*WARNING: Sensitive and graphic material. Please read responsibly. Listen to your emotions and feelings of anxiety. Like pressure, it builds up in your chest, your throat, or your gut. It may be a tightness. This is your subconscious telling you that you are triggered and not protected. If you continue to expose yourself to the trigger despite the physical sensations that are uncomfortable for you, you risk re-traumatization. Those uncomfortable emotions is your Id communicating to you. Listen. Don’t read if this could trigger you.
I want to record this day. It’s one I’ve dreamed of for a long… LONG time.
Ironically, it was also the day I experienced a massive breakthrough. So I will begin today’s post with a story…
About 5 years ago, (maybe 7), I was diagnosed with a mysterious condition called “Vasovagal Syncope.”
The Mayo Clinic defines Vasovagal Syncope as “[occurring] when you faint because your body overreacts to certain triggers. The vasovagal syncope trigger causes your heart rate and blood pressure to drop suddenly. That leads to reduced blood flow to your brain, causing you to briefly lose consciousness.”
The story of how this has been a huge part of my life actually starts in 1990.
13 September 1990, another Tuesday, I woke late for school. About an hour late, which was unusual for our household as my mum was always up bright and early to wake each of us up at 7:00 on the dot.
That morning, it was nearing 8:30, and a soft sob was coming from the kitchen. My siblings and I all walked into the kitchen.
“There has been a horrible accident…”
My mother went on to explain that the previous night, on the way home from church, my Uncle David was driving home with 4 of his children in the car and additional passengers who he was giving a ride home, when an 18-Wheeler hit their station wagon head-on.
The truck drivers had been drunk.
Ten people in the accident. Only 1 survivor.
My Aunt Peggy had stayed home that Sunday because she had a toddler and a one-week-old newborn she was taking care of. My Aunt Peggy had to bury her husband and three of her six children one week after giving birth to her youngest son.
My Aunt Peggy is one of the strongest women I know.
At the funeral of my three cousins and uncle, my mother fainted.
For the next 30 years, she was scolded, gaslighted, and accused of “attention seeking” due to jealousy because she was not the center of attention.
That story about my mum, seeing her on the floor of the funeral home… has stayed with me ever since.
When I began passing out around 2007 or so, “faking it” or “doing it for attention seeking” was the furtherest thing from my mind. This was such a regular occurrence for me, that Gatorade and bottled water were kept in my bathroom at all times.
It comes on fast. It begins with severe dehydration and stomach cramps, and, in most cases, diarrhea soon follows. Always, the moment I stand to make my way to the bathroom, the change in blood pressure occurs and it’s a race to relieve myself before I pass out and hit the floor.
For the next 15 minutes to 2 hours, I am paralyzed on the floor. I crave cold. I crave water. And lots of it. If I have water and/or electrolytes on hand, I’m looking at a 15… 25 minute recovery. If I lack water, I’m in for a long night.
Sometimes I pass out while on the loo. I have hit my head a number of times. Most times, I am so familiar with all the symptoms and early signs, that I get myself to the floor on time. No matter where I am. And tonight, that included a NYC restaurant bathroom in Midtown. Say it with me. EEEEEEEW. I am pretty sure I passed out in someone’s vomit tonight.
It was around 2017 that luck would have it one day, that an episode came on quite suddenly… at my doctor’s office. I remember being so ecstatic! Finally! I had a full medical team on hand and at my disposal. I took full-advantage of my random happy circumstance.
I was at a vending machine tucked away in a hidden corridor, when I felt the shift. No stomach cramps, but the change in blood-pressure, the light-headedness, the sudden heat that pumped through my body, the tunnel-vision. I clung to the wall for balance, determine to get on the floor in public where I could get help.
As soon as I was in sight, I carefully lowered myself to the floor.
“Are you okay?” asked a voice.
“No,” I said. “Doctor.”
And I passed out.
When I woke (about 2 minutes later according to staff), I was surrounded by 4 people. My pulse, blood pressure, and temperature were all being taken for the fourth time or so, a wheel chair was making its way toward me, and my doctor was being notified.
“What happened?” they asked.
“Did you hit your head? Any head injuries?”
I proceeded to tell them everything.
“No. This happens a lot. Once about every 3 weeks and almost always around 2 AM.”
“How long have you had this?”
“About ten years… maybe longer,” I said.
A few conclusions were instantly… well… concluded:
- I had a significant drop in blood pressure.
- I did not have diabetes or any abnormalities with my sugar.
- My vitamins and nutrients were not deficient.
That day, I was not diagnosed with Vasovagal Syncope. That day, the doctors and nurses shook their hands and said, “We don’t know what this is.”
But, every 3-4 weeks, for more than 10 years, around 2 AM, I would pass out.
