You Know You Have PTSD When...

[Friday]

Zero to almost no patience for hyperbole // your trauma being used as a metaphor. <casts eyes skyward>

 

[Sideways]

your trauma being used as a metaphor.

Or the plot of a horror film. Zero tolerance, and a very cynical, "I don't think a person would respond like that".

 

[Freddyt]

You go to celebrate with family (or in-laws) and you sit at the dinner table like Charley McCarthy (Without Edgar Bergen) and can't respond to much more than pass the butter.

 

[LuckiLee]

When the misses can't use your car for grocery shopping because the trunk is full of survival gear.

 

[Friday]

….because the trunk is full of survival gear.

That’s what trunks are for.

 

[PlainJane]

^I get made fun of for this ^

 

[Friday]

You keep getting distracted into moments of sanity.

 

[MnM]

- When the walk in doc tells you your sinus infection and bronchitis are "a simple nerve headache," and all I need "is a head massage" because you're cracking jokes and calling covid a bitch and asking her if she's still sane.

Next time I'll just cry? Scream? Moan and bitch?

- When those things are next to impossible, self-demeaning, and you perceive those behaviors with extreme pain to be immature, unnecessary, and ridiculous...

 

[StarAnise]

...You wake up in the morning 'punching yourself in the head'.

By this I mean regularly waking up with my fist against my temple, whole body tense, as if I'm on the weirdest 'pause' at 'the land of my fist against my head'.... Fist is applying pressure to my head at these times by the way.

I am not exaggerating to joke...

It was not good when I had a neck injury from a car accident mid-symptomatic PTSD. (The car accident was not my fault!) I couldn't believe it. Over and over I told my Doctor and Physiotherapist that I was 'tensing in my sleep' and it was making my injuries worse but I couldn't bring myself to tell them with any detail! (The head punch is just one of these moments...)

It says it all, really!

 

[StarAnise]

I've got loads. I'll come back another day but tonight's second addition is: You know you have PTSD when two of your trauma therapist colleagues ask you "How do you know that?" (at different times across two years) for it to then happen again with a different colleague in a totally different mental health service at the other end of the country...

... and you just pretend it's come directly from a supervisor in your previous job who was another trauma therapist, where you just happened to quiz them on the subject as part of 'a future career interest' just because 'it's an interesting area.' (I am not a trauma therapist.)

 

[Freddyt]

You save lots on groceries by going shopping when you are stressed and the sight of food makes you feel queasy.....

 

[StarAnise]

On arriving home, your partner spontaneously 'plays hypervigilance' with you in the form of competing with your situational awareness just to find out 'who noticed what and how much' in an 'IC1 male' description.