How is it going?
If you ask me how I’m doing lately, I’m likely to thank you for asking, or tell you way more than you asked for. You can blame the pandemic, but it started a few months before that. I don’t need to detail my woes. I have a new therapist for that.
What was it like before?
I’ve been in therapy before. I’ve seen psychologists and marriage and family therapists. I saw it all as therapy. In the past, it was generally talk therapy. I paid someone to talk about my problems. They gave me positive feedback. I felt better when I left, but didn’t address the issues. I was able to move past them, living with them. I told my therapists the work I was doing toward getting my life together and in the process I inspired them. Or they graduated me as someone no longer in need of help.
In 1991 I saw my first therapist. I had just attempted suicide for the first time. I was hospitalized for a week. Going to therapy was something I had to do, but I wasn’t ready to heal. I had no idea what I was healing from. I couldn’t connect with my therapist. I didn’t feel comfortable talking to her, so I never did. It took years to realize that first attempt was a day or two before my third or fourth period, and the hormones that would make me spiral would visit me monthly. It wasn’t a good fit.
In 2001 I saw someone for post-partum depression. She never gave me a diagnosis, but I can admit that my symptoms looked a lot like psychosis. I was a danger to my firstborn child. At the same time, my ex husband had his first girlfriend since we married. I wasn’t doing well and needed help. We talked. I told her what was going on, but I still wasn’t able to really connect with my emotions. I couldn’t express how I felt. The goal was to get me to no longer be a danger. A lot of medicine treats the symptoms and not the source. At my last appointment, she let me know she was leaving and I could either stop going to therapy or she could refer me to someone else.
In 2015 a therapist told me she wanted to take notes for her other clients. I distinctly remembered thinking, “why am I paying you?"
The therapist I went to in 2019 listened to me during the time slot I scheduled to see her. She allowed me the space to cry openly in her office. She then said we could set up meetings as needed, but my main question was whether or not I was crazy. She let me know I wasn’t. I was describing my boss’s actions and she expressed frustration that companies would knowingly hire sociopaths. She told me to check out a couple of books and suggested finding a new job if my company wouldn’t help me. She said I was doing the things she would suggest and she would feel bad taking my money without being able to help me further. A few months later, and the pandemic took care of that situation for me. I cried with relief when I was suddenly laid off.
What about medication?
In 2014, I was sinking. I was imagining driving my car into the median on the freeway. I was imagining a life where I don’t wake up. I also had a lot on my plate. My kids were expressing their need for help. I had to take them to see a psychiatrist and child life specialist. I was coping with the loss of a family member and cleaning out his apartment. I was doing what was right for me, and causing marital arguments in the process. I went to my nurse practitioner and was prescribed a medication. A few months later when I felt like I had the bandwidth to try to cope with everything, I asked her to take me off the pills. She gave me a schedule to gradually wean off. I had severe panic attacks and freaked out when my youngest tried to hug me. The lesson was to get psychiatric meds from a psychiatrist. Her prescription saved my life, but there’s a nuance to these drugs and I could have been better served.
What was different this time?
My normal level of not okay suddenly stood out in a way I couldn’t keep ignoring.
I’ve struggled with Complex PTSD for several years. I understand what it looks like and I generally know when I’m being irrational. There’s science behind my reactions.
PTSD sometimes develops after a traumatic event. It happens when your brain isn’t able to process a traumatic event and you get stuck in that space. Your brain remains on high alert and those stress hormones flood your system constantly. Over time, it can change your brain. The part of your brain that handles fear and emotion (the amygdala) grows larger. The part of the brain that controls memory (the hippocampus) becomes smaller. This is why gaslighting is so evil in domestic violence. We’re already struggling to remember the truth without being lied to about our experience. Complex PTSD develops when several traumatic events overlap. WebMD goes into more detail here.
You’d be surprised at what you get used to. I have the symptoms that look like characteristics of PTSD, but I have lived and worked through them for years. This includes nightmares and waking up with incredible rage. I often live in emotional numbness and dissociation. I’ve had emotional flashbacks and can’t usually get a good night’s rest. I’ve had angry outbursts and how easily I experience guilt over things I have no reason to feel guilty about is irrational. I avoid things that remind me of what happened, which is why I never get drunk unless I’m home alone or with my kids. I have a hard time going to people’s homes and will almost never let someone pick me up. I drive everywhere. I often have to remind myself of the things I enjoy doing. I have a hard time trusting people, and it affects my physical health. You can’t live in fight or flight, but I’ve managed to for many years. All of these things are my normal.
