PTSD from death - Anyone here been through something similar and succeeded in their career?

[nico_thom98]

Firstly I wanted to go into a bit of a back story.

In June 2018 I was hanging out with some friends and having a good time when I got a call from my mother, at first I wasn't going to answer but given that it was late at night I figured it must have been important and picked up the call. On that phone call I was told that my grandmother was very ill and that she was going to pass away so we would have to go down to Christchurch to visit her in hospital. Simultaneously my friend wheels was admitted to the hospital on close watch for his kidneys. I stayed at the hospital with my grandmother and sadly she passed away while I was in the room. That same night my friend wheels had been released from the hospital only to get rushed back a few hours later, I was in complete shock and in an absolute mess waiting outside the door to find out if he made it and sadly his kidneys had given in and he didn't make it through the night. I returned back to the Kapiti Coast for a few nights before the funerals and only to discover my ex of 6 years had cheated on me while I was away. Absolutely crushed and heartbroken I decided to move away to Christchurch to live with my uncle so I could be surrounded by my family down there. Within 2 weeks of living in Christchurch I lost my father to a cardiac arrest while he was on holiday in Greece only 4 days before my 20th birthday.

With everything else going on at the time I honestly lost myself to depression. I decided to move back to Kapiti to be with my immediate family and look after my mother and sisters during the time of grief.

When I got back to Kapiti a few nights after his death one of my closest friends dating back to the early days of primary school Kyle came and stayed with me for a night to support me for my father. Despite what was going on he managed to cheer me up a little bit and we had a really good catch up. The next day I had received a message from his sister to say that he had been in a car crash and too didn’t make it. Now if I'm being honest with you it felt like my world was absolutely ripping apart and nothing at all could make it worse but I was wrong it did. 2 months had passed and I had started working at a place in New Zealand called total span. It was just your average day at work, we were working in a remote area of wellington where the phone service would cut out and when I had finished work and started making the trip home my phone absolutely blew up. I was bombarded with texts from my mum missed calls from my sister and my cousin. I decided to ignore them and drove to my sisters house for a beer after work, when I arrived she was balling her eyes out. She had told me that my uncle (the same one I moved in with in Christchurch) had a heart attack and didn't make it and a few short months after that my other uncle had a motorbike crash and also had not made it.

Man I don’t even know where to start but anyways I have had alot of ptsd in that time. I had worked non stop straight after the death of my father in 2018 and even started my own tiling business which due to the 2022 NZ covid lockdown I ended up losing. I am now 25 and struggling to work and deal with my ptsd and professional help and medication has not helped. I am currently unemployed and don’t really know what to do anymore, has any body here been through something similar and succeeded in their career?

 

[Teamwork]

My spate happened 23 years ago. I was working with a disabled child who was 9 at the time of his death. He did not realize in the moment that if his paper went under his school bus he should not try to retrieve it. Less than three months later another youth also with a learning disability, also whom I was working closely with died in a fire over the winter break. He was 16. His father was devastated and also had the same learning disability as his son so I assisted with the funeral arrangements. within months of this my mom passed and it was sudden due to her not telling us she had cancer. She passed on my birthday.

The many layers of grief and trauma from all this intertwined and I felt as though I was suffocating but also it activated my avoidance and I kicked into high gear on things like reading in an obsessive way to drown the world out.

I felt like I had to fix things and started a centre which I was going to name after the first child death of the 9year old. Instead I named it something else and it is still going. I teach kids with disabilities how to read.

Many times in my life I’ve felt as if death just followed me everywhere. I’ve had some really young encounters with it compared to my peers. Like to plan and discuss a youth funeral at the age I was, was very unusual. If I was to count the number of deaths I’ve experienced and had to assist the family with or was present for it is quite a lot. No idea how this came about. It’s challenging. Not many understand as they get one or two a year of a dear old relative.

The guy whose son died in that fire at age 16, his granddaughter killed herself in his apartment a year ago. We stayed friends and again because he can’t read I helped him get custody of the grandkids. Two months after that he had a stroke that took his vision and we took him in and are now his caregiver.

This is probably how ptsd plays out for me, be there assist look after care give. I don’t know. I just know that I feel for you.

Hopefully you will come to see life and death as a journey we are all on. Some of us as you and I can attest, experience the end of the journey far more frequently than others do. I have no idea why. In my case child death was and has been truly devastating for me to cope with.

 

[littleoc]

I dealt with a lot of death, too. Humans and other animals.

I just want to say that while I'm not working and am not currently able to, it has gotten easier to grieve and accept death. I'm not afraid of death and I find ways to incorporate the dead into my life where needed (as in, by remembering them and telling stories about them, in Jewish ways). It's never pleasant and still always shocking and heartbreaking, but much easier to cope with now than it has been for people who dealt with "less" (I never want to diminish others' pain by comparing it to anyone else's).

 

[enough]

all it took was one and i have known ever since that it happens and it matters, and that what happens next matters more.
I think you will be down the road a ways and able to look back and see that they mattered and their deaths mattered, and what comes next has mattered more, soon. It takes time and it sounds like you havent been given much time between losses but that will change and one day you will realize that you are remembering the lives of the people you lost and not the loss. Big difference, and it is what comes next for you I hope.
Quite the story, a real rough go.

 

[Flying Dove]

Firstly I wanted to go into a bit of a back story.

