LIVING WITH COMPLEX PTSD

A DIFFICULT DAY.

 

Today was painful. A trauma response in the doctor's office. Embarrassing. Discouraging. This is my life. Not everyday; just sometimes. Gratefully it is getting better.

After an episode, I seem to always experience a period of grief. That is where I am at right now. 

Other than that, I am in a good place. It exhausts me though. Sometimes the day after is the hardest, I often have to accept what is again. And remember my whys for carrying on. See the sunshine. 

I cannot help feeling grateful for the progress I have made and for the sweet that comes after the bitter. In the beginning I only saw the bitter. I am much different now.

Here is a Window Into My Soul as I saw it and experienced it three years ago.

LIVING WITH COMPLEX PTSD

December 2017

It is hard to relive the worst moments of your life over and over and over again. It is painful. It is scary. You feel helpless and hopeless, and desperate. 

It is more than a memory, it is a reliving of the experience, the trauma,  including all the sensations and emotions, some times even the sights, smells and sounds. Sometimes it is re-experiencing the emotions and sensations without the visual or cognitive memory of the actual event. This is harder in its own way because you do not know what is happening or why. You only feel it and experience it with great intensity. And because Complex Trauma is about interpersonal trauma, the triggers are frequent, sometimes it feels constant.

Sometimes these flashbacks last minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days and sometimes weeks. Sometimes they even persist for a month or more. The experiences and traumas compounding on one another. Sometimes you run, in all of its various forms, you run. Sometimes you fight and sometimes you freeze. Freezing is paralyzing. Sometimes you just shut down. Sometimes you just give in and let people throw you under the bus, let them hurt you, ignore you, do their bidding, whatever needed to please them because none of the previous options are available or are ineffective. You submit to the abuse or neglect so it does not get worse from the resisting. And sometimes you fold, losing all will to live.

Sometimes living with PTSD gets messy. Often during those times of reliving the worst moments of your life over and over a desperation sets in. Living is too painful. You want the pain to stop. And you consider things that normally you would never consider. Death seems so inviting because death will end the living hell and torment that seems to never end.

Working in the recovery and healing process is often both bitter and sweet. It gets worse before it gets better. It gets messier and the pain intense. You become ever more vulnerable as you require help and open yourself to strangers such as therapists and doctors and then you break down or flashback in times and places most inconvenient, in front of strangers, associates or friends. You have to feel it to heal it they say. It is all so very bitter. The sweet part is ... well, I will get to that later.

In the midst of the healing process, in the midst of the reliving episodes, life continues on. People die, cars break down, dinner burns, your child gets sick, your husband cuts his hand and all the big and little life stressors occur and you are required like everyone else to meet the daily and present demands of life, all while reliving the worst parts of your life over and over. All with a nervous system that is broken, a brain that does not work, a body that is weak, a stress-response system that is thwarted. 

Holidays, birthdays, vacations and things that are normally fun and rejuvenating are triggering, stressful, and disappointing. There is not energy for such things and what used to be is no longer and things have changed and you have changed and you don’t recognize yourself or even know who you are or how to have fun. 

And no one really knows or understands what you are experiencing, so getting any support is almost nonexistent and yet you need it so desperately and it hurts all at the same time and strangely it is okay no one is there because people and relationships are what caused the problem in the first place and you cannot trust and don’t know how relationships work and you hate people even though you long for them. You crave connection and you hate it. Experience tells you it is not worth the risk or the pain.

“... CPTSD means I have survived and now I don't want to. ... I survive without hope. I survived to go nowhere. I survived to suffer. I guess had I known the cost of survival i would have given up a long time ago. Instinct to survive allowed me to experience self hatred, failure, abuse and solitude. ...”

But continue to survive I must. Even though I want to die more than anything else. So you continue in the recovery process. And hard though it may be, it is where you find hope ... when you do find it... hope for something more, something better.

So what is the sweet in the recovery, healing process? It is the moments when in the midst of torment, you remember the Savior and you call to Him and right there in the very midst of the suffering, there in the darkness, you feel his grace and you know He knows and He cares and you feel a depth of joy you never before knew existed. His love holds you. You are not alone. Lonely but not alone. And you can distinctly feel this and know this, not just hope or believe. In recovery it becomes very real. Grace has always been there but you could not always see it or feel it. Sweetness is being able to feel and see and know.

