A long one and a bit complex.
When I was 18, just after I had finished high school I was seriously ill with meningitis. I was in hospital for a month and was in a coma for 2 weeks. I don’t remember much of being in hospital at all; I am not sure whether that is due to repressed memories or to painkillers and the nature of the illness.
I made a full physical recovery and left the hospital completely in shock, in a very celebratory mood. I actually said “All’s well that ends well.” And we had a few parties and dinners and so on to celebrate me getting out of hospital and getting the all clear. Everyone was around for that. After a month or two’s recuperation I began a part-time role as an usher at a cinema where I began to feel something kind of wasn’t right.
I went on to get my first full-time job; a good administrative position at the government department which regulates planning applications. I began to have real trouble; feeling like I was in an incredibly dense fog. I had to run to the ladies throughout the day because I started crying at my desk. Things just began to fall apart so fast it was terrifying. And because it was my first job, in a huge department and I was so young, I felt so incapable.
And all my friends left for university and I was left at home. During my time at that job I had been getting these very strange ‘turns’ which I initially called ‘flashbacks’. I asked my doctor about them and was so frightened that he would tell me that something had gone wrong after having been so ill.
He told me that they were anxiety attacks.
When my contract finished I was so depressed I stayed in bed for about 2 weeks. It was terrifying. To not have a reason to carry on at all. Just horrendous.
I felt it was too much to return to work just then and went to college to do some courses. After that I applied to university and did my degree part-time.
Just before I started my college courses I put my hands through the glass in my front door. I was so unbelievably angry I slammed the door so hard. It was single pane glass and my hands went right through it.
There was blood everywhere and I saw something white in my arm. I was terrified it was my bone. My mother had just crossed the street with the dog. I managed to call her back in time and we drove to the hospital.
So, almost exactly a year later I ended up in hospital again.
Waiting in A & E was horrible, wondering what the damage would be and if I would be able to use my hand again and if I would still be able to play the piano. I was sat in front of the TV there and they had the BBC News channel on it. There was a story involving a car crash on there with people in high-visibility coats swarming round. (For the record; I had over a year of hand therapy and taught myself to play again. I can’t play as easily as I did before but I have worked hard and can still play Maple Leaf Rag. One of my proudest achievements :))
All the while the ‘anxiety attacks’ got worse and worse. They were absolutely terrifying. I couldn’t describe them. Once I collapsed on the university bus and paramedics were called out. I only vaguely remember this.
They were so terrifying that I would physically shake with fear and anxiety during the day, waiting for the next one. I could hardly eat. I couldn’t swallow my food. One thing which helped so much was my mother. She was incredible. She can be very dominating, but in a crisis she is amazing. And during that whole time she was incredible. But it was so humiliating. I lost all autonomy. And I hardly even noticed. When you are that frightened, these things are not even a consideration. Sometimes I even slept in her bed I was so terrified.
She took me to a charity which supports survivors of meningitis for counselling and support. I found the atmosphere there very victimising. My experience of working with the counsellor there was of being very patronised and not being listened to. It was very short-term work and I found this very abandoning. Shortly after being in hospital I had been told how there was one night where I could have easily lost limbs, been brain damaged or died. It was horrible to be in that situation faced with all these things which I had not processed at all in an environment which I found so patronising, victimising and abandoning.
As the ‘panic attacks’ continued, the charity funded weekly massage treatments for relaxation which helped but did not resolve the issue. I felt so incredibly ashamed that I was causing the attacks, that they were taking over my WHOLE life and that I was not trying hard enough to get past them.
This was compounded so much by the fact that I went for CBT a couple of years later. I found CBT very calming, because it is so logical, but deeply shaming. It made me feel so incredibly guilty that I was not trying hard enough to move past all my issues and I was just avoiding everything.
A huge element of the ‘panic attacks’ themselves was an enormous wave of white-hot shame crashing over me with regards to whatever I was doing at the time. It is so hard to describe, but absolutely brutal and so terrifying. And EVERYTHING I did revolved around it. Choosing the wrong mug could cause an ‘attack’. I lived behind glass for so long, so removed from the world.
