Cleaning out the closets

Closets need fresh air

That's the trouble with closets.

Closets are almost always small, closed off, interior rooms that have no access to fresh air or light. They get stale and messy and they are always filled with dark corners and, in fact, the closet itself is generally dark unless there is an artificial source of light that is turned on. Most of us know our way around our own closets so well that we can stumble around in the dim light and find our shirts, the checked one, and shoes, the stinky ones. Closets need exposure.

My gay and lesbian friends talk about coming out of the closet. Hurray!

My issue is a bit different. It is a different closet and a different set of issues. But then, not altogether different, I guess.

My closet needs some fresh air, natural light. My closet needs me to get out of it, too.

My closet is shame.

It is shame from a terrible experience that happened to me that seems to be nobody else's concern, that is, not beyond my faithfully wonderful family.

My closet is PTSD. I am not a war veteran. I don't get pages in the New York Times or coverage in Newsweek. I remember when the first war vets were being diagnosed with PTSD and I was so very glad they were getting the public attention and care they deserved. Now it seems the pages are filled with stories -- as there should be -- of PTSD suffering and war veterans.

But nobody writes about me. Not that I am a narcissist. That is not the point anyway. The point is to have a fellowship of suffering, a community of folks who see the world as you do, who freak out when you do, who cower in their closets of shame like you do. Community. Solidarity.

Clergy. Clergy who have been battered and beaten. That is my community. And nobody writes about us. We are the church's dirty little secret. That we happen. That terrible stuff happens to us. No one wants to know. Any articles written about us are sanitized beyond the point of our recognizing ourselves and what happened to us.

There is power in community. But nobody knows -- or has said -- how many ELCA clergy are disabled due to PTSD, depression, battering. We don't know one another. And, frankly, we are so shuttered in our own silos of depression and mistrust that we are not the ones who are most likely to reach out and find one another.

Well, this is a start. A modest proposal. If you trust me, let me know. We will continue to live without recognition, respect for our struggles, concern for our condition until we ourselves ask for it, maybe even demand it. No one, no bishop is going to come looking for us. We are their worst nightmares. In some cases, they are ours. But we need to find a way to clean out our own closets of shame and depression, of shell-shock and shattered trust.

And the way to do it is the way the military has begun its work with veterans: by drawing the victims together.

Can we do that? We can.

Snow leopard? Dalmatian? Spotted giraffe? Lady bugs? Appaloosa?

What sort of spots should I get for my brain?


The next time you see me I will have a spotted brain!

It is hard, though, to decide what sort of spots to get. There are more spotted animals than you would imagine. Pigs, sheep, frogs, owls, horses, even giraffes. Cats and my new favorite, moiled cows.

I do believe I've written a bit about this before. It involves a wand, remember? Actually, it's just a long pointer and my therapist will not be wearing a pointy hat.

This is an ongoing aspect of my therapy for PTSD, a new means of neutralising the impact of traumatics incidents. I will visualize the event or experience, allow myself to feel its awfulness for a brief moment or two. And then we will look for a spot in my range of vision where the impact of the traumatic event is not so intense.

Like so much of the treatment for PTSD, nobody is exactly certain how, or why, it works but it beats the heck out of walking around the planet in a state of shell shock as the WWI veterans did for decades.

I really hope these new modalities of treatment (see, I can use big words, just not emotionally stand to be near anyone at the time) are helpful not so much for me but especially for all of the Iraqi and Afghani war veterans returning home. And I hope it is helpful for the victims of rape and abuse and other kinds of domestic violence.

We have to take these afflictions more seriously. Mental health issues must come out of the closet and be treated with the same respect we give to diabetes, leukemia, heart attacks. They are just that deadly.

Life is hard. And we make it harder on others when we're just shitty people and treat others like crap. It is normal to respond the way many of us do. The brain is resilient and clever but it wants to work. It doesn't want to be screwed up and blown up and completely mixed up.

I am so grateful for the patience and creativity of medical folks who are trying new means of helping to get our neural pathways moving along their natural courses again. If you know someone who is struggling, don't judge. Encourage. Be kind. Be gracious, generous, compassionate. Not patronizing. But friendly. And try, if you can, to encourage them to find help.

Help helps. It really does.

I'm partial to spotted snow leopards, so that is what I'm going for. But a spotted giraffe? That sounds way cool. I guess we'll find out which it is around this time tomorrow.

Next time I'm asking for some neon.