CONTENT WARNING: Trauma, PTSD, Anxiety and Mental Health
The following blog discusses Trauma in a broad sense, as well as PTSD, anxiety, and mental health. It feels like something I need to write and as always, its honest and grounded in my experiences.
We all have a brain. We all have emotions. We all have feelings. We all have so many of those things shared. And yet, how can we begin to explain what is going on inside our heads when we don’t even understand yet.
Those of you who are close to me will know I’m not doing too well at the moment; emotionally, mentally, and physically. The short version, and as much of the story I’m willing to tell here, is I have PTSD. It’s quite new and related to a trauma I experienced a wee while back. The diagnosis came as a shock to be honest, but it makes a lot of sense now. Recently, it’s been triggered in a way I never anticipated, and in a way that unlike anything I’ve experienced before.
Last year, work was stressful as was my personal life. It is my belief that each person only has so much capacity at any one time. When our energies (capacity) are being directed to places where energy is in high demand, it’s no surprise that our ability to deal with the everyday suffers. That is the case for any healthy person, let alone for those who have health conditions that can be and are exacerbated by stress. As a result of the demands of my energies, I ended up being off sick. On my return to work, I attended an Occupational Health Review. A regular occurrence. One of the recommendations was that I be supported through CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sessions to explore stress management. I’m all for trying things out and I have positive experience with CBT too – It’s better to have tried something to then know if it works or not, than to write it off before giving it a go.
Fast forward to the first session with the therapist who we’ll call M. She was warm and supportive from the get-go. We talked about who I was as a person, what I was hoping to gain from the sessions, what I was interested in and then she asked if I’d experienced any Trauma. I shook my head and said no. Because Trauma is what happens when you’ve experienced violence, abuse, near death experiences, war etc. Except it’s not.
Trauma can include events where you feel:
Mind (2022)
frightened
under threat
humiliated
rejected
abandoned
invalidated
unsafe
unsupported
trapped
ashamed
powerless.
Ways trauma can happen include:
one-off or ongoing events
being directly harmed
witnessing harm to someone else
living in a traumatic atmosphere
being affected by trauma in a family or community.
I learned very quickly that I do indeed have Trauma. Things I have experienced that I buried in a box, inside a box, under a vat of concrete. The only differences now are I know what to call it, and M has arrived with her pneumatic drill to help me break it all apart. I think so many of us have Trauma but don’t recognise it as Trauma because of the same reason I didn’t recognise my own.
Recently, my PTSD was triggered in a way I did not anticipate, and as I write this, I’m very much still in this ‘stuck’ phase, which I’ll try to explain more on. I hesitate to use the word ‘trigger’ as its often bandied about as a way to poke fun and mock. However, several things are worth mentioning before I expand on what I mean by ‘stuck’.
- Trauma is subjective. Just because one person experienced something awful and bounced back, does not invalidate what someone else has gone, or is going, through. We don’t experience things in the same way because we all have our own brain.
- It’s not your place to make a judgement on someone else’s trauma. Just because you can’t relate to it, it doesn’t magically make the experience disappear for the other person.
- Saying things like ‘get over it’, ‘man up’ or anything to that effect is not helpful. From my experience, I don’t want to feel this way any longer than is necessary. Most people do not want to be struggling mentally. They just don’t. What is worth acknowledging though is just how hard it can be to build that ladder to pull yourself out of the hole. For some, staying in the hole is easier. It doesn’t mean its nicer. I believe that people will do the things they need to when they are ready and able to do them.
Going back to this idea of being ‘Stuck’. It’s the best way I can describe how I’m feeling right now, and it comes with a plethora of supporting actors. Firstly, there is anxiety. This constant vibration in my body where I feel on high alert. I don’t even know what I’m on high alert for, but I feel it. There is a tightness in my chest, and a heaviness on my head and shoulders. My body feels off kilter. Imbalanced. My brain is forgetful, it’s foggy, and it is functioning in a way that means I try to leave the house without shoes on or put the milk away in the microwave. That sort of ridiculousness, that thankfully, I have managed to catch myself doing. I can then pause, breathe, and then change whatever needs to be changed. Cognitively I’m just not firing on all cylinders, and whne I think about what’s happening in my body and mind, it’s not a surprise. Then there are the tears. There’s been a lot of them lately. It’s like I have all these emotions being held in my body and they want out. So, I’m letting them out as they arise. Whilst at the same time feeling a hesitation at letting them out. Then of course if all that wasn’t enough, there is the fatigue. I’m used to feeling fatigue, but this fatigue has similarities with a relapse with my ME. Being drained emotionally, physically, and mentally. I’m more irritable than normal, have a consistent low mood and I feel angry. Angry about a lot of things, which isn’t normally where I sit. Then there is frustration. A frustration that I’m ‘stuck’. A frustration that I feel all these things and yet can’t make sense of them all yet. A frustration at myself for feeling like I’m letting people down. That I’m letting myself down. A frustration at myself that I’m not OK.
And this is why we need to have conversations about mental health and wellbeing. Its complex. There is no one size fits all, but there are three things I do know right now in this moment.
- I feel better for having gotten these words out into the world.
- I am not alone. The love and support from those close to me has been overwhelming. And I’m forever grateful for that.
- This too shall pass and this feeling of being ‘stuck’ is temporary because I give it no other fucking option.
To anyone else who is struggling right now, I see you and I hear you. You take it day by day, minute by minute if you need to, and you speak out. Find just one person and tell them you’re not doing great. And if someone comes to you to say they are struggling, if you have capacity to do so, please hold space for them to be seen and heard. Now more than ever, we as humans need to be there for each other.
This has been a SmartPonders.
Thanks for reading. x
If you’ve been affected by anything discussed in this blog, please look to these resources for help, guidance, and support:
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/get-help
https://www.youngminds.org.uk/
SmartPonders 