Riding the NYC Trains: familiar and fun, and then uncomfortable and scary...
My recovery from PTSD
(Click below for the audio file.)
Oh the shaking and rattling while sitting on a NYC subway train car.
It was quite the familiar feeling on my long commutes from Brooklyn to the Bronx for my job over 20 years ago. For me the jostling was almost as calming as a baby being lulled to sleep in a rocking chair. And actually, the craziest thing is how I could fall asleep during the shaking and then somehow my brain knew just when to wake up too! I never missed my stop even though I could be completely knocked out just the station before!
Other times sitting on my commute, or the countless times I traveled by train during my youth and young adulthood, I would get enveloped by the dynamic energy around me. I loved riding the train! There were SO many personalities, ethnicities, ages, and people from ALL walks of life in all parts of their day. Oh and the languages being spoken—Duolingo, Babble or Rosetta Stone could get material for their foreign language lessons just by recording what was heard on taking a trip on the train!
In fact, I was so used to so many languages being spoken around me, that not understanding the dialogue was something that became comfortable for me. It’s an interesting feeling, feeling foreign in your own hometown. And, it’s an interesting feeling to feel calm even though you have no idea what people around you are saying! I guess maybe one reason it was calming is that my brain couldn’t engage in what was being said- and so I often just zoned out.
The times when my brain was engaged, though, was predicting who would get on and off the train. Depending on the stop or time of day it was, there always seemed to be a pattern to the passenger or group of passengers exiting or entering the train. Predicting who would get on or off the train was almost as gratifying as if I was playing bingo. My brain would fire off a congratulatory message: “yes, I knew I was right!” It was so satisfying! And then if I was wrong, well then my brain would play a game of trying to figure out why that person didn’t get on or off when I thought he/she/they would.
I also loved the dialogues in my head that came up watching people around me. I could always kind of get a panoramic snapshot of who was in my visual realm without actually focusing on that one person. And those few times I was caught in my investigation, then I would just meekly smile at the person, in a silent apology of invading their undefined personal space.
And then there were the entertainers! Oh they were great! Some would be playing an instrument- like one you could buy at a music store, and others just put together a makeshift instrument from supplies gathered from the recycling bin or something. Either way, the acoustics of the train, either in the car or in the subway station were some of the best audio experiences I’ve ever had. The notes reverberated off the walls and ceiling and into my body, often lifting me up and out of whatever funky mood I might have been in.
Contrary to being on an actual stage, these performers displayed a sense of free artistic expression unconfined by the expectations of a planned audience or defined by the walls of an auditorium, for example. It was fascinating to watch as they navigated their art weaving in and out of passengers, hand poles, the twists and turns of the moving train, or the sounds of arriving and departing trains.
Wherever people were going to and coming from, and how very different our lives were, there was something magical about us all crossing paths in that train car, on the day, and in that moment. Unlike driving when people’s paths may similarly cross, there isn’t the physical barrier of the car itself. For better or worse you’re sometimes smashed up against a total stranger, and even though it may be a bit awkward or uncomfortable, it felt familiar and somehow mostly safe.
However, in one particular memory the sudden jerking of the train did not feel comfortable or safe.
It was October something, and about 4-6 weeks post the awful event of 9/11. And about 4 1/2 weeks from a traumatic experience that triggered another unhealed trauma 9 months prior when I was on a plane. (More here about that experience.)
In the past as I mentioned, the shaking of the train would practically put me to sleep on my commute. But this time the shaking of the train reminded me of the shaking that had occurred when I was in that near death experience on the plane.
The feeling of being reminded of that plane shaking was anxiety provoking, but it also felt unsettling that something that used to feel safe, suddenly did not.
It was one of the outward experiences that let me know that inward something was really off.
As I tried to go through my “normal” routine, I noticed that a sense of confidence I used to have wasn’t there. I was often unsure of decisions I was making. I couldn’t watch any movies or TV shows that included planes. I just wasn’t happy. People and activities that used to make me feel connected and joyful felt flat—almost like a black and white picture that instead of looking cool, just looks bland.
