Mindful Listening and Mental Health
By: Sylvia Clare Msc. Psychol
Tags: Mindfulness, Dark Night Of The Soul, Mental Health, Self, Love

Sometimes listening and saying little or nothing in response is the kindness we actually need. Certainly this is my preferred approach and also to be on the receiving end of. Sometimes a friend can become a huge burden when you can least cope with it. Knowing when these apply can help us all be mindfully aware and better friends to each other.

I have had complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for most of my life, as a result of a traumatic childhood. That is not my problem any more. That is largely resolved and I live a wonderful loving life with my family and the handful of closer friends who understand me, who have learned to understand me over a long time or, who have had similar experiences.

BUT occasionally the PTSD gets triggered once more and although I can manage it, these times can be extremely distressing. In this time I am terrified once more. My nervous system is shot to pieces one more, on maximum alert. My body muscles are all tensed against something unknown. I am not sleeping and if I do sleep I jerk awake again with a shocking sense of impending doom and alertness that is completely on guard against some unknown threat which my conscious mind knows full well is all nonsense.

My conscious mind knows this is all completely unnecessary, that there is no threat to me, that all is as well as it can be and there is nothing being done to me or needing me to do in that moment. My Amygdala does not know this though, and it gets in there first. It takes quite a long while to calm it down again and convince it everything is indeed alright after all, sometimes days and sometimes weeks. The amygdala is part of the limbic system of the brain and is damaged in development during an abusive early life so that the stress response networks are overdeveloped and the calm/ happy ones are under developed.

It is a matter of some self respect that for most of my life I am now in the calm zones, as a result of my long term mindfulness practice and adherence to the spiritual way of life. This path has literally given me a wonderful life.

Recently I got badly triggered and it floored me over a period of days. It was to do with a member of my family going into hospital and possibly not coming out again. That was not the problem in itself but it had all the echoes of when my own parents were at end of life and I attempted to reconnect with them both before it was too late. It was a disaster for me. After them both dying I was in a complete broken state for many years as all the emotional toxicity within my body discharged itself. Literally everything I had bottled up for decades was flying free all over the place and it brought me to a place of complete brokenness.

For those on a spiritual path, you will understand that this long six year dark night of the soul was also a period of transformation for me, cleansing me of all the falsities and brave faces and ‘people pleasing behaviour’ I had developed to try and hide my damage from others. I surrendered to the process because it was too huge to do anything else and my coping strategies had all been used up. I was a hollowed out shell for much of that time.

SO being triggered back into anything even slightly similar to that time is not a pleasant reminder or something I feel the need to go through again.

Before the triggering kicked in I made the mistake of mentioning to a few acquaintances that a relative was in hospital and it was touch and go, but that is life and death after all, no big deal, just something to face that is all. No one wants people to die but we all will, and we are a pragmatic family on that front.

But then the triggers from the past started to show themselves, I was feeling overly anxious and then wired and eventually full blown PTSD mode once more.

I asked those people to whom I had mentioned this news to leave me alone. Some did and some did not. Some took it upon themselves to enquire how the relative was doing, any news, how was I feeling etc. Each time that took me right back into the trauma when I was using distraction techniques to reign it in. I retreated to working in my garden, to my safe haven of nature in a private space where ‘no one can get me’. I asked them to stop. They ignored that request, and then it was to ‘meet up for coffee and talk about it’, followed by long spiels about their loved ones passing in previous years.

They were not listening to me or to my needs. They were gas lighting me by telling me how I should react and feel and denying my right to my own actual lived experience of how I felt. They were criticising me for my lack of response to them as they thought I should be responding. I get it. People do not understand PTSD, it is not depression though if I was depressed the same would apply.

I asked them once again to stop and they then reproached me for misunderstanding their friendship intentions and being angry and hostile. The victimhood and negative energy in the guise of sympathy that was pouring out of these people was overwhelming me and taking me further and further down — I could not meet their needs — I could not even meet my own needs fully but was doing everything I knew to do to keep myself on the right side of sane. They had marvelous relationships with their mother and were intent on telling me how much it hurt when their mother died but totally ignored that this was the complete opposite for me with my mother who was a psychopathic narcissist whose main goal in life seemed to be enjoying her bouts of cruelty and viciousness towards me. Not helping me all about them still and not listening to me at all. More echoes of mother. It was as if I did not even figure in the story any more.

I now felt I was being pursued, in much the same way as my mother pursued me through out her life, not able to let me live my life even when I went no contact. I felt like I was being gaslighted, made demands from and not listened to or respected by this acquaintance. From here on in I now went right down, shaking, screaming and heart thudding to near fainting levels if someone made me jump ( it happened) and even my husband whistled as he walked down the garden to let me know he was coming before he reached me. I was in a very very bad place and in the end was obliged to reach out for meds. I take valium for the immediate relief even though I dislike taking it, and high dose but slow release beta blockers to stop the nervous system over-reacting. I am almost sleeping ok now again though I am still very nervously over-reactive. It is going to take me sometime to recover from this. I estimate at least a month to return to normal. All the while we are still managing the situation with the elderly relative.

I am also necessarily completely withdrawn from all social contact at the moment, I just cannot take the risk with most people yet, because I am so sensitive that a slight hint of sympathy, pity oversharing/ relating and anything else would just take me right down again.

Which brings me to the point I want to make. Sometimes listening silently is the best thing we can do, to be with some one and put our own issues and needs and expectations completely to the side. To be a good friend sometimes we have to stop being ‘ the good friend’, to stop imposing our perceptions and expectations onto others when they are vulnerable.

I know this acquaintance will probably pursue me to show what a good and forgiving friend she really is and she will probably never understand how much additional damage she did to me. It will probably take my amygdala several months now to even cope with her in any way at all, for me to convince it that she and her psychological make up is not the threat. I can work on that over time as it is likely I will run into her fairly often. We have overlapping lives and that is how I made her acquaintance in the first place.

I do not judge or criticise this event, this occurrence, but instead take it as a warning to myself to withdraw and contain my energy more carefully. I am naturally a very open person and allow people in too easily perhaps. I love her and wish her well in her journey. I thank her for the lesson, the reminders for me, the variations in human emotional development and self awareness that occurs.

I am aware that I am far from ‘right’ in myself and thus must be more careful with myself and sharing any inside information about my life when it is not of immediate concern to others, no matter how well meaning they might mean to be, or how open I prefer to be. I have an enduring resilience kind of strength adn the ability to see the good in everything, not to hold onto anything and not to judge. That is my strength. But I must also be more careful with myself

One day perhaps my nervous system may be able to get past this kind of reaction, perhaps not ever. The literature on PTSD of this complex variety suggests there is no cure or fix, just life managements and coping skills.

Today I went sea-swimming again — with group of people who just go swimming together for safety reasons — it is cold in the water and we can get into trouble too easily alone. But I don’t talk much. just how high the waves are perhaps, what the water temperature is today (11C ). I just feel connected to my body by the water, the cold, the action of swimming. I feel safe in the water, safer that with other people. We swim alongside each other, but just swimming, not really chatting.

Which brings me back to my mindfulness and spiritual journey. Where would I be without it.

Today I am back grounded in love and compassion for self and others, and some hard lessons learned. This too will pass.