My brilliant trauma therapist always corrects me when I say the last
five years have been a life + death battle. She says, "no your whole
life has been". I acknowledge that and just learning to recognise my
feelings and listen to my gut when trigger ...
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My brilliant trauma therapist always corrects me when I say the last
five years have been a life + death battle. She says, "no your whole
life has been". I acknowledge that and just learning to recognise my
feelings and listen to my gut when trigger events arise. Triggers come
in many forms for me, which I am developing techniques to deal with
them, especially when I know a severe trigger event can send me into a
potential crisis. For me, the signs are numbness, confusion, emptiness
and withdrawing. Severe events I shut down and become catatonic. For
years I was surrounded by family (dysfunctional + emotionally detached),
shallow friendships and soulless corporate colleagues, not knowing I was
mirroring behaviours as that was all I knew. When it came time to share
the story of my trauma experiences, including my mother's and my
intellectually disabled sibling, with those that I considered close, it
tended to fall on "deaf ears". My experiences were generally compared by
those that I entrusted my trauma experiences with, as similar to their
parent's divorce or "we all have a hard life, yours is no different to
mine, so just get over it and move on". What I found was the even though
the people around me said they loved or cared for me, their actions and
behaviours were not congruent. When I had my catastrophic breakdown aged
43, the people that surrounded me significantly amplified my negative
psychological situation. Which would playout horrifically for almost
five years. Thankfully, I have discovered how to find healthy
relationships and supports, which has helped me significantly turn my
life quality positively around. I have changed certain negative
behaviours around too, which will be an ongoing personal project. My
point of this post is that even as things can get better, we can slip up
on occasion. For me, that was when my beloved cat got run over and
passed away the other day. He was instrumental in saving my life, and my
direction in life. I have what I call emotional delay, I cried first up,
but the real emotional stuff kicks in a day or so later, and then
negative behaviours can slide in, which occurred last night. Due to my
emotional state, I acted up (a sign that I am in distress) towards the
people that had caused my traumas. Today, I will be sending
communications to those people, apologising for my behaviour, knowing
they will never acknowledge how their actions and inflictions caused me
trauma + pain.
PTSD for Medical and First Responders
