This barely scratches the surface. But I had to express it somehow. You guys might relate, if not, please feel free to express what this torturous, horrific disorder feels like for you.
PTSD to me, feels like taking a bad trip. It alters your reality, distorts your senses and changes your memories. You physically feel unexplainable, strange, worrying bodily sensations, aches and pains. Your mind shows you terrifying images of some kind of horror movie, or entering a war zone, starring all of your family members and friends or just imaginative roles of the worst kind of slaughter and horror known to man kind. Or, you envision some kind of newly near death experience about to be put upon you and you are always the audience to it and still manage to once again survive that mind-trauma. You can't seem to hide, turn it off, change the channel, flee, escape, run away from. . .you are forced to watch it, feel it in every cell, nerve and fibre of your being.
You become this observer, realising you were never in control of yourself or your life in the first place, you begin to question your sanity, your worth, your value, who you are! The answers and the realisations begin to scare the hell out of you.
You get more petrified as you start to watch, what you thought was you, your identity, everything about you, is now dying. You become too numb to cry or even get sad about the inner death of you. Somehow, you no longer seem to care. You go through the stages of grief in one day. . .from shock, denial, bargaining, depression. . .but never reaching acceptance.
You become your own witness to this machine that belongs to you. That you call your body and mind. It starts to malfunction and destroy itself and there is absolutely f*ck all you can do about it. Air is being sucked out of your lungs like some kind of vacuum, like something out of the Total Recall film - when people are losing air. The body mimics life threatening symptoms and you just have to watch and wait until it passes.
The mind exhausts itself as it continues to work on this circulating loop of possible logic, rational problem-solving, trying to fix, analyse it's way out of this hell, resulting into it's only possible outcome, ensuing with the only solution it feels it can find; to end itself in suicide. Then the battles commences as the mind argues with itself that there has to be hope. . .hang on to hope. The mind convinces itself " Things will get better, they have to get better, nothing lasts forever. . ." but it also convinces itself " Abort! Abort! Alert!. . . Danger! Danger ahead! Detecting oncoming threats, right, left and centre!"
It completely bypasses all normal brain function. You no longer operate with a rational mind anymore, you only learn how to react and react f*cking quick. Quickly act out your reaction, take action and f*ck all consequences. There is no time to even think rational in the fight/flight mode. It's an impossibility. Your radar awareness is high on alert and you have to be quick to act, regardless of whether it's a real perceived threat or not!
The instability of all the mind games becomes mental torture.
The trip continues for days, months even years as you enter into more psychosis and chronic pain.
You never seem to understand how the hell you managed to survive the trauma in the first place. It's now the recovery, the flashbacks, the re-living, the re-experiencing that is now slowly killing you from the core. Getting you questioning your own sanity. Only re-traumatizing you more. The world becomes a darker, shady, incomprehensible, twisted and more warped place to live in. The thing is though, you are no longer living, you are merely existing. Just this entity with overwhelming negative energy constantly running through, in and out of you.
Only left with your reptilian brain that is now working overtime on constant survival mode. You may as well bring back the dinosaurs, I would probably outlive and survive them all!
And people tell you to just ride it out, breathe through the 'bad trip'! Little do they realise that the bad trip has now got you proper overdosing on adrenaline. Gushing into your system, completely over flowing and you feel yourself drowning in it. And all you can do is beg and plead for it to be over.
There is nothing else you can do. There is no other alternative. Doesn't matter how many pills you take, exercise, eat right, rest well, sleep at decent hours, look after yourself, have boundaries, treat yourself kindly with compassion, how much therapy you go to, CBT you cover, seeking out your supporter or carer, or employing coping mechanisms and strategies or even grounding techniques and breathing exercises. . .I still have to go through this so many f*cking times. I still have to face it. I still have to ride out this bad f*cking trip. This hell of a trip. No matter what. Then this cycle hits repeat once more and the patterns continue over and over until the will to live is lost and I have to struggle to find it again, or believe I had it within my reach in the first place! It becomes so unbearable, so exhausting and so demanding.
If people did experience this 'bad trip' through drugs. They would never touch the drug again. For them, they would awaken in relief from their nightmare.
