Amy Miller

I was diagnosed with PTSD by a jailhouse doctor after ending up in JAIL because of my impulse to steal. I would steal even though I had money to buy the item. I have had a long history of stealing as far back as when I was 5 years old. I never could understand why I did it. I didn't need the items. I also loved the adrenaline rush of getting away with it. I would often times give the items to friends or family. The Psychologist said that my PTSD was caused by many years of emotional abuse from childhood through my adult life and from being molested when I was 5 years old. And she would tell me that my aunt (my dad's sister) is trying to bribe me so that I would want to live with her. Truthfully, my mother was right! When I would visit and spend time with my aunt and she was shopping, I would often find myself admiring a bicycle or what I always wanted, a canopy bedroom set, and my aunt would come up be and say, "Amy, you can have these thins if you come live with me." And I would think, if you really wanted me to have these things, why couldn't she get them for me anyway, whether I lived with her or my mother. I was so attached to my mother, maybe too attached. When I was sent to live with my other aunt for several weeks, I couldn't eat and I couldn't stop asking to go home to my mother. I literally got ill because I wanted my mom. My mother was loving, but I think she didn't realize that she was verbally abusive. She would call me and my sisters horrible names when I did something wrong or misbehaved. She would also hit us when we misbehaved, but she would lose control when she hit us at times. But, like I said, she was very openly affectionate to me and loving. I did make amends with my mother later in life and loved her very much. But those memories of my childhood still haunt me and come to me when I am trying to fall asleep.

From the time I can remember, I had fear and anxiety about death and would often times cry myself to sleep or would loose sleep thinking about death. I experienced a lot of anxiety in my childhood and there was a lot of unstable times when I was a child. A lot of moving from place to place and financial problems. I was sometimes placed with relatives because my mother was financially unstable. I was also sent to live with an aunt for several weeks because of racial tension in our neighborhood in the 70's and there was rioting. My father committed suicide when I was 3 years old and the only memory I have of him is when my mother took me to his viewing. She told my that my daddy was sleeping. Because of my mother's fear of my father's sister fighting for legal custody of me, due to my mother's lack of financial means to care for me (I had 5 other siblings), my mother would tell me that my father never wanted me and that he denounced me in order to escape paying child support. Law's were a lot different back then and there was no DNA testing.

I also had a long history of on again, off again drug abuse after losing my mother and being in a terrible and abusive relationship with my children's father. I ended up trying drug program after drug program, five of them, to be exact. Finally, I sought spirituality to end my obsession to use drugs and it worked. Today, I am happy to report that I haven't used drugs in 4 years. Which took a very conscious effort on my part. I completed probation successfully, however, I still have a lot of anxiety and don't know how to get past it.

I haven't sought therapy and try to manage my anxiety on my own, by telling myself that it is only temporary. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, depending on the situation.

It is nice to have a place to talk about how I feel and what has happened in my life without the fear of being judged. Most people do not understand what I am feeling and often tell me that everything will be fine and to shake it off.

Well, hear I am. I hope I started this off properly.:)