I think it’s finally time to write the PTSD blog.
I’ve had this blog at the back of my mind ever since I first launched this site in 2020, but it’s always felt too daunting.
Too big. Too vulnerable. Too scary. Too implicating for other people. Too real. Too honest.
But if living with PTSD for the last 7 years has taught me anything, it’s that this disorder and the circumstances leading to it are very much so characterized by the “too”s.
When too much happens to you, and your brain can no longer effectively process what has happened, trauma turns into post-traumatic stress disorder.
Because PTSD and triggers have been turned into nothing short of a cruel, ignorant joke in popular culture, let’s get nerdy with some definitions and criteria.
PTSD, as I generally understand it, is when your brain cannot effectively process the trauma you’ve experienced, keeping you stuck in a near-constant state of fight or flight.
PTSD turns your own brain against you, on top of the trauma you’ve already experienced, subjecting you to re-experiencing, avoidance, arousal/reactivity, and cognition/mood symptoms.
While PTSD is considered a mental illness, it impacts your brain, your body, your adrenaline system, your nervous system – basically, every aspect of your body and mind. All the time. Without stopping.
It can fundamentally alter the chemical and physical structure of your brain. It can keep your stress hormones at unsustainable, almost inhuman levels. And it can very much so change your entire life in a matter of minutes, or over the span of years.
This is called the PTSD blog and not the “extremely personal trauma dumping blog” for a reason – so if you’re here for some sob story you are in the wrong place.
I am a very, very strong believer that you do not need to tell others your trauma for your PTSD condition to be validated – because it isn’t the trauma itself, it’s how your brain processed it, and how you changed as a result.
If you can’t tell, based on the fact that my usually much funnier (if I may say so myself) tone is a little bit more aggressive and guarded than usual, this is not a fun or easy blog to write.
It is not a blog where my fingers fly to catch up to my brain as words come out without me trying. Every word, every sentence is, frankly, terrifying to write.
The stigma around mental illness is so potent – especially when it comes to the ‘scarier’ conditions. And PTSD is very much so one of those ‘scarier’ conditions – we all know the caricature of the world war veteran who hallucinates that he’s still in battle.
But somehow, when it comes to non-veterans with PTSD the hallucinations seem to be swept aside. And while I usually love not having to address the fact that I am having hallucinations (that do not pose a danger to myself or others), the point of this whole blogging thing is to raise awareness – as uncomfortable as that feels for me right now.
This was the section where I was supposed to write on the stigma around gender-based violence, but I couldn’t get the words to work right. You can probably fill in the blanks.
I’d like to think one day I’ll be able to speak on it, but right now we’re gonna have to tackle one (seemingly) impossible blog at a time.
And there you have it! The most serious opener I’ll hopefully ever have to write.
I’ll be real, this doesn’t feel like the blog you get to write jokes for – and it’s probably not one of the funnest articles to read. But if you’ve made it this far, it’s probably for a good reason – you might just be really committed to this whole allyship thing, or you know someone with PTSD, or you are experiencing it yourself.
So, we’ll get through this together, and we’ll (hopefully) come out better on the other side.
Heading I Don’t Have A Name For
While the traumatic event that led to me first developing PTSD occurred when I was 15, I didn’t realize I had PTSD until I was 17, skipping school to watch screaming and fainting goat videos in a psychotherapist’s office.
While the goat videos were frankly annoying and unhelpful, I got what I needed: I learned I had PTSD, and I finally had a name for the hell that had changed my life over the last two years.
(Safe to say, I did not go back to that psychotherapist. And I have not watched a screaming/fainting goat video since.)
See, for two years leading up to Goat Gate, as I now call it, I became a stranger to myself and those around me. While at the time I knew I went through something traumatic, I did not understand what was causing all the changes in my behaviour, relationships, and mental state.
I understood trauma as a one-time thing, something bad that happened that did not (usually) happen again.