About 3 months later, I was at a walk-in for something else entirely unrelated, and the doctor and I were covering my recent history. I told her about my irregular, but almost predictable fainting spells.
Without batting an eye she said, “That’s Vasovagal Syncope.”
I said, “What’s that?”
She reviewed my chart and confirmed, “Yes. You have Vasovagal Syncope.”
“What causes it?”
“We don’t know.”
“Why didn’t they diagnose me a few weeks ago?”
“Because not a lot of healthy care professionals know about it. I only know about it because I just saw a patient a few months ago who had been diagnosed with it years ago by another doctor who had heard of it.”
She printed out reading material for me, which I devoured.
So I had the name for this. Very little was known about the cause or the prevention. A lot of material was available for recovery, but nothing was mentioned about the water or electrolytes. And I spent the next three years managing my… “peculiarity.”
Fast forward to tonight.
I had a dinner with a friend at 6:00 in Midtown and, while I was getting dressed, I decided to grab a blue shirt, something I NEVER wear because this particular shade of blue is a PTSD trigger of mine… one that I was not aware of… until tonight when I put the shirt on, and my anxiety switched on.
It was the same color blue as the walls in the house where I grew up. Where I was beaten.
I shrugged off the anxiety, “Of course it’s a trigger. This is good exposure therapy for you.”
I arrived at the restaurant and the evening’s conversation started with how the blue shirt made my blue eyes pop.
His words brought back a flood of forgotten memories.
My anxiety rose. I suppressed it (shame on me).
We ordered dinner and I forgot to tell the water that I am Vegetarian.
They brought me the platter and I had been served chicken.
My anxiety tripled.
I apologized to the waiter, told him that I was a Vegetarian (who was still not used to communicating this to waiters), and the gentleman apologized for my error and immediately took the plate away, returning a moment later with the meat-free dish.
It was around this time that my friend, and I began talking about Letterkenny, A sitcom on Hulu that depicts “Hicks, Skids, Christians, and Hockey Players… and these are their problems.”
I will be blunt. I grew up in Letterkenny.
Dead. Serious. I was the teen running around with the skids.
I always watch television with the subtitles on. Because I struggle understanding accents due to my severe isolation. But this accent, I understood. Every. Word.
My Number #1 didn’t. He paused the show to put on subtitles. I went, “OH MY GOD! I UNDERSTOOD EVERY WORD! BECAUSE I AM FLUENT IN REDNECK!”
I sobbed loudly. Like Jerry from Rick and Morty.
I guffawed over most of the show because it depicted life where I grew up PERFECTLY. Too perfectly. I braced for impact and prepared for my PTSD to be triggered.
Ironically, it didn’t.
Until…
At the church teen group, the youth leader calls to his wife to join him on stage. And he called her as if she were cattle or a dog. And it all came back.
Yes. That is how they talk to their women up there. Their women. That’s right. My second husband whistled at me like a dog. To this day, I hear someone whistle, and I reply as if it is my name. That’s why I don’t eat animals. Because for 40 years, animals were my kin and my equal. And all the men in my life treated me just like that man did in Letterkenny.
“Shut your mouth. The men are talking.”
A place where, when a woman dumps a man or a boyfriend, he man says, “No, you can’t. I don’t allow it.” And you believe him. So you stay in the relationship against your will… and it never occurs to you that you CAN leave. It never occurs to you… because the fathers and brothers in your life conditioned you that way.
For 40 years, I lived as property. First to my father, enforced by my brothers, then by my boyfriends, then by my husbands. I was never without a romantic partner longer than 3 days from the time I was 15 years old, to the time I was 40.
I only am free now because my then-husband in 2020 kicked me out because he couldn’t breed me.
Don’t ever tell me I wasn’t a slave because I sure as hell was never free.
So how does all this tie into Vasovagal Syncope? Well, we started talking about Letterkenny over dinner, and I told him how amused I was about being fluent in Redneck. We talked more about the show and I told him all the ways it was so much like where I grew up.
Then he started asking questions about the society where I was raised. Which groups? What characteristics?
Christian (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Jehovah’s Witness). White. Mostly republican. Orthodox. Conformists. Severe Right Wing. All Narcissists.
One memory stuck out. “Excuse me. The men are talking.”
His disbelief was apparent.
I told him about my ex-husband’s mother. How she wanted a divorce. He said no. Actually, he said, “You will only get a divorce if you cheat on me.”
After years of begging for a divorce, she did it. She deliberately went out and had an affair, came back and looked him in the eye, “I had an affair. I want a divorce.”
He beat her so horribly that she needed reconstructive face surgery. He then drove up to the Emergency Room, dumped her on the ground, and drove away.
The courts granted him full custody of all three children.
Where I grew up, this was the normal treatment of women. We aren’t free until our husbands, fathers, brothers don’t want us anymore… and ONLY if they can’t use us anymore.
