Caroline01
New Here
I have an incredibly difficult time telling my story for several reasons: first of which being, my PTSD and related issues has been going on since 2011; however, I in no way identified with the word ‘trauma,’ let alone PTSD or anything to do with it until about 2 months ago.
Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe what the experience has been like in the most recent weeks as I have had constant “emotional tsunami” type of experiences & my mind has been going nonstop now that suddenly 4 years of hugely struggling to pretty much just ‘exist,’ while trying hide my ‘secret life’ that is basically just the self-destructive/unhealthy behaviors that make me feel better, allow me to avoid (i.e. hugely addicted to shopping…unhealthy/destructive ‘relationships’/interactions with men, etc.) in addition to the need to maintain a physical appearance that doesn’t look ‘sick,’ despite my terrible sleep habits, often severe sleep deprivation, terrible nutrition, sometimes total lack of nutrition whatsoever, etc….the “survival” is beyond exhausting. The enormous breakthrough/epiphany that occurred in the last week or so was I went from having NO idea why I was basically just the most irresponsible, impulsive, dysfunctional person I had ever known…. Severely ADHD and ‘free-spirited’ & incapable of ever living a functioning, responsible adult life was the conclusion I had come to. But that is actually not at all what’s been going on… Here is my best attempt at an overview of my multiple trauma experiences and time spent blindly progressing further into PTSD…..
Overwhelmed doesn’t even begin to describe what the experience has been like in the most recent weeks as I have had constant “emotional tsunami” type of experiences & my mind has been going nonstop now that suddenly 4 years of hugely struggling to pretty much just ‘exist,’ while trying hide my ‘secret life’ that is basically just the self-destructive/unhealthy behaviors that make me feel better, allow me to avoid (i.e. hugely addicted to shopping…unhealthy/destructive ‘relationships’/interactions with men, etc.) in addition to the need to maintain a physical appearance that doesn’t look ‘sick,’ despite my terrible sleep habits, often severe sleep deprivation, terrible nutrition, sometimes total lack of nutrition whatsoever, etc….the “survival” is beyond exhausting. The enormous breakthrough/epiphany that occurred in the last week or so was I went from having NO idea why I was basically just the most irresponsible, impulsive, dysfunctional person I had ever known…. Severely ADHD and ‘free-spirited’ & incapable of ever living a functioning, responsible adult life was the conclusion I had come to. But that is actually not at all what’s been going on… Here is my best attempt at an overview of my multiple trauma experiences and time spent blindly progressing further into PTSD…..
- My brother (only sibling) spent the better part of 10 years deep into a very severe and constant drug addiction…heroin mostly… meth @ the end. I spent the majority of those 10 years having essentially lost my whole family to his addiction by way of what I felt to be huge emotional abandonment. The abandonment issues that came from that eventually began to affect me pretty badly & really caught up with me when I turned 25…
- I was held at gunpoint in a bar in an extremely traumatizing way bc of how much the gun was held directly on me and how long the experience lasted….Tonic immobility applies to this. And the only coherent and full memory I have is of the thought that I repeatedly said to myself over and over and over... "I feel so bad for my parents that I am going to die at 25 years old and it's going to happen in this gross bar." The amount of time I spent convinced I was not going to survive, desperately wanting to "flight", but being so completely powerless and helpless that I had to resist the fight or flight response and mentally disconnect in the way that happens in that situation... that's a very big deal in all of this I think
- less than a month after that I endured a very quick but deeply destructive relationship that involved an unplanned pregnancy that never should have happened, and a subsequent abortion that I naively thought I would be something I’d be able to just go do and then go on with my life never thinking or talking about it ever again.
- Couldn’t have been more wrong. More emotional abandonment when my boyfriend who had been over-the-top, head over heels, nonstop talk about being together forever….he decides to very suddenly break up with me. It came completely out nowhere…& I wasn’t struggling anywhere near as badly as I was about to me; howver, I was not having as easy of an experience post-aboriton as I had anticipated. I went home and got into bed for 5 days….
- I stopped eating, lost 35 pounds in 1.5 months…he’d come in and out of my life whenever he wanted to…. I hated myself for having the abortion. Massive guilt, self-blame....he would use the excuse that he was hurting too and he had to heal on his own as a reason to offer me absolutely zero support. I was so upset my choice was hurting him that much and so remorseful that he had been so supportive of my wanting it that he never told me he felt this way....REALLY damaging and torturous thought process.
- He never once allowed me to talk to him about anything related to it…. I would desperately beg him to just listen bc I could not find anything that gave me any relief at all for the empty feeling and the dark hole and excruciating heartache that truly felt like they were killing me. Never once did he let me even vent, tell him I’m said… anything.
- A couple months later I met an abusive alcoholic. I was still in a terribly bad place. I had disconnected from the world…the very few people I let into my life & home (I only left to go shop) were very damaged people so that they didn’t question me…. Again I was not conscious of that at the time, and no matter how many times I told this guy how damaged I was and how much I am not what a person wanting a relationship would want….The relationship wont be healthy bc im not healthy…I somehow knew all of this! He kept saying he’ll be patient and he’ll wait…then he’d get frustrated and & irritated and say “I need to move on” but in a much angrier way… then he’d come back a few days later bc he missed me so much….and I of course let him right back in because he had given me emotional connection, taken it away & I was so damaged fragile and vulnerable that it took only that for me to become codependent and too attached.
- The experience was horrific. He’d mentally store every single little thing I’d done to upset him until the next time he was well into a full-blown, rage filled drinking binge. Then he’d erupt. I never knew when it would happen but I always knew it was only a matter of time. Any attempt I’d make to calm him down would only make it worse. I’d offer anything and everything just to get him to stop. It would go on for SO long, and almost every time, at the height of the rage he’d announce he was leaving….and the physical shaking reaction that would occur any and everytime hed yell at me would escalate hugely and I’d BEG him to stay. It’s very Stockholm syndrome like it seems. And its horrifying to me. He’d be about to relieve me of the traumatizing, long lasting abuse and I’d beg and beg and beg, becoming totally hysterical, so that he would stay.
- The emotional and verbal abuse I experienced from him (for almost 4 long years straight) is by far the worst of my trauma experiences & most destructive, I believe. My hypervigilance skyrocketed once the abuse started and it remains. (We are no longer together…I am so much happier…despite realizing how “far gone” I am…. Its terrifying. I literally am not capable of handling stress at all. Over these last few years I had absolutely NO inkling this could have even been a possibility so I went so deep into survival mode without realizing, became so disconnected & so irrational that becoming functioning again in non-emotional ways requires an endless amount of work, energy, effort, focus on its own. I am ready and excited to face this, but it’s hard to not have a part of me wondering, if not convinced, that this is so complex and went so long untreated and worsening that though recovering is possible…I have fully gained understanding on that… I cant not think that the state I am in makes recovering seem like there would be potential for it to be too much to be possible…
- The alexthemia (don’t remember sp.) is something else that I strongly believe is going on with me (No words/no feelings…when people say “I have no words or I have no feelings.”)… For one, I am scarily good at disconnecting for survival… my exboyfriends verbal abuse was the most hateful, mean & upsetting verbal experiences I could ever imagine. So again, it’s survival. But what’s truly been the most frustrating, exhausting & upsetting part of this all is the INCREDIBLE difficulty, and sometimes full blown lack of abiltity to verbalize anything related to any of this….which now is pretty much anything and everything. It makes the “no one understands” frustration exponentially worse, because most people don’t understand but when you cannot verbalize it you don’t even have a hope of anyone understanding!
Last edited by a moderator:
