Complex PTSD and the Creative Life

A Month of Rain and Reads Features Interviews4 months ago19 min read

Welcome to A Month of Rain and Reads, a celebration of self-published and indie SFF throughout the entire month of November. To find out how you can take part and view the whole list of content, visit our introduction post.

Today, we have an article written jointly by Sarah Chorn and Ken Scholes, where they talk about their experience with Complex PTSD and how affected them and their creativity.

This is a long post on a heavy topic, but we share it as the authors wrote it, without editing it or asking them to tone it down. So make sure you’re comfortable, take the time you need, and be gentle with yourself.

Complex PTSD and the Creative Life:

A Conversation with Author/Editor Sarah Chorn and Author/Singer-Songwriter Ken Scholes

First things first, who are you?

Ken Scholes:

I’m Just Ken. I’ve been a performing singer-songwriter since the late 80s, initially in the religious world before transitioning to a Wholly Secular life. In 2000, I broke into print with a short story sale to Talebones magazine and in 2005, I won the Writers of the Future award with a scattering of small press sales under my belt. In 2006, I wrote my first novel, Lamentation, and in 2007 that book landed me an unprecedented five book, six figure contract with Tor Books for The Psalms of Isaak. My series landed me a few awards including Frances’s Prix Imaginales and the Pacific Northwest’s Endeavour Award.

Today, I have five novels and four short story collections under my belt after 25 years in print, all published traditionally, and I have one album – Live at the Village Inn Lounge – released indy and available in the world. A studio album and a two volume live album are currently in production and I’m now at work on Pilgrims of the Dream, a follow on series to The Psalms of Isaak. In my spare time, I provide coaching on creativity, CPTSD and organizational and personal effectiveness. Or play open world video games.

I’m also a dad to my awesome twin daughters, a partner to my awesome partner, and a food-provider and occasional mattress for two really sketchy, worthless cats. You can find me at www.kenscholes.com and www.faciliorsolutions.com.

Sarah Chorn:

I started dipping my toes into the publishing industry in 2010 when I started reviewing fantasy and science fiction books on my (now languishing) website, Bookworm Blues. By 2015, I was starting to edit speculative fiction books and in 2019 I published my first book, Seraphina’s Lament. Since then I’ve published six books (and am currently working on my seventh) and have won a few awards for some of them. Now, I’m a full-time editor. I work for everyone from brand new to New York Times bestselling authors. I’m also a mom to two kids, an avid and enthusiastic gardener, and photographer.

You can find me at www.sarahchornedits.com.

Origin Stories…

When did you first become aware of your Complex PTSD and its impact on your life overall and your creative life specifically?

Ken Scholes:

I knew something was up all the way back into the 90s when I fell into a deep depression after one of the Sunday services at my little Alabama Street Baptist Church in Bellingham Washington. I went on antidepressants initially and ultimately decided to pursue therapy instead of seminary, resigning my pastorate after graduating from WWU. We didn’t have good language for my diagnosis and if we had, I would’ve likely rejected it based on my Southern Baptist belief system. But I knew from 1994 forward, after stepping down from the ministry and going into therapy, that I was in a recovery process from something and as I found more traction, I came to see it was a recovery from a very traumatic childhood that I kept at bay with my rigid religious beliefs and an ocean of disassociation. It defined my choices and my relationships and my beliefs – and those all reflected back the underpinnings of trauma though I didn’t see it until I’d been on the road a bit. My best tool in the beginning was a modified 12 steps suggested by my Focus on the Family therapist. “I was powerless over my Unfortunate Childhood and my life had become unmanageable.” etc.

Initially, it shifted my songwriting into a gentler form of Christianity as I did a deeper dive into self-reflection and learning until I stopped writing religious songs. And when I came back to writing fiction in 1997, my short stories were a deep dive, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, into the soup of my psyche as I learned more and more about myself through the characters I wrote and the problems they faced. Someone once asked me early in my writing career why I wrote and the answer came out fast: “I write to know myself.”

Later in life, after years of hard work and settling into a relatively peaceful time, I had an entirely different experience. The death of my parents and the birth of my twin daughters over an 18 month stretch brought about a whole new range of symptoms I’d never experienced before that were shutting me down completely and I thought I was going insane. So I jumped into research mode and I started figuring out what was going on between Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Pete Walker’s amazing articles about Complex PTSD. Of course, along the way, I found these new and more difficult symptoms – panic attacks, night terrors, night sweats, rage – made life and work on my creative ventures impossible until I started my Stellate Ganglion Block treatments with Dr. Eugene Lipov in Chicago in 2011. Even with the blocks (I went back six times between 2011 and 2015) I still had periods where my creative processes were entirely shut down. I had to learn grace and self-care at even higher levels. Now, it’s been over 35 years and I’ve settled into a much deeper understanding of how I work and how life really works and that understanding has made all the difference.

Sarah Chorn:

It’s hard for me to answer this question because it’s not so clearly defined in my mind.

