As I get further in my therapy I find that the walls I have spent years building are coming down and it is terrifying. When I was a kid growing up I was overly emotional. Most people who witnessed this display had no idea what I was going through at home or what was happening in my life. My feelings would get hurt really easily. I was very raw emotionally and fragile....for good reason....but as a kid you don't really examine that in your fellow kids. So I got teased A LOT for crying when I was sad or my feelings were hurt among other things. No one helped me, teachers wouldn't lift a finger....they just let everything run it's course. So I would cry, kids would tease, and I would go home and cry some more because people were so mean and hurtful. I felt powerless. They call it bullying now. Back in those days it was considered kids being kids I guess. Teachers were indifferent. But hey, I got through it eventually. I didn't make a habit of crying in public as I got older of course. When I was with my now ex-husband he would be incredibly cruel to me and yes I would cry. I would cry a lot. In public when he would say hurtful things to me I would tear up but I struggled to never cry. Anyone in that situation would want to cry. The things that were said and done were wrong, incredibly hurtful. I am a human being with feelings so naturally when I was hurt I would cry. But I was working on developing a thick skin, even then.
When things went south for the last time with my husband and the pain was beyond anything I could handle I started building a wall. I reinforced that wall with brick, mortar, steel, and a force field miles away from my heart. Building a wall protects your heart but it also insulates it from all of the good things. The joy of life. The only hurt I allowed myself was the death of my parents. There was no way to keep that pain out. Nor could I keep hurt and pain out when my kids were hurting. Once upon a time I would get emotional at sad movies or really sweet happy endings. With the walls I built that became a thing of the past. I found myself unable to feel much of the empathy that I had always felt for others. Therapy has changed that and it scares the hell out of me. I think I started changing even before I started therapy, but therapy has opened the floodgates. I try to remember that it is OK to cry, it is OK to "feel" things. I find myself getting emotional watching movies now and it has been a really long time since I have felt this way. My ex-fiance would try to get me to cry when I was upset and all that did was make me dig in my heals and refuse to cry. Crying for me meant weakness, vulnerability. When I was in elementary school it meant teasing and bullying. When I was married it meant being vulnerable to a sadist who loved to make me cry. So to do this now is VERY scary to me. I don't know how to control it which is particularly scary for me.
Soon I will be going back to work and then I will have to learn how to control it in a hurry. It is a bad job to have in this condition. I don't know what these long forgotten emotions will mean for my life. I do know that I am not enjoying being hurt and I have been feeling hurt recently by silly little things that I should just let go. But it is making me aware that the feelings and emotions are coming back into my life. I don't know what to do with them right now. I know that I need to "feel" because without feeling sadness or empathy I can't feel love and joy. I am trying to have a new resolve in my life as well. I am resolved to live and not care what others think of me. I have to be true to myself and remember to let some things go, even though it is hard and the pain is still there. Is this forgiveness I wonder? I don't know. But I know that I don't have many years left on this earth and I don't want to waste them in sorrow and pain. I want my love of life back.
When I was growing up I always put on a happy face and people mistook that happy face for being happy. I learned that from my mother. But I was very unhappy, as was she. I don't want to "put on" a happy face. I want to be happy and have my face show it naturally! So I think that I shall make that my "new years resolution". To be happy inside and out. Embrace emotions. To cry when I am sad and laugh when I am happy. To just be me, for better or worse. It may not garner me a lot of friends, but the friends I have will know me and appreciate me for who I am whether I am happy or sad, joyous or mad. At heart I am a good person whether some people think so or not, accept it or not, it is the truth and I will no longer let others deter me from it.
