It is impossible to use words to fully describe an experience in which all thought and language are taken from you, but having felt that, I am compelled to try. Perhaps the best single word that captures the feeling is “stunned”—a condition in which your very existence is momentarily arrested.
Shock, or what some call fright, can be a better predictor of PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder, than the experience of trauma itself. One study found that an “immediate fright reaction” in victims of auto accidents (a quarter of whom developed PTSD) was a better predictor of the symptoms of PTSD than experiencing “fear, helplessness or horror.”
As I continued in therapy and did my own research on trauma and fright, I learned that severe shocks can have profound effects on brain function. If your life has proved to be a whack-a-mole game, then your brain wires itself to be on alert at all times. We all have certain expectations about daily life that are so deeply ingrained, we never think about them: That we can walk from our house to our car without being swept up into the air by a large flying predator. That someone will not fall from the sky and die at our feet. Once we experience a shock that changes our perception of everyday order, the most primitive part of our brain gets stuck on red alert. It’s a desperate and illogical attempt to be prepared for things that happen so fast one can’t possibly be ready for them.
It was my nonverbal, subconscious brain that was affected most by seeing a man’s violent and shocking death. Despite my previous attempt at therapy, I couldn’t talk my way out of a brain that had been rewired in the most primitive of ways. And it was rewired: The brain structure of victims of violent trauma changes significantly. The hypothalamus shrinks, and the amygdala becomes hyperactive.
No amount of willpower was going to change that for me. But I began to understand some of my own fears. The man with the baseball bat was my mind’s way of keeping me on constant alert, ready for the next disaster. Dark rooms were perfect places for unexpected shocks, given that I couldn’t rely on my eyes to see something coming. Willie’s over-the-top startle response exacerbated my rewired brain’s attempts to continually be ready to fight or flee. It didn’t happen only around Willie.
• • • • •
One day Jim and I were watching the movie Angel Heart. It’s a brilliant but horrifically violent film that I should have stopped watching long before the camera focused on the corpse of a young woman, spread-eagled on her back with a triangle of dazzlingly red blood pouring from between her legs. A man had shot her with a pistol as he was raping her with it. I froze in the chair, barely breathing, unblinking, unable to get up and leave. When the movie was over, I couldn’t move. At all. When Jim spoke, I didn’t answer; didn’t turn my head. I could hear him, and I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t move or speak. I thought, This must be what catatonia feels like.
Jim came over, concerned about my silence, and then I yearned to speak, to tell him I was okay. But no matter what words formed in my brain, my mouth wouldn’t move. He called my name, repeated it, picked up my hand, touched my face. The need to communicate became overwhelming, but I still couldn’t bridge the gap between the words that formed in my head and the effort required to speak them.
I felt crazy then, teetering at the edge of sanity, appalled that I was literally paralyzed by the shock of the image on the screen. After an eternity of a few minutes, I was able to move my right hand. I began to flap it, trying to make it move as if writing. Jim brought me pen and paper, and I wrote, “FLOWERS”—trying to convey that I wanted to see pictures of flowers. He understood and ran to bring me a photo album. He opened the page to an explosion of bright red tulips. Red. Oh God, not red. My head jerked back and my arms flapped like a baby seal’s. I wrote, “BLUE,” and he turned the page, and there were peaceful blues and muted shadings of lilac.
“I’m sorry. I’m okay. I’m so sorry.” Those were my first words to Jim, and he echoed them back: “I’m so sorry, Trisha, I didn’t realize that the movie was so violent. We never should have watched it.” He held me, comforted me; we touched and kissed and lay together through the night.
A few days later, I saw my therapist Mare, who helped me figure out why I had responded so dramatically to the movie. She asked me to lie down, take some deep breaths, and relax. “Just breathe, and pay attention to whatever comes into your mind.” I lay quiet for several minutes while the air conditioner hummed. Nothing came to me, except an itch on my leg and the thought that I should be having better thoughts.
“Just stay with it,” said Mare. “Keep breathing, and tell me what your body has to say.”
Gradually, from somewhere, the color red appeared in my consciousness until it was all I could think about. “I’m seeing red,” I told Mare. “I don’t know why. Why red?”
“Just keep breathing and focus on the red. Don’t try to force anything, just let whatever comes into your mind enter when it’s ready.”
Slowly, the red color coalesced into the fan of blood between the woman’s legs in the movie, and then I saw the image of the man who fell at the coliseum and the shockingly red blood flowing out of his body, forming a perfect triangle of color between his legs.
“The Man Who Fell,” as I began to call him, was a memory I rarely revisited; I had pushed it into the darkest recesses of my mind. But then Willie came along and showed me that willing myself to forget about it wasn’t enough to make it go away.
Mare helped me process the event and to begin healing from it by expressing my compassion for the deceased electrician. I settled into the pillows, my head resting against the wall, and talked to him, telling him how sorry I was that he had died. I said a prayer of compassion to his family: “May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be peaceful.”
Later, I hired a detective to find his name, needing to give him an identity, for him to be more than a nameless person. His name was Albert S. McCarthy, and every day for several weeks, I began my day by talking to him.
