Praise for Keep Pain in the Past
“Heart-tugging stories, sage advice and insightful questions make this a must-have book for anyone suffering from PTSD or any other trauma. With masterful writing, the authors help the reader let go of the past, live in the present and, perhaps most important of all, look forward to the future.”
—Allen Klein, bestselling author of The Healing Power of Humor and You Can’t Ruin My Day
“This book offers real stories and a path to authentic emotional healing for people recovering from past hurts and traumatic events. Writing with hope and compassion, the authors guide the reader through an actionable stepwise process of gaining their life back after traumatic experiences and keeping the emotional pain in the past—for good!”
—Helen Odessky, PsyD, author of Stop Anxiety from Stopping You
“Millions of people suffer from PTSD which can dramatically impact their lives. The self-healing process mapped out in Keep Pain in the Past is based on decades of successful treatment of patients and offers help and hope to those who need it. With this remarkable remedy, readers can go from surviving to thriving.”
—Dr. John Duffy, author of The Available Parent; also podcasts on WGN Radio’s “BETTER” show
“Keep Pain in the Past is a well-thought-out tome of helpful, step-by-step tools for healing from physical and emotional trauma. Authors Cortman and Walden present questions for the reader to ask himself or herself at the end of each chapter and provide suggestions that are sensible and real for one to step out of PTSD and to step up to his or her brighter future.”
—KJ Landis, author of Happy Healthy You
“Individuals suffering from drug and alcohol or other addictions, or from anxiety, depression, resentment, and compulsive behavior, as well as those having difficulty moving on from bad experiences, can greatly benefit from the knowledge and practical exercises in this book.”
—Calvina Fay, executive director, Drug Free America Foundation, Inc.
“Time may not heal all wounds, but a powerful process can. I’m so grateful to the authors of Keep Pain in the Past for restoring hope that trauma can be healed without years of psychotherapy. Each wounded heart is longing to be whole again. This book is the perfect companion for that journey.”
—MK Mueller, author of 8 to Great
“The work Dr. Chris Cortman is doing in the field of trauma recovery is some of the most important work being done today. In Keep Pain in the Past, he shares the compelling stories of people he has helped using a simple (though not easy) five-step framework. Through these stories, helpful writing prompts, and other detailed tools and resources, readers see what is actually possible in regards to recovering from trauma (whether with a capital T or a small t), and can begin to attend to their own recovery. I am looking forward to employing ‘The Fritz’ in my own ongoing personal work!”
—Karen C.L. Anderson, author of Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
Keep
Pain in
the Past
Copyright © 2018 Chris Cortman & Joseph Walden
Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.
Cover Design: Roberto Nuñez
Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni
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Keep Pain in the Past: Getting Over Trauma, Grief and the Worst That’s Ever Happened to You
Library of Congress Cataloging
ISBN: (p) 978-1-63353-810-8, (e) 978-1-63353-811-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952275
BISAC—PSY022040—PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD)
Printed in the United States of America.
Keep
Pain in
the Past
Getting Over Trauma, Grief and the Worst That’s Ever Happened to You
Dr. Chris Cortman & Dr. Joseph Walden
Mango Publishing
Coral Gables, FL
This book is dedicated to everyone who’s been told, “Time heals all wounds,” but it didn’t. It’s also dedicated to people who were told, “It’s called PTSD, and there is no cure, so you just have to live with it.” Let me not forget those who were told that, “There is no such thing as multiple personality, you’re making that up for attention.” And, of course, it’s for people who were sexually assaulted, molested, raped, sold, abused, and then when you bravely told someone, you weren’t believed.
This book is for all of you who have been abandoned, betrayed, neglected, threatened, beaten, terrorized, bullied, cheated on, swindled, scammed, conned, rejected, or never picked for the basketball team. It’s for you who have come forth and told your story, and especially for you who as yet have not. This book is for anyone willing to hope and believe one more time. This book is for you.
Contents
Chapter One
Treating Trauma; What If We Already Have the Answers We Need to Heal?
Chapter Two
Trauma Destroys the Soul Thanks to Mr. Avoidance
Chapter Three
Remember: Tell the Tale in Detail
Chapter Four
Feel: No Feel, No Heal
Chapter Five
Express: Let the Water Flow
Chapter Six
Release: Release for Peace
Chapter Seven
Reframe: Reclaim Your Life
Chapter Eight
Moral injury: What If You Really Are Guilty?
Chapter Nine
Complex PTSD: When the Trauma Happened Again and Again
Chapter Ten
Jim Meets Fritz
Chapter Eleven
Finishing Your Unfinished Business
Chapter Twelve
Out of the Traumatic Past and Into a Better Future
References
Appendix One
References: Appendix One
Appendix Two
References: Appendix Two
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Chapter One
Treating Trauma; What If We Already Have the Answers We Need to Heal?
•
“Time passages. There’s something back here that you left behind. Oh, time passages. Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.”
—Al Stewart
Is Anyone Living in the Now?
