Old made new

Spiritually, it's a one-time event. In mental health, it's a process.

Years ago Ben and I went to a Christian biker rally with friends. Did you know there is such a thing? Bad-looking dudes standing around polishing the chrome on their Harleys talking about Jesus.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated by all the burly men with bushy beards and long hair, wearing black leather and chains. Coming from a very conservative Christian culture, it was a shock to be sure.

One of the first people I met was a guy whose nickname was BATMAN (they all have nicknames), which stands for “Born Again Tom Made All New.” Tom doesn’t answer to Tom anymore. He’s Batman now. He’s not just different, he’s all new—as the Bible puts it, a “new creature,” not just a remade version of the old guy. It’s a spiritual rebirth. The old Tom is dead, the new Tom is alive. He’s a whole new man.

I’m not sure what made me think of Tom today, but it might have been the every-so-often new boards on the old High Bridge in Farmville. The bridge is high above the trees, so it’s exposed to all the weather: scorching sun, driving rain, and whatever snow happens to fall in southern Virginia. There’s no protection. The wood is bruised and battered, walked on and biked on . . . I even saw a truck drive across it today towing a lawn trailer. The old bridge takes a beating.

Every year the State Parks people inspect the bridge from one end to the other, almost a half mile across, checking boards, screws, fencing. Every year they find wood that needs replacing and screws that need tightening. So every year we see this, new added to old.

It’s never a completely new bridge; that would cost millions. They take the old and keep patching it up so it’s safe for us to walk across for another year. It’s not the same as Born Again Tom Made All New. This is more of a rehabilitation project.

When I was hit head-on and started experiencing symptoms I didn’t understand were the result of PTSD, all I wanted was to go back to how I was before the wreck. I kept saying, “I just want to be normal again,” as if my previous self were the measuring stick of normalcy. I wanted to be “made all new” except I wanted the new to be the old, familiar me. There was a lot of twisted thinking going on.

The first time I met with my therapist, I took Ben with me because I did not trust myself to make any decision, undergo any treatment. By that time, more than two years after the wreck, I felt like my brain had completely betrayed me. I still thought my brain was the problem. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t act right, didn’t know up from down or sideways. So I took Ben to make sure this wasn’t going to be some kind of quackery that would do more damage than good. I felt like I needed him to protect me from who-knows-what I didn’t have the presence of mind to protect myself from. I come from a long line of skeptics.

In that first meeting after all the introductions and background, E (my therapist) asked me, “What do you hope to get out of this?”

I answered, “I just want to be normal again. I want to go back to the way I used to be.”

She turned to Ben and asked, “And what do you hope for?”

Ben answered, “I just want my wife back.”

All either of us could think about was getting back the person we both had known for 35 years. That was the comfortable version of Karen we were used to, the one with all the issues she had denied and repressed for a lifetime. But we knew her, and that was better than this unknown stranger we were currently trying to live with. We wanted to old me back.

Then E said the most profound thing that I have never forgotten:

“What if she could be better?”

Isn’t that just like a therapist, answering with a question? At the time, it was all brand-new to us, and I inwardly rolled my eyes and thought “Yeah, yeah, whatever, just fix me.” We had no idea what better meant.

Back then, I had the suspicion that I was never going to be the same, and it broke me. I had the idea that I was going to be damaged for the rest of my life, that nothing would ever be good again. That the rest of my life was going to be one gigantic struggle for survival and I was going to dread getting up every morning and want to hide under the covers in bed all the time. I did not have names for anything I was experiencing, and it was all so overwhelming. I was so in the middle of the trees, I could not see the forest.

What do you mean, better? If my brain is damaged, how can it get any better? Brain damage is permanent (I thought). I had exactly zero hope that anything would improve.

Now here we are, almost six years post-wreck, a year and a half of therapy in. Some days I still struggle. Okay, a lot of days. But I have so much more understanding now. I have names for all the things: anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, panic, triggers, and the naming of them has helped me know it’s not just me being a screwed-up train wreck. These are direct results of the traumatic stress that met me on a mountain road almost six years ago.

E has helped me process (through EMDR) a lot of the difficulties I’ve experienced in life, and they’ve been myriad and started early, long before a car accident. Some, my young brain simply blocked out and I am only now understanding how various events have affected me all my life. But as I gain understanding, it makes more sense.

I’ve learned strategies to help regulate my nervous system when it gets triggered, which is more often than I’d like. The tractor gets me every time. A car coming up to the road I am on always puts me on high alert. I can sense tension in a group of people and it undoes me. And there are many other things that I sometimes shake my head at, wondering why I am “so sensitive.”

But then I remember that my nervous system has been through a lot, and nervous systems don’t just “get over it.” Nervous systems do not have a time stamp, so time does not heal them. There is no magic pill, no “made all new” in mental health. We start with where we are and we learn how to work with that, like patching up the High Bridge.

In the process, I am unlearning a lot of old ways of being and thinking, and I am shucking outdated coping skills that were never healthy to begin with and that were making the old me not the best version of myself. I am learning how to think differently about myself and the world I live in. I am learning to align my beliefs about myself with what God says about me.

None of this happens overnight. When I first began the search for healing, I wanted it to be a one-time event, like Born Again Tom Made All New. *Poof* you’re a new human. But that’s not the way it happens. It’s a process. Here a little and there a little. Layer upon layer. Digging out the old, worn, unhelpful ways of thinking and replacing them one at a time with new, better, healthier ways.

In the beginning, I was heartbroken by the thought that I would never be the same.

Today I rejoice in it.