As anyone who knows post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will tell you, days and nights can be unpredictable. It can be the brightest day, in the loveliest place, or the most cozy night, nestled in cotton sheets, and you still feel like your being is sucked dry.
I fight a relentless battle with shame, fear, guilt, and anger—all emotions that are the opposite of joy. There are gray, depressing days. And nights, drenched in sweat, as recurring inception-like nightmares seep into the dawn. I’ve got the T-shirt for #ISurvivedHell.
In 2011, my psychologist first told me I had PTSD based on multiple instances of trauma from years of abuse from entitled authoritarians in the Evangelical ministry. But it is also rooted in childhood circumstances raised in an ultra-conservative Pentecostal minister’s home filled with racism, misogyny, bigotry, and neophobia. Shame, anxiety, and fear are significant parts of the trauma. As was an addiction to work and approval. I also tried to escape my pain by maintaining a rigorous discipline of marathon training and the exhilarating highs of solo mountain climbing.
The working, running, and climbing drove me to a near-constant state of exhaustion as I performed for the Sunday crowds and the gods I thought were vital to my approval. Note to all who get their validation from work: the workaholic is the most accepted addict. Everyone celebrates a hard worker. Why would you want to change your behavior when the bosses and society applaud you? Work is an insidious, permissive addiction, and for me, work resulted in approval, yet another socially acceptable addiction.
The debilitating need for approval was the defining characteristic of my mental health problems. When I gathered the courage to explore deep within, I found nothing but shame, fear, and guilt, and for me, coping with these unhealthy emotions demanded constant external feedback that I was a good person.
Healing didn’t arrive in a blinding flash of light.
If I could pick one thing that made the most remarkable difference— after treatment had stabilized me (I spent three years in therapy)—it was art: painting and writing.
What works for me as I try to find joy may not work for everyone else. Specific mental health conditions require equally unique treatments. In my experience, the secret to a joyful life is that there is no one secret. A qualified guide will tailor therapy to treat our unique self.
A caveat: I soon learned that one should not expect approval when creating art for one’s own sake. Most people (even your close friends) will not get it. And many people feel therapy is a waste. But, thankfully, I felt healing in the process, the gratitude of waking up with a sense of fulfillment, cultivating awareness of the beauty around me, and the ultimate medicine: the catharsis of flow.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, defines it as: “A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” The activity can be anything from painting and writing to meditation and surfboarding.
Any self-help book, guru, religion, or movement that fixates on making you feel joyful all the time is selling you a bill of goods. It doesn’t make sense in the messy world we live in. Telling people they must do good works, be perfect, repent from their sins, or “manifest” positive thoughts are overly simplistic remedies for complex issues.
I shake my head in disgust when yet another self-help book or program emerges in which hyped heroes tell how easy it is to put one’s life together. Say these two words, or do these five things ad nauseam. I don’t believe in quick fixes and am infuriated when anyone promises one.
At age forty-two, I was exhausted from attempting to heal my trauma with the next big self-help thing or by being a “better christian.” And after a few more horrendous years of looking for approval in all the wrong places, I was finally willing to do whatever I could to find peace of mind. The joy came later.
What did I do?
After investing in a lot of empathic and professional therapy and having a caring guide to help me explore the pain deep within, I slowly began to heal.
I began to read and research how to enjoy life. I painted my unhealthy emotions (shame, fear, guilt, anger) with watercolors. I started to write more honestly and openly about my struggles. I took psychedelics under the tutelage of a guide. I began to meditate. I took the drastic step of escaping to the wilderness for several years to commune with nature. I built nature trails and walked them with my dog, Remy. I created a vision quest for mid-life.
I focused on being more grateful. I read books because they calm me down. I started cooking more.
I made more time for friendship and the love of those who mattered most to me. Gina and I had endless candid conversations over coffee and cocktails. I honed the lost art of listening. I began to accept my sexual design and capacity. And more.
Words have power, and I continue to grow in my appreciation of poetry. Ironically, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the poem of a priest, James Kavanaugh, who renounced the Catholic church, has been cathartic for me.
There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men too gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant’s profit and gain.
There are men too gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of candied apples and ferris wheels
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who devour them with eager appetite and search
For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry.
There are men too gentle for an accountant’s world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove.
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant’s world,
Unless they have a gentle one to love.—James Kavanaugh (1970)
Perhaps I am too gentle for this world. I still have horrific, inception-like nightmares. But they are happening less. I still experience shame, but my art and writing are helping me picture it—and as they say, a picture paints a thousand words. Spain and Barcelona have been healing agents for my particular brand of body and sexual shame. The country’s open-minded views make sense to me.
Finally, focusing on the art and science of joy is not necessarily a cure-all for someone with a condition such as PTSD. But it has helped me live more joyfully with a condition that previously was debilitating. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I want to encourage those who are still wading through pain and who must struggle at times to hang on.
There is hope.
I am proud to be one of the gentle ones. There are, I believe, millions of us. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as our joy. Most importantly, we want to commune—to love and be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our journey, squelch our curiosity, or lock us in prison walls; that will champion us for who we truly are. We continue to explore life despite our trauma, perhaps because of it, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.
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