additional sourcing on this issue.

50 rapes and sexual assaults a day/more than half of minors: Kolbe and Hutson.

no comprehensive protection plan: Amnesty International, p. 3; Kaelin.

55,000 homeless on a golf course: The Petionville Club; Galloway.

one of the deadliest earthquakes: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

more than 10,000 peacekeepers: United Nations 2.

power went out frequently: McClelland 8.

five camp dwellers died: Logistics Cluster.

write about it in an unrelated story: McClelland 22.

went on for more than half an hour: McClelland 9.

eighteen rape cases tried: Beliard.

“Mac, you’re done”: McClelland 9.

CHAPTER THREE

“you will tell everybody in America”: McClelland 1, p. 150.

standing in oil: Mechanic.

“In St. Bernard Parish…”: McClelland 5.information about sessions with and methodology of Meredith Broome: Broome.

largest accidental oil spill in history: Farzaneh.

collusion of local police: McClelland 3.

moonlighting as BP private security: McClelland 4, 6.

Deepwater Horizon gushed for 87 days: Federal On-Scene Coordinators, p. xiv.

journalists not always trained in trauma-related self-care: Some organizations provide mental health advice and resources, notably the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

rates of PTSD among journalists: Range from 5.9 percent to 28.6 percent. Conditional risk in general population is 9 percent. Smith and Newman; Breslau et al.

side reporting trip to Oklahoma feature: McClelland 11.

3,000 BIA officers patrolling 56 million acres of Indian territory in 35 states: Bulzomi.

nearly two-thirds of Indian crime victims described their offenders as white: Perry, p. v.

tribes don’t have jurisdiction over non-Indians: Unless Congress grants that power.
Oliphant
.

American Indians experience twice the national rate of violent crime: Perry.

some tribes 20 times the rate: Fletcher.

more than one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women raped: Amnesty International USA, p. 2.

federal attorneys turned down 65 percent of reservation cases: Between 1997 and 2006: Garcia, p. 7.

defining goal of somatics: Strozzi-Heckler 1, p. 9.

CHAPTER FOUR

dissociation: Dell and O’Neill.

“partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s psychological functioning”: Dell and O’Neill, p. xxi.

cognitive, psychological, neurological, and affective systems triggered by an event: Boulanger, p. 79.

common response and coping mechanism: Brunet 2; Acierno.

an escape from feelings: Strozzi-Heckler 1, p. 131.

“Terror leading to catastrophic dissociation…”: Boulanger, p. 74.

PTSD symptoms must persist a month in order to qualify: Weathers et al; American Psychiatric Association.

definition of trauma criteria: Weathers et al; American Psychiatric Association.

helplessness, fear, and horror don’t necessarily predict PTSD: Friedman et al.

sudden, unexpected death of a loved one/emotional disasters can cause PTSD: National Institute of Mental Health; Lilienfeld and Arkowitz.

hearing about or being continuously exposed to other people’s trauma: Weathers et al; American Psychiatric Association.

PTSD complicated even within psychology: For a few recent disputes, see Lynn O’Connor; Lilienfeld and Arkowitz; and Wylie 2.

lack of openness and regular conversation about trauma: The Ochberg Society for Trauma Journalism devoted an issue to this matter in Summer 2014. Again, some organizations provide mental health advice and resources, notably the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

failure to include sexual harassment and sexual violence: CPJ’s comments on that, McClelland 21.

Herman on Freud: Herman 1, p. 10-20.

Freud’s breakthrough 1896 paper: Freud.

Freud’s attribution of hysteria: “… the symptoms of hysteria are determined by certain experiences of the patient’s which have operated in a traumatic fashion and which are being reproduced in his psychical life in the form of mnemic symbols.” Freud.

strongest, smartest minds susceptible to hysteria: Freud; Masson 2.

strongest, smartest minds
especially
susceptible to hysteria: Breuer and Freud, p. 240.

Freud on the frequency of childhood sexual abuse: “It seems to me certain that our children are far more often exposed to sexual assault than the few precautions taken by parents in this connection would lead us to expect.” Freud.

statistics bear out high rates of rape and molestation a hundred years later: Rates of child sexual abuse are estimated to be between 7 percent and 36 percent for women, between 3 percent and 29 percent for men. Finkelhor. For rape statistics, see below in this chapter’s notes.

Freud ostracized: Freud scholar Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson cites Freud’s personal letters, which he had exclusive access to as former head of the Sigmund Freud Archives, to describe why Freud might abandon his early seduction theory. “I felt as though I were despised and universally shunned,” Freud wrote to Wilhelm Fliess after his 1896 presentation. Eventually, Freud reversed his earlier ideas, and concluded that the psychological distress arose from suppressed perversions—impressions in the patient’s mind rather than real experience. Seduction theory, and Masson’s scholarship of it, remains controversial in the psychoanalytic community. Masson 1, Chapter 4.

shell shock: Sharp.

shell shock didn’t pan out per evidence: Herman 1, p. 20-21; Crocq and Crocq.

“moral invalids”: Courtesy of French neurologist Andre Leri. Leri, p. 118; Herman 1, p. 20.

General George S. Patton gets slappy: Report from Lt. Col. Perrin H. Long cited in letter from General Eisenhower to Patton. Blumenson, p. 330.

British Ministry of Defence pardons soldiers: Fenton.

Greeks “out of heart” and “unwilling to encounter danger”: Herodotus; Bentley.

Civil War doctors diagnosed Union troops as suffering from nostalgia: 5,547 between 1861 and 1866. Anderson, p. 258.

Da Costa and irritable heart: Hyams, Wignall, and Roswell; Wooley.

Herman on how women’s liberation and human rights movements have facilitated the discussion of trauma: Herman 1, pp. 2-4.

rape trauma syndrome and accident neurosis: Rosen and Frueh, p. 6.

similar symptoms for rape and combat veterans: Burgess and Holmstrom; Herman 1, p. 31.

number of assignments, intensity, and social and organizational stress risk factors for journalists: Smith and Newman; Newman, Simpson, and Handschuh; Pyevich, Newman, and Daleiden.

entering a dissociative state strong predictor of long-term PTSD: Brunet 2; Schore; Brewin, Andrews, and Valentine; DePrince, Chu, and Visvanathan.