I wish other people understood what it was like to have PTSD!

Right now I am a cross between angry, sad, and disappointed. My youngest son, he's 21, and I just got into a huge fight. We are going to be short on the rent this month. Nothing I can do about it. I have to renew my disability so I got $30.00 less on this check and my son borrowed a good amount of money and apparently there is a problem with some of the things he charged on my card. He, or should I say I, was charged twice for a couple of things. So although he is going to pay me what he says he owes we are still going to be short, shorter than I thought we would be. I originally thought we were going to be around $5-$10 short....well now it's more like $50. The bank will pay the check I'm sure. But it is stressful, especially since my son thinks his unemployment is about to run out. Unfortunately I am doing the best I can to pay bills, of course, they will all cost me more now because I will overdraw my account several times over. 

  If that isn't bad enough my son decides that my daughter needs to give me back my car so I can go back to work. I had to tell him again that that is not why I'm not working. I told him that I actually CAN'T go to work. Then he starts yelling about how hard it was when he was working and everyone was getting on his case and how I was telling him that he was going to lose his job if he kept calling in sick. Oh yeah, did I mention that my son has never been able to hold a job for more than about 6-8 months. He said that I didn't care that he was having a hard time. His hard time was people getting on his case at work. I told him that he doesn't understand that THIS isn't like that. My PTSD is not the same as a usual depression. He doesn't understand. I wish he did, I wish everyone did. It's not his fault, but it's frustrating. My therapist says that this disability is not one you can see, like a limp so it is hard for people to understand that the injury is inside and doesn't show on the outside.

  People think that if you are disabled then you shouldn't be able to walk or function at all. Well PTSD is different. You can function in certain areas, sometimes for a while. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. My son has no idea the trauma that I've been through. I'm certainly not wanting to sit him down and tell him all of the horrible things that his dad did to me to bring me to this point. He doesn't understand at all what was inflicted on me by his father, not to mention other traumas before and after I was married to him. Then I get to listen to my son yelling at me and threatening not to give me any of the money he owes me so that he can find a place to live. Because where he's living in literally HELL to him??????!!!!!!!( We live in a nice apartment by the way so this is about living with me and his sister) That boy has no clue what it is like to live in hell. His father left the house when my son was 3, he doesn't know what it was like living with his dad, the older kids know more as they received their own unfair share of abuse. Not to mention that none of the kids know everything that was done to me at their dad's hands. I mean truly you don't sit down and tell your kids these things. Talk about hurting them. So instead I get to be berated by my own child for being paralyzed from working at the job that I currently have because it triggers panic attacks that he's never seen me have. To almost faint, tremble, alternate between being flushed to having all of the color drain from my face. To feel like I'm going to die. Seriously, he's never seen this, he's never seen me at my job. His sister and brother saw me at the concert where I freaked out....whether my oldest son realized what was going on I don't know. I know that those who saw me were quite surprised to see a side of me that they had never seen before. One that I don't want to ever show again. My oldest daughter knows exactly what it is like to work at the job I have, because she also works where I work and she loathes it. The stress is more than anyone should be subjected to at a job. Truly.

I told my son, as he slammed out the door, that he doesn't even realize what I do for him. He's living in my place, he has nowhere to go. I didn't even charge him rent for quite awhile and he's 21. I just started charging him recently. He doesn't think he should have to pay as much because he sleeps on the sofa many of the nights unless his sister is gone and then he sleeps in her bed. She's gone a lot because her job is far away so it's easier for her. If either of them were actually out on their own, paying a roommate, they'd be splitting all of the bills three ways. Which what they pay me is no where close to 1/3 of the rent, not to mention the other bills and food. He doesn't even get that. I don't think he has ever appreciated anything that I've ever done for him. He just makes me feel like I'm a bad mom to him, that I don't understand what he's going through. Trust me I've tried and tried. There is only so much I can do to help. I am not going to go out and find him a job. I have recommended jobs to him but there is always an excuse as to why he can go to an interview or to even apply. I bought him nice clothes, he either gave them away to his friends and didn't get them back or he lost them. I can't afford to help him anymore. Soon I am going to have to make the tough choice and put him out I think. I mean his life here is SO terrible, according to him. I can imagine how many people would be grateful to have a roof over their head, a computer to use, DVD's to watch, and food in their bellies. But my son....oh it's hell. I know he's depressed and I'm sorry for that. I would be depressed too if I were him, but I also know that much of this is a byproduct of his own actions. I can't seem to get this through his head and since he has NO common sense he's not going to find out on his own.  It's a mess. 

