Gimme Some Sugar! (The snuffle report)

ink doodle of Sugar, 2014

Sugar is my dog - a diamond with many facets of therapy all wrapped up in her furry ball-of-loveness. I adopted her in January this year, after the death of Darbyshmoo. She was all anyone could want in a dog: she's house trained, she's spayed, she's microchipped, she's heart worm negative, she fetches, she doesn't beg for food from my plate, she doesn't chew on anything I leave out that isn't hers. And she's soft and cuddly. What I didn't know at the time was this:

Somehow, somewhere, someone has trained her to give a special kind of therapy. She knows when someone is suffering.

When the Voices are screaming, when the Hands are groping, when the world is shit, she knows. She just knows, and I don't know how. Even the smallest, wee-hours whimpers of "leave me alone" I utter when the People are evil, abusive, and bad will elicit the BEST. RESPONSE. EVER.

Sugar's love radar picks up the smallest disturbance in my emotional state, and she SNUFFLES me.
Creeping over to me with gentle, slow movements, she lays her head on my chest and SNUFFLES into my neck. Then she'll lie on top of me (I am usually prostrate on the bed in my moments of crisis), and breathe into my face. She lets me embrace her. We snuggle like this. She reminds me what is real, and I am suddenly safe inside her particular, furry pocket of love until I fall asleep. It's an unexpected gift of unconditional support.

I've experimented with her responses. She won't do it if I am faking it in the slightest way. But she is consistently aware when I need her. She's ... tuned in.

When we are cut off, isolated and alone, we develop different coping strategies. Sometimes - let's be honest - sometimes, they fail. In those after-midnight hours of flashbacks and hell, I have an amazing ally. (If you own a dog, or have ever loved a dog, you know what I mean.) And I've come to understand that everybody needs this, in some form, in some way.

A few of you who may be reading this because you or someone you know is mentally ill, and you know how restorative an unconditional love can be. So I offer mine to you, even though I learned it in the most likely of places: my non-verbal dog. Without words, she exudes compassion. When you think about it, there's so much we don't say to one another in this world ... but we don't need to when we find the right peers or friends that we can count on as family.

And so LOVE to you for reading (and hopefully, understanding).
            COMPASSION to you, for whatever you might be struggling with.
            PEACE to you as well, for no extra cost, and
            SNUFFLES for everyone who needs a hug, but doesn't know how to ask.

(I know you're out there.)

30 Days of Mental Illness Awareness Challenge: Day 7

Question: Do you think there are any patterns or triggers to how your illness affects you?

YES … and there’s so much!

You know those “before and after” pictures make-over people get? If you want to think of my PTSD diagnosis and subsequent therapy as a bit of a mental health make-over, you’ll understand why I am going to bifurcate my answer into two, easy-to-swallow, dissolvable, before and after gel caps for ease of consumption.

BEFORE I ventured into the realm of truth telling in therapy, I assumed any kind of stress, including but not limited to being touched, loud noises, bright lights, and startling movements triggered my schizophrenia. With the smallest worry, I would launch into a black whirlpool of hallucinations of “People” trying to rape me, who told me lies, poisoned my food, and tried to trick me into killing myself. I couldn’t keep a schedule or routine because I couldn’t predict what might trigger me or toss me into a paranoia so profound I couldn’t leave the house. (This still happens, but less now.) The People kept me up at night until I would collapse completely after about 3 days of no sleep. My eyes would sometimes involuntarily roll back into my head and I would pass out into sleep for 4 hours, only to get up and do it again for another 3 days. Unfortunately, I had no accompanying mania. (Unfortunate, because there was no productive output, although I’ve heard mania can be pretty hellish, too.) I was the victim of complete a-volition. Agitated inertia and distress followed. Oh yeah, and don’t forget my total loss of touch with reality. It wasn’t until I spoke to an excellent group of folks online that I began to suspect my sense of being invaded and made powerless had something to do with trauma.

AFTER I recognized stressors related to trauma, I realized what could set off an already schizophrenic mind into a tailspin. Anything that surprises me and which I can’t prepare myself for triggers me – and no wonder! – into dissociation. I’ll have to retreat to home or a ‘safe place’ to clear my head. That is one pattern, and possibly the most common one.

Unwelcome touch, people sitting too close to me, and long periods of time in public, are all triggers. If I have to hold The People in for too long, I feel like I am going to explode and have to escape the scene.

I’m learning now about people in my past who were manipulative, which also triggers me so subtly I don’t always see it right away. This push-me-pull-you, passive aggressive waltz some people like to do is crazy making for me in the end. In therapy, I am also learning how to pay attention to my body. My stomach and bowels are the organs most affected by stress (except, of course, my brain). I’ve also noticed I react quite strongly to scenes of violence/rape/unfairness in movies, television, and even books. Either I cry endlessly over it, or I assimilate the characters into my delusions and try over and over to save them. This limits the amount of fun I can have, too: I miss out on all those science fiction mind-fucker movies I love. 

Patterns I recognize are that I am not usually able to follow through with plans or finish projects. And I am extremely codependent; I always assume the things that go wrong are my fault somehow. But I see boundaries now, and am learning to set them. With therapy I am learning the compassion embedded in the word NO.