Whale dreams: Surprising moments of joy that can surface when you are healing

“It’s not down on any map, true places never are. ”

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Trauma affects everything. Even your dreams. In fact, nightmares are one of the  hallmarks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are often one of the symptoms that troubles people the most. If you experience trauma as an adult, the nightmares will stand out—mostly because  you know the difference between good dreams and nightmares. In many ways, I think it is much harder for people who experience trauma for the first time in adulthood because there is such a sense of loss of the safety that one once knew—and such a stark experience of the nightmares. If you grow up with trauma, you don't know anything else. You only know nightmares and you think that nightmares and dreams are the same thing. You are entirely used to them.

The very first dream that I had that wasn't a nightmare was when I was 32. I dreamt that I was standing high on a cliff in California or Oregon.  From this cliff I could see a whale below—breaching and swimming. The whale had come up to the surface and as I watched it the sight of it swimming made me unbelievably happy. I could feel joy in my whole body. It rolled and waved its big flipper and I was so filled with happiness that I passed out—and fell off the cliff and landed, unharmed,  on the sandy beach. And when I awoke in the dream, I sat up and could still feel that joy. I And when I woke up for real, I also could feel that joy. And I carried that feeling  and the awe of this wild creature with me for the rest of the day. That feeling in the dream gave me hope. That dreams could be like that. And that I had the possibility that this kind of happiness could and would surface in real life.

Over the years the image stayed with me. Healing stirs up longing. Longing for connection, longing to connect parts of yourself back together, longing to inhabit a different state of being. The image stayed with me long enough to write the following poem—what if Moby Dick were understood from the whale’s perspective? So much of healing is about a desire for connection and an ambivalence about safety in connection.

The Finder and the Found

The assumption is that he

didn’t want to get caught.

That the entire epic struggle

was one of escape. They assumed

that his desire was for freedom.

But perhaps the great white whale

was just ambivalent about closeness.

Was afraid that Ahab would

hurt him, as the others had before.

Unsure of whether to stay below

or surface, not wanting to give

signals of his whereabouts to those

who would wish to find him.

Perhaps, he was secretly hoping

to be pulled in on a great line.

Welcomed aboard with shouts

of homecoming and reunion.

Maybe Ahab’s longing

mirrored his own desire:

The finder and the found

joined by the ends of a line.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2024

Storms in the Distance: Absence and Presence in Healing

Last week I set out on a hike across a ridge. The first few miles took me past three glacial lakes followed by a 1500-foot climb to the ridge. The lakes wove in and out of view. And now and again the Nenana River far below. The pathway was narrow most of the way and the sides of the trail were filled with flowers: white bunchberry, tall bluebells, artic rose and yellow potentilla. Occasionally forget-me-nots wove themselves in. The flowers arranged themselves in bouquets –bouquets that any wedding florist would have been jealous of—bouquets for the most spectacular events--bouquets for hours.

I stepped out of the trees onto the ridgeline—where the trees were sparse and the scrub bush was low, and nearly at the first footfall there a crash of thunder that cracked loud. It startled me and I looked to see where it came from. Far off to my left-- the southwest-- the sky was dark across another string of mountains. To my right—the sky was bright with sun.

My first thought was that I didn’t know these mountains. I remembered being in the White Mountains in New Hampshire on a backpack trip in high school where we had been caught in a thunder and lightning storm above tree line on the Bond Cliffs. We took off our metal frame packs and put them under one huge boulder, and we all went and hid in the shelter of another boulder until the storm blew past. But here there seemed to be no place to hide, and I was exactly halfway on the hike—safety was equally in front of me as behind.

The dark sky hung over the mountains and continued to thunder. Loud. It was both far away and near at the start. I could see it over the mountains in the distance—I could see the dark clouds and could even see sheets of rain falling to the ground.

The wind from the storm was cool—and came across the valley as a cool breeze. The sun was still shining bright to my right with blue sky and bright white clouds.

If I looked left a cool breeze hit my face. If I looked right, I squinted—the path I was walking seemed to be a diving line between dark and light. Cold and Hot.

I thought about the thunder in the distance and how it was a lot like trauma that had healed. You don’t forget about the trauma. It’s still there and can make its presence known—It can be loud and even a bit frightening-- but it’s farther away. You have distance from it. You can see it. You can know what it is. Can see its shape. Can feel the cool breeze from it. But it doesn’t affect you the same way.

