BLOG

Caretaking Our Personalities when Encountering PTSD

Posted by DCA Theater on February 17, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, INCUBATOR Series: The Vet Art Project

by Janis Clark Johnston, Ed.D., Licensed Psychologist and Vet Art Project collaborator

Caretaking Our Personalities when Encountering PTSD

“…for the structure that we raise Time is with materials filled;
Our today’s and yesterdays are the blocks with which we build.”
—Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  All Are Architects

We build our personality story-house of memories one story at a time, and throughout our lifetime, we keep plastering our story-house walls to remodel certain aspects of our personalities.  Our personality story-houses are not set in “hard plaster.” Research supports a “soft plaster” personality that can change throughout our life, and we may expect more personality changes after the age of 30. We keep gathering stories everyday, but something interesting happens to our story-house of memories when we face trauma. 

When we face scary terrain, we may bury the details of the painful stories we gather; we stash them away from our present awareness in our personality story-houses.  There is a biological explanation for why we cannot focus on the immediate terrible details.  When we perceive our life, or even our well-being, as threatened, our immediate attention goes into survival mode. Later, we may not think about any problem solving for our emotional well-being, as we may experience confusion and/or anguish when we confront such traumatic events.

While we may not be able to focus our present attention in a traumatic event, the ordeal stores in nonverbal form in our brains. And whether we acknowledge frightening details from our past or not, story fragments exist in our basement time capsule of our story-house, making up our personality foundation (along with nonverbal memories from our early years).  We shove traumatic details, and sometimes, whole memories, down the basement stairs of our story-house.  We may try to forget about this basement level of our personality story-house, consciously preferring to live on higher ground.  However, some basements flood.  A situation, or even a neighbor’s experience, can trigger a deluge of forgotten memories to rise from the walls of our personality basement.  Like ancient hieroglyphics, old stories beckon us to decipher their meaning.

“We become the stories that we tell; our stories aren’t single authored.”  —Psychologist Monisha Pasupathi

Actually, all of our stories are composite stories, as we frequently incorporate bits of other people’s stories into our own personality story-house.  Like the wooden Russian doll that houses many smaller dolls inside, we layer our life stories within stories when we recall our earlier experiences.  Later, our story fragments combine in remodeled renditions as we tell our stories to others.  As psychologist Dan McAdams suggests, we tell others who we are by the stories we share from our experiences; storytelling appears across cultures and helps us organize our lives. 

“The story is a natural package for organizing many different kinds of information. Storytelling appears to be a fundamental way of expressing ourselves and our world to others…much of what passes for everyday conversations among people is storytelling of one form or another.”  —Psychologist Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By: Personal Myths and the Meaning of the Self.

How to Care for Your Personality Story-house

1. Be present when a story fragment rises from your “basement” time capsule.  Breathe several deep breaths, taking a longer time to exhale from each breath than the time you take for your inhale.

2. Recognize that you are a creator.  Creativity is one of our basic needs as a person.  What can you recreate with the information that you have just received from your personality story-house of memories?

3. Stay curious about any story fragments that reach your awareness at this time.  Work with whatever comes to mind – in writing, in typing, in music, in movements, in painting, or in sketching any pieces that float into your consciousness.  It does not matter if you write sentences, phrases, or simply a series of words.  Some people have no words, but have images.  Some people have both words and images. The idea is to externalize, or put “out there,” your words and/or images so that you can gain perspective on their storytelling for your life.

4. You may want to express your words/images to a trusted individual, or you may choose to process and work on your own, keeping a journal of your externalized story fragments.  Some people have a habit of writing or sketching for a brief time everyday.
 
5. Be kind to your physical body during this recreating journey.  Eat nutritious foods, get enough sleep, and engage in simple exercise. Even stretching exercises while sitting in your chair can expand your capacity for awareness.

6. Know that you are not alone in your feelings about traumatic story fragments.  People have mirror neurons; these brain cells enable us to perceive somebody else’s emotions/actions.  We are more alike one another than we may have realized.