Joined today in hopes of making friends and connections, finding resources, ideas, coping strategies, and, well, who knows what but hopefully some positive vibes. So this is a horribly long story, but hopefully well written and somewhat entertaining.
Do I have PTSD? I don't know. It's been mentioned to me twice in the last month. I seem to have a lot of the signs/symptoms like nightmares, hypervigillance, short fuse. I'm a 45-year old female mechanical engineer with social anxiety that prefers to live in isolation in the company of cats. A crazy cat lady, if you will. No kids.
I'm an only child that was raised by geese (not wolves) in the woods and potty trained in an outhouse next to the bird coop. A year or 2 ago my mother told me a story of what happened when I was 3 - I have no recollection of this. My parents had a bunch of geese. When I would go outside the geese would flock and attack me. Goose bites hurt. Well, they saw my distress so, as any loving parent would do, they gave me a tire iron to defend myself with. They instructed me to hit the geese with the tire iron when attacked. Apparently I did not follow instructions because my mother said I stood there screaming with the tire iron raised over my head while the geese bit me.
My dad had a girlfriend (I found out also a year or 2 ago) and so divorce happened. My mother packed me up and moved me to her parents house, where we lived for probably about 3-5 years. We shared a room while she went to graduate school. My grandmother was my new mother. My grandfather was a chauvanistic a-hole that enjoyed putting me down every chance he got (I learned years later that he used to punch my mother when she was little and give the gift of bloody noses - he never went this far with me).
By the time I was 8-ish we moved into a crummy apartment near campus where she finished her master's degree. We had 2 cats. Every summer I'd be shipped off to my father's house (where the GEESE live) and by the time I was in 2nd grade I was such a loser in school that I ended up writing a poem about my father's place called "where no one will bother me". I remember the teacher asking me if that was true - I said yes. That's probably one of my earliest childhood memories. Recently my mother sent me my old report cards - my 2nd grade report card starts with "she is very independent". Haha!
My father called me "it" - he always had a new girlfriend every year or 2 and he would say "it's time for IT to go to bed". At the end of summer I'd be shipped from my father's house and go back to live with my mother and go back to hell/school. On the way home one day, I said to my mother in the car: "I can't wait to see the cats!" and she said "I got rid of them because they puked on my speakers". Sure enough, no cats when I got home. I wonder what happened to them, I hope they got a better home and not euthanized at the shelter. Not sure if this was the same year as when I returned and my room had been "cleaned", but one time when I was gone she threw out everything she thought I didn't need. At this apartment my mother stacked chairs in front of the front door every night because I had a sleep-walking habit and I'd try to sleep-walk my ass outta that place every night.
By the time I was in 5th grade I had to be the most unpopular loser in school. But we moved into a cool new apartment on a farm and one of the neighbors up the road had a girl my age that would be going to the same school in 6th grade. We became friends and hung out together until school started and she found out I was unpopular. She made new friends, invited them over, then threw rocks at me when I walked home from the bus. Further down the road a boy a year or so older than me put on a ski mask and chased me on his bicycle while waving a knife in the air at me. This was a rural road, no witnesses, just him and me. I would tell my mother about these kinds of events and she would tell me I was imagining it. To this day, she does not remember me telling her these things. I have not forgotten.
Years later when I was 14, I finally made a few friends. About that time my mother agreed to let me stay at home alone when she worked graveyard shift. She got a new job at the university doing research and ended up going on research boats for 2 weeks at a time (crossing the equator etc). One time when she was gone, my high school friend and I decided to take the truck out for a joy ride - I was actually a decent driver by then. It was midnight, and it was rural - and a tractor-trailer saw us and stopped at the end of the driveway. Footsteps coming down the driveway, crunch crunch. I told my friend to go inside and call the cops if anything bad happened. I grabbed the rifle and made that beautiful cocking sound and said "get out of here"...and the footsteps turned around and headed back to the parked truck.
OK, my new "friends" were the greasers, druggies, you might say. My mother did not approve. She told me I was to come home from school every day and not go ANYwhere. She was not home and was often working swing shift. If she was there she was busy on her computer (yes, in the 80's) and I got tired of it, of being alone and ignored all the time. At school I carved something on the wall in the bathroom with a jack knife and a girl reported me to a counselor. Counselor confronted me, I said something about killing my mother. I left school with a friend's sister that had a car, and we went out for a late lunch and talked. When she brought me home, there was a cop car waiting. She was told to leave - we were both crying. I got sent to an emergency counselor that decided to put me in a mental hospital, so off I was shipped. I think it was only 5 days in the hospital, but I had nightmares about it for a good 10 years. If you have ever been LOCKED UP, with no possibility of escape, you can understand the terror and helplessness I felt. No fresh air, no open windows for 5 days. The court/trial was horrible. My father was there and he told me I deserved to be there. Two days before Christmas, on the drive home from the hospital, I told my mother she could never do anything more horrible than that to me and I would never do anything she said. And so I became a total druggie, but still made honors list and left high school early for college, go figure.