Talking wasn’t enough on its own to reboot my brain from “on alert” to a more normal state, so Mare and I discussed what activities made me calm and happy. Just as I had written the word “FLOWERS” to Jim as the only way to break the spell I’d been in after the movie, I instinctively knew that flowers would help me recover. Like my father, I have always loved plants, almost as much as I love animals.
After the session with Mare, I began to spend as much time gardening as I did with the dogs. Jim shakes his head when I return from yet another visit to the garden center with more purple coneflowers and blazing stars and wild bergamots to plant. And there are never enough daylilies.
I dig compost into the red clay of the farm that ridicules the name of my town, Black Earth. I pull and hack and slice away at weeds while Willie lies on the ground and watches. I push heavy wheelbarrows of dandelions and bad soil into a massive pile of plant debris hidden by some cedar trees. I return to the house tired and sweaty and more grounded than I’ve ever been.
But it took more than gardening to heal me. I wrote extensively in my journal. I learned to meditate. I did yoga. I booked fewer speaking engagements so I could spend more time at home, walk in the woods, and cultivate flowers.
All of these efforts began to work their magic. Though I was still busy, at least I had begun taking care of myself. But sometimes taking care of yourself means digging even deeper, no matter what is buried in the dirt.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Neither Willie nor I followed a neat path to recovery; we each made progress in fits and starts. I continued my therapy with Mare, and Willie saw his physical therapist twice a week for his shoulder. He did his exercises, and I did mine. Willie learned to hold up his right paw for ten seconds, then twenty, to strengthen the muscles that supported his shoulder joint. He became even more adept at balancing on a teeterboard, even when I held one paw off the ground. He walked, ever so slowly, over a bar I held parallel to the ground.
Willie’s shoulder finally healed enough that he was able to be a happy y
oung dog again, full of energy and joy and a desire to leap into my face while I was carrying grocery bags, purse, and laptop. We took long walks with friends through fields and forests where he could pick up sticks and beg me to throw them so he could retrieve them.
Now that his shoulder was better, we could go back to working harder on his conditioning around other dogs. We took walks in neighborhoods with busy roads where I knew all the dogs would be on-leash. I whipped out his tug toy if he turned his head to me instead of barking or lunging when another dog appeared. We sat inside the car in areas where other dogs were more likely to be off-leash, and Willie got pieces of chicken every time he looked at one and then looked back at me. After the incident in the dog park when Willie panicked at the sight of an unfamiliar man, I began the same work with visitors of my own species. Male friends came to the farm and threw Willie treats, a routine that he decided was the best game ever.
Gradually, Willie’s reaction to the sight of another dog changed from tense apprehension to joyful anticipation. If the dog wasn’t too close or moving too fast, Willie would lean toward the corgi or cocker spaniel with a grin and a loose, sweeping tail-wag. Soon he was able to play again with his buddy Sydney, the adolescent Australian shepherd. He found a new friend in Mac, a young border collie who played catch-me-if-you-can games with Willie as the birds sang their spring songs in the high pasture. It worked even faster with men, whom he had loved as a puppy, when Willie learned that visiting men always arrived bearing gifts of food or toys. He ran out to greet them with eyes glistening and tail wagging in a happy circle.
Still, I managed him obsessively, especially around other dogs. Good owners of reactive dogs behave like the security guards of celebrities, continually scanning the environment for potential threats. We have Plan B and Plan C well rehearsed in our minds if Plan A begins to fall apart. I always left the farm with a pocket of treats to throw vigorously at the face of any dog who might come running toward us.
Over the months, Willie improved enough that it was time to let him greet dogs outside his small circle of friends. I had continued Willie’s herding lessons once he was healed, asking him to fetch me the sheep from farther and farther away, and teaching him to run clockwise or counterclockwise around the flock in response to a quiet word or whistle. He had made a lot of progress, but we both needed a coach to help us move on to the next level. Right around that time, Julie Hill, a well-known sheepdog trainer and trial competitor, was giving a clinic a few hours away from the farm.
A small sheepdog clinic was the perfect place to expose Willie to close contact with unfamiliar dogs. He’d be distracted from the other dogs by his desire to work the sheep. The other participants would be sympathetic to my problems with Willie—working your dog off-leash while he’s running free around prey animals is both humbling and exciting. It bonds sheepdog handlers together like victims of a natural disaster, because we all have had one or two “wrecks.” That’s what we call it when your dog stops listening and chases the sheep around the field—or, worse, into the neighbor’s cornfield. I knew that the clinic participants would believe me when I said that I needed help to avoid trouble. Everyone who works a sheepdog has been humbled when things don’t go smoothly. (“Trouble” is not theoretical. Several sheep were lost in a cornfield during one trial, and two were never seen again. Months later, one turned up in the courtyard of an apartment complex miles away. Members of this breed of sheep, Barbados, look like antelope, which is why officials were called in to capture what looked like an escaped zoo animal.)
At first I walked Willie onto the field on-leash, asking everyone to keep their dogs away from him. I took deep breaths to stay calm. What if the disaster that my brain was always prepared for actually happened—in this context, a dogfight? But everything went well: Willie focused on the sheep, and the other dogs stayed away. Gradually, I let Willie spend more time in the presence of the other dogs, and on the second day, he met a big, mellow border collie named Vic.
