An Open Letter From Our Co-Founder: The Invisible Recovery

In the wake of disaster, recovery must take many forms. There’s the physical recovery we can see in pictures and on the evening news – the clearing away of debris, the setting of broken bones, the rebuilding of homes and businesses. But the invisible recovery of mental and emotional healing is every bit as vital, even if it’s slower to come and harder to see.

On Sunday, I had the tremendous honor of volunteering alongside Team Rubicon in Houston, Texas. The organization’s model allows veterans to leverage their unique skills and experiences to support relief efforts and, in the process, regain their sense of purpose, community, and identity as they navigate the often difficult transition to civilian life. I’ve experienced the power of being kind as a tool for healing in my own life, and I was so thankful to be able to join these brave men and women for a few hours.

Along with my mom and several members of my team, we spent Sunday afternoon tearing out badly damaged flooring and ripping down rotting sheet rock in the home of an incredibly strong and brave woman named Pamela.

Pamela has been coping not only with the physical challenges of living alone in a house badly damaged by Hurricane Harvey but with the stress and emotional strain of that situation – of seeing every day the destruction of the place that should be her refuge and of the worry that comes from not knowing when or how the damage will be repaired.

There are millions of Pamelas who still need our support.

While our national attention may have begun to drift, many of those impacted by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria have not been able to move on so easily or so quickly. Such destruction doesn’t care about our ideological differences and tragedy spares no one. So our response must be just as fierce, sustained, and all encompassing. We must help survivors not only rebuild their homes and communities but cope with the psychological trauma of these devastating events.

That’s why I have donated $1 million to support the mental and emotional recovery of survivors of these storms as well as the two earthquakes in Mexico. I donated the funds to Save the Children, Volunteer Florida, Rebuild TX and the Greater Houston Community Foundation and Team Rubicon – and I hope you’ll join me in supporting these phenomenal organizations. Click on the links below to get started. 

• Save the Children’s incredible Journey of Hope program helps children build resiliency skills and overcome the ordeal they have endured.
• One America Appeal worked with us to create a fund to help grassroots organizations in Texas and Florida provide mental health care to survivors at three organizations; Volunteer Florida, Rebuild TX and Greater Houston Community Foundation.
• Team Rubicon brings together military veterans with first responders, deploying emergency response teams to disaster areas.

Trauma and pain may be great equalizers, but so is kindness. We can all do something, whether it’s donating money, donating supplies, or donating our time. I hope every single person who can (and you can all do more than you think!) will join me in helping these beautiful, vibrant communities recover and rebuild.

– Lady Gaga

Mental health is just as vital to our wellbeing as physical health. That’s true for each of us, everyday, but it’s especially important for those coping with disaster and recovering from trauma.

Over the past few weeks, millions have been forced to endure the unthinkable as the result of the hurricanes that have recently hit Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. My prayers have been with those impacted and I know yours have been too. But thoughts and well wishes are not enough.

We must do everything within our power to support the full, vibrant recovery of these communities, from meeting their immediate needs to helping them to rebuild sustainably. These brave survivors, however, are struggling to cope not only with the physical damage done to their towns and cities but with the mental and emotional toll of these events.

So the response to these disasters must encompass these communities’ mental and emotional needs as well as their physical wellbeing – and dedicate resources accordingly. This is vital to long term recovery for people of all ages but especially for youth who can be particularly vulnerable. We know that when a young person experiences trauma the effects can be devastating, potentially impacting their ability to function successfully in school and beyond and hindering their mental health for years to come.

That’s why, as part of my commitment to donate $1 million towards helping these communities recover, I’m supporting Save the Children’s Journey of Hope program. This amazing evidence-based program helps youth and their caregivers develop the resiliency they need to not just recover in the short term but to flourish for years to come.

