The C Stands For Church

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."

This is the constant statement that keeps coming back to me during the process of healing and accepting my circumstances. It is not the first time I've come to this thought in my life. However, when you grow up in an environment that gives no tolerance to the wilds of life's dynamic changes or provides adjustable molds to people's life styles and history, you end up with a process with no manual situation. 

Let's give some background here and the two times in my life I have used this sentence quoted above. Interestingly enough, both times grow from the same root. I grew up in the Christian church in a religious family. I wouldn't say we were zealous in the faith, but we went to church every Sunday. Me and my siblings went to Sunday School and then later onto Youth Group in the teen years. Like all families in the church, I am sure that our family looked like the normal type. I wouldn't describe us as hiding any details about the dark things that happened on the inside. If asked I would tell people I had a very normal childhood and it was quite pleasant. No complaints! However, and of course, entering into adulthood comes with its own challenges as we know, but it also brought along unexpected changes. 

When I was 20, my dad left. We were given some reasons that seemed to me like "well, it sounds like you need to try harder..." but what do I know. This was the first time I thought, "it wasn't supposed to be this way." Divorce wasn't supposed to be a factor in my family. We were Christian after all, and I grew up knowing that divorce was something we just shouldn't be doing. I didn't have any other friends with divorced parents, so suddenly I was set apart. No one could relate. I couldn't relate to anyone else. My friends didn't treat me differently, but they stopped coming around. My house went from the place to be on the weekends to a ghost town. It was the little things, even my mom noticed and made comments on how she missed the house being filled with energy. 

The second time I uttered this phrase in question is the real reason this blog exists. For about 5 months now, I have been on my own journey through therapy. I moved back to my home state, left my job, and nearly everything in my life changed. This all resulted in a dark moment in life where I was truly having trouble functioning, due to high anxiety and panic attacks. I had saved up enough money to get by, that wasn't the issue. However, with great encouragement and push from special people in my life, I decided to find a therapist and really work on things. I have had therapy before, but this time I really needed to treat it like one of my classes back in college. Notes, homework, the works. 

I found a therapist that would work (hi!), which is one of the hardest parts in my experience, and we got to work. I expressed I have had anxiety for about 15 years, I have occasional panic attacks over irrational fears seemingly without a consistent trigger, easily emotionally upset, OCD symptoms, and of course your typical sprinkle of family and relationship hiccups and drama. We talked about possible medication for an anxiety or mood disorder (not bipolar so don't even go there), and I was feeling ok about possible answers and symptom management. That was until I was describing a recent panic attack. I said, "I can physically feel it on my body" and I indicated top of my chest and the crown of my head. My therapist (again, hello), then paused and said, "I think you have PTSD."

This gave me great pause. I thought to myself, "no way, that's crazy." I wouldn't describe anything that has happened to me in life as "traumatic." Sure, having my parents divorce was hard, but I wouldn't call it truly traumatic. I had my foot in the camp of thinking we throw the word "trauma" around pretty loosely these days. However, I have since come to taking my foot out and strolling down the street towards "welcome to the club." I left that session really thinking about the possibility of PTSD. I don't know enough about it to really identify with it. Between sessions, I had to do some research (and the results will shock you). 

Upon my research things started to click a bit. I would read the list of symptoms and my eyes started to fill with tears. My chest started to tighten. I went back to my next session and said, "ok let's talk about PTSD." Over the next several weeks we landed on C-PTSD, which is Complex Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome. Unlike Acute PTSD, C-PTSD is caused by small events over time that go unnoticed. It was described to me like putting a frog in a pot of cold water that gradually gets heated over time. You don't notice the danger of the heat until it is too late. Where were my micro traumatic episodes coming from you may wonder? All from my experience in the church.

The details will come up as I write entries into this blog. Frankly, this is for my own process and own healing, so the need to give exact context to an audience is not my priority. I don't even know who will end up reading this, other than my therapist who has requested to do so. I have been reading and exploring different issues I have stumbled upon. My own hiccups. Growing up a young girl to a woman in Christian church culture is, as you may be able to imagine, interesting and insane. All of which I didn't think much of until I was properly taken out of the environment. I've been exploring purity culture, church practices, operations, motives, corruption, community, and of course pointing to the very thing that the church claims it strives for "being like Jesus." The American church is anything but (spoiler alert). For a place that claims to love and care for people, and go through the thick of life with you, they have left me and everyone else out to try and ultimately set us up to fail. Therefore I am sitting here with the pieces of myself that no longer fit simply with the statement:

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."