Hi everyone, just joined the forum. I have been a PTSD endurer since I was 4 years old, assaulted by my father (violently, physically and verbally) and a few months later by a family friend, again physically and violently. I then went to a school in Kenya, St Andrews, Turi. The headmaster was a sociopathic sadistic paedophile who loved hurting and molesting small boys with blonde hair and blue eyes. Me.
His wife was a cruel, vicious woman with a similar love of systematically inflicting emotional and physical pain. My teenage years were as if I had 'locked-in' syndrome. Frozen, with a volcanic rage brewing with nowhere to go.
I went into civil aviation on leaving school, I wated to go to art school... and one morning crashed on takeoff, killing my passenger, survived the impact (massive) survived the fire and my employer trying to beat my brains out with a crowbar before changing his mind and dragging me out, five seconds later it exploded in a true Hollywood pyrotechnic display, burning me even more and showering me with shrapnel.
Then thrown in the back of an old, open Land Rover and driven cross country to the mission hospital. The doctor took one look at me and fainted. He was so confused he stuffed up the drip, the nurse saw a two inch air-bubble about to enter my arm and threw a book at the stand, ripping the needle out just in time. I never lost consciousness. Badly injured, burns, broken bones, lacerations and severe head and facial injuries.
To say nothing of the shame and guilt.
That was 1972. The concept of PTSD was not in the lexicon of the medical profession in Kenya or in the culture I was a part of. I fled to Perth in '73 from Uganda, Idi Amin was too stressful for words. That was a month or so after I was released from hospital.
I was eventually diagnosed with complex and chronic PTSD in 2009. I have a swag of physical illnesses as a result of the endless, relentless stress.
Hey - but I survived! I'm alive!
Spent years self-medicating to excess. Alcohol and pot.
CBT has been a huge help, along with an extraordinarily strong and patient wife who has stood by me through thick and thin for over 30 years. I have had some 6 nervous breakdowns over the years - maybe more, who's counting? The last three over three years, increasingly savage with the ultimate one quite catastrophic. But now I am back at work, with a bit more awareness of just how fortunate I am.
The funny thing is people who know the story all say that I was 'saved for a reason' and such. I'm a survivor doing my best, that's all.
His wife was a cruel, vicious woman with a similar love of systematically inflicting emotional and physical pain. My teenage years were as if I had 'locked-in' syndrome. Frozen, with a volcanic rage brewing with nowhere to go.
I went into civil aviation on leaving school, I wated to go to art school... and one morning crashed on takeoff, killing my passenger, survived the impact (massive) survived the fire and my employer trying to beat my brains out with a crowbar before changing his mind and dragging me out, five seconds later it exploded in a true Hollywood pyrotechnic display, burning me even more and showering me with shrapnel.
Then thrown in the back of an old, open Land Rover and driven cross country to the mission hospital. The doctor took one look at me and fainted. He was so confused he stuffed up the drip, the nurse saw a two inch air-bubble about to enter my arm and threw a book at the stand, ripping the needle out just in time. I never lost consciousness. Badly injured, burns, broken bones, lacerations and severe head and facial injuries.
To say nothing of the shame and guilt.
That was 1972. The concept of PTSD was not in the lexicon of the medical profession in Kenya or in the culture I was a part of. I fled to Perth in '73 from Uganda, Idi Amin was too stressful for words. That was a month or so after I was released from hospital.
I was eventually diagnosed with complex and chronic PTSD in 2009. I have a swag of physical illnesses as a result of the endless, relentless stress.
Hey - but I survived! I'm alive!
Spent years self-medicating to excess. Alcohol and pot.
CBT has been a huge help, along with an extraordinarily strong and patient wife who has stood by me through thick and thin for over 30 years. I have had some 6 nervous breakdowns over the years - maybe more, who's counting? The last three over three years, increasingly savage with the ultimate one quite catastrophic. But now I am back at work, with a bit more awareness of just how fortunate I am.
The funny thing is people who know the story all say that I was 'saved for a reason' and such. I'm a survivor doing my best, that's all.
