Putting On "normal"

[LaurenRose]

Most of the time when I go out into the world, I have to "suit up" and "put on normal" before I go. It is an actual mental, emotional, physical process I go through. Even though I put on my mp3 and wear my favourite clothes, black t-shirt and jeans/shorts and I know I don't stand out in the crowd, I still have to walk normal, have a pleasant look on my face, have an easy way about me so I don't draw attention. There is something about me that stands out from "normal" though. I have been asked by strangers if I am okay when I think I am doing a bang up job with "normal." It is distressing when that happens.

Even with my non-PTSD friends, a certain normalcy is required. I can talk about an upset, as long as it is contained to a "normal" response. I have tried to help them into a space where I can really talk about what is going on for me but I seem to need that constant reminder that it isn't the same for me. I have to be so careful when they share an experience to limit my responses to "normal."

For example. My daughter's boyfriend. Pub, beer, leave, hamburger, walking across the street to apt, cab blows a red light, almost hits bf, bf throws hamburger at cab, cabbie tackles to ground, $650 cell phone drops, 45 minutes in the back of a police car, charged with public intoxication, phone stolen. My daughter was telling me how pissed off she was at him for continuing after the initial anger with the situation was spent, breaking shit and not being able to sleep. I was traumatized!! One of my larger traumas is an assault by two policemen so I reacted to the entire "take down." She, however, was taking it like a really bonehead thing to do. When I said something that alluded to how he had experienced a trauma and needed some support, she responded that she did give him the "oh honey" time but he didn't let it go. That's when I realized, again, that one incident that is just life in her world is a traumatic re-enactment in mine. I put on "normal" and met her in her sandbox. It made me sad. I wish I could somehow be able to sit and really share with her the depth of my emotion - I know she is interested but she just can't go there with me. Maybe it's because she is my daughter, it hurts her to see her Mom that hurt. I wish I could be comfortable and go through my own "F'd" up space when something like that happens, I wish I could remember to do it. Often I either don't, just suppress, or go overboard and have a meltdown.

Putting on "normal" can be exhausting. Not only do I have to exert that energy to keep my body normal, but my tone of voice as well. To have to censor the proper amount of empathy so as to not lose sight of their world. My words need to be stitched together carefully so as not to either invoke questioning or cause them to have to expound too much on what and why they are thinking or feeling something on a situation. Good gods, and my thoughts. Do you know that little tube thing that the contestant stands in and a big fan blows all the money around and they have to try and catch as much of it as they can? That's my thoughts. It is exhausting.

 

[Kintsugi]

Hi, Jellymint,

It is very hard for me when my mother shares her pain with me. I feel like it's very hard for us to communicate about pain, because we're constantly hurting one another with our sorrow. Sometimes I think it'd be best if she just didn't tell me how she felt, because when she does, I feel like I can't confide in her. I don't want her to suffer. (I am the one diagnosed, by the way, though I have been thinking increasingly that she could be diagnosed with PTSD as she has the experience necessary and many of the observable symptoms). I hope this comment doesn't make you feel bad. I guess I want you to know that there can be love in that silence, because no one wants to hurt the other? It's very hard between mothers and daughters.

Yes, some people's everyday passing occurrence is our worst nightmare.

Unzip your suit. You're at the forum. (((Jellymint)))

 

[LaurenRose]

Smiles, thank you MissAntiSunshine. I agree, most of what I am going through isn't appropriate to share with her and I am glad in many ways that she doesn't need to know in order to love me for who I am. She is 26 now, a grown woman. There is still a part of me that would like to be able to share this stuff woman to woman, but she will always be my baby girl and there is that feral Mom in me that wants to protect her. Perhaps I simply want to give her the depth of my love and desire to protect by letting her into the deeper emotions within me. We have gone through her trauma together. She got involved with meth at 13 and was on the streets of Vancouver before she was 14. At 22, she contracted a terminal disease of the lungs. She went into treatment and has recovered from her drug addiction (always with the monitoring so the beast doesn't take over). She has been removed from the "terminal" list, her body has astounded everyone. It still costs 100k/year Canadian to keep her alive, but the quality of her life - although altered - is sound. We can talk together about her style of "putting on normal" relating to her life on the streets and with drugs. The difference being that she is secure in who she is, who she has been, and her working towards who she is going to be. She doesn't have the inner struggle, she doesn't have PTSD as a result of her experience - thank the gods. It's hard, now that I think about it, to know what it is that I want. It is such a conflict. Perhaps it is the ability to say "I hurt", "no really I hurt", "no, I really hurt" with freedom within the tact required for normal society. It is all so confusing. One of the reasons why I still sequester myself so strongly from the world.