In June 2018 I was hanging out with some friends and having a good time when I got a call from my mother, at first I wasn't going to answer but given that it was late at night I figured it must have been important and picked up the call. On that phone call I was told that my grandmother was very ill and that she was going to pass away so we would have to go down to Christchurch to visit her in hospital. Simultaneously my friend wheels was admitted to the hospital on close watch for his kidneys. I stayed at the hospital with my grandmother and sadly she passed away while I was in the room. That same night my friend wheels had been released from the hospital only to get rushed back a few hours later, I was in complete shock and in an absolute mess waiting outside the door to find out if he made it and sadly his kidneys had given in and he didn't make it through the night. I returned back to the Kapiti Coast for a few nights before the funerals and only to discover my ex of 6 years had cheated on me while I was away. Absolutely crushed and heartbroken I decided to move away to Christchurch to live with my uncle so I could be surrounded by my family down there. Within 2 weeks of living in Christchurch I lost my father to a cardiac arrest while he was on holiday in Greece only 4 days before my 20th birthday.

With everything else going on at the time I honestly lost myself to depression. I decided to move back to Kapiti to be with my immediate family and look after my mother and sisters during the time of grief.

When I got back to Kapiti a few nights after his death one of my closest friends dating back to the early days of primary school Kyle came and stayed with me for a night to support me for my father. Despite what was going on he managed to cheer me up a little bit and we had a really good catch up. The next day I had received a message from his sister to say that he had been in a car crash and too didn’t make it. Now if I'm being honest with you it felt like my world was absolutely ripping apart and nothing at all could make it worse but I was wrong it did. 2 months had passed and I had started working at a place in New Zealand called total span. It was just your average day at work, we were working in a remote area of wellington where the phone service would cut out and when I had finished work and started making the trip home my phone absolutely blew up. I was bombarded with texts from my mum missed calls from my sister and my cousin. I decided to ignore them and drove to my sisters house for a beer after work, when I arrived she was balling her eyes out. She had told me that my uncle (the same one I moved in with in Christchurch) had a heart attack and didn't make it and a few short months after that my other uncle had a motorbike crash and also had not made it.

Man I don’t even know where to start but anyways I have had alot of ptsd in that time. I had worked non stop straight after the death of my father in 2018 and even started my own tiling business which due to the 2022 NZ covid lockdown I ended up losing. I am now 25 and struggling to work and deal with my ptsd and professional help and medication has not helped. I am currently unemployed and don’t really know what to do anymore, has any body here been through something similar and succeeded in their career?

Well. I almost died from brain infection. May 2014. Serious. Incubated multi organ failure sepsis in medically induced coma. Yes I have ptsd from this. Prior to this held my first husband's hand through his last breath. The marriage and me over extending myself a causative factor in brain infection. So I have survivors guilt too

 

[Precipice Dweller]

Not going into too many details, I spent quite a while dancing with death. It wasn't really a matter of choice, although I am definitely capable and actively choosing to live now.

The pandemic damaged my lungs, cardiovascular system, kidneys and pancreas, resulting in numerous chronic conditions. That was a major trauma in and of itself. Having to accept that I'm disabled and unable to work (for now, if ever) was a different brush with mortality. Losing things you associate with your identity always feels a little like dying even when it's clearly not the case.

It helps me to not focus on the loss. That can be hard. Maybe someone else has a better idea how to do that. If you figure it out, please share the wealth!

 

[littleoc]

The pandemic damaged my lungs, cardiovascular system, kidneys and pancreas, resulting in numerous chronic conditions. That was a major trauma in and of itself. Having to accept that I'm disabled and unable to work (for now, if ever) was a different brush with mortality. Losing things you associate with your identity always feels a little like dying even when it's clearly not the case.

I feel this. I had complicated plans for my future, but struggle so badly to keep up with abled people that I had to stop. I was overworking myself through extreme fatigue until I'd pass out while driving, for example. Very scary stuff.

I'm doing better now, though. I'm of course still grieving the future I had in mind, but I've found that (1) there may be better ways to get there that are more realistic and (2) that my goals were realistic for Sara in biology 304 in undergrad but not for littleoc :( Which is sad, and it's okay that it is sad for me. It didn't kill me, it just gave me a mini identity crisis because I always want to work and do more and more and more.

But at some point I had to find out that my priorities are my animals, my friends, my family, and my ability to stay alive longer than if I blindly went forward with those goals. And that's made me a lot happier overall.

So, in answering how to not focus on the loss: do focus on it a little. It's important to grieve any loss or change in your life if you're going to move on. If you're struggling with it, gather ways to cope, and talk to a therapist for professional support or seek group therapy for people like yourself. Best thing I did, though, was develop new hobbies and allow myself to enjoy the things I CAN do, like laying around in bed lol -- if I'm going to have chronic fatigue, narcolepsy, AND occasional insomnia, I may as well enjoy all my blankets in bed and bring my phone with me and get into phone games while I wait for the insomnia meds to work correctly, right? :P

Also, get creative if you're able. I used the app Grindr (I'm gay) to chat with people, and occasionally find someone who doesn't mind laying in bed all day and watching movies or hanging out for an hour or less. Recently I found someone who is going to let me visit his horses, and in the meantime I'm just texting him to make sure everything seems safe enough at least. (PTSD brain, paranoid? Normal safety assessment? Who cares, I'm the man in charge of making sure anyone who meets me in person is safe for me.) Obviously, Grindr isn't known for that behavior, it's mostly known for hookups, but I just politely turn down dick pics, let them know I don't mind the lifestyle but it's not for me, and then make friends with anyone who is okay with chatting after that :P

I believe in you