The funny thing about healing from trauma is that you don’t really know what you are aiming for a lot of the time. You know you don’t want to feel what you are feeling, but it’s hard to have a goal for the absence of a feeling. And the absence of a bad feeling is often not so much a good feeling—as a sense of freedom or expansiveness. The freedom isn’t about freedom from bad feelings—but freedom to be able to have the feelings you are having. Trauma is invasive and has an intensity that requires vigilance. You, your trauma and your constant need to protect yourself are one and the same. You have no distance from the trauma, your protections or even your own thoughts.

Which is why healing feels more like space and movement than it does any particular feeling. It feels like you can breathe. Look around. Think. But not have any particular thoughts. The opposite of the kind of vigilance you have with trauma is a state of reverie—your mind can float from thought to thought—with no particular need to grasp onto anything.

Fragments of poems. Fragments of songs. Names of wildflower and trees. Footfall after footfall. No need to pay attention to any one thing. I moved along the ridge in nearly perfect unison with the storm on my left—not too worried about catching up with it—which I eventually did at the end of the hike, once I had descended into the forest where the path clung to the fast moving river I had seen from above.  The rain was light and I took out the yellow raincoat I had packed.

Sometimes the old traumas stay in the distance, and sometimes the old hurts come back. But even when they do, you know them better. You have more compassion for yourself in the moments they catch you, and you have more ways to take care of yourself. You hear the thunder, you can feel the rain, but you can still see the sun.

© 2024 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

The Slow Healing Movement

“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”

— Wendell Berry, Remembering

There is a Slow Food Movement. Why isn’t there a Slow Healing Movement? The Slow Food Movement is an international movement, started in Italy, that seeks not only to preserve a life affirming tradition of long, satisfying meals, but also to strengthen the entire ecosystem that supports it:  food, eating, farming, family and a healthy way of life.

Have you noticed that everything is now about speed? We don’t have time to do anything anymore. Apparently, according to a recent NYT article, we don’t even have enough time to be nice—we are so overloaded with stress and work—that we feel that we don’t have time to be civil or nice. No time to even smile.

It’s true that I am so speedy that I can get from Boston to Anchorage or Azerbaijan in a single day. I can get a pile of books delivered to me overnight. I can find articles or recipes with one question typed into Google. We are all faster than a speeding bullet now. We all have super powers. It’s not surprising that we all hold ourselves to superhero standards.

But healing, mending, repair, and really, any real growth—are not a speed events. There should be a Slow Healing Movement. There should be a Slow Growth Movement. There should be a Slow Parenting Movement.

I have a friend who is in the midst of some big home repairs and it is such an instructive sight. She has a contractor who is working his way around the entire house removing and replacing rotten sills and soffits; finding boards that need replacing-putting in new window framing. When you look at the house you can see new wood and places where the house has been patched. This is slow and careful work because the old wood needs to be removed, the area prepped and the new wood needs to be fitted. The work is still a long way from the final priming and painting.

Any real repair takes time, and yet the whole world is oriented to fast healing. Part of the problem is that we have come to believe in the speed of the cure—thanks to antibiotics. One pill, a few days, and we can feel entirely better. I am grateful to modern medicine for this capacity, but this time frame does not work on most of our struggles, or really, any of our development. I am not anti-medication, but I am pro-healing.

Repair takes time. Mending takes time. Growth takes time. And, like the Slow Food Movement, it is as much about the ecosystem we create to heal or repair in.

I have found that during times of repair or growth that I crave slowness like a nutrient. And I have found that when I can be brave enough, in a culture of speed, to give in to this craving, the mending really does happen. The emotional bones knit back together, grief recedes, my capacity expands. I get more sturdy, I grow into new places in myself.

Slowness becomes the wonderful and supportive cast that wraps itself around my broken places and allows some things inside of me to knit back together. And most of the time the shifts that I need to make are not massive. I am not talking about taking whole days off (although I have done that when needed), I am just making some different choices about time and pace.

I have found that during times of repair, I crave walking, rather than running. I want to feel my feet on the earth, I want to see the trees, I want to hear the birds. I crave reading, rather than watching TV or movies. I want to take in the world one sentence at a time. During times of repair, I need to go to bed earlier and do fewer activities. I don’t always have choice about what needs to get done for work, as my work is project based and it happens when it happens. But when I do have choice, and am able to slow the work down, I do.

As a therapist, one of the most constant refrains I heard from people was that they didn’t have enough time to take care of themselves. And often we both felt stuck in a bind: they needed to take time, or shift time to heal, and yet they felt trapped by their responsibilities and obligations. Healing felt like yet another burden.

