My Family, The Involuntary Mental Health System And Ptsd

[new gamma rays]

I don't even know if now is a good time to begin, but my brain feels like the Titanic going under. Just too much. Too much pain, too many reminders. A therapist said you can't regain feeling in something (like your hand) without it hurting a lot. Well the part that went numb, is finally feeling all the injustice and violation that hit it. And goddamn I don't want to be alive a second longer if its feeling like this.

That's a pretty terrible way to start. Here's another: Almost two years ago my parents called 911 or the paramedics to have me forcibly taken to an ER, and it was the worst thing that happened to my brain ever. Absolutely inexcusable because I had the exact same traumatic experiences happen to me TWICE the year before. It was my parents intention that if I was dragged away by an ambulance crew and dumped in an ER that I would somehow make the decision to go to a voluntary mental health program from there. A decision I would never make given all the terror and my medical status that no hospital would understand. And the impetus behind all of this was because I was worked up and unable to deal with the PTSD memories of all that happened before (although there was more to it than that). Two years later I am back at home - the place I was dragged out of - and living with those same parents. Its not good, I don't have good options, literally anybody that understands, and a whole lot of medical issues. I don't know why I haven't just extinguished myself. Why am I going through this hell?

.

 

[Powder]

Oh, it is hell for a bit, but it does get better. You know when your whole leg goes to sleep totally, and how the pins and needles are torture when the nerves come back on? If you thought your leg would feel like that forever, you'd want to cut it off surgically. But nobody would do that for you because it is a temporary feeling. And soon your leg will be strong and normal again.

You can get through this and feel strong again. Right now it sounds like you are feeling:

1. Powerlessness, helplessness on top of emotional rage, anger, invalidation, and other traumatic memories and medical violations to boot;
2. Like it will never change or get better;
3. Like nobody understands or cares;
4. Like you might not like yourself with these emotions.

Or something like that? I guess I can relate to a lot of that, but first of all, I promise it CAN get better, not that it WILL, but it normally does, like 99.9% of the time.

Do you have a trusted person who can try to understand so you can tell them. (You're very eloquent, by the way, I teach writing, so I guess I like people who write well. ;)

If you can list what you want, you won't be powerless.
Describe for me what you want.

 

[new gamma rays]

I want to be away from this situation. Ultimately my list of wants is just to be dead, because I see no solution to this. But I just keep pretending I can push it off for another day, another day, another day but its still my plan.

I know that sounds completely grim, and urgent. And it is, but my trauma is being thrown into an ER bed and having the fate of my life determined there. I don't even know if I could open myself up to a situation like that again.

I mean I could give a more tangible answer than that, but I'm completely disoriented and triggered right now. Having the feeling that I can't live in the same house as my mom, and having no idea where I can live in my mind, sends my anxiety back up to trauma levels. And it doesn't help then that I'm in the same house that it happened.

 

[Powder]

I'm sorry to hear that you either legally are forced to stay there or have no option other than that right now. I would guess that it is feeling very triggering to you to be there, even though I don't know what occurred.

Are you in out patient therapy for your PTSD?

From the way you are writing, I sense that you are a sensitive/intuitive person. Is that right?

Maybe not, but I'm feeling some kind of connection here. Sorry. I have had it rough in many ways, but I also feel that I am proud to be a survivor and to do something with this life that has been so hard. You are intelligent. You can use that to regain control.

During college was when I felt the way you are describing, in my 20s. What made it worse was that I was put on SSRIs and given regular talk therapy. Both were like driving nails into my coffin. I'm feeling like all the well-intended help you have gotten has really not been what you needed.

 

[Powder]

I should add I also was feeling helpless, dependent and stuck in my parents' home and blamed myself for that, for not finding a way out, but I was young. Getting totally away and independent was the best move for me.

 

[new gamma rays]

Thanks for replying Muse. I was an English major, so there's that ;)

No, I am not seeing out patient therapy. I have looked extensively, but maybe not called extensively. All of the ones that seemed worth it were either not accepting patients or they never returned my message, which I have no explanation for. (oh great, now I'm going to worry about my grammar)

The psychiatrist I was seeing came to the house and spent most of the session talking, so that was some way to get my history out, but he was young and in our most recent appointment I just lost it when his questioning went too direct. I can't come out and say to any therapist or psychiatrist how suicidal I am, or how really I don't have answers for the future, because it terrifies me and then I think back to the last time I was taken from the house by a paramedic crew, the last MAJOR trauma - and then I hit fight or flight shut down mode. Anything that hints of a scenario like that I just clam up. Long story short, this psychiatrist I don't think really understands how to handle trauma like mine, and he wants out. So really I feel alone right now, just getting by with just the smallest doses of hope or 'maybe this will help me'.

As for the housing situation, that's pretty complicated. For the past year people have just been saying: wouldn't an apartment help? And it probably would and my parents would pay for it, but it involves digging out of my depression and entering a new chapter in my life and . . . well excuses. But I really am physically so wiped out that it is hard for me to consider it, even though its not that hard. Obviously there has to be some major mental defense mechanisms in place.

