I am standing in the hallway of my daughter’s school trying not to cry. She is sitting on a bench that runs the length of the wall where each kindergartener has a peg and a cubby in which to keep their things. She’s trying to put on her new rain boots, but can’t get her feet in all the way. “They’re too tight, Mommy,” she says, which I know isn’t true. We’d just had them on a few days ago with no problem. The real problem is that she doesn’t really want to go to school today. In the last few days she’s gone from someone who can’t wait to get there, to someone who clings shyly to my pant leg, not wanting me to leave. All of this, of course, is completely normal for her age, but I don’t have what I need to successfully handle the situation because my PTSD trip wire has been crossed.

My daughter, who is 4 years old, goes to a private school housed in a portion of a Baptist church. As far as I know, there is only way in and one way out, a set of wide stairs that go up partway, arriving at a landing and then you turn to go up the second set to reach the second landing. All the children in her class spend the first part of the morning playing outside. Her teacher stands by the gate to the playground warmly greeting each student. Part of the journey though, before my daughter can go to the playground, is going inside the building and up the stairs to her cubby and peg where I hang her lunch box and/or put on her outdoor clothes. She always comes with me, then we go back down and she goes through the gate and into the playground (or hangs around shyly for a while and then goes in).

The pathway to and from the building is short and a stream of parents and students go in and out. The stairs are filled with chatting moms and dads, rushing kids, and bad acoustics. Walking into the building is hard for me. By the time I get there I’ve already navigated the parking lot where everyone smiles at each other from their cars or says hello as they pass. There’s clearly a community here, but I’m not a part of it yet (which is no one’s fault but my own). But once I go inside, bad things start to happen. I have PTSD and this space, this experience is activating for me.

There are too many people going in too many different directions. There are too many clusters of people talking. My daughter is supposed to be at school by 8:15 and I’m pretty sure the older kids are supposed to be there by eight, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like as we’re heading up the stairs harried kids and parents are rushing to get to class. I am holding my daughter’s hand, walking as close to the wall as I possibly can. I am not smiling. I am not chatting. I’m not saying hello to passing people. I am surviving.

This morning I ran the gauntlet of getting my daughter’s lunch box put away, but when I come back down the teacher calls out to me that everyone is wearing rain boots today. That means another trip back upstairs. When we get back to her cubby my mouth is dry and my eyes are darting around, a sure sign of my activation. My amygdala is sending up danger signals and I have no way to respond back and tell it things are OK. I once heard that the pathway to the amygdala to the higher brain is like a bullet train, messages arrive instantly. Danger! Danger! Danger! The problem is that the pathway back to the amygdala is a series of tiny roads that are full of mud and have to be covered by a one horse wagon. So, the information - No Danger! No Danger! No Danger! - takes forever to get back to the primal part of your brain that is sure there is a crisis at hand. 

The next day we go to school and it’s the same thing, but as we’re leaving to go back to the play ground I run into my friend and her daughter, who is my daughter’s closest friend. We’re standing at an L in the hallway and people are passing by. My friend starts to talk to me and instead of words I hear, “mumble, mumble bus?” I don’t understand what she’s talking about, and she repeats it, “mumble, mumble bus?” At this point I’m fully activated. The PTSD has slithered up from the nape of my neck, like a half robot, half lizard. Tendrils run out… one goes to each of my eyes and pulls them wide open. One goes to my ears and turns up the receiver to maximum. My nostrils flare, my eyes dart. Then the creature locks into place and I am there trying to figure out what the hell is going on while the noise and the brightness are doubling, tripling. Why is she saying bus? Danger! Danger! Danger! Eventually I figure out that she’s asking whether or not my daughter gave her daughter the school bus she got for her birthday. But at this point it’s too late, all sensors are on. Data is gushing at me in tremendous waves of energy. I’m all input, no output.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is like a smoldering fire surrounded by a circle of rocks, something you might see down by the river or at a campground. It’s not a happy Boy Scout kind of fire, though; it’s a primitive, primal fire from the time when fire was new, frightening and awesome.  When something extremely traumatic happens, this fire is lit. Once it comes to life, it will never go out. You can reduce it to smoldering: there are drugs, therapies, and time, but that’s as good as it’s ever going to get. I would wager that most people’s fires never get lit, but I don’t know this for sure. Before 9/11 I certainly did not have one. I’d been through my share of trauma, and had my share of hyper vigilance, but nothing that even came close to this.