  The way my son just talked to me hurt me so badly. He truly has no clue what I am going through. It's like "Oh mom just doesn't want to go to work".....I have worked for most of my life, I've held 2 jobs, more than once. It hurts me so badly that those closest to me don't understand what I feel or even give me the benefit of the doubt, which honestly....almost re-traumatizes me.

Wow, that was a surprise that threw me for an emotional loop.

Well here I was spending the day reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", a very long book that is being made into a movie, when low and behold I read a rape scene that was very much what I experienced myself. To say that it threw me is an understatement. Although, I wish I could have had the revenge that the girl had in the book, it was sweeeeeeeeet! 

  So damn if I don't get PTSD triggers from something so mundane. God knows I will have to tell my doctor and then he will want to delve into the rape. We've talked about it before but haven't gotten has far as we could in discussing it. I think he senses that I'm not altogether ready to talk about all of the details. I speak about it in an un-emotional way right now, like it was just something that happened, like skinning my knee while riding my bike. It is a part of my defense mechanism I guess. Keep the feelings at a distance. Brick them up behind a wall that no one can access. Of course my wall does not discriminate, everything seems to go behind it. It protects my heart. My heart is walled off in the middle and there is a barrier around it, all of my stuff goes in the area between the barrier and the wall. It is weird to describe it.

  Anyone who experiences trauma finds a way to deal with it. Some create "alters" which are other personalities, which is quite rare. Some of us find other ways to deal with it, forget about it or let it remain front and center in our lives. Me, I tried to put it all behind me and lock it up. Well the problem with that is that I put everything behind that wall the good as well as the bad so that I have a hard time feeling joy as well as sorrow. It really sucks not to be able to feel. It has to be a SERIOUS and very strong feeling for me to feel it. Anger is an easily accessible emotion, that is what my therapist told me...it's a kind of "go to" emotion for me. 

  I was triggered to anger a little over a year ago. I was at a concert with some of my closest friends, and a couple of my kids, when I got into a fight with a woman after the show. It was really stupid and I didn't do anything to provoke it. The woman was drunk and basically thought I had stolen something from her that she couldn't find after the show. She kept telling me that she wasn't accusing me yet she kept asking me if she could look in my purse. The more she asked the angrier I got. I had started off helping her look for the item that she lost. Well when she accused me it was a trigger for my PTSD, which took on the form of an anger bordering on rage. I tried walking away from her and she kept following me so I started yelling at her. This is not normally something that I would do, I was ready to punch her in the face. I am not a violent person but the trigger was there and I fired with some pretty angry words. Had she touched me I don't know what I would have done and that scares me. I never realized that what she did was a trigger. It goes back to my ex-husband who would accuse me of stuff that I didn't do. He would badger me relentlessly, keeping me awake all night until I "confessed", which I would sometimes do just because I was so tired and exhausted. It was a form of torture I realize now. My therapist is the one who made me realize that the whole incident was a trigger. 

  It really sucks to have triggers all around you. It is probably why I don't leave the house much anymore. I've lost most of my friends. Not in a bad, "I don't want to be friends with you anymore" way, but because I don't go anywhere anymore. Part of the reason is truly financial and other normal reasons, but I don't even talk on the phone with my friends anymore. I am sure they are tired of my life being such a downer but also because I probably don't have a lot to contribute anymore. I mean I don't go anywhere or do anything other than mundane things. I don't like leaving the house because I feel safe at home and don't want to encounter a "trigger" that may get me into trouble. 

  Through therapy I should be able to get through this and have a more normal life again. I miss my life so much. I used to have so much fun for a few years and then slowly I started moving back downhill again. The job at the Call Center just pushed me over the edge. Now I am hoping to get through this and find myself again. I am so much fun when I'm not wallowing in despair....really I am.....lol 

Another Day of therapy with hope on the horizon.

