PTSD and Me

WARNING THIS CONTAINS CONTENT THAT MIGHT TRIGGER SOME PEOPLE! PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ARE SAFE BEFORE READING….

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“Distorted eyes when everything is clearly dying…” Silverchair- Emotion Sickness

So this post was going to be a tutorial, but then something happened so I’m posting about it instead…

I am a tumblr addict. I love the site. I waste a lot of time there. I also am a HUGE fan of the site thatguywiththeglasses.com (look it up. great place.) Recently, I posted something about using thatguywiththeglasses to help deal with my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which I do) on tumblr. I have had people ask about the issues, both on there and from my mentioning it here on my blog. So, I thought I would take some time to talk briefly about it. Feel free to skip this entry, I promise that I will have something interesting up later on. Also as I stated above this will deal with some topics that may be triggers, please stay safe.

I was diagnosed, informally and off the books with PTSD when I was seventeen years old, I think. One of the biggest problems that I have is that times and dates get jumbled for me. As I also stated previously I didn’t have conventional teen years. I spent a lot of time shifting from my parents home to my aunt’s house. The two environments where as different as night and day, but the one thing that remained constant was the fact that I babysat for money. It was because of this job that I garnered a good deal of the stress that attributes to my problems. 

The second factor was this while at my parents house I also had a boyfriend that I kept from them. He had his own set of problems (though I dare not venture a diagnosis, if I was pressed I would say he was bi-polar and a touch of a  sociopath) and sometimes he would hurt me.

According to the therapist I saw who gave me the informal diagnosis; either would have been enough to cause of the PTSD, but the two together just made for the perfect storm of craziness inside my head. I wasn’t ready to deal with anything, I was smack dab in the middle of it. So I repressed a lot of it. It was easy to do.

A lot of stuff I reported never got reported on the childcare end of things. I was just a dumb teen after all; what did I know. Besides in small towns money talks, and people are more willing to believe the fine upstanding lawyer who is a pillar of his church, than some teen girl whose dad was just an auto-parts man or whose aunt was just a grocery store clerk. 

As far as the boyfriend; I didn’t tell anyone, because I convinced myself he needed me and would die without me (incidentally speaking he did commit suicide last year in December). He even threatened to kill himself a couple of times. I felt like I had to be there with him.

It was easy to repress this stuff because no one else was talking about it and hid it. So for about 5 years I dealt with the child care and for about seven years I dealt with the crazy boyfriend, and during that time I sought help twice from professional therapists. 

The first one was Christian, and while I am sure he was helpful to others. for me he wanted to blame place (which I was already doing) and tell me to pray and everything would be better.

As I stated previously I am Christian; however praying did not suddenly alert cops to the fact that the children and I were getting abused and that the children’s parents were selling/doing drugs. 

The second therapist that I had was really amazing, but I didn’t trust her enough to open up about everything, and just as I was finally getting comfortable. I got switched. After the therapist that informally diagnosed me died; I figured I could handle things on my own just fine. 

And I did…up to a point.

Even though I was repressing things the feelings where still there, and when I came across a trauma trigger (an experience that triggered a traumatic memory or feeling) I would automatically disassociate and sometimes even blackout. To “revive” myself I would often self injure or I would self-injure as I began to “come around” to focus and deal with the emotional pain. At the height of my abuse I would often self injure to make myself seem uglier to my ex or to get him to leave me alone (he hated the sight of my blood, and refused to touch it). I would also self-injure to get attention. I would hope someone would see the marks and ask me if I was ok, but I also knew that if they did I would just lie and say I was, because I truly thought I was ok to some degree.

And so it went.

When I was nineteen I stopped taking a lot of babysitting jobs, and when I was 24 I finally broke up with my ex (and broke his nose incidentally(it was the only time, besides almost shooting him once, that I had ever fought back)). I thought that everything would be fine. I had come out of the turbulence of my teen more or less intact. 

Then I met April, and all the carefully built walls fell apart.

That is nowhere near as romantic as it sounds. It was and has been, in short, a nightmare for both of us. The abuse she has suffered because of me, is something that we both have to live with. The new scars that I have, the paralyzing fear, the uncontrollable paranoia, flashbacks, nightmares, all of it, because my mind finally felt safe. 

While this isn’t a bad thing (it’s nice to be on the road to recovery), it does make for some tense moments. I can’t be out in large crowds. I can’t watch certain TV shows, or movies ( We just found out a couple of weeks ago that I absolutely cannot watch Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”). I can’t smell certain things or hear certain noises. The worst part is that because the memories are repressed we don’t know exactly what or when things will come up that are triggers (I have one trigger that I still don’t know the memory for). All we can do is wait and do damage control when they happen (I had one up at the Department of Human services one day, that was fun, let me tell you).

Because at it’s root Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an anxiety disorder, and because I tend to live in my head so much anyway (it’s the introvert in me) my head is a noisy place. Fear, guilt, doubt, self loathing, are all voices that scream inside my head, each one clamoring for an audience. It’s hard to think sometimes, and sometimes I over think. 

I used to scorn medicine, but as I have progressed with my treatment I have found it necessary. It doesn’t help with the flashbacks (I don’t think there is anything to help with them), but it does silence the noise in my brain. As I have had bad luck with meds in the past, and have seen others abuse them; I am cautious with mine. I take the lowest dosage possible, and (save for the rare occasion)  I have found that usually gets me through the day.

I still have bad moments, or bad days, and some days I still have to struggle to get out of bed. However, on a whole I think I am improved as least somewhat. And yes part of that is because of the thatguywiththeglasses website. They have a lot of funny and talented people on there, and most times if I can get myself laughing and get out of my own head and focus on other things, I’ll be OK (I listen to a couple of them just for the sound and cadence of their voice). They have saved my life several times, and I am grateful for them. 

So yeah, sorry this has taken me so long to write. I don’t know if I covered everything, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask. If it’s something I can answer, I will. Hope ya’ll enjoy the rest of your day, and I promise kick ass tutorial coming up soon; as well as the last entry on my grandparents.