“Are you at peace with everything that has ever happened to you?” I asked my waitress, wanting to satisfy my curiosity about how someone outside a clinical setting might respond. “Are you living comple
tely in the present, looking forward?”
“Wow, I thought when you said you had a couple of questions, you were going to ask if you could replace the fries with soup without paying extra,” said the server. “But to answer your questions, no, I’m not over my past, is anyone? And for what it’s worth, it’s an extra dollar to replace the fries with today’s soup of the day, chicken noodle.”
Now ask yourself the same question (about your life, not the soup). Have you put the painful events and traumas of your life into a healthy place? Are you free of regret, resentment, and painful, intrusive memories? If you answered yes, you can stop reading right now. You don’t need this book, since you’re living a fully realized, highly successful life in the here and now.
Most people, though, aren’t in this enviable position. Your life is compromised in some way by a trauma from your past. You may not be conscious of it, but that trauma weighs on your like an anchor, dragging down your career, your relationships, and your life. That’s the bad news. The good news is that regardless of what you have experienced, you can take your pain in the past, process and digest it, find meaning in your suffering, and champion the trauma, once and for all.
A case in point is Jim, one of my clients. Jim is an extreme case—I hope that whatever bad things have happened in your life are nowhere near as bad as what happened to Jim. He was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I must warn you that his story is disturbing.
Your particular pain in the past may not be as extreme, but all emotional trauma has similar symptoms. Using Jim’s story, I will highlight the common trauma symptoms and how they can ravage a life if not treated properly. Also, I aim to provide you with hope: if Jim can be treated effectively, anyone can be.
After telling Jim’s story, I’ll provide some questions that will help you think about your own therapeutic experiences related to what Jim experienced. Then, I’ll examine six different perspectives (five scientific and one religious) that have contributed to my understanding of how to treat trauma successfully. Finally, I’ll compare what I believe to be unhelpful treatments with my approach.
An Evolving Tragedy
One day, just before Christmas some forty five years ago, Jim was enjoying a brisk Connecticut afternoon on the river near his house with his two sons, eight-year-old Jim Jr. and five-year-old Kevin. The boys were elated to pile out of Jim’s old Country Squire and eager to go skating.
The river was solid, and the new skates—Christmas presents opened early, without mom’s knowledge—fit perfectly. Kevin told his dad and his brother that this was bound to be the “best day ever!”
And so, it was, until his boys reached the midway point of the river. Jim heard the cracking of the ice while he was setting up a hockey net on the near side. Before he could react, he saw the terror on their faces just before they were swallowed up by the icy waters. Jim speed skated to the opening and dove head first into the hole into which his children had plummeted. He couldn’t find them because the currents had taken the children hundreds of yards downstream. Ultimately, no one found them until three days later.
As you can imagine, Jim and his wife, Ruth, were devastated but committed to surviving their horror. Though Jim felt horrible—he had committed the unforgivable sin of allowing his children to perish—he knew that for Ruth’s sake, he had to try to get past this tragedy. They went to Hawaii in an attempt to “escape” what had happened.
That was a well-intentioned mistake. Tragedies are not confined to the zip code in which they occur. Images of the drowned children haunted them, even in the paradise of Hawaii. It was the last time Jim and Ruth attempted a vacation. They needed to devise a better, more realistic solution to their grief. They decided to have another child. Michael was sweet, intelligent, and extremely affectionate, but he couldn’t fulfill the expectations imposed upon his tiny shoulders. He was unable to eliminate the memory of his brothers.
Michael’s birth made Jim even more conscious of his dead sons. He adored Michael but couldn’t bear to let him get close emotionally. “Christ, what if God took him, too?” was his thought. So he distanced himself from his baby boy by preoccupying himself with work. Ironically, this made Jim feel more disgusted with himself and reinforced his “worst father” internal image. Ruth observed this silently. She knew Jim was sinking but didn’t know how to help him.
At Ruth’s insistence, Jim sought psychiatric help, but the antidepressants did little to make Jim care about life again. Soon, he stopped taking them. He didn’t blame Dr. Evans; how could a pill make his life any better? Did they have a pill that could bring his boys back? He did blame God, however: “You sacrificed your son, but took two of mine.” At times, he thought his silent rage and blasphemous thoughts would assure him a spot in Hell, but then again, how could Hell be any worse than this? Besides, if anyone deserved to be in Hell, it was the negligent father who’d allowed his kids to drown.
Jim did find respite, or more accurately, distraction, on the job. He worked tirelessly as an auto mechanic. He loved cars almost as much as he loved motorcycles, and he put in twelve-hour days routinely. He knew he was shortchanging Michael, but he rationalized his long work days.
He found other distractions, namely motorcycle riding and drinking binges. When Jim resided in the darkest of places, he combined the two. Something about riding at 110 miles per hour (with Johnny Walker Red as copilot) could make Jim Jr. and Kevin all but fade away. He also recognized how dangerous this behavior was and how he was half hoping that a fatal accident might obliterate his emotional pain.