Fast forward to 2005. I just went through a divorce and lost pretty much everything to that manipulative piece of garbage (we were married 13 months). I decided to pack up and leave the southeast USA and head for the Pacific Northwest - nothing to lose! I lived on 42 acres bordering a national forest just a few miles from where the movie Deliverance was filmed. Three weeks before my departure, a bunch of locals jumped over my gate and informed me that as a Yankee, I did not own the land I was residing on. I tried to get them to leave, the would not. I went back in my house, locked the doors, and they came back with several of their buddies. They banged on the doors and walls trying to get in while I called 911. I had to talk myself down from opening fire on them (I had a gun). I waited 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. Cops knew the boys. Boys got told to leave. End of that story.
So, PTSD? Independent? Realist? I don't know, but when someone threatens me, I snap. I got hit twice by men in relationships many years ago and I snapped and beat their faces in and never saw them again. Road rage makes me lose it. People honking horns at me makes me go ballistic. Incessant dog barking makes me insane. Noise in general makes me cranky. I went to a sleep clinic for help and they said "you're a light sleeper". Doctors tell me I need to relax. I do fine if I don't leave my woodland oasis with cats. The older I get, the harder time I have with society.
Bosses complain about my lack of interpersonal skills and say I'm too defensive. They send me to communications classes about body language and other crap and during the last class the instructor pulled me aside to ask if I have Asperger's syndrome! I'm a little traumatized, but have to admit it's pretty funny. As long as I stay on my isolated woodland property and don't see or talk to anyone, I seem to do fine, no one complains! Having such a hard time with my job, they insist on trying to make me like everyone else, and it's not going to happen. Square peg in a round hole and all.
How do I make myself fit in? Why can't people and employers celebrate diversity? I have patents, so obviously I'm not a total idiot (like my mother I earned a masters in engineering). Why can't they just let me do my damn job? I thought engineers didn't need social skills?!
To make matters worse I've been having a lot of chronic pain that apparently can't be cured. Have had trouble walking for the last year and got a handicapped parking permit. Sometimes I need help, and I have very few friends to call, and don't want to ask for help anyway. I just want my life back!
Doctors tell me I need to relax and practice mindfulness. I've done a little research and, well, I'm actually quite good at mindfulness as long as I'm at home. It's being at work and being treated like a child that really seems to be a trigger for me...I am micromanaged and scolded for the stupidest things. It's like being in grade school all over again and I'm the unpopular kid! I guess people never grow up. I'm probably about to get fired. I think dealing with my job causes tension, and that having triggers (PTSD or not) causes exaggerated reactions and physical harm that makes my chronic pain worse.
Thoughts, anyone?
Do I have PTSD? I don't know. It's been mentioned to me twice in the last month. I seem to have a lot of the signs/symptoms like nightmares, hypervigillance, short fuse. I'm a 45-year old female mechanical engineer with social anxiety that prefers to live in isolation in the company of cats. A crazy cat lady, if you will. No kids.
I'm an only child that was raised by geese (not wolves) in the woods and potty trained in an outhouse next to the bird coop. A year or 2 ago my mother told me a story of what happened when I was 3 - I have no recollection of this. My parents had a bunch of geese. When I would go outside the geese would flock and attack me. Goose bites hurt. Well, they saw my distress so, as any loving parent would do, they gave me a tire iron to defend myself with. They instructed me to hit the geese with the tire iron when attacked. Apparently I did not follow instructions because my mother said I stood there screaming with the tire iron raised over my head while the geese bit me.
My dad had a girlfriend (I found out also a year or 2 ago) and so divorce happened. My mother packed me up and moved me to her parents house, where we lived for probably about 3-5 years. We shared a room while she went to graduate school. My grandmother was my new mother. My grandfather was a chauvanistic a-hole that enjoyed putting me down every chance he got (I learned years later that he used to punch my mother when she was little and give the gift of bloody noses - he never went this far with me).
By the time I was 8-ish we moved into a crummy apartment near campus where she finished her master's degree. We had 2 cats. Every summer I'd be shipped off to my father's house (where the GEESE live) and by the time I was in 2nd grade I was such a loser in school that I ended up writing a poem about my father's place called "where no one will bother me". I remember the teacher asking me if that was true - I said yes. That's probably one of my earliest childhood memories. Recently my mother sent me my old report cards - my 2nd grade report card starts with "she is very independent". Haha!
My father called me "it" - he always had a new girlfriend every year or 2 and he would say "it's time for IT to go to bed". At the end of summer I'd be shipped from my father's house and go back to live with my mother and go back to hell/school. On the way home one day, I said to my mother in the car: "I can't wait to see the cats!" and she said "I got rid of them because they puked on my speakers". Sure enough, no cats when I got home. I wonder what happened to them, I hope they got a better home and not euthanized at the shelter. Not sure if this was the same year as when I returned and my room had been "cleaned", but one time when I was gone she threw out everything she thought I didn't need. At this apartment my mother stacked chairs in front of the front door every night because I had a sleep-walking habit and I'd try to sleep-walk my ass outta that place every night.
