I didn’t want to write this blog, but I will because I am open to being wrong, learning from my mistakes, and hopefully encouraging a growth mindset in those watching my journey along the way.
The topic? Exposure Therapy for people healing from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Sounds Like Torture
The first time that I—a person healing from PTSD—heard about Exposure Therapy, it sounded like pure torture. You see, one of the core symptoms of PTSD is avoiding situations or memories that remind us of a traumatizing event.
“PTSD is a mental health condition that can develop after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, leading to intrusive memories, heightened anxiety, and avoidance of situations or memories that remind the person of the trauma.”
- ChatGPT
Every time a traumatized person like me is reminded of (a) traumatizing event(s), their body goes into a fear response (fight, flight, fawn, etc.) and it can take a lot of effort to get back to a regulated state, again. (As in, maybe all day, maybe weeks or months!) That is why people with PTSD get really good at learning their triggers and avoiding them, so that they can avoid the rollercoaster and try to live a normalish life.
Being Triggered on Purpose
On the other hand, Exposure Therapy is when a person intentionally enters those situations or memories in order to be triggered again, so that they can practice overwriting their automatic response from their triggers.
“Exposure therapy is a psychological treatment that helps people gradually face and reduce their fear or anxiety by safely confronting the situations, thoughts, or memories they avoid.”
- ChatGPT
Yeah. Pure torture.
It even sounds unethical… except that sometimes, it really works!
Voluntold for Exposure Therapy
I found out how effective exposing oneself to their triggers can be to overwriting those triggers through two, unintentional experiences of exposure therapy in my daily life that ended up healing my body of some deeply wired fear programs. I’m going to share them with you today so that you can figure out how and when to best intentionally incorporate this tool into your PTSD healing toolkit.
Unintentional Exposure Therapy #1: Labor
Like many people with PTSD, I eventually developed an overactive pain response that significantly interrupted my life. This overactive pain response, which peaked in 2020, presented as a complete meltdown at the smallest experience of pain:
- Stub my toe? Complete and utter crying meltdown mess.
- Hit my head on an open cabinet door? Immediately fall to the floor and curl up into the fetal position while sobbing.
- My husband throws something at me while we are playing but it hits me? Full-blown nuclear reaction.
You can see how disruptive this overactive pain response might be. Also, embarrassing. Like, I’m a f—ing combat veteran, a trained killer, a wife and soon-to-be mother in her late 30s, and stubbing my toe takes me OUT of the game.
I hated it.
Then, labor started.
WTF, God!
I had a plan, y’all! I had been praying into having a Supernatural Birth, or at least a calm, unmedicated hypnobirth, for months and I was sure that my spirituality would override my body’s natural leanings.
I was wrong.
The labor pains came.
They came with a vengeance.
By the time they were two minutes apart (after four hours of laboring overnight in my bed and in the shower—see picture), we went to the birthing center, where they told me I was zero centimeters dilated.
What?!
Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
Then, the doctor did something that I might be mad about forever. She swept my cervical membrane WITHOUT ASKING ME! She performed a non-lifesaving medical act upon the body of a woman who already had significant medical trauma without her consent.
You gotta be f—ing kidding me!
Well, that sweep put my labor pains into fifth gear and they got more frequent AND more intense. They started coming every minute and lasted for 50 seconds. That meant that I had 10 seconds of rest before another major contraction. This near-permanent contraction lasted for maybe two hours before my cervix finally dilated 3 cm—enough to be admitted into a birthing room.
As you can imagine, this almost-continuous pain experience put my brain into a full-blown PTSD flashback. My body thought it was back in the combat clinic in Baghdad, where my commander locked me up against my will when I asked for help, and refused to give me the medical care my doctor ordered.
I began telling myself out loud, “It is NOT 2007, and I am NOT in Iraq. It is 2020 and I’m in America.” I said it over and over, but none of my grounding tools was getting my body out of this flashback.
I realized that my overactive pain response was hijacking my birth plan, so I yelled, “Get me an epidural!!!” to which the hospital said, “Absolutely! That’s why we’re here. We have meds out the wazoo!”
Then, nothing.
For a-whole-nother hour, no epidural came. They were busy, somewhere else, doing something else. My doula was shocked. She said that in over a dozen births, she’s never seen this birthing center take more than five minutes to give someone an epidural from the moment they ask for one.
For 60 back-to-back contractions, there was no relief from the physical pain, nor from the psychological flashbacks they were causing. I screamed like I was dying during every single contraction. I have never screamed like that before or since.
An Unexpected Guest
Then, Yeshu (Jesus) walked into the room and sat down at the head of my birthing tub with a smile on his face.
“God!” I screamed. “What is going on?! I know I have faith and power enough to overcome labor pains, but it’s like I’m… impotent! Why are my prayers not working?!?”
“Because you haven’t been healed yet,” he replied.
“Are you going to heal me?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Why?! What the f— is going on?!”
He didn’t reply, but he remained there, calm and smiling until the epidural team finally arrived and I got out of the tub. They worked their voodoo magic. The pain went away.
Then, my labor stalled.
My baby got distressed.
We moved into having an emergency c-section.
And my birth plan was utterly and completely ruined.
One Week Later
I was mad at God for the whole first week of my baby’s life. Why did he turn off my prayer power on one of the most important days of my life? (It came back as soon as I got home, by the way.) How could he leave me to suffer in such agony with a smile on his face? WTF was going on?!
Then, at midnight on the seventh day, as I was on duty, caring for our baby, I leaned over to pick something up off the floor and hit my head on a door handle hard.
“Did you feel that?!” God said, out of the blue (as we hadn’t really been talking since the bathtub incident).
“Ouch!” I said out loud. “That really hurt!”
“I know!” God said. “But what aren’t you doing right now?”
I looked around for a second, not sure what God was talking about. Then, it dawned on me. Something was missing.
“I’m not crying,” I replied. “I’m not falling over and having a complete meltdown.”
“That’s right!” God replied with a huge smile on his face. I recognized that smile. It was the same smile that had been on Yeshu’s face when he visited me in the birthing tub one week ago.
“That’s what you were talking about when you said I hadn’t been healed yet?” I asked.
“Yup!” replied God.
“You used near-constant labor pains to overwrite my overactive pain response?” I asked for clarification.
“Exactly,” God said. “Exposure Therapy!”
“Oh,” I replied. “Well, I hated it. Also, it worked. So thank you.”
Unintentional Exposure Therapy #2: Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment
I will tell you about my second experience next time.
Leave a Reply