In 2010, I graduated with my Bachelor of Science degree, something I fought so hard to attain. A month later, I celebrated that achievement with a diagnoses of cancer. From October of 2010 to February of 2011, I was diagnosed with cancer, had a tumor removed, learned I was pregnant so I couldn’t actually start my cancer treatment, and suffered a spine injury. Between the years of 2010 to 2024, I treated cancer three times, a spine injury, underwent eighteen surgeries and countless invasive medical procedures, and had two kids.

I existed in a constant state of survival. Just clench my teeth and get through the next thing.

Still, even with my mother starting to suggest a few years ago, “Sarah, maybe you need to go to therapy to help you deal with all this…” I was fine. Just fine. Had it all under control. Nothing wrong over here. I’ve got this.

Around 2023/4, my cancer was in remission and my spine stuff started to get under control. For the first time since 2010, I wasn’t constantly in and out of doctors and specialists. I wasn’t either preparing for or healing from some awful medical procedure. I suddenly had all this time and mental energy that wasn’t taken up by just making it through the next appointment.

After years, I was healing. Something I never thought I’d be able to say.

In 2024, I started seeing my family doctor about anxiety. I told him I felt like there was an “everything is fine” button and a “the sky is falling” button. My “everything is fine” button is broken and I can’t stop bracing for the sky to fall. Nothing is happening, and I just can’t calm down. Ever. I had a hard time leaving the house. I panicked if I drove anywhere. I’d have anxiety attacks that would be so severe I’d have to go to Instacare just to get a doctor to tell me I was okay. I spent months throwing up so much I had convinced myself I had stomach cancer. I would shut down and be incapable of functioning for days, if not weeks, at a time. I would have intense bursts of anger or sorrow or fear that would come on suddenly and without warning. My reactions to anything that happened would be dramatically out of proportion to the thing that happened. Sometimes something would trigger me and I’d know I was “here and now” but I couldn’t stop feeling like I was “then” as years of repressed stuff would fall on me all at once. The world would spin and I’d have a hard time breathing. I thought I was going crazy and it was just a matter of time until someone figured it out.

My work suffered. My personal life suffered. My relationships suffered. Things were in a free-fall and I didn’t know why. I just knew that my brain couldn’t stop screaming.

More, my creativity completely shut down, which was awful because my creativity has always been the thing that’s seen me through the rough waters of life. At some point in all of this, I decided that I was too “broken” to deserve to do the things I enjoyed doing, so I stopped (Note: My therapist is working hard at excising the word “broken” from my vocabulary. “Sarah, you aren’t broken, you’re healing.”). I didn’t just stop creating, I actively decided to sever that part of myself from myself. There was Sarah and there was Creative Sarah and I was too broken, too much of a disaster, to deserve to have Creative Sarah as part of me anymore. Every day in 2024, I held a funeral for that part of myself. I pulled one of my books from publication and made plans to pull the rest. I was going to let that part of me drift away forever. Creative Sarah would no longer exist.

Early in 2024, my doctor started me on medication for anxiety and we monitored my progress. It helped regulate the symptoms, helped bring me down to a more manageable level, but they didn’t go away and didn’t really get any better. So, my doctor and I both decided, after several long months of this, that I needed more specific and deeper help, and he sent me to a therapy center that specializes in complex trauma. I learned that I have CPTSD brought on by a history of abuse I repressed and disassociated from, as well as nearly fifteen years of medical trauma. Now I’ve spent the vast chunk of this year learning what that means and how to live with it.

The Journey…

How has CPTSD changed how you approach your creative endeavors?

Ken Scholes:

I think for me just reaching the point where I understood what I had, understood what an amygdala hijacking was, understood that every chemical reaction has a half-life and will reduce…all of this understanding…became a backdrop that un-mired my creativity. And I understood that by steering into My Personal Darkness with a friendly “hello” I would dredge deeper, pulling up stories and songs that captured life in snapshots.

My understanding was a slow rolling start and the deeper work was all around beliefs. And I had a lot of them. Beliefs about how and when I could be creative, beliefs about how others saw me and my work, and it’s the beliefs in Complex PTSD that will get you. CPTSD is first and foremost a disease of the belief system. We form false beliefs to keep ourselves safe and then our ego protects those false beliefs, putting us into a war with ourselves. When that’s happening while you have a novel late to your publisher, those beliefs can get overwhelming.

Early on, I chose to be open about my CPTSD especially with other creatives and with my tiny fan-base and that change in approach – rather than hiding it all as a big shameful secret – has helped in the same way that openly steering my fiction into openness about these matters. My series, The Psalms of Isaak, is first and foremost an exploration of how people face trauma and war and loss with faith, love and hope.

Sarah Chorn:

In some ways, I feel like I’ve approached my creativity as though it was a slot machine: if I put in the right coin and pull the lever, creativity will fall out and it will be wonderful and I’ll know what to do with it. This is a fine system for as long as it works, but somewhere back in 2022, my slot machine seized up and by 2024, I was lost in a caustic stew of untreated complex trauma and disassociating from Creative Sarah entirely. Furthermore, this machinelike approach to creativity made it easy for me to create harmful narratives in my mind, which ultimately intensified my spiral.

This year, I’ve been learning to approach my creativity as though it is a muscle rather than a machine.