By the time I was in 5th grade I had to be the most unpopular loser in school. But we moved into a cool new apartment on a farm and one of the neighbors up the road had a girl my age that would be going to the same school in 6th grade. We became friends and hung out together until school started and she found out I was unpopular. She made new friends, invited them over, then threw rocks at me when I walked home from the bus. Further down the road a boy a year or so older than me put on a ski mask and chased me on his bicycle while waving a knife in the air at me. This was a rural road, no witnesses, just him and me. I would tell my mother about these kinds of events and she would tell me I was imagining it. To this day, she does not remember me telling her these things. I have not forgotten.
Years later when I was 14, I finally made a few friends. About that time my mother agreed to let me stay at home alone when she worked graveyard shift. She got a new job at the university doing research and ended up going on research boats for 2 weeks at a time (crossing the equator etc). One time when she was gone, my high school friend and I decided to take the truck out for a joy ride - I was actually a decent driver by then. It was midnight, and it was rural - and a tractor-trailer saw us and stopped at the end of the driveway. Footsteps coming down the driveway, crunch crunch. I told my friend to go inside and call the cops if anything bad happened. I grabbed the rifle and made that beautiful cocking sound and said "get out of here"...and the footsteps turned around and headed back to the parked truck.
OK, my new "friends" were the greasers, druggies, you might say. My mother did not approve. She told me I was to come home from school every day and not go ANYwhere. She was not home and was often working swing shift. If she was there she was busy on her computer (yes, in the 80's) and I got tired of it, of being alone and ignored all the time. At school I carved something on the wall in the bathroom with a jack knife and a girl reported me to a counselor. Counselor confronted me, I said something about killing my mother. I left school with a friend's sister that had a car, and we went out for a late lunch and talked. When she brought me home, there was a cop car waiting. She was told to leave - we were both crying. I got sent to an emergency counselor that decided to put me in a mental hospital, so off I was shipped. I think it was only 5 days in the hospital, but I had nightmares about it for a good 10 years. If you have ever been LOCKED UP, with no possibility of escape, you can understand the terror and helplessness I felt. No fresh air, no open windows for 5 days. The court/trial was horrible. My father was there and he told me I deserved to be there. Two days before Christmas, on the drive home from the hospital, I told my mother she could never do anything more horrible than that to me and I would never do anything she said. And so I became a total druggie, but still made honors list and left high school early for college, go figure.
Fast forward to 2005. I just went through a divorce and lost pretty much everything to that manipulative piece of garbage (we were married 13 months). I decided to pack up and leave the southeast USA and head for the Pacific Northwest - nothing to lose! I lived on 42 acres bordering a national forest just a few miles from where the movie Deliverance was filmed. Three weeks before my departure, a bunch of locals jumped over my gate and informed me that as a Yankee, I did not own the land I was residing on. I tried to get them to leave, the would not. I went back in my house, locked the doors, and they came back with several of their buddies. They banged on the doors and walls trying to get in while I called 911. I had to talk myself down from opening fire on them (I had a gun). I waited 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. Cops knew the boys. Boys got told to leave. End of that story.
So, PTSD? Independent? Realist? I don't know, but when someone threatens me, I snap. I got hit twice by men in relationships many years ago and I snapped and beat their faces in and never saw them again. Road rage makes me lose it. People honking horns at me makes me go ballistic. Incessant dog barking makes me insane. Noise in general makes me cranky. I went to a sleep clinic for help and they said "you're a light sleeper". Doctors tell me I need to relax. I do fine if I don't leave my woodland oasis with cats. The older I get, the harder time I have with society.
Bosses complain about my lack of interpersonal skills and say I'm too defensive. They send me to communications classes about body language and other crap and during the last class the instructor pulled me aside to ask if I have Asperger's syndrome! I'm a little traumatized, but have to admit it's pretty funny. As long as I stay on my isolated woodland property and don't see or talk to anyone, I seem to do fine, no one complains! Having such a hard time with my job, they insist on trying to make me like everyone else, and it's not going to happen. Square peg in a round hole and all.
How do I make myself fit in? Why can't people and employers celebrate diversity? I have patents, so obviously I'm not a total idiot (like my mother I earned a masters in engineering). Why can't they just let me do my damn job? I thought engineers didn't need social skills?!
To make matters worse I've been having a lot of chronic pain that apparently can't be cured. Have had trouble walking for the last year and got a handicapped parking permit. Sometimes I need help, and I have very few friends to call, and don't want to ask for help anyway. I just want my life back!
Doctors tell me I need to relax and practice mindfulness. I've done a little research and, well, I'm actually quite good at mindfulness as long as I'm at home. It's being at work and being treated like a child that really seems to be a trigger for me...I am micromanaged and scolded for the stupidest things. It's like being in grade school all over again and I'm the unpopular kid! I guess people never grow up. I'm probably about to get fired. I think dealing with my job causes tension, and that having triggers (PTSD or not) causes exaggerated reactions and physical harm that makes my chronic pain worse.
Thoughts, anyone?