When something happens that activates the primal system of warning, fuel is added to the fire along with the message of panic being sent to the front of the brain. The fire instantly burns brighter, seeming to gather strength from the charged air around it. When things get more intense, demons appear from out of the woods and begin throwing kerosene-soaked logs onto the fire. They are flying. They are empty black and they are screeching. Wham! Another log hits the fire and it begins to spread outside of the circle of rocks. A nearby tree catches fire. The demons keep coming. The fire grows.

And you are stuck in place standing in your little hut watching the blaze, listening to it roar. It’s too big to fight. But on the outside, to most people, you look OK. They don’t know you’re standing in the middle of a forest fire that’s threatening your life and completely undermining your sense of safety. When I’m in this place it’s almost like being in a trance. You look at the person talking to you and you hear what they are saying but your mouth has gone dry and your ability to gather a thought is nowhere to be found. But you have to find it, because otherwise the person will know your secret.

Eventually the fire settles down. The banshees go away, the smell of kerosene lingers. Everything around you is devastated from the event and you are generally dissociated and lost. You’re back down to the fire in the circle of rocks, and eventually you’re down to that fire smoldering with little gray wisps of smoke rising up from it. The data input dials down, your eyes begin to blink; your ears go back to normal. The creature slithers away. Until the next time.

The real problem with PTSD is that it’s traumatizing to have. So, you get PTSD because you’re traumatized and then The PTSD re-traumatizes you over and over again. There are medications you can take and some people benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. Neurofeedback was the answer for me, the one therapy that helped the raging fires. But sometimes I feel like it’s going to take me more time to recover from the PTSD that it will to recover from the initiating events.

As for the school issue, my husband suggested I should use a drug I have for when I have a PTSD attack (perphenazine) and I wonder at the idea that I need to take a pill in order get my daughter to school. I think about talking to my daughter’s teacher, asking if she will let me leave the lunch box in the playground and she or the assistant will take it up. But I don’t know how to have that conversation, “Hi! I’m insane and I can’t go upstairs in the mornings because for some reason the noise and congestion trigger my PTSD.” Who’s really going to say that? Not me.

It’s frustrating to have the school issue come up because otherwise my PTSD has gotten a lot better. One of the things that really helped was talking to my 4-year-old daughter who was triggering me on a regular basis by jumping on me without warning, holding things like toys too close to my face, and doing other things that startled me. One day I decided to talk about it with her. I told her that mommy has a problem that when she jumped on me without telling me it startled me and made me feel sick and scared.  She accepted this without comment and once she understood the world startle, things diminished significantly. Now if she’s doing something I can talk about it with her instead of trying to go into another room to calm down. Talking with her helps me to stay calmer, the fire barely burns before its back to smoldering.

So, if I can only figure out a way to get her to school without panicking. I’m going to have to talk about it with someone at some point because I can’t do this all year long. I don’t want to be sitting in my car after dropping her off with my head on my steering wheel trying not to cry. In that position I worry that some other parent is going to come by and ask me what’s wrong. Everyone is so nice at her school. So, I only indulge for a few minutes.

Generally after I take her to school I talk a long walk with the dogs and that cures the remaining adrenaline from the drop off.  After that, things tend to go pretty well. I’ve been feeling better lately, if not weird sometimes. I’m still relieved to be out from under the horror of clinical depression and in some moments I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I’m also more depressed and more traumatized, but my days have moments of pure presence and love. Today when I hugged my daughter goodbye she laid her head down on my shoulder and rubbed my back. I remain in awe that I am a mother and that my daughter is so bright, loving and happy. So, I’ll figure out the school thing. I have strong motivation. Maybe I’ll go to Lowe’s and buy a fire extinguisher. Or at least some anti-demon/banshee spray. There’s got to be a way through this. I’ll keep looking.

Katie Sullivan
katie@katiesullivan.com

If you'd like to know why I have PTSD, you can read about it here.