It's time to start thinking about the opposite of PTSD and
what it looks like.
Yesterday it thundered and rained much of the day. Every
time I found myself out in the rain and listening to the thunder I was
transported, quite viscerally, back to my backpacking trip on North Manitou
Island in August.
One morning on that trip I woke in the morning and heard
some rumbling coming from over the lake. Storms can come from over the water
and can often be heard approaching for hours before they "arrive".
I thought I should make a decision to either stay put, get
rained on, let my gear dry out, and then proceed to pack up and go on to the
place I wanted to be that night, a wonderful lake in the middle of the island
(I had been camping on the west shore of the island for two nights), or skip
breakfast, pack up right away, and risk getting rained on while I walked, so I
could get to the lake early enough to dry up anything necessary before
nightfall. I wanted to spend as much time at the lake as possible. It is one of
my spirit spots, a truly brilliant place. I decided to get going. I packed up,
walked across the field through high underbrush, where there used to be a
lakeside village a hundred years before, to the entrance of the woods.
It was getting darker and darker as I walked. I wanted to at
least get into the trees before the rain started. I thought I would get less
wet. That was true for a while after the rain started. The old growth
beech/maple forest was very dark and a little foreboding as the rain started. I
felt a bit like Hansel or Gretel walking through the woods, although I was
leaving no breadcrumb trail. After about an hour of walking with the rain
barely reaching me through the trees, making incredible music through the
leaves, the rumbling became louder and more insistent. The rains started in
earnest. A fine symphonic roar. The thunder crashed and the lightning was
rapids and startling in its urgency.
This went on for about another hour or more. Yes, I was wet,
but I was also completely in awe. As it rained the darkness of the storm
started to abate. It grew lighter by degrees, and soon there were shafts of
filtered light breaking through the pillars and arches of the trees. The wind
swelled the orchestration from the rain and the water left in the trees as it
was blown off the leaves. I was soaked. My gear was dry for the most part
because of a strategically employed garbage bag. I had not seen another person
the entire walk and would not until hours later after I had arrived at the
lake, taken a swim and had something to eat. By then the sky was almost clear
and clean, bright and hot. I was elevated and completely happy. Maslow might
call it self-actualized, but I'm not sure that description does the state of
being justice. Connected. A Part of the Whole. Convinced of the Integrated
Nature of Living. Unexplainable. To be felt. To be remembered.
This is the state I re-experienced every time I heard the
thunder and rain yesterday. Reverse PTSD.
In PTSD flashbacks we are forced by the way in which our
mind/body connection builds its defenses to replay vivid remembrances of how
we've been hurt. So we can avoid being hurt again, or remember how we maneuvered
through that hurt. The opposite of this would be an experience like the one I
have described... the ability to relive, re-feel, the excellence and spiritual
heights that our lives here offer us as often, at least, as it offers us
reminders of what has caused pain.
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