Cityoflostdreams
New Here
This is something I have never done before and if I'm honest I'm nervous to write my story in a public place.
From a young age I could tell things weren't right in my household. My mum had asked my dad to leave at a young age but I was still in contact with him. She spent all day in the house and most of her time in bed, I never noticed this was not normal until I started school and would hear the stories about people regularly leaving the house with their parents / going on holiday. Cut out the middle years and things started getting really quite bad when I turned 16, by this point I was heavily into drinking and drugs, sleeping around a bit and barely ever at home, this was probably due to my mum being too tired and depressed to discipline me. She tried her first attempt in front of me and my father in one of his attempts to get her to go the doctor, she jumped out of a second story window of the doctors surgery. I tried to cling onto her and stop her from falling but unfortunately I had a broken hand at the time and was unable to hold on. She was in hospital for about 6 months after that and when she was physically well again she was discharged (something I will never understand how the hospital could do this). It took 3 weeks before she attempted again, luckily I wasn't there to see it this time. She was readmitted into hospital again and after a painful year in a psychiatric ward she left one day , got a taxi and jumped off the east sussex cliffs. The year when she was in hospital was one of the worst experiences I have ever had, it was in a rough part of London and some of the things I saw were certainly not things 16 year olds should see.
This was 6 years ago and unfortunately my life just seems to have gone downhill since then. At the time these things were happening I think I managed to ignore it, I think even at the time of her death I managed to brush it off with "at least she's not suffering anymore". I had an extremely self destructive path during the years she was at the hospital and also for about a year or so after she died, I carried on with the heavy drinking and regular drugs. I met someone who really helped me to change my life around a year after it happened when I was 18. I stopped with the drinking and drugs and found myself a job in an office and came back down to earth a bit. Unfortunately I think coming back to reality and coming out of my intoxicated haze might have hit me too hard, I've slipped into this constant depressed and anxious mood. I don't enjoy travelling anymore due to the anxiety around it and it was one of the things I enjoyed the most in life. Flying is now something that I can't face doing, other modes of public transport take me to the brink of a panic attack and public places terrify me. I have lost numerous friends because of constantly being paranoid that they don't like me anymore and pushing them away from being clingy and probably just quite annoying. On another hand my depression has also caused me to push people away, I broke up with the man I referred to earlier because being around someone so often really started to have a really weird affect on me, I got irritated and agitated and felt suffocated to the point where one night I just told him that I didn't want to be around him anymore, unfortunately I think he probably as the love of my life but its too late to repair things there now.
I have been in and out of therapy for 6 years now seeing all different kinds of therapists and receiving different methods (mainly CBT, counselling, drugs and alcohol groups) and it all seems to no avail. I am really anxious about taking medication after seeing my mum turn basically numb from it. It was only very recently that PTSD was mentioned to me by a therapist who I unfortunately could not afford to carry on seeing.
I'm sorry for posting such a large post, I guess my main aim here is just to share my story, and ask the people here if they do believe what I am suffering from is PTSD and if so how best to help myself? I am unfortunately at a stage now where I have stopped seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and feel completely lost.
From a young age I could tell things weren't right in my household. My mum had asked my dad to leave at a young age but I was still in contact with him. She spent all day in the house and most of her time in bed, I never noticed this was not normal until I started school and would hear the stories about people regularly leaving the house with their parents / going on holiday. Cut out the middle years and things started getting really quite bad when I turned 16, by this point I was heavily into drinking and drugs, sleeping around a bit and barely ever at home, this was probably due to my mum being too tired and depressed to discipline me. She tried her first attempt in front of me and my father in one of his attempts to get her to go the doctor, she jumped out of a second story window of the doctors surgery. I tried to cling onto her and stop her from falling but unfortunately I had a broken hand at the time and was unable to hold on. She was in hospital for about 6 months after that and when she was physically well again she was discharged (something I will never understand how the hospital could do this). It took 3 weeks before she attempted again, luckily I wasn't there to see it this time. She was readmitted into hospital again and after a painful year in a psychiatric ward she left one day , got a taxi and jumped off the east sussex cliffs. The year when she was in hospital was one of the worst experiences I have ever had, it was in a rough part of London and some of the things I saw were certainly not things 16 year olds should see.
This was 6 years ago and unfortunately my life just seems to have gone downhill since then. At the time these things were happening I think I managed to ignore it, I think even at the time of her death I managed to brush it off with "at least she's not suffering anymore". I had an extremely self destructive path during the years she was at the hospital and also for about a year or so after she died, I carried on with the heavy drinking and regular drugs. I met someone who really helped me to change my life around a year after it happened when I was 18. I stopped with the drinking and drugs and found myself a job in an office and came back down to earth a bit. Unfortunately I think coming back to reality and coming out of my intoxicated haze might have hit me too hard, I've slipped into this constant depressed and anxious mood. I don't enjoy travelling anymore due to the anxiety around it and it was one of the things I enjoyed the most in life. Flying is now something that I can't face doing, other modes of public transport take me to the brink of a panic attack and public places terrify me. I have lost numerous friends because of constantly being paranoid that they don't like me anymore and pushing them away from being clingy and probably just quite annoying. On another hand my depression has also caused me to push people away, I broke up with the man I referred to earlier because being around someone so often really started to have a really weird affect on me, I got irritated and agitated and felt suffocated to the point where one night I just told him that I didn't want to be around him anymore, unfortunately I think he probably as the love of my life but its too late to repair things there now.
I have been in and out of therapy for 6 years now seeing all different kinds of therapists and receiving different methods (mainly CBT, counselling, drugs and alcohol groups) and it all seems to no avail. I am really anxious about taking medication after seeing my mum turn basically numb from it. It was only very recently that PTSD was mentioned to me by a therapist who I unfortunately could not afford to carry on seeing.
I'm sorry for posting such a large post, I guess my main aim here is just to share my story, and ask the people here if they do believe what I am suffering from is PTSD and if so how best to help myself? I am unfortunately at a stage now where I have stopped seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and feel completely lost.
