Long Long Long Summer

I am having such overwhelming thoughts on PTSD lately. Like, will I be able to handle a relationship or a job or life? I feel like I'm a burden and having a hard time kicking it in the butt. I'm aware that I've only started therapy 4 months ago, but still. I hate everything about it, how it makes me feel, how it makes others around me feel, and how it rules over my life. I rather just hide and live on my own for the rest of my life than cause other's hurt or burden.

I feel like if I cause so much pain, I should disappear off the face of the earth. Who's going to care for this person? Who's going to want someone who is this broken and hard to fix. Who wants to go through all the crap to deal with me?

As time goes on and I learn more and more about PTSD and myself. I feel like I'm not worthy of those around me. And that I'm really a terrible person to be around.

What's going on in my head?

This is is a thing now......after some months with my therapist, she's come across PTSD as my main diagnosis and MDD on the side. And it sucks A LOT. Especially triggers. Working on myself has been harder than ever, but I'm going to get there. Dammit, I don't care.


~


Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex disorder that can be hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it first-hand so there are things that people with PTSD want you to know. Even those of us who suffer from it sometimes have difficulty explaining it to others. We don’t all have the same PTSD symptoms, and we don’t all respond to the same kinds of PTSD treatment. However, while there can be a lot of differences in the way people with PTSD respond to past traumas and to their recovery, there is one thing that I think most of us can agree on: we wish others could better understand PTSD and the feelings and behaviors that come with it. Here are 10 things that people with PTSD want you to understand.


What People with PTSD Want You to Understand about PTSD

1.We are not weak. Suffering from PTSD as a result of trauma is not a mental weaknessor moral failing. Rather, it is a result of some traumatic thing that happened to us. The fact that some people develop PTSD after a traumatic event, and some people don’t, really has no correlation to the person’s physical, mental, or emotional strength.
2.We are not all combat veterans. PTSD can be caused by any type of trauma, not just the horrors of war. Physical, sexual, emotional, or any other kind of abuse, can cause it as well as things like car accidents, natural disasters, and illnesses.
3.We don’t always look like the people with PTSD on TV and in movies. People with PTSD are often portrayed in TV and films as rage-filled, flashback-having, anxiety-riddled lunatics. While anger,flashbacks, and anxiety are certainly symptoms of PTSD, many of us have learned how to deal with those things through therapy, medication, and support.
4.We did not ask for the trauma that caused our PTSD. Someone suffering from PTSD is not to blame for having the disorder. We were victims of trauma who developed the disorder as a result. The trauma wasn’t our fault, and having PTSD isn’t our fault either.
5.We don’t always know what will trigger us and why. Because being triggered can be caused by just about anything — a sight, smell, sound, movie, television show, place, picture, and the list goes on — we don’t always know which things are going to have a negative effect on us. It is also true that something we encounter may trigger us one time, but not the next. At times, it’s like dodging bullets and you have no idea which direction they are coming from.
6.We have scars, but they are often invisible. The scars left by PTSD-inducing trauma aren’t always observable. Many times the wounds left by trauma are emotional, spiritual, and mental. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
7.We know that sometimes our reactions and feelings are illogical, but knowing that doesn’t always help. Being triggered, anxious, or depressed as a result of PTSD is sometimes quite irrational in relation to the situation. Many times, we know this, intellectually. That knowledge, though, doesn’t make the irrational feelings go away.
8.We cannot just “get over it.” PTSD has physical symptoms; it affects our bodies, not just our minds. 9.Telling someone with PTSD to “get over it” is like telling someone with epilepsy to “get over” having seizures. It doesn’t work.
10.We want you around, even when we don’t act like it. Sometimes we want to isolate and withdraw from daily life. That doesn’t always mean that we want to be alone, though. We may feel comforted by just being in the same room with you, even if there is no interaction.
11. We need for you to believe in our recovery. Recovery from, or at least management of, PTSD is possible, but it doesn’t always feel that way to us. Having support from you and seeing that you believe we can recover is the best thing you can do for us.