Jim settled on alcohol as the best alternative to suicide—that and a compulsive work ethic. He did as well as he could with Michael, participated in Boy Scouts, and even co-managed his little league team one year. But there was no ice skating, ever.
I began working with Jim forty-five years after the tragedy. He was suffering from chronic depression, with symptoms like “anhedonia” (deriving little joy from activities that once provided happiness and contentment) and dysphoria (low mood). He also was afflicted with insomnia—four uninterrupted hours was a good night’s sleep—and he was tortured by nihilistic or “what’s the point in life?” type thinking and horrible self-contempt (“They died on my watch!”). There was also a generalized anxiety—Jim called it his racing motor—and chronic fatigue. With more than just symptoms of depression and anxiety, Jim met the criteria for a common psychiatric diagnosis known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Despite his best efforts to run away from the past, Jim was haunted by intrusive recollections of the traumatic event, “Just how many times do I have to see that helpless look on Kevin’s face before he plunges into the water?” There were also flashbacks of the headfirst dive, the frantic calls for help, and the sleepless nights before the bodies were found.
Like almost all PTSD sufferers, Jim avoided any reminders of the tragedy; no New York Rangers season tickets, no desire to be around families (since his was irretrievably broken), no anniversary of the death, no birthdays, no mention of the boys, and for God’s sake, no talking about the event! Holidays were intolerable, and family members or friends who were likely to offer consolation or “lame advice” were to be avoided at all costs. “Ruth could see ’em if she wanted to, but I wasn’t going.” Avoidance also meant moving to another town, away from the neighbors who knew him and knew what had happened, away from his church, and away from that godforsaken river. And avoidance was the reason Jim drank himself to oblivion. Before the accident, he had been a social drinker; afterwards, he employed the hard stuff to “transport myself to another reality.”
He also convinced Ruth to move to Florida, in large part because of the fiercely negative connotations ice and cold had for him. Perhaps the most serious repercussion of Jim’s emotional trauma, however, was that it made him hypervigilant, especially with Michael. Only when Ruth protested that Jim was overly controlling did he finally b
ack off. But that meant distancing himself from Michael, not learning to give him appropriate space to grow up. As a result, it was sometimes hard, Jim admits, to decide which version of himself was worse: overprotective, controlling Jim, or the distant, uncaring man who spent nights on the recliner with Johnny Walker Red.
Before Jim arrived in my Florida office, he had been to four mental health professionals over the years, but never went to more than three or four sessions with any of them. He was not about to try antidepressants again; “When I explained that to these shrinks, it looked like they were lost in the fear of ‘what do we do now?’”
Jim was pleased that I didn’t care if he took antidepressants. “They aren’t the answer to helping you heal from your losses.”
“You mean there’s a way to heal from this?”
“Actually, yes. I’d like to help you to get a place of peace, if you are willing to follow a plan with me. Healing requires action—there are things we need to do in order for you to recover from your losses.”
I explained PTSD to him using the following analogy: In some ways, your mind is kind of like the stomach. Whatever has not been digested may come back up on you. Of course, while the stomach can only keep food undigested for eight to ten hours, the mind can hold undigested material for decades without ever eliminating it. Healing requires the ability to release the painful material to regain any semblance of peace. I told him I wanted to help him release his trauma once and for all.
∞
Let’s leave Jim’s treatment for the time being. (I promise we will return to it later in the book.) But for now, let’s explore his many years of (unnecessary) suffering. Why was it that the mental health professionals he saw never helped him?
Societal bias has favored a medical model of treatment for most everything that ails us, including symptoms of PTSD and other forms of emotional trauma. Doctors have prescribed antidepressants for symptoms of depression and anxiety, tranquilizers and sedatives for insomnia, and mood stabilizers to address emotionally instability. If all else fails, antipsychotic medication has been prescribed as “a glue to keep it together.” Unfortunately, an abundance of research demonstrates that medications at best mask symptoms of PTSD and at worst create numerous and often debilitating side effects. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs2 states that “Trauma-focused psychotherapies are more efficacious than pharmacotherapy and are strongly recommended treatments for PTSD.” (Jeffreys, M. 2017) A booklet provided by the National Center for PTSD3 for veterans seeking treatment says, “Medications can treat PTSD symptoms alone or with therapy—but only therapy treats the underlying cause of your symptoms. If you treat your PTSD symptoms only with medication, you’ll need to keep taking it for it to keep working.” (National Center for PTSD, 2018,) The VA, which is the biggest provider of trauma treatment, and National Center for PTSD, which is the biggest researcher of PTSD, both agree that medication never helps the underlying cause of the symptoms—the unresolved trauma. In fact, by successfully masking symptoms, medications may actually interfere with effective treatment, as clients may settle for a treatment that distances them from their emotional pain. Antidepressants and tranquilizers are notorious for masking emotional pain (emotional anesthesia), although they can prevent people from disintegrating into a puddle of tears. Most people enjoy that feature of antidepressants, and they often conclude that masking the pain is as good as it’s going to get.
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