*Unzipping* - laughs, how appropriate. Funny how that danged zipper gets stuck

 

[Kintsugi]

Hm. I am going to visit my sister today, who is in her early thirties. I will ask her when/if she and my mother share openly now that she is grown and older. I will report back to you, if you would like. I am curious myself. At this point in my life, I couldn't handle it. But also, my mother is pretty unhealthy with herself in my opinion. She is in denial about a lot, so I'm not sure that her coming forward to me is helpful, because I'm never sure when she will deny something.

Your daughter seems like she has been through hell.

Perhaps her confidence was a necessary byproduct of her experiences.

In some ways, being sexually assaulted is my normal, and when it has happened to me over the last four years, I have not been able to take it seriously, because it's sort of like, "Oh, you thought you hurt me? You have no idea what the others did."

It's very hard to explain. I hope that you and your daughter can share an open relationship sometime. (Translation: I hope that my mother and I can share an open relationship)

When I express pain to my friends, I try to do it in a way that communicates my normal while acknowledging the gap between how I feel and what happened. Does that make sense? Yesterday, me and several friends plus my housemates were talking in my livingroom. Seemingly all of a sudden, two girls walked into my apartment. Now, these kids were from my school of 900, where no one locks doors and people just come on in generally. But that is on our campus. In our dorms. In our community. NOT in my sketchy-a*s apartment complex!

They were two small girls. The first one in I did not recognize. My alert systems were really outta wack. It was like... ALARM! INTRUDER! KILL! Wait, it's just a girl... BUT WHO IS SHE? KILL. No no, just girls from school. I just don't know them.

And then my CNS fumbled over itself to calm down because I had a rush in my system in that moment like if I had had a weapon on hand I would have just used it without thinking. Very scary.

I talked to one of my housemates about how that was not right. He told me that they said they did knock. We just didn't hear them. I thought about it for a good minute before bringing it up again a little later. I told him that I was not trying to harp. I just needed him to understand my perspective. It does not matter what people outside of my door do. If I or someone else inside the house did not let them in, what the F*CK makes them think they can walk in?

I explained even later when he asked me about my triggers (I had just mentioned not long ago that I suffer from PTSD. He's a psych major and would at least get it a bit. Also, I happen to know that he suffers from a mental illness, and he's pretty forthcoming about it at school). I told him that I had an exaggerated startle response, hypervigiliance. I couldn't just have people be walking into my apartment. It wasn't safe for me or them.

I think the third time was the charm. He nodded slowly, seeming to really understand, and then we said goodnight.

 

[LaurenRose]

Life can be a complicated twist and turn of events can't it. Marry the hypersensitivity of PTSD and BLAM - it's a whole new enterprise. I laughed at your description of when the girls came in, then chastised myself for being insensitive and brought it down to a dull chuckle. The way you wrote it allowed me to "be" in it and I would have had the same reaction. Good for you for being able to talk to him in a calm way!! I am very sorry that those bad things happened to you.

My daughter and I are very close. She knows all about my PTSD and some of my traumas. Some of them I won't tell her because it's something I just won't do - for her and for me. We have always had a very open relationship. One of the things I was able to do with my kids in spite of having undiagnosed and not-understood PTSD was give them a sense of self and accountability for their actions. When they were heavy in the drugs, I made sure that the bridge of connection remained in tact. I set down some very heavy boundaries, but being an ex-addict myself, I didn't want the drug to ruin their ability to call me 24/7 if they hit that wall. It worked. When my soldier friend died recently and I called my kids because death was so close, they both responded with the circle of life stuff as a way to comfort me. I am unable to explain to them that my first thought was "he made it." This isn't a bad thing, but I find myself having to reign in the desperation for them to take care of their bodies so I don't lose them too. My son drinks daily - a functional drunk. Daughter isn't too bad but there are things she can be doing to either improve or maintain her health. I am going to see them in June. I am going to sit with my son and have "the talk" and use some of my PTSD talk to help me explain to him how deeply I feel about it. At least with them my degree of "normal" isn't quite so thick.

The heaviness of "putting on normal" for me is mostly when I am out in the world or when I am with my non-ptsd friends. Am learning a new way of being there. Kind of like learning how to breathe underwater if that makes any sense.

I am interested in what you find out from your sister. It sounds like my relationship with my daughter is a bit different that you with your mother. I always find the dynamics between parents and children interesting.

 

[Kintsugi]

It sounds like you have several passages through which you could relate to your kids when speaking to them about these issues with drugs and alcohol.

I can tell you I'm not speaking over the phone with my mother and haven't been for weeks. So yeah, they're probably pretty different relationships. My mother is a control freak with no sense of boundaries, though. Somehow, this doesn't seem to fit what you've described in your parenting! ^-^

 

[intothelight]

The title of this thread caught my attention. Jellymint, your description of putting on "normal" and the fact that is doesn't really "fit" and is "exhausting" is something that I totally related to.