Fear in Me

In recent self discovery and enlightenment, I come to an awakening in myself. Lately, I have been having many struggles with my feelings and emotions from the habits of stress and life...and health. It's been a hard couple of years. Since my junior year of college, I've been conflicted and confused on my feelings and emotions. I never knew how to deal with them or what I was feeling. I'd cry, I'd hurt myself, I'd hide and run away. I kept it from everyone I knew. Until one day, a mutual college friend, asked me about the dream I had that night and my emotions just erupted. I vomited words all over the place and didn't know how to catch them from falling into someone else's hands. But she was kind and compassionate. She recommended me to see a therapist. I was stunned but never have I felt so sure about that in my life....until that day.

Within the next week, I scheduled an appointment with the college psychologist to talk. It was the most nerve-wracking day of my life. I was so scared to be judged, to be asked questions I couldn't answer or didn't want to answer. When the therapist came to get me, she told me I looked nervous. But to tell you, I was in fear. Fear of what might become of things I opened up about. What would happen if I let it become a part of my life rather than run from it. And here I am today telling you about it. Because I am no longer afraid.

After a year into a relationship with a man I admire, it had become apparent to me that I wasn't quite over my fear. Fear of the self. Fear of not being enough. Fear of guilt and shame. Every once in a while I would become filled up with these feelings of guilt and shame, then eventually burst. I'd try and find reasons in my head why I felt this way. Was it because I wasn't enough for him, did he really love me like this? THIS being a chronically ill person. THIS being a girl who was sexually harassed by her uncle. THIS being a person who made mistakes often. THIS being a person who was clumsy, quirky, quiet, and odd. THIS person ending up in an abusive relationship for her first relationship. THIS person was not worthy of herself. She had not felt that way, so how could she be worthy to anyone else?

These feelings became my life. It could be anyone or anything I did, guilt would still be there. Guilt and shame led to anxiety, and then spiral into a depression. Which, for many years I thought that depression was the problem. I was person who became depressed on occasions, sometimes for many days. But I wouldn't show it in fear of being pointed out. I hid it until I was able to set it free in college when I first met my therapist. I was with her for two years and I saw her twice a week, every week. For a long time, I hid going to therapy. I finally broke down one day and told a close friend of mine who I trusted and still do. Even though I have told her about my therapy and depression, it still wasn't the whole truth. That fear of the self was still there. Conflicted and confused.

I know a lot of my guilt and shame stems from my childhood. I remember instances and events in which I felt those feelings and anxiety and depression. I thought it was normal then. It was how everyone was and we just go about our day and lives as it was. Until college I didn't know a thing. I began to work on my depression and anxieties with my therapist. She helped me through a lot and helped me channel it through my art. Which at the end of my senior year, I chose to display some very private feelings on paper. Not in words, but pictures. The camera helped me see things in a different way. And I was able to work through the process of not only making the art pieces, but the feelings itself. One piece I surprised me how much I decided to show of those feelings. But it reflected confusion and conflict.

I should have seen then, that my journey wasn't over. After the show, I even ran elsewhere and cried for awhile. Knowing these feelings weren't resolved. Not in the slightest. It was only the beginning. 

At some point, I knew that these feelings were real and weren't normal to have all the time, I still let it follow me. The worst thing I could have done was let it follow me into a relationship. The worst kind of relationship. One that was your first. I was dumbfounded and thought I was in love with someone who loved me back. In the long haul, it wasn't love. It was emotional and verbal abuse. I felt used. That's what it came to. Even after we weren't together anymore. It became worse until I left entirely. 

Entering into a new relationship a year later, might have been too soon maybe. But it was life saving.  I always have a hard time saying that a person came along and took me away from hurt and pain. But this person had. And it's the man I admire today. Even if weren't romantically involved, I would still thank him for being there when I really needed a hand. Going back to this, THIS being the fear of myself. I had to face it in a new light. A light I needed to be turned back on for me to deal with it. The point in which I decided that I needed to deal with it, was when I was contemplating whether I should be in a relationship where I felt guilty and not enough. I wanted to hide again. Even from the person I loved most. I was afraid of it messing up my life with this person. And my own life. How it would affect others. 

But this man, took my hand and showed me a whole other way of living I wasn't use to. Nor understood. I didn't understand why there wasn't constant consequences, faults pointed out, or shamed for being myself or sharing my thoughts. To him, I am enough regardless of everything. I was showed that it was okay. It was okay to make mistakes and learn from them without feeling ashamed or guilty. And if I did, to work through those feelings that hurt me. 

It's what guilt holds me to. Fear. Fear of myself. Fear of not being enough. 

But I am enough. And I will continue and try to fight these feelings instead of running.