The threat was gone, the trauma was over. So why was my brain acting like it wasn’t?
It’s difficult writing about this time in my life, because I genuinely have a hard time remembering it.
What I do remember is completely shutting down emotionally and mentally, leaning into dissociation to avoid coping with reality. I genuinely believed at the time it was better to feel nothing than to feel all the pain and frustration and confusion I was avoiding, and as a result I can’t really remember those two limbo years of my life.
These were also the years spent with my friend and my mentor, both who have since passed. There are rare, precious memories with them that I have lost forever, and will never get back.
For those who don’t have PTSD and have not seen how it affects someone up close, it takes. It takes everything you have, and everything you are – but those memories with the people I loved who are now no longer with us are the worst thing PTSD has ever taken from me.
Aside from the extreme dissociation and complete emotional shutdown, I remember that I gave up on making friends and withdrew from my family. I was, to be completely honest, miserable to be around. I was irritable, and snappy, and rude.
So, that was two years of my life.
Two years spent a stranger in my own body, in my own life. I felt like I was trapped inside myself, hardly ever consciously there, going through the motions but not feeling them. I could look in a mirror, see my face, and not really understand that that was me.
This is called depersonalization, and like dissociation, it erodes your sense of self and any sense of personal identity.
And then, Goat Gate.
I can’t remember why I decided to seek out professional help, or what flicked the switch in my head to finally make me admit that I had a serious issue.
But, Goat Gate happened nonetheless – and I began to finally understand what had happened in my brain, and what I needed to do to begin healing.
Recovery
Trying to crawl out of the mental hole I spent two years digging for myself was frankly embarrassing.
To come to terms with the way I acted towards others, the friendships I had thrown away, the people I had taken for granted was a reckoning that helped me understand just how serious PTSD was.
But by the time I began recovering, I started feeling guilty. Embarrassed. Weak.
At that time, I started to believe that the initial trauma was not PTSD-worthy, and that I had made this whole mess for nothing.
Dear reader, this was clearly bullshit – and clearly a guise to not address how the incident made me feel, to not cope with all the much more vulnerable emotions I was now, once again, capable of feeling.
I only learned about a year ago after finally getting through The Body Keeps the Score that the magnitude or severity of the trauma does have some impact on if PTSD will develop, but that PTSD largely develops because something in the brain (that of course we don’t quite understand just yet) could not process the trauma appropriately.
And I was finally able to start letting go of the shame I carried, because I genuinely believed my trauma wasn’t PTSD-worthy.
Now, not to romanticize recovery – but there was an undeniable beauty in it once you get past all the shame.
To have lost myself for two years, to have somehow found my way out of it, and to be able to reclaim the life I had left behind was such a meaningful time in my life.
For the first time in years, I was finally able to regain a sense of control. I regained my sense of self. I regained my life.
I started staring myself down in the mirror, and started to make an uneasy friend. Now, I look in the mirror and I know it’s me.
I started drumming on my collarbone to keep me grounded when I started to dissociate. Now, I am so present in the moment it’s hard to remember what dissociation feels like.
In fact, I don’t think I could even dissociate if I wanted to anymore!
And then, the pandemic hit. But somehow, I was fine – most of the triggers certainly went away.
While I could’ve used the time to work on relearning social skills and developing my friendships, I instead pivoted to do a lot of soul searching to make sure that, no matter what happened in the future – I would never lose myself again.
Carly Screams At A Man
And then reader, I had all this progress and recovery tested – but I passed with flying colours.
After being groped by a stranger at one of my local coffee shops, I didn’t freeze this time. I started cussing this grown man out.
I screamed some incredibly impressive profanities while he took off running. I think I actually (slightly) scared some bystanders with the things I was yelling.
And as strange as it is, I was so proud of myself.
But, as you know, PTSD is about how your brain reacts during and after a traumatic event – and I knew I needed to keep it together and stay present if I wasn’t gonna let PTSD get me again.
