Day 19: What helps you get through the hardest days?
I have my coping skills, but obviously there are days where they just don't work. In those cases:
My boyfriend. He immediately comes to my rescue any time I'm not feeling well physically or mentally. He cuddles me, tells me really reassuring things, and if all else fails he shows me cute animals such as this seal:
Also the support network here, as well as The Den Discord server by the lovely @traumatizeddfox. Also my mutuals, like @toothdrop and @rottingtrouble-child, not to mention @weirddkiddo, the late @faemold-angelmilk, and @shy-ghost-girl to name a few. <3
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Personally, I do not hold direct memories of a lot of our trauma in our early teens and younger, but I do hold a decent chunk of the trauma that occured after we were about 13 years old give or take. As a result I have experienced a decent few symptoms. Obviously, as a system, we experience A LOT of dissociation to the point of DID, but for the most part I will leave that out as it is a bit of a given.
For myself, Iāve experienced flashbacks (both implicit and explicit), unwanted memories, avoidance of anything that might be triggering and remind me of the trauma, excessively seeking out triggers that might remind me of the trauma, memory issues, detatchment from just about everything, feeling outcasted / different than a lot of people which creates issues and difficulty making friends, depression, hypervigilance, so on and so forth.
I used to experience a sense of foreshortened future and a lot of self directed hate / self blame.Ā
Aderis I do know personally struggles heavily to adapt to a world that ISNāT trying to hurt her and while she cognitively now realizes that the world is safe, she doesnāt often understand how to live with that knowledge since she spent a lot of time being on guard and always ready for the worst. She also I think experiences a lot of what I have as well if not more on top of that.
Admitting something like this is extremely hard for someone. For me, it was especially hard because of the fact of how my family is. They have toxic tendencies and the other side is majority toxic in general. So I am not precisely safe from them playing blame game if they even admit it to themselves that I do have PTSD.Ā
I hope this helps someone else who has to admit their family or to other people about PTSD. Also, I would like to point out that I didnāt tell my whole family (I wonāt tell my whole family) and I will also like to say that others may have even more different reactions. It is something scary and no one knows what to precisely expect. I was trying to be trigger wary while writing this.
TL;DR at the end Iāll have a line separating them. Everything I pre-typed for this is undercut.Ā
@ptsdconfessionsā
My family like most is complicated. It feels to me like mine is more so than a lot of others but I know that probably isnāt the truth. My mom left when I was young, which is important to this but not what this is about. I had accepted my mom left because she wasnāt happy in her marriage to my dad. She explained to me she didnāt know where she was going so she couldnāt take us with. She didnāt want to put us in any kind of danger by accident. For a 7-year-old, I understood she was trying to protect us and get out of a loveless relationship.Ā
I have 4 older sisters, but one doesnāt play a role in this till years later, so I am going to skip her for the time being. (She was adopted after my mom left and around the time the PTSD started to form)Ā
My counselor and Therapist both had repeatedly suggested I explain more than āI have depressionā to my family. They knew that I knew I had PTSD. The reason behind it varied to a bunch of things that most of which happened before I was 13 and there was nothing I could do about it. Some of the stuff that happened later in life adds onto that but I am going to stay vague to avoid triggers as much as I can. None of my PTSD had to do with my mother leaving, or at least very little did, because if she was there then a lot of it wouldnāt have happened.
So I first sat down with my sister and uncle who lived with me. I am going to call this uncle (huge family) U-D, the sister at hand is L. Lās reaction was āSo you are mentally insane, that means you can get disability and quit your dream of whatever it is, I donāt know it doesnāt make sense.ā My dream is to help children that dealt with same past like me and make sure they donāt end up as bad as I did, so I became a paraprofessional (Fancy word for special needs aide) The other part of my dream is to become a published author. Not through self-publishing but a big name company. I donāt care if my books donāt sell, I want to know that I have at least tried to be an author.
