Until I started HRT, I put on at least one item of clothing backwards or inside-out most days of the week. I usually caught it before I walked out the door. Despite its frequency, I didn’t really notice this pattern until it began to fade, not long after I began the boy juice.
Now it happens so rarely that when it does, I take notice, like this morning, when I put on my shirt both backwards and inside-out. Was it because I’d simply been rushing? Or have I been distracted lately, not making the effort to stay present? When I left Jade’s apartment for the train, instead of putting in my headphones, I did the 54321 grounding technique. There was the sight of a Puerto Rican flag, the sensation of the sun on my face, the sound of a bus breaking on Nassau, the scent of wilting roses, the taste of nothing.
I first learned about grounding techniques during the press junket for How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) in People magazine: After Jim Carrey kept having panic attacks in his costume and prostheses, which took 8 hours to get into, an ex-Marine was hired to teach him to tolerate his claustrophobia by counting his fingers over and over again. I can’t find that article now, but a more recent one with so-called “fun facts” says that it was CIA agents who were hired, only their “distraction tactics” were “eat everything you see,” “smoke as much as you possibly can,” and “punch yourself in the leg.” I suppose it’s heartening, how little our American war criminals know about withstanding their own torture practices. I wonder how much they charged.
I learned the 54321 technique when I attempted to do EMDR for the first time in my late twenties. Sunk into the brown leather couch in the chilly Berkeley office, stressed out by the blanket the therapist instructed me to cover myself with (germs, etc.), weeping as I fought to regulate, a concept which I had only just learned about in The Body Keeps The Score1. The weeks went by, and we never got any closer to actually doing the EMDR—I could never settle enough. Two months in, the therapist told me she couldn’t help me.
“You’ve managed to fully objectify yourself,” she said. I didn’t know what to do with that, or how to fix it. Occasionally she wouldn’t let me leave our weekly session on time because I wasn’t yet “grounded,” and she was worried about my safety (why, I didn’t know). What I did know was that I resented her gentle efforts to prevent me from using my own distraction tactics, most of them variations on “punch yourself in the leg.” She was the first medical professional I had ever expressed hostility toward directly and honestly, which I didn’t understand, because unlike the many bad medical professionals I’ve encountered, she hadn’t done anything other than ask me to do things like speak about myself, count aloud, remember, be present. But I couldn’t help but be furious, any more than I could prevent myself from crying, shivering, chattering, or vomiting during and after our sessions.
It’s different now, of course. I can do 54321 whenever I want, and I do. It helps.
David tweets at @k8bushofficial.
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A life-changing read, despite knowing what we know about Bessel van der Kolk. Another was Nurturing Resilience, which I can’t recommend enough for those who want to learn more about and treat C/PTSD.
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