"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."
I first heard this when I was a teenager driving on a trip back from California. I was fascinated by the thought. I just started understanding that there are 2 reasons for everything; the one you tell people and the real reason. The tricky thing about PTSD is the real reason plays hide-and-seek from me. I don't readily know why I do what I do. I have to consider the problem from different angles until I can start to see the patterns of my behavior. Counseling taught me to see the patterns in my own life. I could follow threads of repeating pattern until finally figuring out that I am still trying to resolve issues from many years before. I am a detective of my own life. The interesting thing I do now is I watch my behavior and then recognize there is a problem. If I dig past all the healthy food for a bite of chocolate fudge for the third time in one evening, it isn't hunger. If my breath is coming short and fast, but I am not exercising, it may be the beginning of a panic attack. I don't always understand why I do somethings. I am learning to use my own behavior to give me clues into my inter-working of my own mind.
Patterns are evidence of things gone before.
I first heard this when I was a teenager driving on a trip back from California. I was fascinated by the thought. I just started understanding that there are 2 reasons for everything; the one you tell people and the real reason. The tricky thing about PTSD is the real reason plays hide-and-seek from me. I don't readily know why I do what I do. I have to consider the problem from different angles until I can start to see the patterns of my behavior. Counseling taught me to see the patterns in my own life. I could follow threads of repeating pattern until finally figuring out that I am still trying to resolve issues from many years before. I am a detective of my own life. The interesting thing I do now is I watch my behavior and then recognize there is a problem. If I dig past all the healthy food for a bite of chocolate fudge for the third time in one evening, it isn't hunger. If my breath is coming short and fast, but I am not exercising, it may be the beginning of a panic attack. I don't always understand why I do somethings. I am learning to use my own behavior to give me clues into my inter-working of my own mind.
4 comments:
That is very much how it has been going for me. Putting together the patterns of how I behave. It is like I'm working backwards to move forward. Indeed, "I am a detective of my own life." xx
Thanks TR.
IMO Sometimes the real reason is right in front of us but we subconsciously CHOOSE not to see it.
I think I knew, but didn't want to admit, that my father was(is)a nasty man who actually enjoyed hurting his "loved" ones. I'm pretty sure I realized that my mother was(is) his willing accomplice. Over and over they made no secret of what they were doing and proved it by behaving appropriately with outsiders.
I believe I didn't want to admit that I was raised by a pair of completely dysfunctional whack-jobs, because what does that make me? The realization that the very people who should have loved me unconditionally from the moment I was born, but didn't, was not a truth I wanted to see, because how worthless does that make me?
Thoughts like "They did the best they could." or "They loved me in their own way." still slip into my head now and then because, for me, the truth is just too hard to face.
Healthy or not, denial is a powerful coping tool.
That is tough to face. My kids and husband figured out my mother long before I did. Shuck me up when I understood my parents were a matched pair.
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