The Cartomancy System

It sounds like such dramatic, childish bullshit to say “I’m triggered when people don’t pay attention to me” but. Dude. Yeah. Being ignored, even if it’s unintentional or accidental, reminds me of an abuser who would ignore me to the point that he pretended I wasn’t real and convinced me that I had hallucinated some of our interactions. Being reminded of that feeling causes me to have real, physiological symptoms in the present day without ever being directly exposed to that abuser anymore.

Triggers are fuckin’ weird.

And that’s okay! It’s totally normal to have “unusual” triggers!

(I’d actually be willing to bet that everyone who has “sudden noises” as a trigger also has something very specific to their situation that is a “weird” trigger. I’d be willing to bet that “unusual” triggers outnumber “standard” triggers by a huge margin but “standard” triggers just happen for a broader base of people. Hell, even two people who experienced the same trauma, like say 9/11, might share “airplanes” as a trigger but maybe one also has “taxis” and the other has “pizza” because of how they each experienced the event)

I like to compare triggers to the things that make you sad after a breakup. I was shopping for the first time after mine and went to grab his favorite snack and had a breakdown in the grocery store.

Do people normally cry when they see pita chips? Hard enough that strangers come up to comfort you/steer clear of you? Probably not. But that’s what my brain and body did, so even now, three years later and in a new relationship, seeing pita chips makes me really sad.

That word DOES NOT MEAN you’re making it up. It doesn’t mean you’re imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISN’T DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.

I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldn’t see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.

My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadn’t even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going “HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????”

He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.

Since I’m still waiting for replacement pen tips (so I can’t do more involved art,) I made a handy visual for Words About Parts and What They Mean!

Disclaimer: “Fusion” is the only one I looked up from the ISSTD, the rest are simply common/layman’s terms for how different states feel (to me.) These things may not feel the same to every system and that’s okay!

I don’t usually post personal shit but my friend and I were talking and there were some things she didn’t know were PTSD related, and sometimes it’s just so weird and out there so. Some stuff I learned too late were caused by trauma:

- Nightmares that have *nothing* to do with your trauma

- Getting angry at anything that startles you/is loud/is irriatating

- Becoming alarmingly calm in situations of crisis/chaos

- Shaking, just, all the time

- Needing very little sleep to function effectively

- Massive mood swings that often get mistaken for personality or mood disorders

- Feeling like there is a layer of dirt on you/that your skin is dirty and needing to get it off

- Believing you will die young and alone !! Big one!!

- Looking for reasons to cut people out of your life

- Needing things to be exactly as you like them to be – not necessarily clean/organized but just to be a specific way and be within your control, and getting angry when it is not *this one gets mistaken for OCD v often

- Preferring high stress/very busy lifestyles to keep occupied

- Needing compression/pressure (ie tight shoelaces, heavy coats and blankets, snug fitting hats, etc) to feel comfortable/safe

- Discomfort with silence

- Very sensitive to heat, smell, and lighting

- Ringing in ears!! I had no idea about this one tinnitus is not that uncommon for ptsd, even if there was no direct head trauma involved

- Physical numbness, often in arms & hands when a flashback or panic attack is about to start

- Derailing conversations when they are causing stress

- Sudden and unexplained onsets of just the most deep sense of melancholy (often accompanied by a lot of tears)