Category: Suicide

Posted in mental health, Self Help, Suicide

Girl in the Shadows

Posted on by Addy Vaughn

I have spent a significant amount of time in my life battling an unknown enemy. This villain spends her days lurking in every corner of my being, silently monitoring every thought, emotion, and aspiration and selectively determining where she can do the most damage with the least effort.

Her name is Katie, and she is my darkness, my trauma and pain, my addictions and failures, my anger and rage. She is a mechanism of hurt and pain and is shrouded in anxiety, fear, and shame. She is Katie, and she is me.

Now, to be perfectly clear, this is not how I would describe myself in an interview or how I hope that my friends describe me when others ask what I am like. Obviously, most days, I do my best to pretend that she does not exist. Most days I pretend that she is someone that I may know, but can’t be sure. Some days I pretend like I have no idea who she is. Kate is the person on my resume, and only that person. But the truth is, that the harder I try to ignore my relation, the more persistent she is and the impact of her shattering truths become harder to withstand. So after 40 years of denying her existence, I have decided that it is time to learn a little bit more about her, why she is filled with self-hatred and anger, in hopes that maybe we can start living together in peace.

The shadow journey is one that can be incorporated into any kind of therapeutic modality, but can also be used in a daily spiritual practice as well. To put it quite simply, if a therapist is doing their job well, there is an element of shadow work in any therapeutic setting. Therapy is intended to allow for a comfortable space to explore the darkest parts of our being, which is the foundation where the shadow journey begins.

What is critical to understand is that the “work” in shadow work is not the therapists role…it is ours (Or not mine in my social worker hat). So to move through our stuck mindsets and harmful self-image, it is blood, sweat, tears, sledgehammer, table saw, wood glue, nail gun, sandpaper…you get it. It’s work. It’s incredibly difficult work that seems like having a 24 hour a day job. And if I’m completely honest, as a social worker, I had never done my own shadow work in one specific area: Anything pre-military was off-limits, and that boundary was intentional. I don’t want to remember how I felt before the military, because it was BAD. I mean, really bad. 28 years of feeling no self-value. 28 years of wanting to be dead every single day. 28 years of hiding my true self from my relatives because “Jesus”. 28 years of thinking I was a complete loser that could never pull it together, or that I was a bad child, or that I was never going to really know what it felt like to be loved and accepted. I have never wanted to revisit that time in my life and I have really tried to avoid it for as long as emotionally possible. That being said, she can’t be ignored any longer. She has grown louder, stronger, and more demanding everyday. So along with my long-time therapist and my partner in healing (my wife), myself and my shadow will be along for quite a ride these next 12 weeks.

Follow along and we can all get to know this shadow kiddo that needs some serious attention.

Introduction: Moral Injury and Reconstructing your Moral Identity

 

I have always known that someday I would write a memoir. Well, maybe not always, but certainly in the last 15 years. What I didn’t know was that going to have to stumble through writing this story while trying to save myself. Learning the concepts of moral injury and trauma refocused my perspective of myself, my mental and emotional obstacles, and clarified the purpose behind some of my thoughts and behaviors. But before we get to those pieces of the book, let me give a quick recap of what has brought me to this point.

I am a veteran, and yes, that is important to my story. I deployed twice as a medic and absolutely saw absolutely horrible things. But that is a very small piece of the torment and emotional anguish that has gotten me to this point. The darkest and deepest fracture of this type of injury occurs far after the trauma itself. It grows with every painful moment, every situation that leaves you feeling defeated, and every morning that you wake up when you hoped that you wouldn’t. Unlike some other categories of psychological struggles, this one seems to be dismissed to make room for its sister diagnoses: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety disorders, etc. It is difficult to explain to everyone you meet that you are in the midst of a moral crisis that questions your very values, so it always falls back on the old PTSD. Easier to explain, no one questions it, they thank you for your service, and they might pitch a couple hundred bucks at a charity for veterans. Simple, easy, and no need to get into anything emotional or existential that make other people uncomfortable.

After I was diagnosed with (pretty obvious) PTSD, I left the military, and pursued another career choice: Social Work. I would spend the next few years taking the same meds every day, trying to find ways to cope with an incredibly dark and very present sense of shame. Not just guilt. Guilt visited on occasion, but this is very different. As we all are learning (Seriously thankful for Brene Brown), shame is a totally different animal.  I would sit through my social work classes, look around at other students, and think to myself, “Something must be wrong with me. Learning about all this social work-y stuff is making me feel like a hypocrite”.  It wasn’t until I had almost hit what I would say, the last few branches before a pretty devastating fall, that I learned about moral trauma. And just in time.

My vision for this book is to take you through a reconstruction of my moral identity. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all parts of my morality are going to be ripped apart, demolished, and built up brand new. Hopefully, some things can stay, because they are good, healthy, and just need to be noticed, shined up, and given a little attention. However, others may need to be set on fire with gasoline and burned to the ground. But my hope is that others out there, like me, that have been treated for PTSD exclusively and feel that there is a very substantial struggle that never is alleviated, that we can find a new sense of self after a trauma to our identity.

Please don’t stop reading because you were diagnosed with PTSD that is not due to combat. You will find that we all have similar struggles regardless of the source of our trauma, and I do not consider my personal experience of trauma to be the worst, the most relatable, or the most damaging. However, I do consider my trauma to be substantial enough to take you on this journey with me. I think that often, while we each experience various traumatic moments in our lives, I believe that there is power in sharing our story for the collective purpose of society. I want to empower others to reconstruct their own moral identity and realize that we are more powerful in our vulnerability and transparency. I hope that we can recognize that we can create and re-create ourselves, and that we are not confined to our historical idea of who we are.