I feel as though I am only an observer in life, no longer a participant. It is shocking and sad not to think of a future. I mean, I'd like to think I have one...but as I get older, with the PTSD being so bad right now, I no longer look to the future as a time of unknown possibilities. I spoke to an old man once who told me that he no longer looked to the future, he said he was just waiting to die, said there wasn't anything else to look forward to. Even in my current condition I am struggling and trying to look forward to something, anything....One thing that happens, unbidden, I think of things I should have done. Just pops into my head, "oh damn I should have done this!". I don't get all maudlin about it, I just think..."dammit that would have been great, I wish I had thought of that. Why didn't I think of doing that?". I have to tell you, it SUCKS!
Right now I am just waiting....I am due to go back to work on Jan. 3rd, I am resigned to that. I don't want to, I have to say. Not because of work per se, mainly because I will have only been on my medication for a week before I go back. That isn't a lot of time. I am worried. But it can't be helped, I can't get into see the county doc until the end of December. So I am not going back to work in the optimum physical and mental state. With all that is going on with the world and the hostility I see every single day, it not only worries me, but it scares me. I don't know that I can handle it. But I have to try. At least until something else comes along. I have starting working on another blogging project and it seems like it could be interesting. It is part of a social experiment I'm doing. I like it because it interests me and I can see potential in it. It grew out of frustration. I look at it as a positive outlet for a lot of my anger. I am interested to see how it goes. I am trying desperately to restart my return to society as it were. I need something that will give me a little pleasure, something to focus on besides my depression. I recently corresponded with a friend of mine who sounds like she is going through much of what I am. I felt so badly. I feel just like she does. How common is this? She is not on medication either. I am here to tell you that some of us desperately NEED medication. It really helps. It is painful not to be on it. People don't realize that medication for people with disorders such as PTSD or depression or anxiety is an essential treatment. Without it we are in horrible pain. Not necessarily physical, although that actually can happen depending on your disorder, but emotional and mental pain. I feel it every day. Like a headache, some days the pain is more severe than others. This morning the pain caused me to have issues with breathing, because I was feeling panic coming on. No rhyme or reason, it just happened. There is not always a known trigger, sometimes it just happens. It starts with anxiety and graduates to panic. Thankfully I caught it both times and was able to get it under control with slow, deep breathing. It is painful, it truly is. Imagine suddenly feeling like you are going to die. Literally. I am just glad that I didn't have to resort to medication as I only have a handful of anti-anxiety medication left. By that I mean, about 5 pills. I always used them sparingly, which is why I still have some left. I haven't been on medication for many months so I am lucky that I handle my meds in this way. So if I can just get through the next month and a half I might just make it. Of course it seems like I can't tell how it is going to go one day to the next.
I am so glad that I am going to see my therapist Tuesday. We really need to get down to the nitty gritty with my therapy. I have to be able to conquer more things before I go back to work. I want to get to the bottom of my issues and it just seems like I keep dealing with what is happening right NOW. That is all well and good but a lot of what is going on right now has it's roots in my past. I am really needing to focus on these things so that I can truly get past them and maybe it will be a little easier to cope with things that are going on right now. I think a lot about my past. Things that I did and didn't do, things that happened and how I dealt with them, or in some cases didn't deal with them. I don't think I have enough time to fully deal with so much that has happened in my life. I mean my doctor has seen trauma in my life that I didn't even realize was traumatic until he mentioned it and I realized how bad it was. I mean, I was always in such a hurry to get through stuff. As a child the trauma's I went through just became bad things in my life that I tried to forget. As an adult I was too busy with kids and staying alive in my marriage to deal with all of the trauma I was experiencing. I didn't have the time and it has caught up to me in a big way as these things tend to do. I think that is why I am falling apart right now. It was just too much to keep inside anymore. Now I am an open wound. It is scary. I need to deal and move on. I will probably be in therapy for many, many years at this point. Although some trauma's are tied to others so maybe I can cut some of the time off? lol.
Well I think this entry is long enough. I know that not many people read this. But those who do...thank you. I hope that if you are a friend that maybe you understand me a little better. If you are an impartial observer, I hope that my sharing my struggles help you to see that you are not alone.