Went to see my therapist today, as I do every Tuesday. Wasn't sure what to really talk about as I didn't really feeling like anything was happening in my life to talk about. Other than the fact that my disability at work was approved for another few months. It will give me time for more therapy and it will keep my job secure which is THE most important thing right now.

  I told my therapist about this blog and he thought it was a great idea. He was asking me about creative things that I do and I mentioned that I used to draw all of the time. My whole life when I was a kid was all about art and drawing. I took art and drama classes in high school. I took Creative Writing classes in college. Always got A's in these classes. He asked why I didn't do art anymore and I told him about how I had drawn a picture for my now ex-husband, let's call him M. Anyway I drew a picture for M's birthday when we were dating and had it matted. What I drew was not normally what I would have drawn, but it was something that he liked so I worked hard on it for him as a gift. When I gave it to him he was mean about it, he didn't like it and made fun of it. It was the last time I drew anything meaningful other than to doodle. He crushed my spirit by not appreciating it in the least. My therapist told me that more abuse and he asked me if I had tried to draw at all after that. I told him that I did try, but my heart was no longer in it. Years ago after I had gotten divorced I told my mother how I didn't draw anymore or write and she was shocked. I told her that I just wasn't any good and that just blew her mind. Not long after that she sent me a sketch pad and some poems that I had written. I looked at them and starting crying, ""  I really did have talent"  I cried to her on the phone. She said that she had sent these items to me to remind me of who I was.

  My therapist who I will call Dr. H, asked me about my hopes and dreams. He asked me what dreams I have for myself right now. He told me to imagine myself 30 years from now. He wanted me to tell him what I regretted that I hadn't done from the age that I am right now. He said the past is gone so what am I not doing right now that I would regret when I'm in my 70's. That was not an easy question. So it took awhile and I told him about regretting staying in a job where I'm not happy. So we discussed what I would like to be doing right now. So after a few false starts I mentioned something that I had already attempted to do but never got around to it. It is something creative, which was always my passion. We discussed ways in which I could achieve that goal. He also told me that when I was talking to him my eyes lit up when sharing all of my ideas. He said that I'm here and that is my true self. There is hope for me. He gave me an assignment related to what I want to do. I'm not sure that I will be able to do it as it requires me to leave my house which isn't easy these days as I am having to share my car with my daughter right now. But if it's possible I will do as much of it as I can. It is a challenge for me as that is part of what my problem is....great ideas, no motivation to do them. But having a goal or assignment may be the push that I need.

  One of the things that Dr. H taught me about PTSD is the fact that those of us who are creative are more susceptible to trauma. When you have PTSD the trauma is stuck on the creative side of our brain and needs to be moved over to the logical side. That is not an easy thing to do. There is actually a therapy for that called EMDR which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing . We have thought about trying it but I am not ready yet and he isn't pushing it. If you have a chance to look it up it is quite interesting and does work in many case and there are many ways to go about it. Here is a link:
http://www.emdr.com/ 

   I also looked at some other blogs today and saw how professional they are. Damn! I'll be lucky if anyone looks at mine.lol But if at least one person reads this and gets something out of it I will be happy. One of the reasons why I started this blog was to hopefully help others to know that they are not alone and that there is help out there. Maybe even help via this blog. We shall see I suppose.

  A quick side note, I changed my font to a larger size. If you are reading this and think it was a mistake, please let me know and I can change it back. I just thought it might be easier to read....especially if you are older like me. :)  ***


***OK so I realized that I could edit my posts, duh, so I edited my first post in this blog so that the font IS larger and easier to read...:-)

Catch Up and Welcome to My Life!

Hello and welcome to my blog and my life. When I first thought about starting this blog I had lofty ideas that I would write about my life every day and write about what was happening with my therapy. Well, every day turned into "no day". So I am giving myself some slack and writing when I get a chance. I know that writing is a good thing for all of us to do, especially when we are trying to work things out in our lives. So, today is the first day that I am finally writing, god knows I used to write on a daily basis, let's see if I can do something close to it again.


