Analogy: My Ptsd Feels Like...

[Incendiu]

like I'm in a glass cube flying over a landscape that changes and everyting is connected to me.. I cant sleep I cant escape...its there and when I'm not there it's just for the short time it takes for the scene to change to another or when the guide talks to me. That guide is a person sitting in the corner with a straitjacket. I never see her face but I know it's me..but older. Giving me advises, begging for freedom. (This is actually from a dream I had when I was 13...I really did not understand it then...I just couldn't figure out who that other person was and still she was so familiar. Now I guess it was me...trying to reason with my self, my will to break lose)...

 

[KP the nut]

Today mine feels like ambulance sirens screaming in my brain and blue flashing lights dancing in my vision

 

[milbert]

Today, my PTSD feels like an old, ugly, uncomfortable couch. Coffee stains and a brownish flower pattern cover the velour finish like a rash. The filling's worn out, the cushions sag, and springs poke at me from every direction, but how can I stand up if it's all I'm used to? What else exists?
On days like this, I start to think about what the experience of a normal day must be like for someone without childhood PTSD. I watch people carefully, and try to imitate how to act in public situations so well that I can usually pass for normal, but I don't know how I would even start to pretend to feel normal. It's like I'm trying to build a tower without any emotional scaffolding, or without any concept of how many skills I'm missing.

 

[Tinyflame]

Like being on the edge of a parallel universe.

 

[Jami Youngblood]

Post your own responses.

"My PTSD Feels Like..."

...opening up a closet full of boxes and boxes of mismatched puzzles, then having all of them come crashing down into one gigantic pile...then being told I have to put them all back in the correct boxes before I leave.

UGH.

like I am being taken by the aliens into outer space

 

[thinlizzy4010]

give me that pile of puzzles! I will have them neat and tidy and in order in a heartbeat.
I have described me as being a present.
I am a present all wrapped up, pretty with a bow. But someone has tried to peek in too many times, and my sticking tape is getting a little unsticky and my paper has a few little tears and crumples. I spend my time, making sure my wrapping stays put and that you cannot tell that I have been handled too roughly.
The gift inside is beautiful, perfect and shining. One day i will shed that old wrapping, I won't need to keep it hidden. on that day I will have triumphed over my ptsd!

 

[Jacquie]

What Cat said. I actually liked me. And now I understand it wont just 'come back'.....I too feel like I'm in someone elses body and it weird, and horrible and not me. I dont look like me, feel like me, act like me, even eat like me. And now I think I am grieving for that person who was me, who is so lost its like she died. And its horrible. I miss her/me. And I have no idea who 'this' one is because nothing she does makes sense. Its like I've been taken over by a stranger.

 

[Srain]

Feels like I am playing a freakish Alice in Wonderland game of Musical Chairs. At the end I am the only left in the hard fought game and the chair is in the room with the woman who is the one who said she finally gets what I've saying all these years.

 

[AngelaMarie]

My PTSD feels like someone is stepping on my heart and enjoying the act!
My PTSD feels like I was made a freak and will always be one!
My PTSD feels like it limits me in every avenue of life!
My PTSD feels like I will never be loved or have anyone that really cares for me in the life!!! (except for my boys).

 

[BloomInWinter]

I hit 'Like' to these not in 'liking' the pain but in solidarity and applauding your ability to 'put words on'....these analogies can help those around us better accept our 'symptom du jour' if they know how we're feeling, I think.

Right now, My PTSD feels like....

A sculpture, made of many shards of broken glass memories....each one, carefully glued in place to allow me to deal with the next broken shard. For a long time, I could feel proud of the art of it....then, one day.....the glue all got old, cracked, and the whole thing fell down, painfully, leaving only painful shapes too dangerous to work with by myself anymore.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Walking through an endless corridor of self doubt, feeling stupid, useless, guilty, unable to do anything, pathetic, ugly, horrible.

The floor of this corridor is lined with glue. I am trying to get to the end where I can see the light shining through the cracks in the door way out.

But that glue keeps sticking my feet down and making me freeze. It takes so much effort to pull my foot from that glue. I need so much energy, but I am running out of it, I am on my last push. Not sure I will make it or I will get stuck in that corridor forever.

 

[Tinyflame]

Like I've been through a grinder.