Living with PTSD on a daily basis

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

For the better part of thirty years unchecked PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), ETD (Extended Trauma Disorder) and, I now believe, bi-polarity—none of which I knew I had, drove my boundless restless rush into the rapids of self-destruction time and time again.

And each time that I self-combusted, I racked up more shame and regret, and it became harder and harder to claw my way back into the main stream where I would over-compensate and over-achieve in a vain attempt to be “normal”… or not. 

And through it all I bore my secret shame and difference deep inside of me like a brand that never stopped burning.  There is not one part or person in or of my life that has not been scorched by its’ flames.

You wouldn’t believe to what lengths I went to escape my guilt and anger and shame.  So much of my life went by in a blur.  Years spent trying to stay high enough to keep me from feeling or thinking in depth about anything.  Heroin came close.  Time after time with both the heroin and crack years—thirty years apart, I stalked death.  So many times I should have died …

But all the while a seldom silent scrivener roamed the dusty hallways in the catacombs of my mind, keeping tally of each loss, each failing, each sin, and four days after my radical hysterectomy and subsequent disembowelment my debt became due when my life, as well as my body, came to a screeching halt and forced me to read his records, because, for the first time in my life, death was no longer an option.  I want to live!

Of course, it wasn’t that simple.  I went through periods of loss so deep I thought I’d drown in it.  It left my heart—my very soul wide open and raw and it was there that God’s will could operate in my life. 

The truth is that we have to accept responsibility for our actions and the damage we cause in our own lives and in the lives of others, whether we have PTSD or not.

PTSD may be what fuels the damage that we do in our lives, but it’s what we choose to do with that energy that counts.  PTSD is NOT a shield to hide behind.  Neither is it a club with which to beat others.  It is a fact of our lives. 

But we are not puppets of our own emotions.  Just because we’re triggered by the news, a nightmare, a slamming door shut—it doesn’t mean we have to allow it to escalate into a PTSD episode.  We have a choice and the responsibility to make a choice that doesn’t harm or intimidate anyone.

If you learn that now; if you make that choice to stop the damage now, you bi-pass years and oceans of loss … to everyone.  And you also get back your life.  It may not be the one you thought it would be, but it can be even richer because of your loss, and the power facing it will give you.

Now, on to the reason I started this post.  I’m going to turn 57 shortly and with each year that passes I find more and more things that I can no longer do because of the damage to my body and my mind.  The physical losses piss me smooth the heck off.

Horses have always been an important part of my life.  I sold my girls back in December of 1989 because I could no longer afford to keep them, and I miss them so much.  Recently I decided that I want to get another horse.

However facts and realities have a way of cropping up.  Speaking of  “up”, aint no way in the world that I can fly myself up bareback from the ground like I used to.  Ummm…how AM I going to deal with that?  In fact, aint no way I’m even going to be able to get INTO the saddle right now without a forklift.

Solution: my neighbors painting ladder—once I’m up, I’ll just leave everything to “Depends” adult diapers!  Problem solved.  I’m sure I’ll limber up in time …

Problem: we rent our lovely home: Not sure what the owner will say …

Solution:  OMG!  They said YES!  Gulp … he even said I could build a round ring on the property by the pond!

Problem:  Pain.  My back, legs and knees already cause me so-o-o much pain.

Solution: Screw it.  I’ll just ignore it like I always do.

Problem:  No corral and no materials.

Solution—I hope: I’ll ask the community to donate unwanted poles, pipes or boardsl—I don’t have the money right now myself.

Problem: cougars and coyotes at night.

Solution: I’ll build a small corral and stall right behind the back fence near the old cedar tree for at night.  For money?  Ummm…

Big problem: my hands.  I won’t even try to describe the pain in my hands and forearms after I’ve used my hands for raking, writing, digging, watering, blowing my nose …

Solution:  See solution for back, legs and knees.

Big, big, biggest problem:  I won’t be able to deal with cleaning out corrals, feeding, moving the horse from the night pen to the round pen, etc., at least not in the winter when there is snow and ice on the ground.

Big, bigger, BESTEST solution (and reason why people would want to donate supplies for the corrals):  The economy has hit this very rural area like a ton of bricks.  People can’t afford to feed their animals and they either give them away, underfeed them or eat them. 