  First of all I will try to fill you in on some background. I am in my late 40's and apparently have been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for about half of my life. It started with an abusive marriage when I was 18 years old. The man I was married to was my same age but years ahead of me in the manipulation and abuse of others department. We married and had 4 children together when I was finally released from that hell by him cheating on me repeatedly. I didn't know it, of course, only suspected but in great manipulator style he made me think that any and every problem in our marriage was mine. My fault for trusting him when my instincts were screaming at me.  In the end he decided to "confess" all of his sins in the space of one night. Which rocked me to my core, let me tell you. I have never gotten over the deceit and betrayal....not to mention the fact that I was married to someone whom I didn't know at all. It was like he had another life. And lest you think, as some tend to do in these situations, that the sex must have been non-existent or bad.....we had sex every other day, at least,  for 12 years and then some. The sex was the best he ever had (this is a quote from him, not me). What he wanted was something that no one could give him. He didn't love himself and when you don't love yourself you can't love anyone else. He was looking for something that he has never found to this day. 


  Anyway, the marriage was fraught with mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Why did I put up with it? That is the million dollar question. Most of all it was because I was young and naive. I believed in sticking it out, plus we had children to consider. I tried and tried to make it work, but there is no way to work out something like this. My ex-husband was sadistic and he derived some kind of pleasure from making me suffer. His oldest brother once told me that he wished that he weren't related to him because he always treated people close to him like crap, but treated everyone else really nice. I know that most people who knew him thought he was funny (he was), charming (he was), and nice (he really wasn't). He was cruel to those closest to him. That of course meant his family of which I was now a part of. I will talk more about this and perhaps more specifics later as we go along this journey together.

  Another trauma that fell under the PTSD banner was the sudden death of my mother. She died with no warning, in bed, while taking a nap because she wasn't feeling well. I had just seen her a few weeks earlier when she had come to visit with my dad. She had only just turned 58 years old. Very young to die. It was totally unexpected and threw me into a very deep and serious depression. I am an only child so my mom and I were particularly close. I didn't think I would ever be OK again. By that time I was already divorced and caring for 4 kids by myself. I was working a part-time job and could barely go to work, then I would come home and go to bed. My poor kids didn't know what to do. No one around me knew what to do. My boyfriend at the time couldn't understand why I wasn't over it after about 6 weeks. Not that he didn't care, he just didn't understand. He kept thinking, "well she's in a better place"....meanwhile I am just missing her and not knowing how I could live without my mom. She was my closest friend. So the boyfriend and I broke up, he broke up with me because I "wasn't the woman he had fallen in love with". Of course I wasn't, a loss like that changes you. He has since come to regret that assessment and we eventually got back together for awhile. More on all of this later I'm sure...

  So the last trip on the trauma wagon is the suicide of my father 4 years after my mother died. I don't think there needs to be a lot of explanation here right now about this as I know it will come up later.


  The reason why I am now getting help....which by the way I did try to get before, just the wrong therapists at the wrong time or something like that. The reason is that I had taken on a job at a call center in a bank. Now I am really good at talking to people and normally I have no problem with it. The job is a VERY stressful one whether you suffer from PTSD or not, but it is particularly bad if you are a PTSD sufferer. I found that I DO have a problem with people calling me every name in the book and there is nothing I can do about it. It pulls me back and reminds me of my marriage when I was powerless to do anything. I begin shaking and feeling like I'm going to die, in other words I have a panic attack. These types of calls are what my therapist calls a trigger. The call center is full of triggers and I may not ever be able to go back. Oh yeah I'm on disability right now. I am trying to get as much therapy as I can before I go back to work, wherever that may be. Just trying to find the money to live and keep up my insurance. Whew!

  So for the moment I am going to leave you with this summary of what traumas caused my PTSD and I hope that you will join me as I go through my therapy with it's highs and lows. There is hope for all of us who are suffering. I have a therapist now that I think really gets me and is already helping me to understand a lot. I would like to share this with you, my readers, wherever you are. I hope I have some at some point. I hope that you will also share this with others who suffer or have someone close to them who is suffering from this paralyzing condition.