My story

BEFORE THERE WAS A ME - My father suffered severe PTSD from World War II. I now know he did, even though he was not diagnosed until he was almost 70, and then his diagnosis was bipolar disorder. He also grew up in the Great Depression and slept on a porch so his sisters could have beds. In college his ‘dorm' room’ was the barn where he swapped caring for the animals for the roof over his head. My mom was from a less poor family but, when I confronted her with my own abuse as a child and I declared that she just didn’t understand, she quietly bowed her head and said, “Yes, I understand. Your grandfather’s business partner came to town and stayed with us from January to April every year and made it clear that he was to get WHATEVER he wanted or else he’d ruin my father’s business”. She made it clear that WHATEVER included her.

NEW REFLECTIONS - Just a few years ago, I could not have begun my story this way, acknowledging their pain. I would only have been able to tell of my own pain, of being a victim of early childhood abuse at the hands of primary caregivers. I also would not have known then that early childhood trauma has a very different impact on a person than trauma experienced later in life. Books are written about the difference, and entire research studies are being done to test treatments for those who suffer early childhood abuse. Many very important treatments for trauma such as EMDR have been found to be more effective than medications for all PTSD sufferers except those whose trauma began in early childhood.

DISCOVERY - I know, I haven’t told you much of my story yet, but my entire reason for writing is to let you know that many, many normal and even highly praised modalities didn’t help me. BUT Holographic Memory Resolution did. I found it almost 15 years ago. No, actually my daughter found it. She fell off a cliff while hiking and broke a rib. She suffered panic attacks and was recommended to see two of the first trainees in HMR. They found that she was from Mississippi and recommended she go to the retreat there led by Brent Baum, the developer of the work that they did. She was teaching school at the time and couldn’t get off work to attend the retreat but ‘gave’ me the retreat as a birthday gift. I experienced 3 HMR sessions with Brent and the rest is history. I’ve had more than 3 now, but those first 3 changed me so much that my psychologist dropped her notepad when seeing me after those 3 and said, “I never had any hope you would get to this level of healing.” She knew EMDR but didn’t feel I was a candidate for it.

DIS-EASE - Prior to meeting Brent, I’d been in a wheelchair and been declared 100% disabled with rheumatoid by two different rheumatologists. And this was after being diagnosed with 34 diseases, mostly autoimmune. I’d spent 10 years and many dollars with six psychologists and many more medical doctors but my condition gradually worsened until HMR. I’m now testing negative for the autoimmune diseases, but it’s interesting to see them listed. When I do seminars, I list them in alphabetical order. I’m working on choreography so I can do a song & dance with them, celebrating being out of that wheelchair!

LEARNING - As I’ve healed, trained in HMR, and begun working with clients, I’ve continued years of education about trauma. I’ve learned that our body’s protective design is such that, when we see, smell, hear, or feel anything that reminds us of a prior scary event, our primitive brain, the one with which we were born, sends signals to the lower body to get us out of that location quickly. Our body responds with a surge of hormones to accomplish this. When that happens, we also have little access to our Prefrontal Cortex so we have little cognitive thinking. The result is that we react totally appropriately as to the original event but perhaps very inappropriately to our current stage of life. The fascinating thing is that, to our subconscious, we are still in the original event.

DEVELOPMENT - And, researchers now know that when we are not properly protected in early childhood, we don’t develop trust. Perhaps greater than that, major portions of our brains do not develop in their normal time frames, so we aren’t capable of such things as proper language to even describe our own trauma.

TRIGGERS - All this is to very briefly explain that my early childhood abuse caused me to rarely feel safe, not have the language to explain what I felt, and not trust others. My body was also triggered by green chairs, the smell of leather, men’s Western shirts, khaki pants, green trucks, certain calendar days, and windshield wipers, among other things. When seeing or hearing those things, my adrenaline and cortisol shot up to provide fight or flight. I now know that, when this happens, our digestive system shuts down and, perhaps more importantly, our immune system quits creating thymus cells and is accordingly greatly weakened. No wonder my immune system was shot! There were lots of green chairs, green trucks, Western shirts, khakis, leather, and windshield wipers in my life for years. Why, one counselor I saw off and on for years insisted his clients sit in a green leather chair in his office. I never did, even taking a wide berth around it, until my first 3 HMR sessions. When I returned to his office to show him how much I’d improved from HMR, I entered his office and headed directly toward the green leather chair. He jumped up to stop me from sitting there but caught himself when he saw how relaxed I was as I sat there, claiming my right to be fully in my body and safe, even in a green chair. That was such an empowering moment for me.

More of my story later.