Through a curriculum that includes cooperative play, discussion, art, meditation and mindfulness practices, young people learn to recognize and understand their emotions and develop healthy coping skills. Tens of thousands of youth have benefited from the program since it’s development in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Save the Children is working to bring it to hundreds of thousands more in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

In recognition of World Mental Health Day, I’m inviting all of you to join me in supporting this transformational program. Click here to help Save the Children ensure that these young people have the skills and resources they need to thrive in the face of tragedy.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about how I plan to support efforts to help communities who have been impacted by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria as well as the two earthquakes in Mexico and I hope you’ll join me. Together, we can help these beautiful, vibrant communities rebuild stronger and healthier.

At Born This Way Foundation, we believe in telling your story – good or bad, challenging or triumphant. Deciding to speak openly can be hard, but it can also be a gateway to healing and a comfort to others who thought they were alone.

There has been a tremendous response to our co-founder Lady Gaga’s brave admission that she has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Below is an open letter she wrote sharing her story. We hope it will be an inspiration to others to do the same and to seek the help and support they need to recover.

I have wrestled for some time about when, how and if I should reveal my diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After five years of searching for the answers to my chronic pain and the change I have felt in my brain, I am finally well enough to tell you. There is a lot of shame attached to mental illness, but it’s important that you know that there is hope and a chance for recovery.

It is a daily effort for me, even during this album cycle, to regulate my nervous system so that I don’t panic over circumstances that to many would seem like normal life situations. Examples are leaving the house or being touched by strangers who simply want to share their enthusiasm for my music.

I also struggle with triggers from the memories I carry from my feelings of past years on tour when my needs and requests for balance were being ignored. I was overworked and not taken seriously when I shared my pain and concern that something was wrong. I ultimately ended up injured on the Born This Way Ball. That moment and the memory of it has changed my life forever.  The experience of performing night after night in mental and physical pain ingrained in me a trauma that I relive when I see or hear things that remind me of those days.

I also experience something called dissociation which means that my mind doesn’t want to relive the pain so “I look off and I stare” in a glazed over state. As my doctors have taught me, I cannot express my feelings because my pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain that controls logical, orderly thought) is overridden by the amygdala (which stores emotional memory) and sends me into a fight or flight response.  My body is in one place and my mind in another. It’s like the panic accelerator in my mind gets stuck and I am paralyzed with fear.

When this happens I can’t talk. When this happens repeatedly, it makes me have a common PTSD reaction which is that I feel depressed and unable to function like I used to. It’s harder to do my job. It’s harder to do simple things like take a shower. Everything has become harder. Additionally, when I am unable to regulate my anxiety, it can result in somatization, which is pain in the body caused by an inability to express my emotional pain in words.

But I am a strong and powerful woman who is aware of the love I have around me from my team, my family and friends, my doctors and from my incredible fans who I know will never give up on me.  I will never give up on my dreams of art and music. I am continuing to learn how to transcend this because I know I can.  If you relate to what I am sharing, please know that you can too.

Traditionally, many associate PTSD as a condition faced by brave men and women that serve countries all over the world. While this is true, I seek to raise awareness that this mental illness affects all kinds of people, including our youth. I pledge not only to help our youth not feel ashamed of their own conditions, but also to lend support to those servicemen and women who suffer from PTSD. No one’s invisible pain should go unnoticed.

I am doing various modalities of psychotherapy and am on medicine prescribed by my psychiatrist.  However, I believe that the most inexpensive and perhaps the best medicine in the world is words. Kind words…positive words…words that help people who feel ashamed of an invisible illness to overcome their shame and feel free. This is how I and we can begin to heal. I am starting today, because secrets keep you sick. And I don’t want to keep this secret anymore.

A note from my psychologist, drnancy;

If you think you might have PTSD, please seek professional help.  There is so much hope for recovery.  Many people think that the event that stimulated PTSD needs to be the focus.  Yet often, people will experience the same event and have completely different reactions to it.  It is my opinion that trauma occurs in an environment where your feelings and emotional experience are not valued, heard and understood.  The specific event is not the cause of traumatic experience.  This lack of a “relational home” for feelings is the true cause of traumatic experience. Finding support is key.

Click here or visit the National Institute for Mental Health for more information on PTSD in all its forms and where to find help. If you are in crisis now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8225).