Having an attack was like having the most brutal, cruel, shaming voice inside my head deriding everything I was doing and everything I was. And it was so awful because there was nowhere to hide as it knew everything I had ever thought or did. And it always told me that I was having the 'attacks' because I knew what it was telling me was true, and that I was just too weak to face the truth.
And all my friends had gone to university, whilst I was terrified to leave the house.
I did go to university. But I lived at home with my parents, and I went part-time as a mature student. It was horrible being at university. I was such an outcast. I just came in for lectures and seminars and left. The other mature students were pretty cool, but other than that it was awful. It was such a painful way of rubbing in everything that I had missed out on and would never have.
And it was so cruel because while all those other students undoubtedly had their problems; they could leave the house, were not shaking with fear and were not completely psychologically and emotionally reliant on their mother in their 20s.
In about 2012, I suffered some kind of burn to my leg as the result of a ‘panic attack’. After some consultations and scans it was concluded that I have complex partial epilepsy and I was prescribed medication.
I was so terrified waiting in that neurologists office. Petrified to hear the results in case they didn’t know what was causing it all.
The medication has been INCREDIBLE. I am a TOTALLY different person. I get seizures occasionally but their frequency and strength are incomparable. I have started dance classes and have done a couple of shows; which was just UNTHINKABLE before. I have started amateur filmmaking and have written, produced and cast my own short film which is being edited at the moment.
Although, last year I burnt my neck with the hairdryer during a seizure. I didn’t realise how that has affected me; I have anxiety around my face as it was close to it. I am still an outpatient at the neurologist seeing which combination and dosage of medication works best for me.
I have been in counselling for about 2 years and it is going well. I am trying to untangle a lot of painful childhood issues with all of this too. I grew up feeling like there was something ‘wrong’ with me and the message I got from a lot of my caregivers was “I’m big and you’re little and I’m right and you’re wrong.” (Yes, I brought that clip from Matilda in for my T. on my tablet haha – spot on!). And a big feature of my childhood was not being listened to and being invalidated so talking about a lot of childhood stuff has been really great.
Of course all this is a huge amount to process now. I think what I am having trouble with is validation. My maternal grandfather was a Polish immigrant who was in a POW camp in WWII so I grew up with the subtle attitude of ‘You have nothing to moan about.’
I have had a few episodes of disassociation and emotional numbing, but I definitely notice that ‘nothing’ will be enough to validate my experience as trauma. I feel as if I have not been noticed. All my friends just dropped off after they went to university. There are a few I am close to but the rest just fell away. And how the f*ck do you talk to people about this without sounding like a total dickend? Because I feel so raw I feel like all I will hear is “You haven’t been to war or been assaulted or raped. PTSD? What the f*ck are you talking about?”
My T. says she definitely thinks that is what is going on. I have been having some dreams about The Planning Inspectorate and people with no hands and being in hospital and stuff since beginning to discuss this stuff in depth in counselling and find myself so f*cking angry over the most random shit.
And I have no tolerance for anything that goes wrong with the body at all. I go to pieces when I have a bad cold.
I think what's tough for me is to see how limited we all are as humans. How fragile we all are and I guess I feel like my dignity and integrity have been irrevocably compromised because I just had to do whatever I needed to to survive those 8 years.
I remember how I used to think that if my mother died I would have to kill myself. Because I just could not handle things on my own. And that was a horrendous thought to have in your 20s. And to hardly notice too.
And it is getting really hard not to self-harm. I was going through a period where I was sticking metal nail files into my arms and legs, almost without noticing. But I decided that it will REALLY not help, and to go the gym and run on the treadmill until I cannot see or breathe instead (naturally, with a killer playlist) but it is really tough sometimes.
What is really difficult though is I am stuck in limbo; I really want to get out to work but I am so terrified because that is where it all hit me and I felt SO incapable at The Planning Inspectorate. I keep falling asleep when anything work-related comes up and I couldn’t understand what was happening; but it is me trying to hammer through the brick wall of all this trauma and exhausting myself.