I could foster “rescued horses” who need time, TLC and training before they move on to new owners.  I could take horses from March through October/early November, and help the community, the animals and myself,  

So, what do you guys think?  I know the part about the pain is pretty sketchy, but I don’t let it keep me from doing all the up-keep on this big house, the better part of a half acre including a vegetable garden herb garden and flower gardens, so I won’t let it stop me with this.  I really, really need to do this. 

Or do you think I’ve finally flipped my fuzzy and the pain pills have turned my brain into a softball?  Let me know, ‘kay?

PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is an equal-opportunity destroyer.  As anyone who’s ever loved, lived with, worked with or who cares about someone with unchecked PTSD can attest, it isn’t just the person who has the disorder whose life and reality is turned upside down: it effects and affects everyone whose life it touches. 

And the closer the connection, the more damage it does.  Spouses, lovers,  significant others, children, friends and family often develop “secondary” PTSD from living in an emotional minefield at a time when it sometimes must seem that the whole world is full of thunder and fire.

Most people do one of three things:

1.     Walk on eggs because they never know whether or not the next step they take will trip one of the wires that triggers one of the mines buried in the emotional (and sometimes corporeal) landscape of your world.

2.     Rage back.  Either openly—in the face, blow for blow—or in the many subtle and sometimes brutal ways in which we—often unknowingly, but sometimes for just because—push the other person’s button.  It’s a vicious cycle that becomes so ingrained that there’s no way out except to …

3.     Run.  Wait until it’s safe to go (translate that to mean that there is no chance of being caught unawares), pick up the shattered pieces of your life and run like hell. 

But life doesn’t have to be lived that way.   A person who has PTSD did not choose to develop the disorder.  If you think it’s scary to live in the volatile world of PTSD, its pure D hell.  Most of the time we don’t know what the hell is wrong with us or why we do the things we do.

We don’t plan to sabotage our relationships, our jobs, our lives.  We don’t want to spontaneously combust.  But we don’t know what to do to keep that urgent restlessness that just builds and builds and builds becoming an emotional tsunami.

Once we begin to accept that there really is something drastically wrong with us and we want the ruin to end, one of the first things you—as a concerned party, can do is pay attention.

What kind of things repeatedly trigger PTSD based behaviors in the person you care about?  What are her triggers?  What pushes his hot buttons?

Find out, pay attention, and eliminate as many potential triggers in your lives as you can.  If yelling from room to room drives up her blood pressure and is likely to agitate, don’t do it.  Talk to everyone else in the family and get them to cooperate and I think you’ll be surprised at the difference this makes.

I love music.  So does Greg, and so does my granddaughter.  And we like to crank up the volume too.  Hmmm … let me see.  The Rollingstones, George Winston’s piano solos or some kickin’ country, and just for fun, let’s throw in a little rap.  The bluff simply isn’t big enough for a battle of the bands!  So we all use an I-pod or the PC, and no one’s music bothers anyone else.  It’s a small thing, but it’s something you can do, and it does work.

Most people who have PTSD have problems sleeping.  We either can’t sleep, can’t stay asleep, or sleep too much.  We have hideous nightmares, sweats and terrors, so the way in which we are awakened can have a direct and immediate effect on the emotional tone for the day.

If you need to awaken someone with PTSD it is usually kindest and best if you do so softly—soft voice, slow, soft touches, and a kiss or too eases them from the depths of sleep where they are defenseless, into the waking world of now without making them go ballistic.

If something comes up that you know you need to discuss with your partner who has PTSD, watch the tone of your voice.  If you deliver your news calmly, if you choose a time and way to do so that isn’t likely to increase your partner’s anxiety, he or she is much more likely to respond well to what you’re saying and much less likely to “kill the messenger”—namely you!

PTSD is not an excuse (or a reason) for behaving or treating someone badly, and it is not okay to be an ass, but a lot of grief can be avoided by simply choosing the time and place to talk to your partner and pick your battles wisely.  Try to avoid arguing with someone when either you or they are already angry or emotionally charged, and choose words that say what you need to say without dumping all the troubles in the world on your partner.   

