Giving Up The Fight

photo credit: Athena Grace

I used to sleep with each of my hands forming a fist. I didn’t notice this until a massage therapist told me to relax my hands so she could work on them, and then it dawned on me that I tended to sleep with my hands in fists. I thought my fists meant my hands were relaxed. I know that doesn’t sound logical. After she said that, I noticed that whenever I sat to watch television that my hands formed fists. Standing in line at a store, if my hands weren’t holding what I was buying, then they were in fists. The next time I got a massage, my fists were back. It seems as though when I wasn’t using my hands they were forming fists.

I’m not a fighter, at least not in the traditional sense. I’ve never been in a fist fight in my life. However, for about a decade and a half after I developed PTSD, I consciously and subconsciously fought the varying degrees in which my disorder presented itself. Thankfully after I learned tools that helped me, I had significantly more days where the fight to stop or suppress flashbacks and other symptoms from rearing their ugly faces were much less often than the days that felt peaceful. My awareness that I was fighting against my symptoms was more often nonexistent rather than all consuming, though I know exactly what being all encompassed by a flashback feels like.

Still, my hands gravitated to forming fists whenever I wasn’t using them.

I didn’t realize I was fighting until my therapist told me two words that changed my life. I sought counseling after one of the worst flashbacks I’d ever experienced. I told her that I wanted to be done with PTSD and not have to fight against my symptoms every time I was triggered. I asked her this question—how do I rid myself of PTSD forever? Her two words—you don’t.

It was the opposite of what I expected to hear, yet it didn’t bother me that my therapist suggested that I might technically have PTSD for the rest of my life. Hearing her say you don’t actually put me at ease. I could put my dukes down. To me it meant I should stop fighting my PTSD and instead learn how to move through my symptoms in as peaceful a way as possible.

From that moment on, I stopped fighting. Looking back, I wonder if my fists, which had felt like a relaxing way to have my hands, was a result of my disorder feeling like a fight. Whatever the case, it feels good to move through life with open hands. Sometimes I still catch myself going to sleep with fists, especially after a stressful day, but I’m much more conscious about releasing them. Noticing my fists used to disappoint me, but now they remind me that like everyone else I’ll always be a work in progress.