I have done a lot of work since graduating, but it has all been part-time and no pressure. I did well at all those positions. Around the time I burnt my neck I got my benefit (social security) taken away and that had a big effect on me too. So now finding work feels incredibly pressurised. I am living with my parents so having it taken away was not life-threatening; but incredibly humiliating. (It has since been reinstated with backpay).
I don’t want to be at home, reliant etc. But going out to work seems like such an INCREDIBLY daunting task. And then I just feel incredibly ashamed, that it is all my fault, that I have not been trying hard enough, I have been too lazy, too happy to sit around doing nothing and it feels even more daunting. Like I am actually not “good enough” to go out to work. And of course that is what makes me want to hurt myself and it is a vicious circle. And, perhaps it is not surprising because I have been made to feel so helpless for so long.
And it is ridiculous because I look at my CV and it looks awesome (I have had a lot of part-time work and a lot of work experience since graduating) and I am doing a lot; I volunteer as a marketing officer, I do a lot of networking events and short and amateur film work.
I just have this feeling that I cannot manage work, that EVERYTHING will fall apart, that life will NEVER be the same and that I do not belong in the workplace; that I am not good enough to be there because I am a fraud.
And it is so much worse because I feel like I have already lost so much time and I don’t want to lose anymore. And, just like at The Planning Inspectorate, all my friends are at work, keeping it together and are totally capable. And then I feel so ashamed.
So being here I hope that getting that understanding will help to cultivate that compassion through validation. And I am sure that will help things so much.
Then I won't have to beat myself over the head and feel like it's all my fault and I'm totally incapable. I think it will really help me to put things in perspective. Because I don't know how to talk about this stuff. There just aren't words for it. And people just look at you like you're f*cking crazy and the silence is deafening.
Thanks for reading everyone. xx
NB I've put 'Sufferer' because my T. has said it's PTSD, my Dr. has said I am exhibiting a lot of the symptoms of it and my practice nurse (who fills in for the Dr. when he's away) has agreed with my T. but I have not been given an official diagnosis by a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist.
When I was 18, just after I had finished high school I was seriously ill with meningitis. I was in hospital for a month and was in a coma for 2 weeks. I don’t remember much of being in hospital at all; I am not sure whether that is due to repressed memories or to painkillers and the nature of the illness.
I made a full physical recovery and left the hospital completely in shock, in a very celebratory mood. I actually said “All’s well that ends well.” And we had a few parties and dinners and so on to celebrate me getting out of hospital and getting the all clear. Everyone was around for that. After a month or two’s recuperation I began a part-time role as an usher at a cinema where I began to feel something kind of wasn’t right.
I went on to get my first full-time job; a good administrative position at the government department which regulates planning applications. I began to have real trouble; feeling like I was in an incredibly dense fog. I had to run to the ladies throughout the day because I started crying at my desk. Things just began to fall apart so fast it was terrifying. And because it was my first job, in a huge department and I was so young, I felt so incapable.
And all my friends left for university and I was left at home. During my time at that job I had been getting these very strange ‘turns’ which I initially called ‘flashbacks’. I asked my doctor about them and was so frightened that he would tell me that something had gone wrong after having been so ill.
He told me that they were anxiety attacks.
When my contract finished I was so depressed I stayed in bed for about 2 weeks. It was terrifying. To not have a reason to carry on at all. Just horrendous.
I felt it was too much to return to work just then and went to college to do some courses. After that I applied to university and did my degree part-time.
Just before I started my college courses I put my hands through the glass in my front door. I was so unbelievably angry I slammed the door so hard. It was single pane glass and my hands went right through it.
There was blood everywhere and I saw something white in my arm. I was terrified it was my bone. My mother had just crossed the street with the dog. I managed to call her back in time and we drove to the hospital.
So, almost exactly a year later I ended up in hospital again.
