I live my life in a whirlwind of should. Each day coming up with a new list of to do and should do’s that I will endeavour to complete on a regular basis in an attempt to get to a point of feeling whole. These are things that I try to do in order to feel a sense of calm that I’ve been seeking for years and perhaps my entire life. I create new goals and then experience a sense of self-loathing when I can’t keep up with the plan that I’ve made and “life gets in the way”. I’ve placed that phrase in quotations because how is it possible that so many of us see our lives this way, as getting in the way? The lives that we had a hand in creating as being in our way in living a life that we still desire.
I have a confession for you my friends. I’ve been diagnosed with Complex PTSD about 6 months ago. I’ve been having a hard time accepting it because I refuse to be my diagnosis. I refuse to identify with it. But the truth is that it is part of my life. The trauma that I suffered growing up surfaced and though I have casually referred to it in my writing to date, it has had an extremely detrimental effect on my ability to live my life fully in this past year. I’m only beginning to understand how much it has had an impact on my life. It surfaced in part as a result of trying to be everything to everyone in my family, supporting my husband with his own diagnosis from service and having two kids with special needs. But it also surfaced from years of working in a high stress environment and consistently striving for achievement as opposed to rest. Society values this sort of striving. It doesn’t value rest and relaxation on a regular basis. Favouring to view people as weak if they think too much about themselves or their families.
I saw the signs a few years ago and was desperate for something to give then. I can remember as early as 2015 feeling as though I didn’t have much more to give. When I went to get help and was asked what I needed in terms of support, I remember my words being, “I need to be taught how to be able to give everything that is demanded of me by my work and my family but not feel completely exhausted and depleted”. Looking back on it now, three and a half years later, I can see that what I should have said was, how can I take care of myself so that I can take care of others. I do remember being asked what I was doing for myself but I didn’t even think at the time that it was a reasonable question. I felt I was failing to meet the demands that I was under already, why would I slack off and sit back to relax.
Worried that my friends and co-workers would judge me for the way that I was feeling, I didn’t tell anyone that I was really needing help. What I kept saying was that it was my family that was having a hard time and that I needed to support them. I made decisions on a daily basis which I thought would get me what I needed to feel a bit of relief but it never worked. It was only when I started to have heart palpitations and chest pain, nightmares, sleepless nights, brain fog, memory loss and an inability to get through the day without crying that I gave in and started to get the help that I really needed. I no longer had a choice, I could no longer cope. I’m sure that there are people who judge as I’m no longer to hold the image that I once did in their eyes or my own. How can expect them not to judge when I am unable to get through a day without judging myself for my low levels of energy and panic attacks at the slightest of stressors. I’m still unable to fully comprehend how our bodies get to this point after years of not being flooded and impacted by the trauma. Why now?
“I should be able to get past this!”
“I should be able to feel happiness for everything I have, including a beautiful family and successful career!”
“I should be happy for all I’ve accomplished!”
“I should be able to get through a full day before feeling eyes burning tired!”
“I should be able to lose the weight that I’ve put on as a result of stress and comfort eating”.
These are just a few of the ways that I judge myself. If I were to list them all, then the number of shoulds and wish I coulds would probably be in the hundreds. I’m slowly learning that people can judge as much as they need to. I now surround myself only with those who are willing to help lift me up out of the darkness as I would do for them. I’ve been very fortunate to have a handful of very close friends who listen and validate what I’m going through on a regular basis. I’m grateful every single day that I have them in my life, for without them, I’m not sure how bad things would have gotten. I’m also grateful that I have a supportive spouse, for we can support one another.
Let’s wind back to “why now?” I’ve always been the type of person to have a hard time accepting things at face value. I want to know more. I want to understand so that I can avoid it happening to me again, or so that I can heal and move on.
I asked my therapist and doctors this question time and again, “but why now?” Why after almost 30 years of the worst of my trauma am I experiencing this? The answer is simple yet still not easy to accept. The answer is that the body keeps the score. The body remembers. Lying dormant deep in the tissues of your body and it can resurface at any time. Particularly when your brain and body are exposed to situations that feel like the original trauma. The inability to escape, to control the situation and in which there is fear. It’s as simple as that. Fear is part of the human condition. But when there is undeniable damage done to the brain and body and you can’t return to baseline, to the feeling of the absence of fear, then your body interprets the event as being just like that time when you were left alone for several days at the age of eight, too afraid to tell anyone you were alone because they may come and take you away. It remembers the moment that your mother took a bottle of pills with a case of Alpine at the age of seven and told you to go call the police from your Nanny’s house because she was going to die now. It remembers the feeling of not being able to do anything to escape the situation that you’ve found yourself in. It remembers even when you don’t.
This is the triggered state that I have been cycling in and out of for a year now. Never sure of when it will happen, or when something will remind me of one of these moments and I will be unable to escape the feeling of panic, dread and excruciating fear. Unfortunately, though there is help, it takes time. I’ve never been a patient person. Anyone who knows me will attest to this fact. A lifelong anthem of mine being the Guns n’ Roses song Patience. Woman take it slow, and it'll work itself out fine - All we need is just a little patience. I feel that after a year of “treatment”, that I should be better. I should be able to get over it. Push it back down again. I’m confident that one day I will recover. I will feel whole again. But pandora’s box has been opened and it has been impossible to close. So there is no turning back now. There is only forward - toward an uncertain future but one in which I hope to feel wholeness and acceptance.
Comentarios