For myself, the past few weeks I have decided to throw away my perception of "normal" and learn to be just myself. I have always felt that I was living a lie, and I am just too tired to do that any more.

With complex trauma, we have a feeling of not have a core; but if we keep living and trying to adapt to the expectations of others, we may never find ourselves. I am just refusing to not be anything other than who I am. I am still in the process of discovery and I am sure it will change over time. But there is this huge need to live life as myself and on my own terms. To do anything else feels like death.

So I am taking off "normal" and living.

 

[Reclusive]

I'm working on the same thing as intothelight. There was a time when I didn't care what people thought of me or if I seemed strange or scary or whatever and I got a long fine. And believe me, I was weird. So I keep trying to remind myself of that - that it was safe once and it can be again. I'm tired of the mask. I was to shatter it into a millions pieces. I want to be ME - and I want people to like me or dislike me for who I am, not how great an actor I can be. And if they have a problem with me, that's THEIR problem.

It's not easy, but I feel that this is the healthiest way for me to deal with 'normal'.

In fact, one of my medications makes me really weak and I've given up hiding it. When I go to the grocery, I ask the bagger to help me put my groceries on the treadmill thing and I take advantage of the carry out service. Sure I look fine and able, but I'm not, so let them think what they want so long as I get to take my groceries home.

 

[Spero3]

Jellymint,

In reading your post, I was struck with what a unique perspective you have on situations. You see events in ways that most people cannot. I see this as a plus...not a negative. I understand that putting on "normal" is very hard. We all do it, but people with PTSD or other problems have to do it to a high degree. I usually feel abnormal, but I have learned that often I am less "abnormal" than most people, because I am so attuned to my issues. I have a saying: "Everyone is crazy. It's the people who don't know they are that are dangerous." :)

My comments are probably not very helpful, but I wanted to point out to you that you have a gift so to speak.

Spero

 

[LaurenRose]

MissAntiSunshine. That must be really challenging. I am sorry for what you are going through.

For myself, the past few weeks I have decided to throw away my perception of "normal" and learn to be just myself. I have always felt that I was living a lie, and I am just too tired to do that any more.
But there is this huge need to live life as myself and on my own terms. To do anything else feels like death.

I'm tired of the mask. I was to shatter it into a millions pieces. I want to be ME - and I want people to like me or dislike me for who I am, not how great an actor I can be. And if they have a problem with me, that's THEIR problem.

One of the things I am trying to embrace is who I am today and how/why I operate today and not look to yesterday and to take it forward to the future. I am not sure how to do this but in defense to my own self regarding my own recovery, I keep giving it a damned good try. It seems like I am still in the process of stepping into my true reality but it is the one that is the right "fit" if that makes any sense. And I agree with intothelight, to try to keep living my life as I knew it IS death. Oh how I am struggling though.

Actors. I acted so good that I fooled my own self. Now that I am learning more about the nature of PTSD, especially reading so many similar experiences in here, I am amazed at how well I did. I was thinking about this a lot yesterday. It's kind of like if I was visiting a brand new culture, one that had never seen another civilization, and immediately conforming to their life. Eat like they do, speak like they do, dress like they do, adopt their mannerisms and belief systems. Soon I will think that I am actually one of them and can proclaim to myself, "I am (insert name of culture)" and believe it with everything that I am. Fact is, I was not born one of them and will always have that going on inside of me. Today I am striving to be who I am, inside at my core, and live in harmony with the world around me. Really, when I think about it, we are each building our own realities and therefore it would make some sense that we all have a little bit of that "visitor" going on. *Frowns*... not sure how I feel about that now that I read it, the "everyone" bit... hmmmm.

 

[Kintsugi]

.With complex trauma, we have a feeling of not have a core; but if we keep living and trying to adapt to the expectations of others, we may never find ourselves. I am just refusing to not be anything other than who I am. I am still in the process of discovery and I am sure it will change over time. But there is this huge need to live life as myself and on my own terms. To do anything else feels like death.

So I am taking off "normal" and living.

I am doing this right now, too! You go ITL.

 

[missd84]

I often feel like it's such a chore to be normal. I am always trying to pretend I'm okay, that nothing is wrong, that I actually slept well, etc. I also tend to have to really watch my reactions to everyday life. I'm always on edge and sure I'm a lot to handle, but I'm doing everything I can. Always thinking how to keep acting like you've got it all together is very fatiguing but I almost feel like it's necessary because no one understands. I've been disappointed by even friends now because they have "tolerated" me. Anyone else have that experience?