Waiting in A & E was horrible, wondering what the damage would be and if I would be able to use my hand again and if I would still be able to play the piano. I was sat in front of the TV there and they had the BBC News channel on it. There was a story involving a car crash on there with people in high-visibility coats swarming round. (For the record; I had over a year of hand therapy and taught myself to play again. I can’t play as easily as I did before but I have worked hard and can still play Maple Leaf Rag. One of my proudest achievements :))
All the while the ‘anxiety attacks’ got worse and worse. They were absolutely terrifying. I couldn’t describe them. Once I collapsed on the university bus and paramedics were called out. I only vaguely remember this.
They were so terrifying that I would physically shake with fear and anxiety during the day, waiting for the next one. I could hardly eat. I couldn’t swallow my food. One thing which helped so much was my mother. She was incredible. She can be very dominating, but in a crisis she is amazing. And during that whole time she was incredible. But it was so humiliating. I lost all autonomy. And I hardly even noticed. When you are that frightened, these things are not even a consideration. Sometimes I even slept in her bed I was so terrified.
She took me to a charity which supports survivors of meningitis for counselling and support. I found the atmosphere there very victimising. My experience of working with the counsellor there was of being very patronised and not being listened to. It was very short-term work and I found this very abandoning. Shortly after being in hospital I had been told how there was one night where I could have easily lost limbs, been brain damaged or died. It was horrible to be in that situation faced with all these things which I had not processed at all in an environment which I found so patronising, victimising and abandoning.
As the ‘panic attacks’ continued, the charity funded weekly massage treatments for relaxation which helped but did not resolve the issue. I felt so incredibly ashamed that I was causing the attacks, that they were taking over my WHOLE life and that I was not trying hard enough to get past them.
This was compounded so much by the fact that I went for CBT a couple of years later. I found CBT very calming, because it is so logical, but deeply shaming. It made me feel so incredibly guilty that I was not trying hard enough to move past all my issues and I was just avoiding everything.
A huge element of the ‘panic attacks’ themselves was an enormous wave of white-hot shame crashing over me with regards to whatever I was doing at the time. It is so hard to describe, but absolutely brutal and so terrifying. And EVERYTHING I did revolved around it. Choosing the wrong mug could cause an ‘attack’. I lived behind glass for so long, so removed from the world.
Having an attack was like having the most brutal, cruel, shaming voice inside my head deriding everything I was doing and everything I was. And it was so awful because there was nowhere to hide as it knew everything I had ever thought or did. And it always told me that I was having the 'attacks' because I knew what it was telling me was true, and that I was just too weak to face the truth.
And all my friends had gone to university, whilst I was terrified to leave the house.
I did go to university. But I lived at home with my parents, and I went part-time as a mature student. It was horrible being at university. I was such an outcast. I just came in for lectures and seminars and left. The other mature students were pretty cool, but other than that it was awful. It was such a painful way of rubbing in everything that I had missed out on and would never have.
And it was so cruel because while all those other students undoubtedly had their problems; they could leave the house, were not shaking with fear and were not completely psychologically and emotionally reliant on their mother in their 20s.
In about 2012, I suffered some kind of burn to my leg as the result of a ‘panic attack’. After some consultations and scans it was concluded that I have complex partial epilepsy and I was prescribed medication.
I was so terrified waiting in that neurologists office. Petrified to hear the results in case they didn’t know what was causing it all.
The medication has been INCREDIBLE. I am a TOTALLY different person. I get seizures occasionally but their frequency and strength are incomparable. I have started dance classes and have done a couple of shows; which was just UNTHINKABLE before. I have started amateur filmmaking and have written, produced and cast my own short film which is being edited at the moment.
Although, last year I burnt my neck with the hairdryer during a seizure. I didn’t realise how that has affected me; I have anxiety around my face as it was close to it. I am still an outpatient at the neurologist seeing which combination and dosage of medication works best for me.
I have been in counselling for about 2 years and it is going well. I am trying to untangle a lot of painful childhood issues with all of this too. I grew up feeling like there was something ‘wrong’ with me and the message I got from a lot of my caregivers was “I’m big and you’re little and I’m right and you’re wrong.” (Yes, I brought that clip from Matilda in for my T. on my tablet haha – spot on!). And a big feature of my childhood was not being listened to and being invalidated so talking about a lot of childhood stuff has been really great.