I'm not the only person who feels this way, am I? I feel like every little setback these days means the beginning of the end. Things can be going "OK" and then BOOM one thing happens to set me back, doesn't have to be big...and I feel like I just want to be done with life. Right now I am sure a big part of that is the fact that my medical insurance was canceled so I am not taking my meds on a normal schedule. I am trying to make them last so I am taking my anti-depressants every other day. I will be making an appointment to see one of my doctors in the next week or so, he has to OK me to go back to work. He will, even though he doesn't want me to, because he knows I HAVE to go back, I don't have a choice. I am going to ask him to put me on a 4 day a week schedule to ease me back. Maybe 4 days permanently...but I won't know if I can afford that until I do it and where I work they DON'T like it to be that way. Part-time is less hours, not less days. But there is no point in less hours per day, it only helps them and will kill me even more financially. I wish I could afford to do things a different way but I can't. My son is planning on moving out next month so I can't rely on any financial help from him (for rent or food) anymore and eBay is not going well all of a sudden (not just for me but for many sellers). However I do have a couple of other ideas up my sleeve, just have to find a way to afford them and to do them. It is really hard for people who do not suffer from this to understand that it is like a disconnect between what you know you need to do and what you can do. I feel like I am existing on some weird plane where I am alone...Everything is going on around me but I am barely able to interact. Of course I'm also worried that I am going to have to stop seeing my therapist until I get my insurance back, I'm sure he is not going to see me for free and I can barely afford the co-payment right now. So I may have to forget therapy for a month or so until I get my insurance back, not to mention that there is no telling how long the lag time will be for the insurance. It was such a hassle the first time I got it. I can only do what I can do, but it sucks.
I was going along so well in therapy and doing better in many ways, starting to dig into things that would make me better and now I may have to quit. Even before I go back I am worried about slipping back into my bad thoughts, hell I haven't seen my therapist in a week and am already feeling like I'm slipping away. This is why therapy is so important to keep me grounded in this critical phase of my treatment.
This sucks so bad. No happiness, no joy, no sense of things getting better has made me fall into the abyss of hopelessness when I was starting to feel hopeful. DAMMIT!!!! I am so mad at those in my life who traumatized me to this extent!!!! Damn them! Except for my mom whose only contribution to my traumas was to die younger than she should have and I am kinda mad at her for not telling the doctor all of the issues she was having physically. Maybe they could have helped her! She thought she could handle things on her own, that she knew better. I begged her to see the doctor if she was having problems, which I knew she was. Obviously I had no idea at all how serious those problems would turn out to be. I miss her so damn much, I need her. She always made me feel just a little bit better just knowing that she was there and that she loved me no matter what I did.
Wow this blog just took a weird turn....well maybe that's the way trauma is. Sometimes the focus is on one thing and then it shifts to another trauma. Each trauma has it's own symptoms and feelings associated with it. Some of my trauma is obvious and angry and some of it is sad and regretful. All of them are traumatic in their own individual ways. Some affect me in everyday life and some affect me only sometimes, when triggered by something. What I wouldn't give right now to hold my mom and just cry until I can't cry anymore.
On a good note, I have talked to a couple of people who have read my blog and have found some things in it to be thought-provoking. For that I am really glad. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to write this blog. My condition is making it increasingly difficult for me to write, it can be painful mentally and emotionally. So I am not as consistent as I'd like to be with this. But it makes all of it worth it when someone reads something that resonates with them. I am happy to share, especially when it helps someone to feel as though they are not alone. And also to share what I have learned in therapy. Look it's free! I hope to be doing better and maybe my therapist and I can find a way to make this happen, who knows. I just hope to hold on. I miss myself. I used to really like me, now I don't even know if I know who I am anymore. I know that I am not a bad person and I know that I have good Karma (even if it doesn't seem that way right now), I don't intentionally hurt anyone. I also know that I am getting older and I am dying and I want to be me again before I die.
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
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...:-)
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.
