What PTSD feels like

Ever wonder what it’s like to have PTSD? No? Great, let me explain…

PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder. Most people think of it as a result of being in combat, but I’m not a veteran. Myopia and asthma aren’t exactly great military candidate material. But did you know you can get PTSD from other traumatic life experiences? Bullying, abusive relationships (both romantic and business), even neglect and abandonment. Trauma doesn’t have to be be physical and bloody to leave scars. In fact, emotional scars are probably worse to deal with. You don’t know they’re there all the time. They certainly aren’t visible to the general public. And they’re “easy” to stomp deep down inside while you try to forget about them. But they have a way of rearing their ugly beads.

Take, for example, a simple delay in getting started at a new job. The hiring process may have been rushed and paperwork is now being gone through with a fine tooth comb, and there may not actually be anything wrong – the powers-that-be are just making sure things are done properly. But in the mind of someone with PTSD, there’s clearly something wrong. Somehow, the new employer must have found a reason why not to hire you, and they’re just trying to find a nice way to tell you. They’ve realized you’re an imposter and you aren’t really cut out for the job. Deep down you know that they probably couldn’t find someone MORE qualified than you, but the “deep down” voice isn’t bold enough to speak right now – that voice has been quashed so many times it doesn’t even know if its voice works anymore.

So you start going over and over in your head everything you may have done or said wrong. Did you email too many times? Did you ask too many questions? That’s definitely it – that last question really made you look dumb. No, it had to be asked. Maybe there was an error in one of the transcripts and it looks like your education wasn’t complete. Maybe someone sabotaged the hire. But who would do that? Who knows, but you’ve pissed a few people off along the way…

I know, you’re surprised I’ve pissed a few people off. I’m so docile…

So I lay here in my bed in the middle of the night wondering about everything rather than sleeping. That’s what PTSD feels like. It’s an anxiety attack waiting to happen. It sitting at that simmering point and just not quite getting to a boil. But you don’t sleep and you second-guess everything. And something will finally happen to make you realize you didn’t need to do all that worrying. But for now, the S part of PTSD holds control: Stress. Yay, fun…

Shoulding all over myself

I should be stronger. I should be smarter. I should be skinnier. I should run more. I should exercise more. I should spend more time with my kids. I should work harder. I should, I should, I should… Shoulding all over myself.

I heard this phrase in a podcast today and it struck a chord with me. I hold myself to such high standards that I have a hard time reaching them. I’m not perfect. Nor should I be. But I still hold myself up there. And when I don’t meet my standards, I feel like a failure. Why? Largely in part due to the trauma of my youth, partly due to society’s high standards.

There are expectations that everyone holds. The worst are the ones we set for ourselves. We are our own worst critics. I had friends point this out to me recently. They reminded me of all the good things about me, all of my good traits. And I have a hard time hearing those good things. It’s easier to hear that you’re NOT good enough, that you’ve made a mistake. But when you hear all the good, sometimes it’s embarrassing.

We’ve got to stop shoulding all over ourselves. We’ve got to start being ok with who and what we are. It’s starts with me. Will you start with you?

Am I 13 or 39?

Running down the hall for the front of the building, trying to get out the front doors before they can reach me and punch me in the back, pull my hair, or push me. Hearing them yell at me, call me names, talk about me as I walk past them in a busy hallway. Listening to them on the other end of the phone as they say I better be scared because they’re going to kill me. They called me a whore, a slut, ugly, stupid. I had only even kissed one boy by this time, I was at the top of my class. But I ended up in the principal’s office trying to defend myself from these attacks, and no one believed me…

This is all so very real in my memory. I can see it all as it happened. I was 13 years old, in one of the most impressionable times of my life. I had all the confidence in the world up to this point. I had written an essay about my dream car for English class – it was going to be a black Mustang convertible with red racing stripes, and a license plate that read “GODDESS”…because I was THAT sure of myself. I was a straight A student, very naïve, didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t drink, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t sleep with boys, I didn’t dress provocatively. But my best friend that I had since preschool started being friends with the girls who came from the juvenile detention home, and she started doing drugs and drinking with them, and she wasn’t happy that I wouldn’t join her, so she joined them in attacking me instead.

I loved school, I loved my friends…up to that point. I lost most of my friends, including my best friend. It had been instilled in me that in our family, we didn’t fight. So I didn’t fight. I ran. And I cried. And that made them pick on me even more, because I didn’t fight back. I became an easy target.

My mom asked me what I had done to have them treat me like this, because it didn’t make sense that it would start out of nowhere. None of it made sense. The school principal didn’t believe that things like this could be happening on school property. The sheriff, who was also a friend of the family, said there’s no way these girls would do something like that, because they’re trying to improve their lives… so what?… I must be lying??

All of the adults in my life that I trusted were questioning me. My parents chose to do open enrollment at the end of the school year and transfer me to the school in a neighboring district. I never got picked on again like that. In fact, the first year I was there, I was voted in as Snow Queen for our snow days celebration, then I was voted in for class officer. But I never got over the initial insult… Transferring to another school, while it was the best thing for me, helped me further cement the idea that running away was always the best option. Fight or flight, right? I couldn’t fight, so I flew, I ran.

With the help of my therapist, we’ve identified that this was a changing point in my life. I went from a carefree, confident kid to a people-pleasing, indecisive one. I put on a face of confidence, but any bit of critique knocked me down. I’ve never cared for confrontation, and I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. I knew how to run. That started a destructive time in my life and led to some decisions that I can never take back…but that’s a whole other conversation…

At 39, I have triggers that send me back to that school hallway and I feel like that same little 13-year-old who couldn’t defend herself and had people saying and doing awful things to her. My heart starts racing, I have panic attacks. I get sick to my stomach when I have to have adult conversations. I get upset and I cry, because that’s all I’ve known. But with the help of my therapist, I’m slowly gaining my confidence back. I’m slowly getting to the point that those memories are just that – memories – and they no longer control me. I am not the things those people said I was – I never have been. I’m learning to speak my feelings, and realize that the world doesn’t end when I voice my opinion, and it’s possible to have calm conversations with differing points of view – everything doesn’t have to be an argument.

Why do I share this? Because I’m working on shame resilience. I’m working on fixing me rather than putting bandaids on my injuries. And I’m hopeful that by sharing my experiences, it will help even one other person to feel like they can share their experiences and realize they are not bound by them. You are not the awful things mean people say about you. You are worthy, you are valuable, you are deserving – of something so much more than what you think you are. I’m looking forward to a time in the not-too-distant future where I can have passing thoughts of junior high that don’t set off a panic attack, and I’m able to just be me. Because I like 39-year-old me.