Build Your Vessel

It’s been quite a while since my last blog post.  The reason?  I decided to go back to school.  I’ve started an online master’s program to become a clinical therapist.  I’m five weeks in and already believe this is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.  More on that later.

This past week in one of my classes we were learning about Choice Theory and Reality Therapy.  If you are unfamiliar, the basic idea (admittedly simplified) is that we all have choices in our lives and must take responsibility for them.  We have the power to change our own lives.

Many of us in the class read this chapter and balked.  It seemed to ignore that trauma happens and leaves us feeling powerless, and that several of the systems in our world LITERALLY take away our power to do anything about it (such as the justice system, ironically).  Suggesting we can make the choices necessary to improve our circumstances sounds like some toxic positivity BS. 

But I thought more about it in terms of my own situation and have some new thoughts to work out.  Maybe it’s because I’m on a hormone upswing right now that I’m feeling optimistic, but hey, I’ve gotta ride these waves.  Which is exactly what my new theory is about.

When perimenopause hit me like a deck barge shooting off fireworks filled with poop, did I have a choice?  Was I the one causing my own unhappiness in that situation?  Could I have simply decided to be okay with it?

No.  Absolutely not. 

As best I can tell,

--and we are humans, so we have to use narrative to reflect on our experiences – and each of us is a TOTALLY unreliable narrator of our own lives, but I am going to say that I have done extensive work to analyze the crappola out of my situation and this is now what makes the most sense to me --

perimenopause caused hormone swings that left me feeling totally insane.  I recently found a journal entry I wrote in July 2024, where I talked about how I didn’t even know what I thought anymore and didn’t feel like I was inhabiting my head.  When my workload became stressful, my lifelong anxiety spiraled out of control and triggered feelings of being trapped (part of my C-PTSD).  And because I wasn’t feeling like the “executive functioner” of my brain due to hormones, I was unable to cope.  The two issues (wild hormone shifts and C-PTSD) affected each other in an endless feedback loop that just made everything worse by the day.

I had used Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for years to manage my anxiety quite effectively, but suddenly it was totally useless.  As was my daily meditation practice.  So, I tried new things – weighted blankets, EFT Tapping, diet, exercise, floating in the pool, alternating between hot and cold, talk therapy, medications, etc.  I talked to at least 8 different doctors over 2.5 years.  And as I’ve mentioned before, it turned out that a simple fix of hormonal birth control was step one.  Within a week of that prescription, I felt like I was me again.  Me who was totally screwed up still, but at least me.  Then after another 8 months of therapy, more things going haywire in my life, an eventual diagnosis of C-PTSD, and finally undergoing 5 sessions of EMDR, I am back to stable mental health.

Stable doesn’t mean “cured” or “fixed” or “normal” (whatever that means).  C-PTSD doesn’t go away, nor does anxiety.  I live with those daily.  But now that my hormones are not always going cray-cray (and when they do, I have the awareness to understand what is happening) and my nervous system is no longer stuck in “fight or flight” mode, my other coping strategies and my toolbox of techniques are actually useful to help me through daily struggles.  It can be exhausting.  But what other choice do I have?

Here's where I do actually buy into Choice Theory.  I didn’t choose to have all these things happen “to me”, but I chose to keep trying everything possible until I found the right combination of resources and treatments to make things manageable.  I fought like hell.  And yes, there were absolutely times when I cried out in self-pity, feeling like it wasn’t fair that so much excrement could explode at once and paint my life so stinky and brown.  But even in these low moments, I refused to give up.  I wallowed when I needed to and then tried something else.  Again, and again. 

I pieced together a make-shift vessel to carry me through the storms at sea.  Now that I’m on dry land – as bumpy and treacherous as the terrain may be – I need a new all-terrain vessel (like maybe a duck boat).  And I’ll keep redesigning and fortifying my vessel to take me through whatever I encounter next.

I love a good visual metaphor, if you couldn’t tell. 

So, the “Build Your Vessel” theory goes like this.

You are dumped in this world wherever you are, encountering whatever terrain or body of water happens to be there.  You don’t get any choice in that.  Your journey on this planet might be through lava flows or along tiny paths crumbling away on the edge of a cliff.  Or maybe you lucked out and your whole life is a freshly paved highway or a tranquil river on which you merrily float while taking in the gorgeous views.  For most of us, life will likely bring a variety of seascapes and landscapes and weather hazards to endure.  It likely won’t feel fair.  Or well-timed. 

Sometimes the only vessel you’ll even have available to help you navigate is an old door on an ice-cold sea (poor Leo).  You won’t always have a choice in that, either.

There will be times you have to cling on for dear life and just do your best not to give up or let go.  That may be your only choice.  Don’t let go.

Because when your journey shifts to something slightly less disastrous, you’ll be stronger.  You’ll have more experience.  You’ll know how to look around at your resources and make your vessel stronger for the next time.

How you build your vessel is where you have choice.  And again, what resources you have to build with – the tools, the materials, the techniques – will be limited and totally unfair.  You may have to MacGyver your vessel until you get somewhere else and can access better resources.  There is nothing fair about this, but what other choice do you have?

The goal here is to acknowledge that our terrains and waterways and journeys will never be fair, equal, or consistent in their navigability.  Many of us will always have to shield our vessels from obstacles we know won’t go away.  Some of us will go overboard planning for the worst because that’s how our trauma taught us to live.  But that’s okay.  We get to design our vessel – that’s how we reclaim our power.

I’m having fun visualizing my new one.  My old one disintegrated and even the duct tape couldn’t hold it together anymore.    

My son always tells me someday he’s going to be rich and buy me a yacht to live on, because he knows how much I love being on the water.  Neither of us is vain enough to want a yacht for status or anything like that, we just need a really big boat because it has to have a library, a music room, a room for puppies and kitties and a stingray tank, rooms for the other people living on the yacht who help us take care of our animals so they’ll never be lonely, etc. 

He doesn’t need to give me a yacht, though.  He’s already helped build my vessel. 

My son and my friends and my professional support team are all there with me on my metaphorical yacht.  It’s like a party boat, but without alcohol. 

When seas get rough again – which I’m sure they will – this time I won’t be alone for it.  I can ride the waves now, knowing my hull is reinforced, my stocked toolbox is at the ready, and I have a support team to see me through it. 

When the POS Monster rains down explosive diarrhea, I get out my handy dandy poop scooper (which I picture kind of like Toodles with a combo flame-thrower/vacuum) and throw it all in the composter – which then fertilizes my greenhouse room full of wildflowers. 

If and when my yacht takes on too much damage, I’ll rebuild a new vessel, using what I learned to make it better each time. 

Next up in this course is Feminist Theory, which I really love because it includes social activism.  It isn’t enough to get cozy on my yacht; once I feel empowered enough, I’ll be getting out the big diggers to reshape waterways and jackhammers to build new roads.  Let’s all use our experiences to make things better for the next generation.