On the walk home (in tears, of course) I was clutching myself and muttering “my body” over, and over, and over. I looked crazy, but it sure was effective.
While I filed a police report and was directed to victim counselling services, I never actually heard from them and knew I was gonna be on my own for recovery.
While I was undeniably hypervigilant and borderline paranoid, I was present. I was aware. I was alive.
And I knew what I needed to keep being okay.
So, the next day I went back to that coffee shop, grabbed a coffee, and sat down. Not exactly where it happened, but just being back at that place the very next day was an act of reclamation.
I wasn’t going to lose my spot to some asshole – and I wasn’t going to let this place that I frequented become a reminder of something bad that had happened to me.
And now, I pass by that coffee shop without giving it much thought. Yes, sometimes I’m reminded of what happened.
But I don’t feel afraid – I feel proud of myself, and how I handled the situation.
Yet Another Header You Just Can’t Give A Catchy Name To
Reader, I hate to inform you that those two incidents were practically a warm up relative to the latest one.
Again, I won’t give details. But it’s important to understand that this incident was gradual and I didn’t realize what had happened to me until it was over – and that realization very much so broke something in me.
To have developed PTSD at 15, to have had it take two years from me, and to have slowly and painfully worked on becoming vulnerable with others only for it to backfire was unthinkable. And PTSD thrives where trauma becomes unthinkable.
It’s been a few months, and I am still in the trenches. I’d love to say the worst is over, and I really hope it is, but that doesn’t necessarily put me in a good spot right now. I am still plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, meltdowns, and hallucinations.
I wake up from nightmares and call off work because I am a wreck for hours after waking. I sometimes have to sleep with a light on – at 22 years old – because I feel unsafe in my own home. I wake up, hallucinating something around the corner and grab the knife I keep on my nightstand – the knife I can’t sleep without now.
My work performance isn’t what it used to be, I have more difficulty paying attention in class – but somehow, by some miracle, my friendships have not suffered – in fact, they’ve only gotten stronger. And I truly, genuinely believe that has made all the difference.
Once I had realized what had happened, I knew I needed to tell someone I trusted. I knew that, if I tried to keep what happened to myself I would slip back into depersonalization and I would lose myself.
Because when we don’t tell others what happened, our secrets die with us. The truth dies with us. And unfortunately, all too often, the truth is far too heavy to carry alone.
I knew that once I told someone, there was no going back. And to be completely honest, telling people what happened was more scary than the original incident.
Every day, I am so grateful to the people who believed me. To the people who supported me. To the people who hear about it indirectly, who know not to bring it up with me but who I know I can trust.
Figuring It Out
This is a complicated situation with very complicated feelings, and I am working on holding both anger and sadness at the same time.
I’ve learned over the last few months that it is so easy to be angry and (rightfully) blame someone, and so much harder to hold that sadness, to admit you’re vulnerable, and to admit that you’ve been hurt.
I’ll admit I’m pushing myself way too hard to recover. To get better. To brush it off, and act like nothing ever happened. But acting like nothing ever happened just doesn’t work – and I know that now.
I know that right now, I am not okay at all. And I am frankly terrified that it is going to take me so long to get better. To be okay. That I am going to have to once again be vulnerable when that is the very last thing I want to do.
Because if I have learned anything from all of this, it’s that even when we are confronted with unimaginable, unprocessable trauma – it’s always worth it to fight our way through it.
To fight to keep our sense of self. To fight to stay present. To fight to stay alive.
When I was first recovering from PTSD, I spent a lot of time trying to understand my resistance to vulnerability.
At 17, my greatest fear was to become vulnerable only to become hurt by the people I loved and trusted.
Now that I have faced that fear, my greatest fear at 22 is losing myself to PTSD again.
Reader, I have no intention of facing that fear – because I have no intention of letting PTSD get the best of me ever again.