Dr. John A. King and his partner Melissa discuss living with severe complex PTSD. They talk about moving from a pre-trauma identity to a post-trauma one, redefining what normal looks like. Melissa's phrase: turn stress into strength by celebrating what you can do now, not what you've lost.
If you guys would just share, because John was— let me just say this, as far as PTSD, and I see a little with our clinics, we see a lot of PTSD and, you know, vets with PTSD.
Yeah.
And so, John's PTSD was one of the worst that I had ever seen. And so, when you read his book, you will see that. And so, the fact that he's worked his way through that to live a good life, a successful life, this wonderful life, that's what I want you guys to share, how you did that.
Sure, absolutely. And I think at the time when you're going through it, you don't, you don't realize that you're working through a recovery or you're, you're just sort of in the trenches, kind of head down. You're surviving. Yeah, making it happen and making it work. And I think the bottom line of what we want folks to take away from the book is hope that if it can happen for John and if we can work it out together, then there's hope for anyone that they can do it. And I think One of the first things we did with John was sort of walk through the process of defining a new normal for him, that John 2.0 is what he calls it, is a different person with different needs than John 1.0. Yes. You know, so before the onset of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, he was a different person. And so it's okay to redefine what a normal day looks like for you. To redefine what, you know, even simple things like what should your bedtime be, what should your get-up time be. And it's all about managing just the new person that he was dealing with that had different needs, different, actually different strengths, and sort of how to take advantage of that and make it work. And so I think one of the things that we sort of did together Was help him map that out.
Yeah, she was really good. Mel coined the phrase turning stress to strength and PDS stress into PDS strength. So we spent a lot of time looking at what I was now good at and celebrating that because I just couldn't do those old things. And Melissa's never known me well. She never knew John 1.0. She only ever met me after the recall of the events. So she, she, in some people's eyes, she's only ever seen me as broken, but she's never spoken to that. She's always spoken to the greatness and the health and the wholeness that she was believing for.
All I could see was this brilliant man who just had some challenges he was working through. And so—
She was a little naive.
He is brilliant. And, and that's part of the, the part that's so hard with his struggle. Is that you loved him so much, but he was struggling so much.