In retrospect I think my being needed to feel and be “flat” as a way to protect my nervous system from anymore damage. It felt safer to not do “fun” things because of the sometimes vulnerability involved. That free-fall I experienced in the plane for example, would not feel fun at all if I were to have gone a roller coaster. It felt safer to not engage in my usual meaningful conversations because I knew there was a lot of emotion right there under the surface and I just wanted to keep it hidden from others and from my own consciousness and awareness.
As the weeks went on and that feeling of “not feeling like myself” continued, the uneasiness just brought on a layer of uncertainty that I wanted to go away. I decided I needed to get help. I e-mailed a counselor that the airline had set me up with right after the incident originally happened. And he suggested a local therapist that I could see in person.
For about 4 months I had bi-weekly sessions with a psychologist that consisted mostly of the modality, EMDR- eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It works under that biology of bi-lateral stimulation in which I alternately heard a beep in the left ear and then the right ear. Or one time I watched a metronome go back and forth, activating my left eye and then my right eye.
In as relaxed state as possible, in a dimly lit room, the psychologist asked me to recount the exact feelings and thoughts I had at the time of the trauma. While I was recalling the memory or memories, I would be watching the metronome or listening to the beeps in my headset.
Right after these sessions I would be exhausted and drained physically and emotionally, as if I had just completed an intense boxing workout. But as the sessions progressed, I didn’t feel quite as “beat up” afterwards. And I could tell that the EMDR was working, because less and less when parts of the incident came to mind, or if I was talking about it to another person I didn’t well up in tears or have my throat tighten up.
It was a very surreal thing to have a change happen inside of me that I wasn’t actually directly controlling. The only thing I was “doing” was showing up at the sessions and doing what the therapist directed me to do. It was explained to me, that through this method the memory somehow loses its attachment to the emotion of the traumatic experience. And indeed that is what I realized started to happen. And even 20 years later, my memory of the details are intact, but the fear, the anxiety, the sadness I had about the incident are not there. But I am still very aware of the profundity of the experience on my life.
What was also very strange during this time, was that as I was going through my own processing and recovery, everyone around me was also experiencing their own processing and recovery from 9/11. It was wild. I’d hear people’s stories and sense their emotion around the trauma and I knew exactly how they were feeling.
I was also acutely aware of the fact that because 9/11 was a national disaster- people who had no real connection to NYC, were somehow extremely involved—but yet for those of us in NYC, who were directly impacted, it was often a deeply personal experience. And so it was like everyone’s own personal journey was somehow hijacked by the stories told on the national news.
It was like when a well meaning friend breaks into your story and says: “oh I know exactly how you feel! When I went through that, I felt the same way!” And yes there often can be overlap in the friend’s experience, but in the moment of being interrupted, I was the one telling MY story, and I needed to express what I was feeling. It was hard for many NY’ers to have space to heal what they needed to process when the national media was always telling us what we were feeling on the nightly news.
It really was quite the recovery time for me. At the time, I was also grateful that I didn’t have any other major unresolved trauma that had happened much earlier in my life. Because without a doubt, I’m sure it would have surfaced again. And at the same time, I felt for those who were in that situation of facing past traumas because of what 9/11 brought up for them, just as it had for me.
After getting to the end of my recovery for my own traumatic plane event, and as I felt the psychological healing happening, there was still a feeling of being down in the dumps that the counseling sessions didn’t seem to be helping with. And also maybe because of the emotional intensity of living in NYC at the time, I felt like I truly did need an escape.
I had never been on a yoga retreat and yoga’s was not really my thing, necessarily. But the idea to go away to yoga center a few hours away did feel safe and simple. Plus my mom and a couple other friends had recommended the place, Kripalu in Massachusetts, and so without anything to lose I asked my parents to borrow their car and went…