The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

really talks about. For instance, I used to be afraid of flying. Turbulence would make me break out in a sweat, grip the armrests so tightly my knuckles turned white, and envision a fiery plunge thou- sands of feet to the ground. Yet on my first airplane trip after return- ing from Iraq, I didn’t blink an eye. Somehow, going through an actual life-or-death situation cured me of worrying about fantasy ones. It also cured me of lots of other fears, like public speaking, intimi- dating colleagues and worrying about what other people might think of me. An interview with CNN about PTSD in diplomats? No sweat. Lots of things in life just aren’t worth getting that upset about, which is a lesson I learned when faced with the very real possibility of dying a sudden and violent death. But it was through therapy that I learned that you don’t simply start sleeping through the night again. Rather, you learn to focus on the real issues that were keeping you up at night and address them, so you can sleep the sleep of the just, not just the sleep of the heavily medicated. It took me several weeks to think of an alternate ending to my elevator nightmare that didn’t involve my death. But I have it now. The other woman in the ele- vator is the old me, the person I was before Iraq. Right before impact, she holds on to me and cushions me from the full force of the impact, giving me the best shot possible for survival. F O C U S J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 Once I finally began sleeping soundly through the night, I started having the nightmares I wasn’t sleeping well enough or long enough to have before.