A Useful Tool I Stumbled Across
sharing a minor PTSD hack
When Your Nervous System Is Confused
Something is going on that has me PTSD-triggered. (I will probably write about this at some point, but not yet.) It’s an ongoing situation that will likely continue for at least another week or two, possibly a little longer.
By “PTSD-triggered,” I mean that I am experiencing symptoms of PTSD, including inability to focus, emotional numbness, intrusive thoughts, sleep disturbances, exaggerated startle reflexes, adrenalizing quite easily, etc. I do not mean that I am “triggered” in the colloquial sense, which as far as I can tell means “mildly upset.”
Having done everything I can to help ameliorate the situation, all I can do now is wait. My adult brain understands the situation fully; my nervous system is reacting to this as if I were a helpless little kid again.
Last night, I stumbled across something that really helped, and I think I understand why.
Trust the Inner Voice (but Examine It First)
Recently when I was busy not sleeping, something I can only describe as an intense urge overwhelmed me. I was overtaken by a powerful desire to re-arrange the furniture in the living room/office of my apartment. This makes no rational sense. There is simply no way in which this would make any aspect of the ongoing situation any better, resolve it one second sooner, etc. None.
I sat on my meditation pillow for awhile and tried to understand where this was coming from. I considered many possibilities, among them that I was experiencing a sick impulse towards punishing or harming myself, as re-arranging furniture would surely aggravate my shoulder injury and result in several days of limited mobility and pain.
Finally, I decided to act on it carefully and in a way that would not result in extra shoulder pain. Slowly, I took apart my personal computer setup and my work computer setup. Then I took all the books off the small bookshelf that holds my mathematics and coding reference books.
Resting frequently and acting cautiously, I switched setups. My personal setup is now where my work setup was; my work setup is on the desk that held my previous personal setup. I also moved my reference shelf and re-arranged it, too. Instead of a careful organization by topic, it’s now purely random.
This isn’t a cure; I’m still triggered to some degree and it’s still going to be a long couple of weeks. But it’s helped a lot.
Why This Helps, I Think
There’s no disassociation into muscle memory, because everything is set up just differently enough that I have to think about it. The views and background images are different. The way in which my incense reaches my nose during the day is different. My usual patterns of movement, eating, note-taking during work meetings, and other tasks require setting up new systems and making new choices. My most used reference books are not where muscle memory thinks they should be.
As a result of these surface-level changes, I am constantly re-orienting myself to the present.
It reminds me of the reason why I keep my living space obsessively clean, neat, and orderly. I grew up in real filth; the kind of house that would’ve had me removed by authorities, if they’d known. Living somewhere that is clean, neat, and orderly provides me with constant evidence that the past is over.
This is doing something similar, I think. Constantly re-orienting myself to the present is keeping my nervous system at least partially rooted in 2022.
If you are prone to anxiety attacks, are a fellow living-with-PTSD type, or otherwise can relate to this, I hope this little “hack” can be helpful.
This is really interesting to me. My folks got divorced and I was moved three times in a year when I was 8. Had two entirely new families in less than that. What’s intriguing to me is that, when we finally settled in the house I would live in for the next several years I would rearrange my bedroom furniture every month or so and I did that for a couple of years. One of those things I haven’t remembered doing for many years--I wonder if it was a similar coping mechanism (albeit from a lot less intense set of stressors).
Thank you for naming this practice. I grew up with obsessive cleanliness and frequent changes of the common space, and I am immersed in clutter, meaningful useful clutter (lol). I understand the energy drain of clutter, and am making tiny steps to reduce it, a la the infinite 1%. Looking at those steps as reorientation to the present adds momentum to the process.