About Svasti

About me/this blog

I’m a 37 year old woman living in Australia. Here, amongst these pixels, I’m unravelling the mess created in my life by a single incident of violent physical assault on the 29th September 2005.

[To get a cliff notes version of my story, you can view the timeline page - a shortlist of events ordered by date).]

The aftermath of that night included the onset of depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), nightmares, panic and anxiety attacks. And a complete loss of faith in myself and who I thought I was. For a long time, it was the end of happiness in my life.

To make matters worse, I attempted to keep the devastation under wraps for several years and hide what a mess I really was from friends, family and workmates. I foolishly thought I could just wait it out, and eventually the pain would pass.

Which is simply not wise. PTSD and depression aren’t like broken bones, or a broken heart.

I think my denial of how I was feeling caused more harm to my already damaged Self, which made it that much harder to recover.

I didn’t get the help I desperately needed for years, not until my body interfered by sending me messages of extreme physical pain. All scans, x-rays and other tests showed there was nothing wrong with me physically, but clearly there was a great deal wrong in other ways.

I finally began to seek professional help in early 2008 and interestingly, the physical pain I experienced vanished literally overnight.

I’m winning… I think

Guess what? It is possible to heal from PTSD and depression.

In this blog I talk about my experiences in therapy a little. Most of it was talk/cognitive behavioural therapy. But I hit the ceiling with talk therapy after I’d done a lot of work clearing away the detritus and rubble.

I think this could be because my fears were wordless, and because I’m very visually oriented.

What ended up working for me was EMDR therapy and miraculously so. Within six sessions, most of my PTSD symptoms had vanished.

My last session was February 2009 and to date; I’m still 100% free of the debilitating flashbacks I once lived with every day.

Depression has been a little harder to kick. I’m still working on that although I have some pretty good ideas these days, on what keeps it at bay.

The last lingering side-effect is the physically painful panic and anxiety attacks that seem to occur very randomly. I’m working on that!

Sanity checks

I’m a writer (hence the blog), a novice poet, a cyclist with no car, former professional belly-dancer, and proud aunty.

I’ve been an initiate of a traditional Shaivite/Tantrik lineage for many years now. Which means that my musings here often have a spiritual flavour.

Also, I’m currently studying to become a Hatha yoga teacher (course finishes December 2009).

The path to healing is…

Individual.

What works for me might not work for another person. But then again, it might.

No matter what happened to you or what ills you’ve had to live through, if you’re in pain then you have a chance to heal.

But the journey is far from straight forward – as I’ve documented in my blog – and it’s harder than you can imagine to kick the pain, grief, and trauma.

The rewards however, include freedoms you can’t imagine when trapped in the fortresses you’ve built to keep yourself safe. That same fortress eventually shrinks and threatens to choke you – but it doesn’t have to.

There’s only one person who can make it happen, though. Yourself.

Original intent vs current

I started writing this blog out of desperation.

I’d stifled my grief, pain, fear and sadness for such a long time. I really needed a place to express what happened because for a long time I couldn’t talk about it, even to myself.

Through writing this blog, therapy, mediation, yoga and much self-inquiry, I’ve come to realise that the night I was assaulted did not occur in a vacuum.

And so, I find myself writing about events from earlier in my life, too. My childhood and turbulent teen years which resulted in a very damaged self-image and incredibly poor self-esteem. Issues I’d labelled as water under the bridge.

I can see how all these events allowed me to reach my own personal ground zero. And as bad as that was, in some ways I’m glad for the wake up call.

No more can I pretend that certain experiences were acceptable. Nor do I want to.

As such, this blog is not just about assault, abuse, trauma, depression and PTSD. It’s about taking stock of my life holistically and making decisions that lead to physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

Contact me

If you’d like to get in touch, you can email me at: svasti108 (a t) gmail (d o t) com