It is the sweet peace and lessons that come after the storms rage. You know what you did not know before. You are now somehow different. Somehow better for having experienced it all and come through it alive. You realize that some healing has in fact taken place, some pieces put together, you feel a little less broken and for even just a moment a little bit whole, a little bit of hope, a gratitude for the release and it is sweet.

It is the shifts and the insights. It is the epiphanies that come so many, so strong, so wonderful. It is in those moments of knowing that even though you don’t know why or how exactly that this all has purpose for yourself and for others. That you are not this illness but much more than the illness or anything that has happened to you or even that has not happened to you, for truly much of it is not what happened to me but what did not happen to me, for me.

The sweet in recovery is coming to understand and know in the midst of the torment that it will not always feel so intense. It feels like endless torment but you have experienced it enough now to know it lightens up or ends, even if temporarily. Before recovery, you did not know this.

Sweet is remembering. It is the good side of remembering. It is remembering that you have been in the pits of hell before but you came through, it is remembering what you have learned, it is remembering how far you have come, it is remembering that grace and joy you felt in your darkness. Sometimes it is only the memories that keep you going in the midst of the torment, the reliving of the worst moments of your life. Recovery is having something sweet to remember, something sweet to hold onto.

The sweet in recovery is learning new tools to get you grounded quicker. Sweet is letting go. Sweet is embracing truth. Sweet is greater ability to act, if only for a moment and having those moments come more often.

The sweet in recovery is experiencing calm. True calm. Not freeze, not dissociation, not fight or flight, not please. Just calm. It is a beautiful feeling.

The sweet is learning to dance and being able to dance. The sweet is flying, the freedom, the perspective, the beauty of flying. When you fly, you reach higher heights than you ever could climb to and you see things you could not otherwise see and you feel totally free.

The sweet in recovery is learning to rest. Allowing yourself to rest. Sweet is in the being. Just be, nothing more. Sweet is being present. Sweet is acceptance. Sweet is surrendering to what you do not know and cannot know. Sweet is in this very minute.

The sweet in recovery is coming to know what is happening when you don’t know what is happening. Oh, this. This is so sweet.

Before the recovery and healing process there was no understanding of what was happening to you. You were just weak and pathetic. The tools you had were insufficient or unhealthy. In recovery that begins to change. 

The sweet in recovery is finding acceptance and non-judgment, acknowledgement and validation from gifted therapists. Less than ideal, it works and it is sweet. The sweet is the solutions they offer, the solutions they help you find in yourself, the encouragement to do so. It is having someone finally hold space for you, bear witness, to listen and even if you have to pay for someone to do that for you, you finally have it. Sweet in recovery is finally being able to feel safe if only for a moment.

So while you relive the horror and the torment and while it gets worse before it gets better, you are now able to have someone sit with you through it, you are able to understand the process some and you know the intensity will lighten and a lesson or shift is coming. You know that this is the path of healing, even if you do not know what healing ultimately looks like or who you are, you have someone right there who sees beyond what you can see, someone who trusts the process, someone to help you be safe, someone there which means you are not alone. And that is sweet.

I still want to give up more often than I don’t. I would welcome death if it came. I still live in torment too much. I still do not know what amount of healing I will ever have. I don’t know who I am or what I can expect out of life or this process. But I can at times just be. Just rest. Catch my breath before the next storm rages. And cope the best I can in my circumstance. I live with complex PTSD. It is crippling, it is debilitating, it is painful, it is hard to live with. It is humbling. Every breath I take is done in faith and because of love. At least I am not alone. Even when I isolate myself. Something greater than me calls me to carry on. Something greater than me compels me to continue in recovery and not to give up even though I am done.

Living with complex PTSD is hard. It is no way to live. I could even argue it is not really living. But maybe some day I will know what it is to really live. That would be sweet! 

Today was a difficult day. It was also a good day. A good day to be alive! A good day to live! Resilience is the key!

Hope on! Journey on!

Molly Grace Daniels