I’ve only been free for 2 years.
I haven’t unpacked a lot of this yet. The memories are now starting to surface.
I spent the last two years sensitizing myself.
I have a lot of work still to do.
Near the end of the discussion, I felt the familiar signs. Severe dehydration. Stomach cramps. Shift in blood pressure. I grabbed my phone and my purse and made it to the bathroom just in time for the tunnel vision to start.
I relieved myself, and the room went black. I woke up on the floor — on the cold, tile filthy, NYC Midtown restaurant bathroom floor… I am pretty sure I was laying in someone’s vomit. I woke and immediately texted my Number #1.
I got up, washed myself best I could, and realized I had been gone for nearly 20 minutes.
I returned to the table and explained my condition to him. And he said, “How often does it occur?”
“Well… It’s been awhile. It used to happen every 3 weeks and almost always at 2 AM.”
“It’s 8:00… So around 7:30 PM… 7:45…”
“Yes, it’s happened at other times before, but almost always around 2 AM.”
“When was the last time it happened?”
Now this made me start. I blinked. “Wow… actually… It was nearly 18 months ago.”
I remember only one time, my Number #1 sitting on the floor with me in his bathroom at 2 AM, feeding me water, gently rubbing a cold, wet cloth on my face.
“And before that?” he asked.
“That was the only time since I escaped that it happened.”
“Except for tonight,” he pointed out. “When you were talking about… Is it linked to PTSD, do you think?”
I blinked. Dumb founded. I thought about it.
2 AM.
I was raped for 5 years in my sleep… almost always around… you guessed it.
2 AM.
I lived as a Female Domesticated Slave in years of isolation. My Syncope started during my first marriage and shortly after my children were born.
“And tonight, you were talking about your enslavement,” he said.
“I remembered things tonight,” I said. “That I had long forgotten.”
“How long ago have you been free?”
“Two years,” I said.
He gasped. “Two years is not enough time to heal from 40 years of slavery.”
And, despite being free for only 2 years, I didn’t start acknowledging and calling my previous existence what it was until 3 months ago, when I started this blog.
3 months.
“I wonder…”
I Googled it, “Vasovagal Syncope and PTSD.” The search results poured into my phone. The Mayo Clinic, NIMH, the CDC, personal blogs from those diagnosed and suffering from Vasovagal Syncope and PTSD…
“Son of a bitch,” I said and shared the search results with my friend.
“That means,” I said, almost afraid to hope. “that the cure to Vasovagal Syncope is PTSD management using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Meditation and applied redirection.”
We went outside and walked to the subway on Union Square. I would be taking the N home. He would be taken the L (goddamn I hate the L). The ten minute walk in the cold night air felt wonderful at first. But an episode always ends with chills and me climbing into a HOT bath. Sometimes, I vomit. Tonight, I only dry-heaved.
I have no medical background. I can only hypothesize.
But I find it awfully ironic that a physical condition that has followed me most of my adult life, mysteriously vanishes almost immediately after I leave an abusive and horribly toxic society.
I’m sitting in bed now, reflecting on my perfect day. I battled tech problems. I called my Number #1 about 18 gazillion times today to help me with the tech support. I created and launched my first event with The Healing Garden. I launched my product line today, revamped my website, tightened the format, and also, I realized and accepted the amount of Shadow Work ahead of me when addressing my slave trauma (All of which I will be documenting here on Exploratory Dialogues so you can follow along with the mental work and see how Shadow Work can be done effectively while using my methods).
I smile. It’s like a door revealed itself today in the Memory Mind Maze.
“You’re ready,” Imagination says. My Alters all shift and come into view. Bergen shifts his sword at his hip.
“Space ship, lass,” Bergen said. “Doona forget it’s a space ship.”
“It’s the Cargo Bay,” Kallan grumbles, glaring at Bergen. She too is standing at the ready. Buckling a belt.
Joanna released a gentle sigh and gave Angel and Jerry a look.
“We’re all at the ready. We all know what to do. We have done this a million times before.”
“You’re remembering because you’re ready,” Imagination says.
Joanna nods.
“I am ready,” she says.
The last time we did this, we had all just barely come to know each other. Prior to those last few times, it had always been Joanna alone to coax the door open, throw open the barrier, and charge into the room.
Alone, she would battle the demon, take down the monster while listening to the child in the corner screaming. Bloodied and battle-worn, and alone, Joanna would take up the child from the corner, and comfort her, soothe her, and rock her back and forth.
“You’re safe now,” Joanna would say. “No one will ever harm you again. You are safe.”
“You’re not alone anymore,” Imagination said.
Joanna smiled. “Yes,” she agreed. “I am not alone anymore.”
The corridor and the Mind Maze waited. We all knew what we had to do.
“When the time comes,” Imagination said. “All in good time.”