U-D stated that he doesnāt understand how I have PTSD because I was never in the army or warzone. Later on, he learned what happened to me when I was little, or at least small bits, from my sister B. Let just say after learning some information he had dropped that I couldnāt have PTSD and just went with it. L kept pushing me to do things that she knew would trigger me till finally not one but four councilors had all sat down and explained to her what she was doing, she kept it up. She saw that if she can keep triggering me then I will do what she wants to make her leave me alone.
Then eventually I told my aunt AD and my Dad. Dad stated he could tell that I had PTSD because of the fact that he was a lousy dad. Which is partly true. If he would have done what should have when I was little then I wouldnāt have it this server. He isnāt fully at blame but he admitted he did things wrong and knows it. AD then learned a few of the things through dad and me. She was supportive and wanted me to seek deeper help. Which I did with her encouragement and her nudging me on the path of healing.
Next person I told was my grandmother on my mother side. Up to this point, I have only talked to the family who is on my dadās side and I can be face to face. My grandparents on my dadās side passed away years ago and my grandfather on my momās side passed away while I was still a baby. So this grandmother was the only one I could talk to. Her reply to finding out made my stomach feel like I had eaten lava and nauseous. You know the feeling that you just did something bad and disgusting and you get after that? Well, that was my version of that feeling. I am getting it now, but I want to get this story out here.
My grandmotherās reaction which a lot of my PTSD does ties back to her in my childhoodā¦ was the simple saying āIt is your motherās fault. She left you at such an impressionable age. It caused you to have depression. If you would stop living in the past your doctor wouldnāt mistake it as PTSD. So start smiling more and live in the future!ā Which I ended our conversation with a quick āMy phone is dying, talk you laterā then it took me 2 months to be able to call her again.
My Aunt who works at the hospital AB was next and AB snorted. āI have known that since you were twelve. You on medicine now for anxiety? What kind so I can check it against my copies of your old medical records.ā Which was a huge Wait, what? So I told her my meds, she then told me to ask the doctor about lower doses because I donāt take medicine. I never liked to. Which the doctor agreed and gave me lower doses and the kind my aunt requested because, after a second look, the doctor stated that it would be better for me. I have nightmares that make me have insomnia. (Solution to that is lots of caffeine. Mainly coffee.)
My sisters B and M (adopted one I said I would skip for time being) both knew about me having PTSD but because my dad wouldnāt seek help for me when I was little there was nothing they could do until I was an adult. By then they thought I already sought help, but only did about 2 years ago.
I havenāt told my eldest sister, because a huge chunk of it is because of her and her husband. I also havenāt explained properly to my mother because I donāt want to make her worry, she has PTSD too. I know I will have to eventually.
That just left one uncle that I was extremely close to. ADās husband. When I finally told him about it he dismissed it stating āEveryone has PTSD.ā Which made me confused and I stated that. āListen, you are perfectly normal. You are fine. Nothing is wrong with you. What they claim is PTSD is normal for everyone. Everyone has it. It is like breathing air, it comes naturally to us. You just have to ignore it and move on in life. Not take the medicine they give you and become a pill popper, man.ā ((Heās an old school hippy)) He then started to use that tone that parents do when you have done something wrong when I tried to explain that it wasnāt sadness or depression that I have actual flashbacks and nightmares. That I have physical issues once triggered that too much happens at once to explain in dept. Which one he started to give me that look and down talking me saying basically what he said before. He stormed off and act liked I was an idiot. I was heartbroken because out of everyone, I figured heād understand. He was drafted into a war when he was 17 so he should have understood, right?
Talking to AD later, I explained what happened and I could see the emotions in her eyes seemed to scream in annoyance. Not at me, but at her husband. She then explained to me when she first met him in her teenage years, he was already married but they were filing for divorce, they became good friends since they worked together. She was a waitress, he was the cook. He then told her about how he has been forced to see a doctor who he thinks was coo-coo (her words) he had been diagnosed with PTSD from the war, though he was just a sailor who picked up injured soldiers and brought them home, and he was diagnosed Bipolar. He didnāt like how the medicine made him feel and react so he stopped taking them declaring that they were trying to make him into a pill popper, which she stated it took him months to stop having the withdrawals from the medicine.