Over the course of the next several posts we’ll be looking at anchors and discussing important ways of helping you learn ways of coping with the whole situation.

PTSD is not just a set of symptoms that affect a specific area of someone’s life: it is a way of life and there is not one aspect of our lives (or yours) which is not turned upside down by the disorder.

Sharing the life of someone who has PTSD is exhausting, frustrating and often feels pointless (but its not).  Be sure to take care of your needs too and the needs of the innocents around you.  Nurture yourself—join a support group—get counseling for yourself and your family.  

And try to remember—as frustrating, scary and difficult as it is to love someone who has PTSD, its even more difficult for the one who has it, and he or she probably has as little or less understanding of why they do the things they do than you do.  In the emotional landscape of our souls there is little or no familiar territory to be found in a world where nothing about us or the world we thought we knew makes sense, and in our fear, rage and shame we often strike out.

Alrighty then, back to the not-so-wonderful world of unchecked Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

Most people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder have periods of rage in our lives.  Some of us get stuck there and it becomes a way of life. 

People with unchecked PTSD tend to be volatile because of the hormonal soup in which our brains, bodies and psyches marinate in 24/7.  When something in our lives triggers us at the core level of our beings—at the level of identity, self and mind, we often respond by striking out at ourselves and those around us.  Our sense of “self” and our confidence in the coherence of reality comes unglued.

When that happens we often become like the monsters that we fear most in life.  We may become a “seething cauldron boiling with the bitter poison of raw resentment, or a threatened dog that barks and bites and snaps blindly at the world” (Michael Meade The Water Of Life, page 96; last paragraph).

In the long run, both our bodies and our minds secretly and thoroughly remember the wounds we receive in our lives.  Even during relatively stable and happy periods of our lives the wounds are there—just under the surface, and they continue to bleed and ache and ooze into our current lives and relationships.

Whenever we face our issues—whenever we come close to gaining a new or fundamental understanding of, and healing from the pain and angst that we carry within us, the closer to the surface our wounds become.  And unfortunately, we are more likely to lash out against the change, ourselves, and those around us.  The old, primordial part of our brains which was kicked into overdrive by our traumas is hard to convince that all this pain and all those wounds, and the hormonal soup in which we either sink or swim in is unnecessary.  As a result, our responses to even the most mundane stressors are often hugely exaggerated.

Either that or we tend to withdraw deeply into ourselves and live largely separate, lonely lives rather than deal with the disappointments, rages, sorrow and pain that comes with living a “normal” life.

Whichever way we respond to, and interact with our inner issues and the world at large, we can choose to look closely at our moods, mood-swings and look behind our rages or withdrawal and develop an understanding of why we responded to any given stressor in the way that we did, and those insights and the emotions attached to our understanding are absolutely essential to our healing and our sense of being complete and whole.

The single most important thing for someone with PTSD to accept and understand is that in any situation, regardless of what we feel—emotionally or physically or any way else, is that we always have a choice in how we respond.

Sure, a lot of the things we feel, do and say, are felt, done and said out of the depths of the PTSD, but we have a choice—we can blow things all out of proportion and lash out at ourselves and everyone around us; or we can retreat into isolation and either nurse our outrage or feel threatened and endangered; or we can choose to delve deeper into ourselves to find a path that does no more harm than has already done.  Even if that sometimes means that all you can do is leave it alone.

Once we step out onto a path of healing—once we have reached the place where we can no longer accept the illusion that PTSD doesn’t affect our daily lives, the sooner we accept the responsibility of and for our actions, the less ruin and the more joy we’ll find in our lives.

Think back to the last serious disagreement you had with someone close to you?  How did you respond at the height of the argument?  Why?  What did you hope to accomplish—what was the point you were trying to make and why?

Did you make it?  Was understanding reached on all sides and balance between you and the other person restored?

Or did the whole experience just tear a big hole in the garment of your relationship?

What would have happened if you, at the height of the disagreement, had simply stopped?  What if you had put down your pride and resentment and had acted instead on the knowledge that the person you are fighting with is more important that any point could ever be—even if you are “right”. 

What could you have said and done that would have not only gotten your point across but done so without hurting anyone? 

Is there anything, now that you can do to help heal the wound that stretches between you and the other person?  What would happen if you did?