Supporter What Is Your Image Of What Ptsd Looks Like, From An Artistic Perspective?

[Rie]

I'm trying to visualize this thing called PTSD that has suddenly reappeared in my home. I always knew my husband had PTSD, but we now know he managed to bury it very deep. For some reason, Nelson Mandela's death last December triggered it's reappearance. Right now I'm finding it helpful to me, at least, to try to attach a visual image to this PTSD. I'm thinking that this PTSD has been here in my home as long as my husband has (I bought the house 7 years before I met him). It is an invisible, amorphous blob that has been here, just sort of floating around, maybe even sitting on his shoulder, for the past 13 years. In December it started to engulf him.
Does anyone else have an image that they find helpful?

 

[franciemarnie]

Interesting idea!

I've always seen PTSD as something like a jammed lever. It gets unpredictably stuck on Emergency!! The danger buttons are pressed so sirens are going off and it can't detect that it's safe now. False alarm. The circuits are blown. Something like that.

I'll have to give it more thought.

 

[WillyKat]

My first thought was a pile of crap with broken shards of glass in it, but since I like francimarnie's take on it better, let's just add some bird crap to the emergency lever.

Good thread.

 

[Powder]

I feel like I swallowed a tazer that was shoved down my throat. When triggered, it feels like I'm in an electric chair, but the torture is coming from the inside of me somehow. Sometimes, it's subtle (and I can hide that pretty well) and other times, it literally causes me to get sick or pass out.

So I see it as either a tazer or the phazers from the old Star Trek, set to "stun," as Kirk would say.

 

[Never Give Up]

I picture P.T.S.D. as an apple. It still looks like an apple on the outside but the inside is filled with sand and is no longer nutritious.
-or-
A row of colored crayons in order by shade...take the crayons place them in a box and shake them up and expect them to still be in order. (when it comes to communication and interaction)

 

[Survivor2Thriver]

~Love me some Nelson Mandela! Why do you believe that set him off?

 

[Echo]

I see it (me) as a slowly and forcefully erupting volcano. The top of my head is the wobbly, bubbling caldera, over which I'm trying to force an ill-fitting lid so that it doesn't fully erupt and self-destruct like Krakatoa. Any eruption sends shock waves, like a bomb slowly or not so slowly going off, through my family. I've felt like this from day one; the trauma energy is so powerful inside me and rises like waves of flame.

 

[intothelight]

Hi Rie,

Welcome to the forum!

Interesting idea to visualize PTSD and since I am not very artistic, this post made me stop and think. To me it is like cancer that spreads throughout a person's mind and body, and what we do in recovery beats it back into remission. But it is always there "somewhere" and it can come back and spread if we don't take the steps necessary to keep it in remission.

Don't forget to take a look at the Supporters section as there is a lot of great information.

Debbie

 

[CVC]

I made a sculpture once, a head. The face is smooth, expressionless, hard and numb. Except the eyes, which are hollow and lit from within; broken glass glints through in piercing, bright colors. The skull is cracking open, pieces missing here and there, and if you peer inside, you can see the brain cavity is filled up with broken glass. Sharp, dangerous, broken, concealed.

 

[The Albatross]

This was my avatar here for a long time, it represented me and PTSD:

Link Removed

Note I didn't upload it because I don't own it. I think linking to it though is okay (?) I connected with that image for a good long time and on various levels. The only thing that was missing basically was the body scars.

 

[Rie]

~Love me some Nelson Mandela! Why do you believe that set him off?

It's because he lived in Kenya from about age 5 to 14 when his Dad worked there, and he has always admired what Mandela has done, and how he turned his life around.

 

[Rie]

This was my avatar here for a long time, it represented me and PTSD:

Link Removed

Note I didn't upload it because I don't own it. I think linking to it though is okay (?) I connected with that image for a good long time and on various levels. The only thing that was missing basically was the body scars.

Fascinating avatar. It's like your brain is imploding, but on the outside. I like your new avatar better though, - very hopeful and peaceful.

The picture I chose for my avatar, of me paddle boarding on a lake near us, is a photo my husband took at dawn a couple of years back. I always find dawn the most hopeful time of day, and I made sure the picture I picked had me actually putting my paddle into the water, because I know this supporter role, this roller coaster ride I am on now, requires me working at it too. I've got to hold on, and find ways of surviving this ride.