During the pandemic, I’ve had a few events bring up traumas I had mainly learned to live with.
A couple of months ago I was talking to an older gentleman about changing his Medicare plan as a licensed agent. He seemed kind. I was in public with him at Walmart. I had a table set up to let people know about Medicare options. We started discussing where I would meet him. We discussed going to his home, and that’s when I started freaking out. I couldn’t find that feeling of safety that I had just been living in. It was debilitating to the point where I haven’t gone back to that store.
Gradually, my new normal included not showering and brushing my teeth, or getting out of bed. I made dinner and bought groceries, but without a job, spent the rest of my day in bed. I found anything I could complain about and went online. If a company tried to take advantage of me, I was going to set them on fire. I had been victimized enough, and that company selling crappy goods was going to pay!
It was a great time to self advocate because most days I wanted to pick a fight. I made a list of every wrong I wanted to right and set up a to-do list. I filed complaints with the FTC, state attorney general’s office, the OCC, the SEC, found an attorney and just signed off on a settlement agreement, and even started a small claims court case that I get to show up for in January. There might be more, but I’m trying to put that to-do list aside for now. It wasn’t helping me feel better. It was fueling my rage.
A couple of weeks later, I was in the emergency room, trying to determine if my chest pain was life threatening. It wasn’t. It was anxiety and stress. It was time to get help.
I was lucky enough to be referred to someone that knows trauma. She came up with a diagnosis and a game plan. We’re reprocessing the core memories that tell me danger is everywhere, and we’re using EMDR therapy. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is helping me to get past the traumatic experiences that have created the floods of cortisol and adrenaline that are my way of being. Right off the bat, she diagnosed Complex PTSD, major depressive disorder and anxiety. And she knows she can help me. It’s been a few sessions and I can’t see the lie. There’s more information about EMDR therapy, here.
Why now?
I’ve been slowing down lately. There are no fires to put out. There’s nothing to do but sit in bed lately. I’m job hunting but unless I lower my standards, the interviews are slowing as well. My standards are what I’ve already achieved, so I refuse to go lower, and I’m figuring out steps toward entrepreneurship.
Everything I’ve dissociated from over the years wants to rush up and be dealt with. I don’t have anything to distract me from the things I usually dissociate or run from. Suddenly I need to grieve the people I’ve lost in the last two years. A good friend from high school that I lost touch with, a mother and father figure, and my eldest sister have all recently departed and I still haven’t walked through all of the stages of grief that would honor the mark they’ve left on my life and heart.
Out of nowhere, I’m feeling the stress of moving, even though it was a year ago. Feeling isolated and on constant guard through the security system has me on edge. I’m checking for local news through Reddit, Next Door and the Ring app. I’m bouncing from my Lorex cameras, to the Ring camera to the Vivint cameras to get a better view of the strangers or cats or passing busses on my street. The crime rate in my city is insanely high, and I see it everywhere, even though it’s been minimal to my family. I might have made it seem more aggressive when I emailed my local representative, but someone had to tell him. Also, you can’t quantify the fear I feel. It’s subjective.
I had a couple of trusted men betray my trust over the last year or so. Men I had known twenty and thirty years and treated like non sexual family started asking me about my sex life and wanting to see me in a way that felt like a violation. The words used to sexualize me, and make me feel small feel a lot like I did when I was held down and assaulted. It’s that same knot in my chest. It’s that same sinking feeling. It’s the weight that sinks into my bones and my mind shuts down because it’s shocking and doesn’t make sense. Long after they’ve asked for my sex, I’m waking with trembling hands and anger that feels like heat and pressure on my forehead. My heart is racing and I want to vomit the nothing I ate through the night.
It’s time to pick up each memory and help my brain process it so I can move on. Why shouldn’t it be now?
Ask for help. Keep asking. It does get better. I know and trust that it will.