I’d helped innumerable clients through the first introductions of dogs who used to be aggressive, often with my own stable of benevolent dogs. Keep your body loose. Breathe deeply and regularly. Don’t stare, and don’t loom over the dogs. I followed my own instructions, and everything happened just as it should. Willie was a bit tense, but Vic paid no attention and channeled Zenlike calm while I forced myself to let them alone. The dogs sniffed butts, acknowledged each other, and parted to scent-mark in the grass nearby. After a few seconds, I called Willie away and took him on a little walk. Whew.
I was ecstatic. It felt miraculous to watch Willie greet another dog without an incident after keeping him away from all but his close circle of friends for so long. As the day went on, Willie met other dogs, although only ones I had vetted by watching them greet other dogs. There were a few stiff-tailed males I decided to keep Willie away from, but most of the dogs at the clinic were relaxed and polite. Willie and I drove home at the end of the second day tired and happy, the green hills of Wisconsin rolling like swells of the ocean around us.
Willie continued to improve around other dogs as I sought out safe situations in which he could greet friendly dogs. Within a few months, he was able to walk into a vet clinic without exploding at some hapless beagle in the corner. After careful introductions, he made some new friends, and they’d romp and play in the orchard pasture, eyes shining, tongues lolling, as they ran shoulder to shoulder, stretching out like racehorses in big looping circles.
Willie’s other problems improved at the same time. He didn’t panic if a truck backfired going by the house. I’d found a diet that prevented his intestinal upsets. His fear of tall men was morphing into happy anticipation of a game of fetch. He never barked or growled when he spotted an approaching dog. He walked side by side with poodles and Pekingese with nary a nervous glance.
One night, after weeks of successful sessions with other dogs, I took Willie to meet a young border collie named Zip. The introduction went just as I’d hoped. Zip was passive and polite, and although Will was a bit stiff-legged during their greeting, he soon relaxed and the two began to do what all young social male mammals do: play. Within less than a minute, the two dogs were lost in a rousing game of chase.
Owners of reactive dogs or dogs who are aggressive to other dogs carry a unique kind of fear every time they walk their dogs. Am I going to be leashed to a barking, snarling maniac if surprised by a dog around the corner? Will I be walking down the street and look up to see two large off-leash dogs barreling toward us, the owner a block behind them and waving at us with an oblivious grin, calling, “It’s okay! They LOVE other dogs”? Walking a dog who is afraid and/or aggressive to other dogs makes excursions outside at best anxiety-provoking and at worst a nightmare.
But Willie and Zip ran through the tall grass like buddies on a playground. They played “who can run faster” and “I’ve got the toy and you don’t” while the sun dimmed behind the trees and the crickets played percussion in the background. Surely there is little more beautiful than two healthy young dogs bounding together across the grass.
Zip’s owner also had a female boxer, Tango, who she said was good with other dogs. Unlike Zip, Tango was an adult female who wouldn’t passively lie down to be inspected by a bumbling adolescent. She was muscled up like a wrestler and conveyed a sense of strength and confidence. Meeting her would be a good experience for Willie, because not all dogs he’d meet in the future were going to give him the upper hand during a greeting. Letting them meet was a small but reasonable risk, given that Tango was said to have good social skills and Willie was doing so well. The owner and I talked it out, and we decided to go ahead. Even as we spoke, however, a little voice inside asked me if we should proceed. Deep in my gut, a red flag was waving, but I ignored my intuition and decided to let the dogs greet each other.
Tango stood her ground as Willie approached, her legs straight, her head straining forward, neck flexed like a stallion’s. The appropriate response of a young dog to an o
lder, on-territory female would be to adopt an appeasing posture by lowering himself to the ground. But Willie responded by rearing up like a horse, attempting a “stand-over” by resting his forelegs on her shoulders. This is usually an active attempt by a dog to gain control of the interaction. A stand-over is not a wise move for an adolescent dog on an older female of a breed famous for never backing down. Worse, he growled at her. And then all hell broke loose when Tango growled back and lunged at Willie.
Imagine a blur of black and white streaking in erratic circles around the grass, followed by a growling mass of muscle. Every twenty strides, Tango would catch up to Willie and mash him into the ground with her forepaws and body, growling into his belly while Willie flailed and screamed. Tango’s owner and I chased after the dogs in a frenzy, attempting to catch animals who were a gazillion times faster than we were.
Finally, we managed to get a hand on each of them. It probably took only a few seconds, but I remember the incident as if it lasted forever. As chaotic as things were, it was clear that Tango had not physically injured Willie. She’d simply told him in no uncertain terms that if anyone was going to do the growling, it was her. His panicked, high-pitched reaction had only aroused her more.
After the dogs calmed down, I did some work with Willie to end our visit on a good note, but what I remember most are the expletives I repeated as I drove home. This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen; I knew it could set back Willie’s progress considerably. Sure enough, the next time he saw an unfamiliar dog, Willie’s reaction regressed into stiff-bodied growling and obsessive sniffing of urine marks.
The Education of Will Page 11