This is why we need a Slow Healing Movement. Because it is really, really hard to fight the culture of speed. It is hard to bravely say, “I need to slow down to heal,” especially when you feel at your most vulnerable. It’s hard to feel like only one who needs to move slowly in a world full of fast people. But the truth is we all need it. We need it, our family and friends need it, our kids need it. We all need times of slowness so we can mend, repair, grow. And if we had a movement behind us, we wouldn’t feel so alone. We could have cool t-shirts or bumper stickers. We could have slogans or shorthand where we could proudly state, “Having a Slow Day! How about you?”

There is no ‘right’ way to slow down. The Slow Food Movement has really good food and good wine, which wouldn’t be a bad start. But beyond that—everyone needs to shift their pace, their speed, their space in really different ways. Some people will go running to slow down, and others will nap. Some people will take a break for lunch and others will work through lunch so they can leave early. Some people will want music and others will want silence. You just need to listen to that inner voice. What will help you mend? What feels so supportive that you feel like things can knit back together, that you can imagine growth again? What will allow you to take the time you need? How can we support each other to do the same?

Needing slowness isn’t an aberration or a pathology—it’s a normal part of any healing or growth cycle. It’s just as a culture we have gotten away from natural cycles. And like the Slow Food Movement did with trying to bring back the basic human need for community, conversation and food—The Slow Healing Movement can do this for our ability to bring time, relationship and care to the things that need mending. So, let's support each other, and let's support ourselves. For all the mending and growing you need to do—go ahead, Have a Slow Day!

© 2024/2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

It's never too late to start healing

I have heard so many people say things like, “It’s too late for me to heal what happened” and “There’s no one who could help me” or “I’m too old to get help for this.” These statements are some of what has motivated to write about trauma and to create a better understanding about healing from trauma.

I believe it is harder to heal from trauma the older you are—but not because you are old. As I have described in an earlier blog, repeated trauma or long term trauma is not one trauma. It is really 3 forms of trauma. The first form of trauma is the trauma that you experienced—the ‘what did happen.’ The second form of trauma are the protections –the defenses—the way of being that you created to survive the trauma. These protections become a part of your personality, your way of being, your habits and routines. And the third form of trauma, the unseen impact of trauma, is what didn’t happen- it is all the things you didn’t or couldn’t do or learn because you were living in trauma. It is the experience of peace and calm, it is where your attention could have gone if it weren’t focused on survival.

It is harder to heal from trauma when you are older not because you are old, and an old dog can’t learn new tricks, or there aren’t good people to work with you and your trauma, it is harder because you have lived for so much longer with the protections and defenses. You have lived so much longer behind your wall—and it feels impossible to imagine any other way of being. It feels impossible to imagine being outside of the prison with the wind on your face—in a world where you don’t know the rules. Healing from trauma means letting go of these protections—living without them—for moments at first, and then gradually for hours, days, months. And it means risking new behavior, risking experiencing the ‘what didn’t happen.’

And I describe it as a risk on purpose. Living with your old protections, living as if the trauma could happen at any time again—that feels safe.  There was Japanese Lieutenant Hiroo Onada who held out fighting on a Philippine Island from 1944 until he was finally found and relieved of his duties in 1974. 1974. The war had been over for decades. But continuing to fight the war sometimes feels more sane. It makes the war more worthwhile. It provides hope for a different outcome. It can be so hard to let go of the war knowing that when you do, it is really over. It happened and you can’t change the outcome. Surrender really is surrendering the hope for an outcome that can’t happen.

Leaving the world of trauma, of your protections, where you are always ready to go back, is a big move. And anyone’s hesitation about healing, about wondering whether it’s worth it, or whether they can handle it, is a valid worry. It isn’t easy. It involves a lot of hard work, and it involves a lot of grief. Only in the quiet after the war can you begin to remember and feel what it felt like during the war. When you finally start living without your protections, when you finally start risking the new experiences—really, only then, can you fully feel what it felt like to live through the trauma at all. And many people catch glimpses of this grief and think it would be impossible, think that they wouldn’t survive it, they catch a glimpse and they say, “No way.”. But they forget the most important thing: they already have survived it. The grief is old. It is painful, but it will go.

There’s no magic in healing. You won’t become someone else. But you will get to experience yourself without the emotions of survival running your life. You will get to see your life not just in a past-perfect tense of what happened and what might have been, but also in the present, and the future- of what might be. No, it’s not easy to surrender your island of trauma, the safety that you know, to risk a different safety, a peaceful safety decades later. No it’s not easy, but you were strong enough to survive—which means you are more than strong enough to heal.

© Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD 2014/2024