Of course all this is a huge amount to process now. I think what I am having trouble with is validation. My maternal grandfather was a Polish immigrant who was in a POW camp in WWII so I grew up with the subtle attitude of ‘You have nothing to moan about.’
I have had a few episodes of disassociation and emotional numbing, but I definitely notice that ‘nothing’ will be enough to validate my experience as trauma. I feel as if I have not been noticed. All my friends just dropped off after they went to university. There are a few I am close to but the rest just fell away. And how the f*ck do you talk to people about this without sounding like a total dickend? Because I feel so raw I feel like all I will hear is “You haven’t been to war or been assaulted or raped. PTSD? What the f*ck are you talking about?”
My T. says she definitely thinks that is what is going on. I have been having some dreams about The Planning Inspectorate and people with no hands and being in hospital and stuff since beginning to discuss this stuff in depth in counselling and find myself so f*cking angry over the most random shit.
And I have no tolerance for anything that goes wrong with the body at all. I go to pieces when I have a bad cold.
I think what's tough for me is to see how limited we all are as humans. How fragile we all are and I guess I feel like my dignity and integrity have been irrevocably compromised because I just had to do whatever I needed to to survive those 8 years.
I remember how I used to think that if my mother died I would have to kill myself. Because I just could not handle things on my own. And that was a horrendous thought to have in your 20s. And to hardly notice too.
And it is getting really hard not to self-harm. I was going through a period where I was sticking metal nail files into my arms and legs, almost without noticing. But I decided that it will REALLY not help, and to go the gym and run on the treadmill until I cannot see or breathe instead (naturally, with a killer playlist) but it is really tough sometimes.
What is really difficult though is I am stuck in limbo; I really want to get out to work but I am so terrified because that is where it all hit me and I felt SO incapable at The Planning Inspectorate. I keep falling asleep when anything work-related comes up and I couldn’t understand what was happening; but it is me trying to hammer through the brick wall of all this trauma and exhausting myself.
I have done a lot of work since graduating, but it has all been part-time and no pressure. I did well at all those positions. Around the time I burnt my neck I got my benefit (social security) taken away and that had a big effect on me too. So now finding work feels incredibly pressurised. I am living with my parents so having it taken away was not life-threatening; but incredibly humiliating. (It has since been reinstated with backpay).
I don’t want to be at home, reliant etc. But going out to work seems like such an INCREDIBLY daunting task. And then I just feel incredibly ashamed, that it is all my fault, that I have not been trying hard enough, I have been too lazy, too happy to sit around doing nothing and it feels even more daunting. Like I am actually not “good enough” to go out to work. And of course that is what makes me want to hurt myself and it is a vicious circle. And, perhaps it is not surprising because I have been made to feel so helpless for so long.
And it is ridiculous because I look at my CV and it looks awesome (I have had a lot of part-time work and a lot of work experience since graduating) and I am doing a lot; I volunteer as a marketing officer, I do a lot of networking events and short and amateur film work.
I just have this feeling that I cannot manage work, that EVERYTHING will fall apart, that life will NEVER be the same and that I do not belong in the workplace; that I am not good enough to be there because I am a fraud.
And it is so much worse because I feel like I have already lost so much time and I don’t want to lose anymore. And, just like at The Planning Inspectorate, all my friends are at work, keeping it together and are totally capable. And then I feel so ashamed.
So being here I hope that getting that understanding will help to cultivate that compassion through validation. And I am sure that will help things so much.
Then I won't have to beat myself over the head and feel like it's all my fault and I'm totally incapable. I think it will really help me to put things in perspective. Because I don't know how to talk about this stuff. There just aren't words for it. And people just look at you like you're f*cking crazy and the silence is deafening.
Thanks for reading everyone. xx
NB I've put 'Sufferer' because my T. has said it's PTSD, my Dr. has said I am exhibiting a lot of the symptoms of it and my practice nurse (who fills in for the Dr. when he's away) has agreed with my T. but I have not been given an official diagnosis by a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist.
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