Just even those simple questions, there's a lot more there. Its only recently that I've gotten the ability to think of any of these issues with . . . well not clarity, but no distraction. Before this I was living in a group home. I am not locked in here by any means, and in fact my situation feels pretty tenuous at times when I get upset and it sets everybody off. That's another major trigger. Unfortunately -due to the screwed up circumstances of being in the involuntary mental health hospital, my parents obtained guardianship over me. Which means I can't even drive. I don't even know the context of the whole legal situation. Its messed up.

Well that there in and of itself is too much. I really feel like I am on my hands and knees just trying to move forward, but don't think I can make it.

 

[Powder]

Grammar sucks. Let's admit it. We just want to communicate here. :)

I am hearing that you are having to use distraction most of the time to survive. That you can't consciously face the trauma yet, and are dealing with it more or less unconsciously. I think that's pretty much all of us at some stage or another.

Yes, you need your body to heal to the point, it's not the problem, and you can focus more on your emotions and such.

I think you will find the forum to be helpful as you come out of the "chrysalis stage," which is most painful. By the way, I don't like the chrysalis-butterfly metaphor at all. They need to find something that is more, less, disgusting?! I don't know. Have you seen a chrysalis? Yuck!

Anyway, I think it gets better for you. You just need to feel stronger, and that is a unique journey. It's up to you.

 

[new gamma rays]

I can't even begin to write about what today marks the third anniversary of. Basically the end of my life, the event that turned living with chronic pain in a temporary chaotic state of affairs that included running out of medicine into a confrontation with my family and a therapist that landed me in an ER, in lieu of my family calling the police. It was an ambush to me, when I was most threatened, and it turned out bad . My parents had the urge to confine me and threaten me, instead of figure out what was wrong. I went from someone who just needed meds refilled, to someone who was pinned down to an ER bed while my parents babbled out hysterical nonsense to an ER staff that assumed I was a crazy person. I don't even know what they said, but it went down against me. I didn't leave that place until near 4 in the morning, just surviving my close shave with the infernal machinery of this state. I don't know how much its going to hit me today, but its going to hit me pretty soon - October is a long month, and I have never had a chance to really process what went down. And instead of having time to do so this year, I am coming up empty try Three years ago I had a chance to recover from the devastating blow and near involuntary hospitalization, but instead I just kept marching into a fate I would do anything to go back in time and avoid.

And right now I feel nothing. Too tired and dead to feel anything. I thought my mom would be gone tomorrow and I'd just be left with an empty house and the past. But she's not leaving until Tuesday and I am worried if it just overpowers me, because she is the one most responsible for all that happened. Everything before, constant neglect, harassment. She engaged in every little passive aggressive act of meanness she could find, or maybe she was just plain crazy, but she opened a campaign of assault against my brain and had no intention of stopping. And then not even guessing why I was in distress, chalked it up to mental illness and didn't listen to me about what was physically wrong - just decided they could threaten to hospitalize me unless I called three doctors in two days. They had no clue what was going on with me but that didn't stop them from putting into action a ruinous plan.

 

[new gamma rays]

2nd anniversary. Why even use that word. It is two years removed from the incidence I consider most traumatic to me, and here I am and it feels like yesterday. I have never had time to talk about it with anyone, never had time to piece it together or really get an explanation from my parents. It just lives like a constantly screaming child in my mind, and I can't see what its crying at.

 

[new gamma rays]

Frankly I just want to kill myself tomorrow, but on Thanksgiving. In all likelihood I'm not going to be able to make my family's thanksgiving get together. For the fourth year in a row. And that's going to kill me, because at least seeing some of relatives I haven't seen for two years would help. Human connection etc. Instead I stay leashed to my problems, a decision I unconsciously/ maybe consciously made. While my mom, the woman who so cruelly neglected me three years ago when I begged for help, and who made the decisions that led me into the clutches of the worst place in the state gets to enjoy her family and everyone thinks she's a caring person. Its going to make me enraged this weekend - which only equates to making me feel more fearful of the irresistible f*cked up forces that imprisoned me to begin with. Goddamnit, why relive this. Why just be wounded again.

 

[Powder]

Gamma, I'm sad for you today. Hey, your parents don't understand or don't care like they could or should. If they haven't figured you out by now, then they are not going to. It's time to let go and give up on that, but not on life.

I am not with my sick folks today either. Three years, too. Rather than feel bad, let's raise a glass to that! :)

Make a new tradition on your own. Don't join family if they are there. Do you have another friend to spend time with who, in future, would be able to pick you up in their car?

I agree with your friends who say, get out of there. It's hard to heal and grieve the wound when it's still happening. Just by being in that house, you are being wounded, and you are angry because you know you are self-inflicting it. That would make anyone want to give up.

I hope that if today is miserable, it will wake you up and help you move on from this place. Sometimes I have to hit rock bottom on an issue before I see the need to pick myself up some way in it. :(

It's hard. But we do it somehow. You may have to reach out to one person, who can help you find a therapist or doctor and make little steps toward healthy relationships and freedom.

Find a vision of the future that is hopeful, and think back to when you were strong in the past, to fuel the necessary steps. Just take them one day at a time.

Today is just another day. It's yours for whatever you want.

Hugs, Muse

 

[new gamma rays]

Thanks Muse. It is really not about the holiday specifically, although missing out on family is part of it, and more about reminders of all the horrible sequence of events that happened around this time two years ago. And unless I force myself to go to relatives I can't get away from it. I'm going to have to though. I will try to take these words and ideas to heart though