But, see for me? I wake up in this nightmare! Every. Single. Day.
PTSD to me, feels like taking a bad trip. It alters your reality, distorts your senses and changes your memories. You physically feel unexplainable, strange, worrying bodily sensations, aches and pains. Your mind shows you terrifying images of some kind of horror movie, or entering a war zone, starring all of your family members and friends or just imaginative roles of the worst kind of slaughter and horror known to man kind. Or, you envision some kind of newly near death experience about to be put upon you and you are always the audience to it and still manage to once again survive that mind-trauma. You can't seem to hide, turn it off, change the channel, flee, escape, run away from. . .you are forced to watch it, feel it in every cell, nerve and fibre of your being.
You become this observer, realising you were never in control of yourself or your life in the first place, you begin to question your sanity, your worth, your value, who you are! The answers and the realisations begin to scare the hell out of you.
You get more petrified as you start to watch, what you thought was you, your identity, everything about you, is now dying. You become too numb to cry or even get sad about the inner death of you. Somehow, you no longer seem to care. You go through the stages of grief in one day. . .from shock, denial, bargaining, depression. . .but never reaching acceptance.
You become your own witness to this machine that belongs to you. That you call your body and mind. It starts to malfunction and destroy itself and there is absolutely f*ck all you can do about it. Air is being sucked out of your lungs like some kind of vacuum, like something out of the Total Recall film - when people are losing air. The body mimics life threatening symptoms and you just have to watch and wait until it passes.
The mind exhausts itself as it continues to work on this circulating loop of possible logic, rational problem-solving, trying to fix, analyse it's way out of this hell, resulting into it's only possible outcome, ensuing with the only solution it feels it can find; to end itself in suicide. Then the battles commences as the mind argues with itself that there has to be hope. . .hang on to hope. The mind convinces itself " Things will get better, they have to get better, nothing lasts forever. . ." but it also convinces itself " Abort! Abort! Alert!. . . Danger! Danger ahead! Detecting oncoming threats, right, left and centre!"
It completely bypasses all normal brain function. You no longer operate with a rational mind anymore, you only learn how to react and react f*cking quick. Quickly act out your reaction, take action and f*ck all consequences. There is no time to even think rational in the fight/flight mode. It's an impossibility. Your radar awareness is high on alert and you have to be quick to act, regardless of whether it's a real perceived threat or not!
The instability of all the mind games becomes mental torture.
The trip continues for days, months even years as you enter into more psychosis and chronic pain.
You never seem to understand how the hell you managed to survive the trauma in the first place. It's now the recovery, the flashbacks, the re-living, the re-experiencing that is now slowly killing you from the core. Getting you questioning your own sanity. Only re-traumatizing you more. The world becomes a darker, shady, incomprehensible, twisted and more warped place to live in. The thing is though, you are no longer living, you are merely existing. Just this entity with overwhelming negative energy constantly running through, in and out of you.
Only left with your reptilian brain that is now working overtime on constant survival mode. You may as well bring back the dinosaurs, I would probably outlive and survive them all!
And people tell you to just ride it out, breathe through the 'bad trip'! Little do they realise that the bad trip has now got you proper overdosing on adrenaline. Gushing into your system, completely over flowing and you feel yourself drowning in it. And all you can do is beg and plead for it to be over.
There is nothing else you can do. There is no other alternative. Doesn't matter how many pills you take, exercise, eat right, rest well, sleep at decent hours, look after yourself, have boundaries, treat yourself kindly with compassion, how much therapy you go to, CBT you cover, seeking out your supporter or carer, or employing coping mechanisms and strategies or even grounding techniques and breathing exercises. . .I still have to go through this so many f*cking times. I still have to face it. I still have to ride out this bad f*cking trip. This hell of a trip. No matter what. Then this cycle hits repeat once more and the patterns continue over and over until the will to live is lost and I have to struggle to find it again, or believe I had it within my reach in the first place! It becomes so unbearable, so exhausting and so demanding.
If people did experience this 'bad trip' through drugs. They would never touch the drug again. For them, they would awaken in relief from their nightmare.
But, see for me? I wake up in this nightmare! Every. Single. Day.
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