In the 80s before his daughter was born he tried again, and again he didnāt like how they made him feel and once stopped taking them the withdrawals were the worst thing he has ever encountered or at least that is what he told AD. So much like how older people in our small town area is still using racist words but not in a racist way, only because their mind is set to that programming that canāt be overridden, he is same way about medicine for āfake mental illnessesā and that was why he was so hard on me.
He still is hard on me whenever someone brings up about when I need to take my medicine and he is around. It got to the point I have actually started to try to avoid him as much as I can. I hate that because I love spending time with him at his house, we do crafts together and bounce craft ideas off of each other. He used to come over to mow the lawn for me so I didnāt have to use the old push (not engine mower it is an actual push contraption with opened blades and you have to put your weight on it to make it cut the lawn) He does it with his actual mower that is run on gas. Now avoiding him, he started to avoid me too and I hate the feeling of loneliness I got.
In my family, it is rare to hear someone to say sincerely āI love youā he did. No one else in my family besides, my mom, B, and M do that. Everyone else does it as if they rehearsed it and donāt mean it. Like it is something that they are supposed to say. Which when I hear it so sincerely from him or my mom or my two sisters that do that, it puts me in tears of happiness because my normally numbed emotionally body is filled with this comfortable warmth. Any bad thoughts or images that popped in my head or even the worst day imaginable, once I hear those words with someone being sincere, it is all out of my mind and I am too happy to care about anything else.
TL; DR // Summary
So each had a different type of reaction to me coming out.
L - Money, thinks she is going to get to control me because I can leave my job (I am not getting money because of PTSD)Ā
UD - At first not understanding then he is. He makes sure I eat and when triggered he normally gives me chocolates and make sure I take my meds.
AD - Love, lots and lots of love. She buys me random stuff (including lunch while I am working at the school) and my favorite yet is when she baked me a freaking cake because I was annoyed at my sister trying to trigger me before I got to school that day.
Dad - Guilt and understanding.
Grandmother - Blaming everything and everyone else not even caring what was the true cause, when that didnāt work then stated I donāt have it just living in the past.
AB, B & M - They knew already and thus why they were always loving and supportive of me (besides B always states āYou are my baby girl, of course, I love youā Then I normally get roped into really tight hugs that make all my bones pop.)
Hippy - Denile. Claims that PTSD isnāt real. Set in old time ways of thinking when really damaging to me but he doesnāt mean to be. He is trying to be helpful.
Iām leaving my mom out, I rather her think for now until I have to tell her, that I just have depression. It is easier on her mental health and I donāt want her to stress and worry about me.
Day 18: Do you have any unhealthy coping mechanisms?
My unhealthiest coping mechanisms where drinking and getting high - but Iāve cut down dramatically on the former and have given up completely on the latter. I cut sometimes, pull my hair and scratch myself - Iād say those were very unhealthy coping mechanisms. I maladaptively daydream, disassociate, and idealise - the former two are healthy-ish? My therapists have all said their fine, so long as they donāt take over my life. The last one is not and Iām really trying to stop. But itās difficult.Ā
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Thankfully my PTSD symptoms have dramatically reduced. I used to have 10 anxiety attacks a month and now it's nowhere near that. I also used to have telogen effluvium (stress-induced alopecia) which has since gone away, along with severe dermatillomania (aka skin-picking. I still have this, but not nearly as bad). I have significantly less flashbacks, hypervigilance episodes, and PTSD nightmares.
Some things that have surprisingly gotten worse include my OCD (I now struggle with multiple BFRBs as well as Existential-OCD, which also means more panic attacks), dissociation has strangely also gotten worse, which is also tied into the fact that my sense of self is... I genuinely don't know how to describe it except perhaps just... different? I'm now a questioning system.
