PTSD Healing Series: How To Accept Criticism

What To Do When You Disappeared And Lost Time

@nataliebarr6075

3 weeks ago

“I went from being an energetic, strong high achiever to being this shut down shell of myself. I can’t seem to pull out of it. Nothing helps, not the daily practice, not meditation. I hate the empty life I have now. I have no job, no friends, and no energy to get out there being the amazing person I know I am supposed to be. I survived 30 years of abuse while still somehow doing amazing things. Then once I am finally free of him and free of the constant abuse, I can’t get my mind free of the fear and numbness. How did I do so much in survival mode for decades only to be frozen now that I am safe?”

You Tube Comment from Anna Runkle video below.

Again, to the letter, she gets it, she describes it, when nobody ever has—nobody I know. This is not just another “procrastination” video; Rather, Anna understands the incarnated PTSD entity/being, that “crashes” and makes all successes intolerable, hence a storm of blackouts, just when things seem to be going well. Listen, at least, to the first five minutes—if you relate to any of this.

Time

I was unable to be online yesterday, from early morning until late night, as I was in transit, to attend a very small meeting in Alzaina, a mountain town 45 minutes from Málaga, where my friend Raúl Ehrichs invited us. (By the way, I missed not one, but two buses, from Granada to Málaga.) (Now that I have a program, a way to understand it all, I don’t “mind” that much. I am beginning to “get” it.)

Anyway, when I got to the hotel room maybe around midnight, and looked at comments section, I saw that there was a fight going on. I absorbed the main gist of the accusations against me, and some of the ensuing conflicts, and felt sad, scared, cold, and “dys-regulated.” I told myself to stay in my body.

In childhood, being “in trouble,” meant death. You simply plunged into a fugue of wild apology, your brain a-spin, not a real “you,” but a creature that can and did say anything to stem the wrath. The wrath was life or death and your love was to apologize even if you were being accused of things so unspeakable you should have been the furious one. But you had no power.

In adulthood: Somebody angry does not need to mean “death.” It means you’re getting feedback you can sift through, and own some and reject some.

I remain 100% committed to trauma healing, and that means I must recognize the trauma also of others, and stay present when I am accused and rebuked.

I’m not making this up—it is possible, if you work the self-acceptance muscles.

A. is correct that I have been absent from comments but not correct that I am “ungrateful.” I understand I have unintentionally set off a feeling of being ignored, in “A.” I’m sad about this. I register the accusation that I am not a scholar—true. I register the accusation of a lack of professionalism, being inconsistent. Fairly true. I don’t accept the accusation of “whining.” But I 100% accept the bottle thrown at me for being increasingly unpredictable in my presence and interaction.

And I also understand, as the French say, “Ce n’est pas la fin des haricots verts.”

(It’s not the end of string beans.)

The work in trauma healing is not going straight to annihilation (self and other) when one is criticized. My Irish sister Siobhan emailed me last night and urged me to follow the kindness of Jesus, who would never, she wrote, block a person. She suggested I ask what the unmet need is and what I did to cause so much anger in A.

I’m not as advanced as Siobhan, my better angel voice. But I hear her Christian, bell-like voice, and it makes me less triggered.

I asked Raúl and friends to let me go up to his balcony—mid conference— so I could write this, as it feels like a very important impasse. If I apologize and I’m not sorry, that’s not going to get us anywhere. If I apologize and I lose all sense of where I really feel I was at fault (childhood) then I am also on the wrong path.

But if I can stay in my skin, when somebody tells me I totally suck, if I can “sit with it,” and not catastrophize, and try to accept the truth of important feedback, and try to get better—there is maturity and healing in that.

A. does not require me to validate A. and I don’t need to end all hope for myself as a hostess and publisher because we’re going through a squall.

(Please don’t think I have become mature or healed. I am just finding a few muscles I did not know how to use before I started marathon listening to Anna Runkle.)

So: A, I sent you a complete reimbursement. I hope you have not deleted your past comments—I will go read everything. (And I hope you all know my “like” command has been not working for months, and Substack can’t solve it, but I will keep trying.)

I have no interest in being un-criticise-able.

Many of us grew up in “homes” that were loaded with violence, storms of wrath, and a sense of guilt even if we were just sleeping, or just thinking.

I wanted to create a trauma free house here, but I didn’t tend to it with enough vigilance. When people get furious, or “attack” and accuse, me, and some of you, do I “block” (I have done this, in the past) or do I let it breathe until we hopefully resolve it?

What this is is like a concert in a field that nobody has to pay to enter, all the content is “free” BUT, a tiny percentage of the subscribers pay my bills. It’s exactly what I need to survive, it’s the first “living” in a very long time, and I am in fact so grateful that I don’t know how to express it. Those people might be in a position to say: “You owe me.” I think they are owed something, and my way to resolve this is to say to anybody who becomes unhappy: Say the word and I will refund you in full.

Money makes people angry. That’s all I know about money.

I think I know what people will accuse me of next: “You hide too much behind Anna Runkle.” Yes, I rather hang on her every word because it is incredible that there is a flesh and blood actual person who describes the mind agony so exactly that all my life I carried and could never explain/describe/confess/redeep/repair/heal—nada. I am never going to give time of day to anybody who says brain damage from early brain formation (shock, trauma, abuse) is a “choice” or that one should “ignore” it. I have a lot to say about the many traditions, religions, and cultural leanings that ask us to do this, in the longer piece.

The “longer piece” about “PTSD” I have mentioned has not been published yet—I will return to Granada tomorrow evening and try to get it up by the next day. (I plan/intend to stick to my time promises more—you can hold me accountable.)

Now: Something happy—this morning, Raúl took us to have chorizos and chocolate (yes I did eat this) outside in this incredibly lovely mountain town, Alzaina, and one of our friend noticed something was happening in the valley below, because she heard a bell.

It was a beautiful flock of goats!