What do I mean by this?

My mother-in-law is a marathon runner, and at the end of each race, there are massage tables and ice baths, and people with blankets and water. The runners are limping and exhausted. They need days to rest and recover. Everyone, including the athletes themselves, realize they have just accomplished something amazing and their bodies need some time, so it’s given to them.

No one thinks them strange for any of that. No one judges them harshly or looks at them weird.

I keep that in mind when I approach my creativity these days. I think of my creativity as an athlete and writing is her sport. Sometimes, I might have a (proverbial) muscle sprain and maybe I’m not up to running that day. Or maybe I’m under the weather. Maybe it’s (metaphorically) raining so practice is canceled. And all of that is fine. My creativity is a muscle, and muscles sometimes suffer injury, strain, need to rest, heal, and recover. No one judges a muscle harshly for requiring a level of comfort and health to function at its highest capacity. Why should I question my creativity thus?

When I remove the pressure and judgment and I’m feeling up for the task, I actually enjoy the sport I’m participating in (writing). It feels amazing to put my running shoes on (open Scrivener) and hit the pavement (start typing) and I cherish every moment of it. When I get to the finish line for that day’s progress, I celebrate, even if “progress” means I just wrote one sentence. It’s one sentence more than I had yesterday. And the more I show up ready to go with my (metaphorical) running shoes on, the more willing I am to do the thing.

Last Question…

What would you tell other creatives facing Complex PTSD or other health issues?

Sarah Chorn:

Be gentle with yourself.

And

Always get help and seek it aggressively. The more I’ve understood myself, the easier this has become.

Clover wants you to be gentle with yourself

In so many ways, I’m just starting my journey, but I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for those who surrounded me and helped me stand up again when I fell. There is value in letting yourself lean on others, in finding those who can be your support system and surrounding yourself with them. In being okay with not being okay and really internalizing that message and then letting those you love in on that fact as well. Build a support system and do it fearlessly.

I’ve learned that torment steals light, it does not feed it. In my own life, I have never been less productive creatively than I have been these past few years. It is impossible to create when you can’t even function. So, I had to change my approach to art. When my machine stopped working, I realized I wasn’t actually a machine, and when I considered what that actually meant, it changed the game for me. Sometimes altering how you approach your art can be beneficial.

Above all, never give up. You’ve survived 100% of your life to this point. You can survive this, too. Taking the first step towards healing is a terrifying experience, but you deserve to be here. And we need your voice.

And remember: healing is difficult and not often linear so…

BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF.

Ken Scholes

I’d tell them to not lose hope and to prioritize their health by pursuing any and all treatments until they find something that helps. The best advice I was ever given came from Kristine Kathryn Rusch (sp?) when she told a roomful of writers “If you want to fix the problems in your writing, fix the problems in your life.” It’s true. Get the help you need and don’t wait. If you need medication or therapy or to explore alternative treatments, ground yourself in understanding and go get the help you need. No one will care about your health or your life like you will. Love yourself enough to put your feet on the path.

Let your art, whatever it is, become a lens through which you examine life…especially your own. For me, the rigorous honesty and fearless moral inventory combined with my writing were critical aspects of my recovery.

And build your tribe. It was other creatives and close friends at different places in their own journey that helped me along the way as I figured out how to use my tools and heal those wounds. Pete Walker (look him up) talks about how we heal CPTSD through caring relationships and I can point to a long line of people who helped love me back together through all of the pandemonium and madness of my recovery years.

More from Ken and Sarah

Ken and Sarah both are available to talk with you or your group about CPTSD. Reach out to them on Facebook preferably. They also have a talk scheduled for Nov 22 at 10am PST that you can access via Facebook Events.

Use this link to find the event.

About CPTSD

About Sarah and Ken

Sarah Chorn

Sarah has been a compulsive reader her whole life. At a young age, she found her reading niche in the fantastic genre of Speculative Fiction. She blames her active imagination for the hobbies that threaten to consume her life. She is a freelance writer and editor, a semi-pro nature photographer, world traveler, three-time cancer survivor with hEDS, and mom to two. In her ideal world, she’d do nothing but drink lots of tea and read from a never-ending pile of speculative fiction books. She has been running the book review blog Bookworm Blues since 2010, editing full-time since 2016, and currently works freelance and as the staff editor for Grimdark Magazine.

Links

Website (personal): https://www.bookwormblues.net
Website (editing services): https://sarahchornedits.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6567924

Ken Scholes

Ken Scholes is the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of five novels and over fifty short stories. His work has appeared in print for over sixteen years. His series, The Psalms of Isaak, is published by Tor Books and his short fiction has been released in three volumes by Fairwood Press.

Ken’s eclectic background includes time spent as a label gun repairman, a sailor who never sailed, a soldier who commanded a desk, a preacher (he got better), a nonprofit executive, a musician and a government procurement analyst. He has a degree in History from Western Washington University.

Ken is a native of the Pacific Northwest and makes his home in Saint Helens, Oregon, where he lives with his twin daughters. You can learn more about Ken by visiting www.kenscholes.com.