I think overall my life has gotten better, and I think it's easy to say for multiple reasons, but especially because I am safe now.
Day 9: Do you feel that experiencing trauma has changed you?
I actually already touched on this in Day 1's response:
"identity disturbance" - not really sure how else to label it but my trauma has forced me to change in a lot of ways, and there were also some changes that I voluntarily made to feel more comfortable in my own skin after what happened. I feel like one of the main involuntary changes is a loss of innocence. I was happy and naĆÆve and had no concept of mental health or boundaries, and now every single one of those things have changed. I feel I have changed too much to even be considered the same person anymore, so I changed my name, pronouns, clothes, music,, hairstyle, hair color, etc. I realize now that this was all in an attempt to escape my body and the memories that I cannot shake. I thought that if I be someone else, maybe I can no longer be the person whom this happened to. But at the same time, it's not doing me harm, in fact it's bringing me comfort, so I continue to go by the new name and pronouns. I think it helps me feel acknowledged in that I am no longer the same person.
"identity disturbance" contd. - another thing about my sense of self is that, along with feeling like I am no longer the same person, I know I say things like "the girl I used to be" and while I know that this body of mine has pretty much always been the same, internally I genuinely feel like someone else assuming the identity of the person that was here before. I haven't been diagnosed with OSDD, though my therapist - who I've had for years - believes I have it. I actually have a system blog on here but I don't like plugging it due to stigma and fakeclaiming. For that reason I also don't really like publicly discussing what I understand to be my system. But that being said I am comfortable mentioning that, as someone who does not identify with the person who was inhabiting this body before me, I am still somehow able to access pretty much all the memories. System communication is virtually non-existent and extremely difficult for me to attempt, but there is occasionally passive influence, commentary, and once in a blue moon I am able to exchange brief conversation with them. Another odd thing which I don't myself understand but, not only does there not appear to be really any amnesia between us, but we're also very like, blurry, blendy, soupy in general (as opposed to completely differentiated). It's like a venn diagram where there's a lot of intersection, but it's always in motion and intersects with different circles at different times, if that makes sense.
I think that, especially due to all the dissociation surrounding the traumas, itās very easy for me to make the distinction between the girl I was when Marcus dated me and the person I am today. [deadname] had brighter hopes and dreams, was too in love with reality to try drugs (a straight edge with all of the straight and none of the edge), laughed at bad jokes and trusted everyone in a heartbeat. I just feel like a ghost of myself now, hollow and emotionless, self-medicating to dissociate from the harshness of reality, but still restlessly haunting my own body with the trauma I need to put to rest. I want closure for her so I can put her in the ground and move on.
Day 25: Is there anything positive youāve experienced in recovering from trauma?
The answer I want to give is similar to that on Day 2 where it asks "What are some good things that have happened in your life?" I'll reiterate some things I think are still relevant here.
Immediately following my trauma I made a club at my high school called Love Doesnāt Shove which was for domestic violence awareness and prevention. I printed a ton of curricula from various cites such as RAINN, Break the Cycle and OneLove. I also raised $300 in bake sale money to fund a trip for me and my club advisor who was also the school social worker to buy clothing, toiletry, and bedding for two local domestic violence shelters. I made it in my local newspaper with a picture of me sitting among the bags.
I actually found the article (whited out my deadname, but):
Another thing is that Iāve been in therapy since 2016 and since around 2019 I started seeing a new therapist who is the best.
Also this blog, not only to express myself and have a safe space to talk about my trauma, but also to open it up to others and helping other survivors simultaneously. I have already helped hundreds of trauma survivors here. It feels good knowing Iām not alone.
I think ultimately I'm grateful that I have a better sense of my boundaries and mental health, though it was an unnecessarily rough way of familiarizing myself with those concepts.
